The Presidential Years 265
minister, U Nu, were much more sophisticated interlocutors than Comrade
Nikita who, to quote the American ambassador James W. Riddleberger, gave
the Yugoslav political elite the impression of a “country cousin.” And the Brit-
ish ambassador added in his dispatch to the Foreign Office that thanks to the
Russian guests, the Yugoslavs had become aware of their own “Western” char-
acter as compared to “‘rigid, old-fashioned, uninformed Soviet thinking,’
reporting their feeling that the Soviet delegation was composed of ‘uncouth
second-raters,’ and that Tito stood head and shoulders above any of them.”^8
The Yugoslavs could not ignore the differences that had developed between
them and the Soviets after Stalin had excommunicated them, and the gap
between their political ideas grew. They were not only shocked by Khrush-
chev’s speech at the Belgrade airport, in which he violated previous agreements
and once again sought to blame Beria and Djilas for everything that had gone
wrong, but also by his boasting that World War I had brought communism to
Russia, World War II had added Eastern Europe and China, and World War
III would see it spread throughout the world.^9 The Yugoslavs had stopped
thinking in terms of world war, and did not consider a military confrontation
between the blocs at all inevitable. They were aiming instead at peaceful coex-
istence and at a non-aligned policy (as independence from both West and East
was to be called).^10
The Yugoslavs had begun showing an interest in Asia even before the split
with Stalin, trying to establish links with local communist parties. At the
beginning of 1948, Tito sent Vladimir Dedijer and Radovan Zogović, a Mon-
tenegrin poet and Agitprop official, to Calcutta as delegates to the Second
Congress of the Indian CP. They were tasked with contacting Mao Zedong,
who was still fighting for power in China, as well as members of the anti-
colonial liberation movement in Indonesia.^11 After the independence of India
and Indonesia and the victory of the Kuomintang in China, Belgrade’s inter-
est in the area increased and acquired new substance as a result of the struggle
with Stalin. As early as June 1948 the Chinese had aligned themselves with the
Soviet Union, which meant that it was impossible to have a dialogue with
them despite Belgrade’s recognition of the communist government in Beijing
on 5 October 1948. Yugoslav diplomats had new input regarding their interest
in Asia once they joined the Security Council in autumn 1949. There they cul-
tivated friendly relations with the Indians, who were also new members of that
body, as shown by their frequently concordant voting on important issues such
as the Korean War.^12 Krishna Menon, India’s representative in the Security
Council, even proposed to his Yugoslav colleague, Aleš Bebler, that Yugoslavia
should open a window onto Europe for India, and India would do the same for
Yugoslavia in Asia. Both states established diplomatic relations, setting up their