92
4 }
The Bandung Era
Moscow Points a New Direction and Beijing AgreesStalin’s death in March 1953 left a deeply divided Soviet leadership, mutu-
ally suspicious and acutely aware of the severe problems of the realm Stalin
had bequeathed them. Stalin’s rule had brought immense suffering and pri-
vation to the people of the USSR. Popular discontent had been repressed by
police violence and sheer terror. But the post-Stalin Soviet leadership were
aware that continuation of that course was likely to produce uprisings or, at
best, sullen apathy. A somewhat more humane type of communist rule had
to be worked out. But political relaxation also posed risks of rebellion. The
problem for the new CPSU leadership was to find the appropriate level of
de-Stalinization.^1 In terms of foreign policy, Stalin had managed to turn most
of the USSR’s neighbors into enemies. Territorial demands and confronta-
tional policies had turned Turkey and Iran into enthusiastic participants in
US collective security schemes. Stalin’s wary and contemptuous attitude,
plus strident condemnations by the Soviet media as tools of imperialism,
had alienated potential friends like India and Indonesia. In Eastern Europe,
Stalin’s installation of “little Stalins” to impose harsh socialism had produced
simmering discontent which was bound to produce uprisings. The uprising
in East Berlin in June 1953 was a foretaste of things to come. Stalin’s poli-
cies had also managed to create a military confrontation with an increasingly
united and US-reinforced West, adding further danger to potential upris-
ings against East Europe’s “little Stalins.” How would the United States and
Britain respond to uprisings in Eastern Europe? Even toward the PRC, Stalin’s
policies were unsustainable. Stalin’s successors understood that Stalin’s sus-
picious treatment of Mao, combined with Soviet insistence on special rights
in China’s northeast and northwest, had created a time bomb in USSR-PRC
relations that needed to be defused quickly.
The day Stalin died, Mao Zedong went to the Soviet embassy in Beijing
to offer condolences. For three days, Chinese national flags flew at half-mast