292 The Presidential Years
idea of an inevitable clash between the capitalist and the socialist world
and recommended that the Western and the Eastern blocs should be abolished
to prevent a nuclear war, the Chinese took a stand. They accused the Yugoslavs
of having repudiated the revolution and the proletarian dicta torship and
reproached them for having elevated their unorthodox thoughts to a doctrinal
level.^149 Hence a battle flared up in the press in which the Chinese newspaper
Hongqi accused the Yugoslav leaders, starting with Tito, of being “agents of
imperialism.”^150 A freezing of diplomatic relations followed, including the
recall of the Chinese ambassador from Belgrade and the Yugoslav ambassador
from Beijing. This was only a smoke screen, behind which were hidden much
more serious tensions between Khrushchev and Mao, although at that point
they did not wish to express them openly. After the blow that the Soviet Union
had suffered because of the Hungarian Revolution, Beijing wanted to affirm
its status in the communist world by formulating an orthodox ideological line
different from that of Moscow, which was aimed at a dialogue with the West.
This sparked an impotent fury in the Kremlin.
Kardelj was aware of the rift between the two parties as early as the celebra-
tions in the Soviet capital in November 1957, warning the comrades that “in the
international proletarian movement, a fight has started between the Chinese
and Russians for ideological primacy.”^151 No one in Belgrade could have imag-
ined, however, that the struggle would assume such a bizarre form. The two
powers, at least initially, did not quarrel openly with each other but preferred
to choose their own separate scapegoats as objects of their anger. The Chinese
assigned this unpleasant role to the Yugoslavs, above all to Tito, whom they
branded as a “traitor to socialism” and a “capitalist lackey.”^152 The Soviets, for
their part, chose Albania, which had of late become a puppet state of Beijing
in the Balkans. The Yugoslavs, versed as they were in ideological battles, imme-
diately recognized what was going on and, as Belgrade’s ambassador in Beijing
Vladimir Popović said, they were not willing to “kneel down” and sheepishly
accept Chinese insults.^153
The polemics peaked on 6 November 1959, when the world’s eighty-one
communist and workers’ parties met in Moscow during another celebration of
the October Revolution. On that occasion they tried to overcome the latent
conflict between Beijing and Moscow with a unanimous condemnation of
Yugoslav “international opportunism.” They agreed that by stubbornly clinging
to their revisionist ideas, the LCY leaders were edging away from Marxism-
Leninism, allowing their country to become subject to American imperialism,
and ultimately setting it against the socialist camp.^154 The only ones who were
in any way sympathetic to the Yugoslavs were the Poles, though they also con-
sidered Tito and his comrades to be “idiots, unable to hide their thoughts.”^155