The Presidential Years 289
from the Polish ambassador, who claimed to have fallen asleep). Two days
after the conclusion of the congress, on 28 April 1958, Pravda published a sting-
ing editorial that did not mention Yugoslavia, only “revisionism” as a trend
that should be fought against. On 4 May an even bolder attack against “Yugo-
slav anti-Marxists” came from Beijing, an article published by the ideological
organ of the Chinese CC, Hongqi (Red banner), and reprinted in Pravda. In
the following months, the Soviets and their satellites fueled poisonous polem-
ics against revisionist Yugoslavia, which they accused of selling out Marx’s
ideology for money. They asserted that the Yugoslavs’ program proposed an
alternative to the Moscow Declaration, signed in November 1957 by twelve
communist parties. Renouncing the doctrine of “two camps”—socialist and
capitalist—and replacing it with the thesis of two equally dangerous blocs—
Eastern and Western—they were accused of having lowered the socialist coun-
tries to the level of capitalist and imperialist ones. On 5 June 1958 in Sofia, at
the Bulgarian CP Congress, Khrushchev aggressively condemned the LCY ’s
program, reproaching Tito and his comrades for having been corrupted by
“Western imperialists.” He also mentioned that they had supported the “Hun-
garian counterrevolution,” and stressed that the exclusion of the CPY from the
Cominform was entirely deserved, saying: “We will declare war against all
those who, by their deeds, weaken the unity of the communist and workers’
parties, who weaken the camp of socialist countries, which is growing greater
and greater.”^131
Tito did not keep silent, but on 15 June proclaimed from Labin in Istria:
“Comrade Khrushchev often repeats that socialism cannot be built with Ameri-
can wheat. I think it can be done by anyone who knows how to do it, while a
person who doesn’t know how to do it cannot build socialism, even with his
own wheat. Khrushchev says we live on charity received from the imperialist
countries.... What moral right have those who attack us to rebuke us about
American aid and loans when Khrushchev himself has just tried to conclude
an economic agreement with America?”^132
Only two days later, on 17 June 1958, another hit below the belt came from
the Soviet side with news that Imre Nagy and three other comrades had been
condemned to death and shot. The Hungarian government’s press release
stated that the executed leader had, in the past, asked for and been granted
political asylum in the Yugoslav embassy, from which he instructed his fol-
lowers to foment armed uprisings, strikes, and clandestine subversive activity.
The Yugoslavs, accused between the lines of having tolerated such “counter-
revolutionary” intrigues, reacted with a strongly worded diplomatic note, re-
minding the Hungarians of the agreement between the two governments in
1956, which should have guaranteed immunity to Nagy and his entourage. In