conference with Mao Tse-tung in Peiping, Khrushchev apparently decided to resort to more forceful measures designed to press Communist China and its bloc supporters back into line. The Soviet leader publicly attacked China's foreign and domestic policies on four separate occasions in the closing months of 1959. On 31 October he implicitly rebuked Peiping for its bellicose posture toward the West by alluding to Trotsky's ''notorious slogan of 'neither peace nor war'." On 1 December Khrushchev launched a polemical, i f oblique, attack on China's commune and "leap forward" programs, characterizing them as
a "distortion:of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism on the building of socialism and Communism1' resulting from "conceit and
mistakes in leadership." Reacting to these developments, North Vietnam.apparently decided i n late 1959 to adopt a more ne&,ly neutral 'position : in the Sino-Soviet dispute, a policy which
it has maintained up to the present time. Implementation of
this policy during 1960-1961 would be characterized by a new national assertiveness manifested internally by stressing the unique character of the Vietnamese revolution and externally by proclaiming (for the first time) the revolutionary experience of North Vietnam as a model for Communist "liberation" movements in other underdeveloped areas of the world.