There Is Only One Sun: The Comedy of Socialist Bloc Relations

In international politics, relations between capitalist nations are like Wall Street brokers: they’ll gladly strip each other to their underpants for profits during the day, but the moment their financial interests align, they clink wine glasses, sign a contract, and act like sworn brothers. Their relationships are dirty, but simple—everything revolves around money. Everyone is a merchant, so nobody pretends to be holy.

The "comradely relations" of the socialist bloc, however, operated in an entirely different dimension. When they shook hands, it was an "unbreakable brotherhood sweeter than honey." But once they fell out, millions of troops immediately lined the borders, and they practically wanted to perform physical facial reconstruction on each other with nuclear warheads. From the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia to the Sino-Soviet split and the Sino-Vietnamese War, this tragicomic cycle of "family yesterday, mortal enemies today" played out repeatedly. Why? In truth, there lies a completely irrational yet utterly undeniable law of astronomy here: There can only be one sun in the sky.

This cosmic logic was built on a unique "god-making assembly line." Inside these nations, the ruling apparatus possessed a magical alchemy that could transform an ordinary, fragile human being—someone who made mistakes and caught the flu—into a flawless, omniscient, super-idol. He was blindingly radiant on television, eternally correct in the newspapers, and provided "crucial constructive guidance" on everything from planting wheat to the exact physical posture citizens should adopt when trying to conceive at night. In the jargon of the era, such a leader was crowned a "Red Sun." The Soviets engineered Stalin; China manufactured its own Red Sun; Albania had Hoxha; Romania had Ceaușescu; and North Korea turned the sun business into a hereditary family dynasty.

If each nation simply kept its own shiny sun in the living room to light up its own floor, everyone could have gotten along. The fatal flaw, however, was that these leaders couldn't just be local suns. The organization was ideologically compelled to crown them with cosmic titles like "The Beacon of Hope for the Liberation of All Mankind." And that is where things became catastrophically complicated.

Physics tells us that if a solar system has two suns, it doesn’t get double the warmth—it gets double the disaster, and all surrounding planets are instantly roasted to charcoal. When two "Red Suns"—each pampered at home with the belief that they are the brightest star in the universe—met at a summit, the awkwardness was excruciating. Behind the smiles and handshakes, they muttered furiously: "Why is this guy sitting slightly higher? Why is the flattery in his newspapers louder? How dare he not applaud during my speech?!" Because each "sun" was the physical incarnation of "absolute infallibility," the moment a sun made a mistake, the entire myth of their divinity would crumble. Thus, when two absolutely infallible Red Suns sat down to debate what Marx actually meant in some obscure footnote, compromise was mathematically impossible.

To compromise would be to admit that the other sun was brighter and more orthodox. And if you admitted that, how could you go back home and convince your own citizens to keep screaming "Long Live the King"? Thus, academic debates rapidly escalated into holy wars. The Soviets accused China of "dogmatism"; China accused the Soviets of "revisionism." Yugoslavia called the Soviets "chauvinists," and the Soviets promptly kicked Yugoslavia out of the club. Everyone held the exact same Red Book, yet everyone accused the other of reciting fake scriptures and worshipping false idols.

In this struggle to compare holy light, the question of "who is the big boss" became a highly serious scientific inquiry. Because everyone was a "sun," nobody wanted to be a planet, let alone orbit in another star's gravity. The Soviet Union, acting as the "Big Brother," expected the younger siblings to behave like sunflowers, keeping their faces permanently locked onto Moscow’s sunshine. But Yugoslavia's Tito wasn't having it, and China's Red Sun certainly wasn't either. "I am treated like a blazing sun in my own home every single day," they thought. "Why the hell should I act like a low-wattage bulb in Moscow?"

When suns collided, they didn't compare whose GDP was higher; they compared whose Marxist doctrine was "purer" and more "authentic." The comical result? Romania quietly unfriended the Soviets; Albania severed diplomatic ties; China and the Soviets clashed with artillery on Zhenbao Island; and China and Vietnam traded tank shells to share their respective understandings of Marxism-Leninism.

In contrast, alliances in the capitalist camp were refreshingly simple. The United States, as the boss, was bossy but spoke the language of cash and rules. As long as you behaved and bought American weapons, you could worship a flying spaghetti monster for all they cared. The US wasn't going to send an armored division to invade your capital just because "your understanding of capitalist scripture isn't pure enough."

In the socialist camp, relations turned terrible precisely because everyone was far too "noble" and "pure." Everyone believed that they alone possessed the true temperature of the one Red Sun destined to warm the earth. As for the ordinary citizens caught in the middle—baked to a crisp and peeling from the radiation of these giant competing suns—they could only wipe the sweat from their brows while listening to the high-pitched editorials blasting from the loudspeakers, letting their sweat drip into the parched earth.