Fathers & Sons

There was a sense of deja vu about the whole affair--an uncanny, paramnesic feeling that all of this had happened before. And of course it had. Half a million Muscovites filled Red Square with song and holiday color, as usual. Through the balmy spring weather rumbled the same long lines of tanks and rocket launchers, as usual. Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky delivered his usual threats of rocket-borne retaliation against any imperialist aggressor. From high on the facade of the Moscow Hotel, the usual giant portrait of Nikita Khrushchev eyeballed the crowd, and--as usual--the man himself, surrounded by the same Presidium, waved his Homburg in the middle of the lineup atop Lenin's tomb.

The Presidium was, of course, older: it now averages 62, a fairly advanced age for a group that claims to represent the world's future. (Communist China's Politburo is even more decrepit: its average age is 65.) Former Member of the Secretariat Frol Kozlov, 55, was not on hand; the severe stroke he suffered last spring had dropped him from the front rank. Theoretician Mikhail Suslov, 61, the victim of a kidney or liver ailment late last year, was back at the stand, invigorated, no doubt, by the heady air he had whipped up with his ideological attack on Peking last month. Khrushchev himself, at 70, appeared in fine fettle, although his own health problems have lately forced him to ease up on meat in favor of cabbage. He sounded only mildly carnivorous later in the day, warning that U.S. reconnaissance flights over Cuba might have "disastrous consequences."

For the first time since World War II, there were no Red Chinese officially on hand to witness the May Day parade. At the last minute, Russia had withdrawn its invitation to the delegation of Chinese workers who had come to Moscow especially for the occasion.

Rumanian Revolt. But if the Chinese were non grata in Moscow, there was at least one Eastern European Communist capital where Peking was still welcome. In Bucharest, Rumanian Party Boss Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, 62, went out of his way to include Mao Tse-tung in his May Day message of greeting. In the Red world, it was a significant gesture, and every Communist from Auckland to Zanzibar took note of it. For Dej is playing a double game in the Sino-Soviet conflict, one that could lead to plenty of trouble--or perhaps to a certain amount of freedom.

Before the Chinese attack on Moscow last month, Dej had sent a delegation headed by Premier Ion Maurer to Peking to plead for an end to the polemics. Dej was afraid that any worsening of the split would force Khrushchev to tighten his grip on the Eastern European satellites, and Rumania was doing well without any more help from Nikita. Rumania boasts the highest industrial growth rate in Europe, a phenomenal 15%, and has achieved that growth by defying Moscow. The original role Khrushchev had charted for Rumania under its Comecon plan--the Red version of the Common Market--was that of an agricultural exporter and supplier of oil and petrochemicals. Dej refused to accept this "dumb-peasant" role, struck out on his own three years ago to do as much business with the West as possible.

Since then, Rumanians have imported or contracted for some $400 million in industrial installations from the West. In 1960, when the Rumanian Galati (pronounced Galatz) steel combine was formed, Russia grandly offered its help. But Rumania turned elsewhere, and the $42 million contract for the combine's rolling mill went to a British-French group. The Ploesti oilfields, today producing more than in the best prewar years, are studded with Western-built plants, which produce everything from automobile tires to women's stockings, and Rumania's petrochemical industry is booming.

A Heartfelt Call. But if greying, brush-browed Boss Dej is willing to trade with the West, he is loath to accept any of its political ideals. Few Communist countries have a tougher, more hawk-eyed police force than Rumania. Unlike Budapest, Warsaw, Prague, and even East Berlin, Bucharest is a city without political cabarets or satirical magazines. There is no discernible ferment among the literati, and even the young people are afraid to wear the zoot-suit stilyagi clothes popular elsewhere in Eastern Europe.* Party Boss Dej, a strong-handed ex-railroad worker, keeps as tight a grip on the throttle as any old-time Stalinist could have a decade ago.

Last week Dej continued his struggle to stay clear of Moscow's grasp in the fight with China. The Rumanian Workers' Party newspaper, Scinteia (Spark), published a 10,000-word statement summarizing Rumania's efforts to mediate in the dispute between Moscow and Peking. It also addressed "a heartfelt call" for a cessation of the fight--indicating that Rumania would not take sides in the dispute, but preferred the "polycentrist" approach of independent Communist parties, most strongly proposed by the Italian Reds. Said the statement: "There does not and cannot exist a parent party and a son party, parties that are superior and parties that are subordinate." And as for Comecon, the Rumanians were still playing the maverick. The statement proclaimed that any Communist state should have the right to develop economic links "with all states, regardless of their social system."

t By contrast, in Prague's Kinsky Park 3,000 students who had gathered for a poetry reading turned May Day into a melee, chanting antigovernment slogans and "Down with the Gestapo" when Czech Boss Antonin Novot-ny's cops charged in with clubs and dogs.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.