Page "History of the People's Republic of China (1949–1976)" Paragraph 26

Angry polemics with the Soviet Union continued during the early 1960s.

Mao Zedong argued that Khrushchev's emphasis on material development would soften the people and cause them to lose their revolutionary spirit.

The Soviet leader countered by saying " If we could promise the people nothing but revolution, they would scratch their heads and say ' Isn't it better to have good goulash?

'" However, much of this hostility was directed at Khrushchev personally and after his expulsion from power in October 1964, the Chinese tried to mend relations.

A few weeks later, Zhou Enlai headed a delegation to Moscow for the 47th anniversary of the 1917 revolution.

They returned home disappointed when Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin said that they would repudiate some of Khrushchev's more eccentric policies, but that they had no intention of turning the clock back to the time of Stalin.

Despite this, relations with the USSR didn't really fall off until the Cultural Revolution and China continued to send representatives to the anniversary celebration of the 1917 revolution up to 1966.

The Cultural Revolution was in full swing by then, and at the celebrations that November, one Soviet politician remarked " What's going on now in China is neither Marxist, cultural, or revolutionary.