Reviving Revolutionary Momentum } 169
global communism. Mao therefore maneuvered toward a split in the name of
“unity”—but only unity on the basis of Marxist-Leninist principles as laid out
by Mao. The day after the letter arrived, Mao received the Soviet ambassador
Stepan Chervonenko in his, Mao’s, bedroom. Once again Mao received the
Soviet ambassador in pajamas. Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai were also in atten-
dance. Scholar Sergey Radchenko thought Mao’s extremely casual attire was
intended to demonstrate Mao’s elevated status above mundane conventions
like polite dress and diplomatic protocol. In any case, Mao told Chervonenko
that polemical criticism was not a big deal. He himself, Mao proclaimed, was
not afraid of criticism, and others should not be either:
Indeed, because polemics [between the CCP and the CPSU] begin, will
the sky fall down on earth or will grass stop growing on the Xishan
Mountains? No. The sky will not fall down, grass and trees will still
grow, women will bear children, and fish will swim in the water.^11
Mao then linked the struggle against international revisionism to the
struggle against revisionism within socialist countries: “In socialist coun-
tries, new bourgeois elements can appear and develop. If we do not deal with
them, they could get out of hand.” To demonstrate magnanimity, Mao repeat-
edly invited Khrushchev to visit Beijing for talks. He also said that polemics
could be temporarily suspended during that visit. This invitation went no-
where, as Mao must have known it would. Khrushchev would not risk the
loss of status and humiliation of appearing, once again, before Teacher Mao.
The CCP did, however, accept the Soviet proposal of February 23 for bilateral
talks. Eventually, July 5 was set as the starting date. Deng Xiaoping led the
CCP delegation, assisted by Kang Sheng and Peng Zhen. These talks were
pivotal and would mark the final rupture between the CCP and the CPSU.^12
In the lead-up to the July 1963 talks, Moscow prepared a number of what
it deemed practical proposals designed to address Chinese security concerns,
albeit within the confines of continuing Sino-Soviet alliance: coordination
of the air defense systems of the two countries, exchange of military intel-
ligence, expanded economic ties, and so on. Beijing took the opposite ap-
proach. Two weeks before the scheduled start of talks, Chinese ambassador
Pan Zili in Moscow handed to a top CPSU theoretician a CCP “Proposal
Concerning the General Line of the Communist Movement”^13 (hereafter re-
ferred to as “Proposal”). Organized around twenty-five “questions of prin-
ciple,” the Proposal constituted a reply to the CPSU’s conciliatory letter of
February. After delivering the Proposal to the CPSU, but without waiting to
hear Moscow’s reply, China launched an extensive campaign to publicize it.
Mao first met with foreign communist leaders visiting Beijing, gave them cop-
ies of the Proposal, and asked for their suggestions. Renmin ribao then pub-
lished the Proposal in full. The PRC embassy in Moscow began to distribute
a Russian-language translation of the document. Copies were mailed by post