Comment on the Article “Initial Reactions after the Breakdown of the Four-Power Summit Conference” [!]
(May 1960)
[1]

(1) They did their utmost to shift the blame for wrecking the conference onto the Soviet Union, creating an anti-Soviet atmosphere.
(2) There was panic within the West, clamour for intensifying arms expansion and war preparations, and mutual recriminations and complaints. The U.S. and British air forces announced they were on “alert status.”
(3) They speculated profusely on the reasons for Khrushchev’s change of tactics this time. Most of these speculations sought to sow discord in Sino-Soviet relations, claiming that Khrushchev’s change of tactics was due to “internal political pressure” and “China’s influence.”
(4) They made various conjectures and analyses regarding the future prospects of the situation, most of which held that “the situation has deteriorated” and that the “failure of the conference might trigger a third world war.” Most of the socialist countries held mass rallies supporting the Soviet Union’s solemn stand and condemning the U.S. crime of wrecking the summit conference. Some Bulgarian newspapers and periodicals mentioned that one should not harbour illusions and unrealistic ideas about imperialism. Poland held that the developments of the situation in recent days showed that the Chinese comrades’ assessment of the world situation had some truth to it, and that the nature of imperialism would not change along with technological progress. A correspondent of the Soviet newspaper Izvestia said: “The facts now once again prove that the Chinese Party’s thesis that the nature of imperialism cannot change and that it resorts to dual tactics is entirely correct.”

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Comment on the Article “Initial Reactions after the Breakdown of the Four-Power Summit Conference”
Mao

Advancing by Chairman Mao’s Side (Chinese painting)

--- Notes

An internal reference material printed on May 28, 1960, carried this article. The article stated that Soviet Premier Khrushchev, seizing upon the recent provocative incident of a U.S. aircraft intruding into Soviet airspace, delivered a solemn statement at the preparatory meeting of the Soviet-U.S.-British-French Four-Power Summit Conference on May 16, demanding that the U.S. government condemn the aircraft’s provocative action, declare its abandonment of such a policy, and punish those directly responsible for the crime; otherwise, the Soviet Union would not participate in the conference. U.S. President Eisenhower brazenly rejected the Soviet Union’s reasonable demands, refused to assume responsibility for its own crimes, and declined to give due guarantees against repetition, so that the Four-Power Summit Conference was declared broken up on May 17. After the breakdown of the Four-Power Summit Conference, the reactions of the capitalist countries were: