Workers World Vol. 18, No. 3
New York, Jan. 13 – When in late December the People’s Republic of China released a Soviet helicopter crew imprisoned since March 1974, it was a truly astonishing development. The most remarkable aspect of it, however, is that it has been treated in the world press, including that of China and the USSR, as a minor diplomatic incident.
Few if any articles in the socialist countries have subjected the incident to analysis. The radical press in this country has given it scant attention (if any). Except for the first three days after the announcement, the capitalist press has treated it as a non-event. Nevertheless, the only analysis, if it can be called that, did appear in the leading bourgeois papers of the Western countries.
Naturally they analyzed it strictly from the viewpoint of their own imperialist interests. The incident in and of itself had no significance to them whatever. The only meaning to the Soviet crewmen’s release, so far as they were concerned, was as a possible harbinger of things to come. Might it indicate a normalization or even reconciliation of the two socialist countries? This would be a nightmare to them, but a source of great hope and strength to all the workers and the oppressed of the world.
The New York Times, of course, was full of apprehension in its editorial of January 1. It regained its composure, however, when the release of the Soviet crewmen was followed by a new vitriolic attack by the PRC against the Soviet Union. This was followed later by an extraordinary fuss made over the visit of Julie and David Eisenhower and an audience given to them by Mao himself as a token of China’s interest in the diplomatic rapprochement with the U.S. against the USSR begun by Nixon’s visit.
The release of the Soviet helicopter crewmen, however, should first of all be considered on its own merits.
It is to be remembered that when they were first captured, China announced they were on an “armed reconnaissance mission.” The PRC dismissed the Soviet contention that the crew was on a medical mission and had strayed into China accidentally.
In releasing the Soviet helicopter crew, China virtually accepted the Soviet interpretation. This is what is truly astonishing. When one considers the nature of the acrimonious polemic between the leadership of the USSR and China, and the struggle they are conducting on the political as well as diplomatic front, such an admission seems scarcely conceivable. The brief announcement made by Hsinhua, the Chinese press agency, stated that “after investigation by the Chinese public security organs,” the PRC authorities “now consider credible the Soviet members’ statement about the unintentional flight into China.”
Thus the PRC has imprisoned the Soviet crew for almost two years before completing their investigation. This in and of itself sounds incredible. If, as the PRC originally claimed, the reconnaissance helicopter was armed, then it could not possibly have taken that long to verify the nature of the crew’s mission.
Whether the crew was innocent or guilty is important, but not so far as the imperialist world is concerned. To them truth in any diplomatic incident is absolutely irrelevant – of no consequence whatever. The essence of imperialist diplomacy is to lie and deceive. That is why the imperialist press in reporting the incident paid no attention whatever to examining the truth of the incident.
It is otherwise with the working class. Class truth aids class liberation and class deception reinforces class oppression. Socialist diplomacy as distinguished from imperialist diplomacy has a two-fold mission.
In relation to imperialism, a socialist country has the right and the duty in any military or diplomatic maneuver to weaken or divide imperialism and to strengthen the military and diplomatic position of the socialist state. In executing these maneuvers, however, it must do so in a manner and spirit which raises the class consciousness of the workers and liberates them from imperialist trickery and deception. All working class maneuvers must first of all abide by class truth so far as the workers and oppressed go. Socialist diplomacy must not deceive them, it must not lie to them as does the bourgeoisie.
This is precisely how Leninist diplomacy was distinguished from imperialist diplomacy literally from the first day that the Bolsheviks seized power and the Soviet Union entered on the world arena. The diplomacy of the early days of the Soviet Union was first of all calculated and directed to the workers and oppressed people. Shady maneuvers, secret deals – which demoralize the workers, making them cynical and ultimately indifferent to all politics – this was precisely what Soviet diplomacy tried to avoid. The way the Soviet Union conducted itself at Brest-Litovsk in the difficult days when the USSR was besieged by world imperialism was a shining example of how to try to divide the imperialist powers while at the same time speaking class truth: saying it like it is even in difficult times.
Examining the helicopter incident in the light of proletarian policy, in the light of revolutionary internationalism, it can be seen as a tragic throwback to some of the worst aspects of bourgeois imperialist diplomacy. And this is true on the part of both China and the USSR. At both ends of the Sino-Soviet relationship, the incident was treated from the point of view of bourgeois power politics and nationalist rivalry. Neither China nor the Soviet Union in this case showed an ounce of concern for world public opinion among the workers or of the workers in their own respective countries.
In the first place, if the helicopter crew was innocent of any charges, after being imprisoned for so long, the PRC owed an explanation to its own people and to the workers and oppressed of the world whom they had led to believe that this was a spy crew. Surely more than a terse paragraph and a half was necessary if this admission by the PRC was not to be taken cynically – and cynicism in the long run leads to deep doubts about the leadership’s policies in general.
On the other hand, if the Soviet leaders were not engaged in a power politics struggle with the PRC, they could have immediately grasped the incident as a means of reopening a dialogue to normalize diplomatic relations and get off the political and diplomatic collision course they have been on with the PRC for many years.
As it was, they seemed little inclined to take advantage of it to cement relations with the PRC, even if the PRC had intended it only as a ploy to get a better bargain with the Ford administration.
As matters stand, however, if the PRC intended it as a mere ploy, meant to frighten the Pentagon into closer relations with China, it didn’t succeed. On the other hand, the USSR leaders seem just as anxious to retain their tenuous détente with the Ford administration instead of probing deeper for a renewal of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty, which legally is still supposed to be in existence but in reality is a dead letter.
Nevertheless, after everything has been said and done, the incident, even though carried out in the context and spirit of bourgeois diplomacy, does show that there is the possibility and even a probability that the two socialist countries can arrive at a mutual arrangement which would at least bring to an end the false and nauseating polemics – a struggle which long ago deteriorated into a state to state struggle and from which only imperialism gains an advantage.
This by no means should mean an end to ideological differences, which is something else again. But if it is possible for both China and the USSR to strive so desperately for a rapprochement with the imperialist colossus, they could with much more beneficial results arrive at a rapprochement between themselves, to the detriment of monopoly capitalism.
The biggest lesson, however, applies to those working class groups and parties throughout the world which uncritically and blindly follow the politics of either the Chinese or Soviet leaders. What an embarrassment, in particular for the Maoists! And those who are assiduously pursuing the policy of the Soviet leaders stand in no better role. Moreover, an endless stream of further embarrassments are in store for them.
If the helicopter incident shows anything at all, it reinforces the need for proletarian independence from the revisionist policies of the Soviet leaders and the neo-revisionism of the Chinese leaders. This, in the long run, will also prove the best defense for the socialist interests of both China and the USSR.
Last updated: 11 May 2026