Foreign Ministry Spokesman’s Statement
Malinovsky Is a Liar
May 3, 1966
[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 9, #19, May 6,
1966, pp. 5-9. Thanks are due to the WWW.WENGEWANG.ORG
web site for some of the work done for this posting.]
ACCORDING to a report of the Hungarian Telegraph Agency, U.S.S.R. Minister of National Defense Malinovsky said in a speech in Hungary on April 21 that the aid for the Vietnamese people’s struggle could be still more efficient should the Chinese leaders not hamper these efforts, and that as the Soviet Union did not border on the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, its aid for the Vietnamese brothers could only reach them through Chinese territory. In this connection, a spokesman of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs makes the following statement:
Malinovsky is a liar. China has never hampered the transit of Soviet aid materials to Vietnam. All military aid materials which Vietnam asked for and which the Soviet Union asked China to forward have been transported to Vietnam by China with priority, at high speed, and free of charge. From February 1965 when the Soviet Union asked for the sending of its aid materials to Vietnam through China up to the end of 1965, China transported a total of 43,000-odd tons of Soviet military aid supplies to Vietnam. The Vietnamese government is well aware of this. And so is the Soviet government. The facts are all there, and nobody can succeed in distorting them.
Both in quantity and quality, the aid the Soviet Union gives to Vietnam is far from commensurate with its strength. It should have been easy for a big power like the Soviet Union to provide Vietnam with several hundred thousand tons of military supplies. But it has only given a few tens of thousands of tons, a deplorably meagre amount. It must be further pointed out that most of the Soviet supplies consisted of old weapons of its own armed forces, which had been replaced and which even included some that were worn-out and of no use at all. True, the Soviet Union has also given Vietnam some weapons of comparatively new types, but even these are already outmoded. As for those of truly good quality, the Soviet Union either does not supply them or is unwilling to supply them in large quantities. This state of affairs is definitely not due to any hindrance on the part of China. How can the blame be laid at the door of China when the Soviet Union is simply unwilling to supply good things in large quantities? Take, for instance, the first quarter of this year. For this period the Soviet Union asked us to earmark a transport capacity of 1,730 wagons. We agreed and readied the wagons. However, the actual Soviet delivery was only 556 wagon-loads. Such was the fact. How can anyone who is not off his head talk about China hampering Soviet aid to Vietnam?
As is well known, in Khrushchev’s days the Soviet Union refused to aid Vietnam. The new leaders of the Soviet Union put up the signboard of aiding Vietnam when they took over. Some people think that the leading group of the Soviet Union has really changed, but the change in fact is only in method and tactics. Both Khrushchev’s no aid for Vietnam and the new Soviet leaders’ aid for Vietnam are aimed at controlling the Vietnam situation and bringing the Vietnamese people’s struggle against U.S. aggression and for national salvation into the orbit of “U.S.-Soviet collaboration.” Therefore, the new leaders of the Soviet Union hastily began to engineer so-called peace talks behind the back of Vietnam to meet the needs of U.S. imperialism, even before the first batch of their promised aid materials arrived in Vietnam last year.
The Soviet leading group knows that to serve U.S imperialism it must first of all sow discord between China and Vietnam and undermine the unity of the Chinese and Vietnamese peoples against U.S. imperialism. In the past year or more, the Soviet Union has been making use of the question of its aid to Vietnam to attack China. Its aid to Vietnam has been scanty, but the rumours it spread slandering China have been numerous. For a time, the method used by the Soviet leading group in serving the United States has indeed become a little more covert owing to the constant exposures by China and by all Marxist-Leninists of the world, but its behind-the-scenes activities have never stopped.
At its Twenty-third Congress, the leading group of the C.P.S.U. assumed a posture for unity against imperialism, and not a few people unaware of the truth thought that it was sincere. Now, everybody can see that this was mere pretence. In reality, at the Twenty-third Congress the leading group of the C.P.S.U. still employed the dual tactics of sham opposition but real capitulation to imperialism, sham revolution but real betrayal, and sham unity but real split. The Hungarian delegate sang the loudest in the anti-Chinese chorus at the Twenty-third Congress and quite logically it was in Hungary that shortly afterwards Malinovsky, a member of the Soviet leading group, personally divulged the hidden anti-Chinese theme of that Congress.
As a soldier, Malinovsky ought to know that besides ground and air communications there are sea routes to link various countries in the world. It is utterly groundless to say that aid cannot be rendered in the absence of a common boundary. The Soviet Union has no common boundary with Cuba which lies far away, yet it could ship rocket-nuclear weapons to and back from Cuba. It is not even that far from Vietnam, why can’t it ship even conventional weapons there? Again, the Soviet Union has no common boundary with India, yet it could ship large quantities of military materials there by sea to help the Indian reactionaries to attack China. Why then can’t it ship aid materials by sea to help the Vietnamese people fight the United States? It is sheer nonsense to play on the existence or absence of a common boundary. The heart of the matter is that the Soviet revisionist leading group has already degenerated into an accomplice of U. S. imperialism. Its so-called aid to Vietnam is a sham. Its real aim is to oppose China, Vietnam, and all people persevering in revolution. What it hankers after is “world domination through U.S.-Soviet collaboration.”
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