Joining the Socialist Camp } 31
open channels of communication with the new communist authorities, and
strive to handle matters in a routine and businesslike manner.
These US decisions in 1948–1949 and the calculations behind them were,
of course, top secret. Yet shifts in US policy were perceived and understood
by CCP leaders. In January 1949, the Politburo issued a resolution warning
against the “dualistic” nature of US policy. On the one hand, the United States
continued to support Chiang Kai-shek. On the other hand, it was trying to
bore from within the revolutionary camp. It was possible that the United
States might even “recognize” new China in pursuit of this plot. It was neces-
sary to “firmly rebuff ” the US scheme, the resolution said. Two months later,
a Central Committee resolution elaborated on this. The party should “take
measures to thoroughly eradicate imperialist domination in China.” With re-
spect to the possibility of US imperialism recognizing new China, Mao speci-
fied that “not only should we not seek a speedy resolution now, even after our
nationwide victory for a certain period we must not rush to settle the ques-
tion.” The question of recognition of China by the imperialist states was an
element of the overall goal of “carrying the revolution through to the end,”
that is, consolidating CCP control and then moving the revolution into its
socialist stage.^4
The US strategy of courting nationalist Chinese communist away from
Moscow posed a serious danger to CCP efforts to ally with the Soviet Union.
The rebellion in 1948 of the Yugoslav League of Communists led by Josip Broz
Tito against Soviet attempts to dominate Yugoslavia after World War II was a
major challenge to Stalin. Yugoslavia was the one country in Eastern Europe
that had independently driven out Nazi occupying forces and established a
communist state without backing from Soviet armed forces. By 1948, conflicts
between Tito and Stalin were sharp and public. In March, in a move similar to
Khrushchev’s move against China twelve years later, the Soviet Union with-
drew all specialists and advisors from Yugoslavia. Economic embargo by the
USSR and its East European socialist allies followed. Yugoslavia responded
by reaching an accommodation with the emerging Western alliance system.
Tito’s rebellion against Soviet leadership raised Stalin’s apprehensions that
Mao might follow suit.
Stalin had long harbored doubts about Mao’s and the CCP’s “class char-
acter.” Mao was a peasant and an intellectual, not a member of the proletariat,
as Stalin fancied himself to be. Moreover, the “class basis” of the CCP revo-
lution was the peasantry, not the urban proletariat, which Marx and Lenin
had taught must be the main force of the revolution. Then there were Mao’s
occasional assertions of independence from Comintern direction over the
years. Stalin had been tolerant of these because Mao had proven himself to be,
alone among CCP leaders, a very effective military commander and ruthless
ruler of men.^5 Yet Stalin suspected that Mao’s inclination toward nationalist
independence was evidence of a petit-bourgeois class character. Moreover,