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CHINA from MAO to DENG (3 of 11)

Mao spoke of China achieving communism sooner than the Soviet Union. He had been displeased in 1956 when the leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced Stalin -- the Chinese Communists having praised Stalin to their nation. Mao characterized Khrushchev as a "revisionist" -- in other words, deviating from Marxism. He saw the Soviet Union as having become a bureaucratic state. Mao's supporters claimed that China was pursuing Marxism and the Soviet Union was not.

Khrushchev, on the other hand, believed that Mao was having romantic delusions. Khrushchev believed that the Soviet Union was building socialism. He believed it was necessary for the Soviet Union to educate specialists -- engineers, teachers et cetera. He saw Marx's communism, including the end to divisions in labor, as something far off in the future.

The ideological split between Mao and Khrushchev was aggravated by their different approaches to the power of the United States, the atomic bomb and provocations from Taiwan. Mao disliked Khrushchev's attempt at détente with the United States. Taiwan had set up military outposts on the tiny islands of Quemoy and Matsu, each just a few miles off China's coast, and Mao wanted to stand up to Chiang Kai-shek's regime and to the U.S. Mao spoke of his being unafraid of nuclear bombs, and he asked that the Soviet Union help China develop such bombs. Khrushchev refused, telling Mao that China had no need for nuclear bombs because the Soviet Union had them and was China's protector.

Khrushchev was not only trying to develop better relations with the United States, he wished above all to avoid a nuclear war. He opposed China's bombing of Quemoy and Ma-tsu. Mao responded by announcing that what China did regarding Ma-tsu and Quemoy was an internal matter, and Khrushchev saw this as stupid because China and the Soviet Union were allies and what China did regarding Quemoy and Matsu could have grave consequences for both powers.