212 The Postwar Period
well,” wrote Dedijer to Tito from Paris in December 1951, adding with excessive
optimism: “This is a terrible blow for the Russians.”^322
In spite of the difficult situation in which he found himself, Tito was not
willing to implement a foreign policy that was not in line with his convictions,
even if that meant displeasing the West. In January 1950, Vietnamese commu-
nists fighting French colonial rule took possession of the north of the country,
creating a government led by Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi. The French reacted
and installed a puppet regime in Saigon. On 31 January, Stalin recognized the
Hanoi government, followed by Tito who was at least wise enough to inform
the Western diplomats of his intentions. Paris was furious, protesting and
threatening to withdraw the aid promised to Yugoslavia. The US secretary of
state, Dean Acheson, was also indignant, but his reproaches did not deter
Tito, who declared that he was not prepared to barter his independence for
Western economic help.^323 He took the same attitude in 1951 when he sided
with Mohammad Mossadeq, who, trying to overthrow Shah Reza Pahlavi,
rebelled against the exploitation of the Iranian oil fields by British and Ameri-
can companies. In making these decisions, the marshal paid no attention to his
comrades, who doubted the expediency of such an uncompromising policy.
“We can exchange goods and products, but not our conscience and our ideas,”
he declared in a speech at Užice on 18 February 1950.^324
This anti-imperialist orientation did not produce any positive or encourag-
ing reactions in Moscow, where Yugoslavia continued to be ostracized. Soviet
propaganda at that time, as well as that of the satellites (especially the Hungar-
ians and Romanians) tried to show that during the war Tito had not been at
the head of the liberation struggle and the revolution and that his “clique”
had falsified history. In this narrative Yugoslavia, as was true for the rest of the
East-Central European countries, had been liberated thanks to the “moral and
material aid of the Soviet armies.” On behalf of the CC CPY, Moša Pijade
replied to these calumnies with a series of articles based on the correspondence
between Tito and “Grandpa” in 1942, laughing at Stalin’s “generous” help at the
start of the resistance. These articles, published by Borba, were translated at the
end of the year into English to show the West how deep the roots of disagree-
ment were between the CPY and the Soviet Union. In the meantime, however,
the international situation had deteriorated to the point where any debate
regarding the importance and seriousness of the Tito-Stalin split had become
superfluous.^325
The Korean WarAt the end of June 1950, the Korean War broke out, a war with which Stalin
wanted to test how far he could go in his confrontation with the West. After