80 SOCIAL SCIENTIST to record the unemployment, starvation deaths, epidemics and growing illiteracy in a capitalist-landlord India, grow eloquent in describing with unconcealed delight the slowdowns and breakdowns of the Chinese economy, most of them imagined and the rest plagiarised from the imperialist press. Read this gem for example: This rationing system provided a hungry existence for hundreds of millions of Chinese. Millions of people had to pay with their lives for the reckless decisions of Mao Tse-tung. Numerous data which leaked through the thick bamboo screen, disclosed that in 1961-62 there was a dropsy patient practically in every family and many died of hunger. Altogether more than 25 million people died of hunger in China during that period.1 Does not this have a familiar ring? The writer Dimitriev certainly has borrowed a leaf or two from the notorious anti-Soviet propagandists of the twenties and thirties who conjured up visions of millions upon millions dying of famine in Soviet Union. Dimitriev, an adept in supressio ueri and suggestio faisi forgets to tell us that most of the difficulties China faced during this period of "Great Leap'"" and immediately afterwards was due to the unilateral and unexpected withdrawal of Soviet technicians and assistance, treacherously timed to coincide with unprecedented drought conditions in China. Of course, Nikita Khrushchev wanted such things to happen and thus to break China to submission. Even Palmiro Togliatti of Italy, a strong supporter of Moscow's switch over to revisionism condemned in no uncertain terms this treacherous withdrawal of not only technicians and aid, but even copies of blue prints and half-built plants.2 But inspite of Khrushchev's fond desire and what this Soviet publicist would have us believe has happened, China survived this treachery with glory and the fable of millions of deaths is but a scandalous canard. Another writer goes on to quote figures from nowhere to prove that the wages of the Chinese workers are progressively declining.9 He also waxes eloquent h la a Very Reverend Alexander Sholzenitsyn on the suppression of culture, science and dissent in China.4 Examples could be multiplied. But this is only one side of theg picture. The Soviet leaders and publishers can plead an extenuatin circumstance, that Chinese publicists are paying them back in the same coin. When Soviet writers condemn China and Chinese leaders as militarist, Bonapartist, anarchist, BIanquist, Trotskyite, Confucian (sic !) and what not5 Chinese allege that Soviet Union has relapsed into capitalism, and is ^social imperialist5' (whatever it may mean !) and is to be considered an enemy of the people of the world on par with American imperialism. Well, though we may still debate on who had the head start in this not-so-salubrious game of anti-socialist scandal-mongering and name-calling,there is no need for any debate as to who heads the race now.