120 { China’s Quest
government and put in power a neo-Stalinist regime led by János Kádár. Nagy
was executed, in secret, seven months later. Again Khrushchev had flip-flopped,
Mao noted. Mao was concluding that Khrushchev was an unprincipled oppor-
tunist who changed easily under pressure.
Shortly after the events in Hungary, the CCP invited Moscow to partic-
ipate in a tripartite CPSU-CCP-PUWP meeting to discuss relations among
socialist countries. Moscow agreed, and Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping flew
to Moscow for the conference. On October 30, the USSR government unilat-
erally issued a declaration on relations among socialist states. The declaration
proclaimed the complete equality among “the countries of the great com-
monwealth of socialist nations,” but also that the principles of proletarian
internationalism required intervention when “the forces of black reaction
and counterrevolution ... take advantage of the dissatisfaction of a part of the
working people in order to undermine the foundations of the people’s demo-
cratic system ... and restore the old landowner-capitalist ways.”^14 Khrushchev
had essentially adopted Mao’s analysis. Yet again, the Soviet leader had
vacillated.
One issue left unstated by both Beijing and Moscow but clearly under-
stood by both was the relative status of both capitals in the East European
socialist camp. Was Eastern Europe to be Moscow’s sphere of influence, with
the CPSU calling the shots? Or was the CCP to have an equal voice in that
region? Within a few years of 1956, Albania would move out of the Soviet orbit
into alignment with the PRC, while Romania would balance halfway between
Beijing and Moscow.^15 Several other East European regimes would play the
China card to achieve a greater degree of independence from Moscow, at least
until the Sino-Soviet split became too intense circa 1963 to permit that any
longer. In other words, Mao and the CCP were challenging not only Soviet
leadership of the international communist movement, but also Moscow’s
leadership of the East European socialist camp. Figure 5-1 illustrates China’s
position in East Europe from 1956 through 1977.
The Hungarian uprising had a major impact on CCP politics. Following
the suppression of the Budapest uprising, the CCP Politburo met almost
daily to discuss events. Hungarian events taught Mao that a large number of
counterrevolutionaries had remained hidden under HSWP rule awaiting an
opportunity to rise up. This was a lesson for China, Mao told the Politburo. It
demonstrated the need for continued mass struggle against counterrevolution-
aries in China and other socialist countries.^16 The central lesson of “Hungary”
as defined by Mao was that the easing of repression had been wrong; it had given
hidden counterrevolutionaries an opportunity to raise their heads. Expanding
discussion to the “Stalin question,” the Politburo agreed that Hungarian
events demonstrated that Stalin’s repression of counterrevolutionaries in his
own time had been “basically correct,” albeit expanded too far. Three CCP
theoreticians—Hu Qiaomu, Tian Jiaying, and Wu Lengxi—labored for five