The Presidential Years 291
to rebel against Tito’s regime. According to Politika, Albania instigated this
“wretched and uncivilized business,” and its leader, Enver Hoxha, exceeded the
“vulgarity” that had been typical of him in the past.^142
Nobody in Yugoslavia was surprised by Albanian and Bulgarian hostility,
whereas China’s attitude proved painful. Since establishing diplomatic relations
on 11 February 1955, the collaboration with Beijing had always been without
polemics, even cordial. As early as 1948, Tito and his comrades saw Mao Zedong
as their natural ally against big brother Moscow. The conviction that the Chi-
nese communists had achieved revolution with their own forces against Stalin’s
will, as had the Yugoslavs, seemed to justify this belief. This hope soon appeared
illusory, since it became apparent that the Chinese stood unwaveringly with the
Boss.^143 After 1955, however, they changed, openly recognizing that their atti-
tude toward the Yugoslavs had been wrong. Commenting on Khrushchev’s
penitential visit to Belgrade that year, Mao Zedong declared at a reception:
“My congratulations to Tito for the victory of his principles. The Belgrade
Declaration [which recognized Yugoslavia’s right to its path to socialism] is the
most important document created as yet in the workers movement.” Mao’s
closest collaborator, Zhou Enlai, said to the Yugoslav ambassador in India dur-
ing an official visit: “We must be friends, and we will be.”^144 The Hungarian
and Polish uprisings against domestic Stalinism in 1956 seemed to offer the
occasion to implement this proposal. Mao Zedong and other leaders of the
Chinese CP, preoccupied about what had happened and aware of the need to
preserve the unity of the socialist camp, promoted a communist world confer-
ence and proposed that Tito might join the initiative. Tito was weary of such
summits and was not enthusiastic about the idea, which was abandoned, only
to be resumed in 1957 by Khrushchev on the occasion of fortieth anniversary
of the October Revolution. It was now undoubtedly a different conference
from the one that Mao had envisioned.^145 During the Moscow meeting, Mao
was cordial toward the Yugoslav delegation, led not by Tito but by Kardelj and
Ranković, and stressed the similarity between the LCY and the Chinese Com-
munist Party in their relations with the Soviets. “We differ from you only be-
cause you have whiskers and we don’t,” Mao said to Kardelj jokingly.^146 Kardelj
agreed, noting that, paradoxically, the two really successful communist revo-
lutions, Chinese and Yugoslav, had both been accomplished against Stalin’s
will: “He wished that the countries of revolution should remain dependent on
the Soviet Union, knowing well that every revolution brings with it the desire
for national independence.”^147
At the start of 1958, the two countries signed a commercial protocol, provid-
ing for a volume of trade amounting to $19.6 million.^148 When shortly there-
after the Seventh Congress made the heretical statement that renounced the