Soviets Must Share Blame for Cold War With Beijing, Gorbachev Says

On the first day of a historic summit disrupted by student protests, Mikhail S. Gorbachev said today that the Soviet Union must share the blame for the cold war that divided the two countries for three decades.

“Very probably we are also responsible for that period to a certain extent,” the Soviet leader told China’s President Yang Shangkun.

China’s leaders moved the welcoming ceremony to the airport from a central Beijing square to avoid a confrontation with tens of thousands of rebellious students camped out on the plaza for a third day.

In remarks broadcast on Chinese television, Gorbachev expressed “sorrow and regret” for the bad blood of the past and said, “This period has come to an end.”

Gorbachev, 58, arrived today for the first Sino-Soviet summit since Nikita S. Khrushchev met Mao Tse-tung in 1959 in acrimonious talks that contributed to rapidly deteriorating relations.

The two nations nearly went to war after border fighting broke out in 1969 and have since been at odds over the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, Moscow’s backing of Vietnam’s involvement in Cambodia and what China has called Soviet “hegemonism.”

Both sides agree that Gorbachev’s meeting Tuesday with 84-year-old senior leader Deng Xiaoping will normalize government and party ties and help spur economic, cultural and academic contacts.

“The way toward this meeting was not an easy one,” Gorbachev said at a later banquet speech. “It required from both sides wisdom, responsibility and perseverance in removing the negative aggravations and prejudices that marred our relations for so many years.”

Gorbachev also stressed that “the improvement of Soviet-Chinese relations is not directed against any third country. In the final analysis, the entire world community stands to gain from that improvement.”

The United States, which in the past has benefited strategically from the Sino-Soviet split, has welcomed their rapprochement, saying it will contribute to stability in the region and world.

But the summit got off to a rocky start as up to 150,000 people, half of them students, occupied Tian An Men Square--China’s symbolic seat of power--in a massive protest for a more open and democratic society.

Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady Gerasimov, in a briefing, said the demonstrations will disrupt plans for Gorbachev to lay a wreath on a monument to revolutionary heroes in the center of the square Tuesday.

“Physically it’s impossible. The place is taken up by demonstrators,” he said.

Gerasimov said the Soviet side understands China’s difficulties in coping with the students. “We have similar experiences and have lived through some difficult times,” he said.

Gorbachev laughed and joked with Yang during in the first minutes of their meeting. The 81-year-old Yang, who like many older Chinese studied Russian in his youth when the Kremlin was Beijing’s ideological mentor, greeted the Soviet leader in Russian and was praised for his skill in the language.

Later, in a welcoming banquet in the Great Hall, Yang noted that “Sino-Soviet relations traversed a tortuous course in the past. Today, we have come to a new starting point.”