The 'New Course’ of Soviet leaders after Stalin’s death in March 1953 at first hardly reverberated among the Kremlin’s Balkan satellites. Local leaders, nicknamed 'little Stalins’, in particular Hoxha of Albania and Vulko Chervenkov of Bulgaria, paid only lip-service to the role of collective leadership and to the separation of state and party organs. Although the brutal repression was somewhat relaxed, the Stalinist system remained largely intact in these countries long after a wave of liberalisation swept Eastern Europe in 1956. Even the removal of Chervenkov by Todor Zhivkov in April 1956 changed little in Bulgaria. In Romania and Albania, Gheorghiu Gheorghiu-Dej and Hoxha, both confirmed Stalinists, remained in power until their natural deaths in 1965 and 1985, respectively.
But Tito had a significant impact on the process of de-Stalinisation in the USSR and in Eastern Europe. Following Soviet intelligence chief Lavrentii Beriia’s removal in June 1953, Khrushchev and his colleagues came to believe that bolder policy changes were necessary to extricate the Soviet Union from Stalin’s legacy. In this respect, a change of policy towards Belgrade became a measure of the new leadership’s readiness to step out of Stalin’s shadow. Still, it took Khrushchev more than a year to overcome the opposition of Molotov and other Kremlin hard-liners.
On 22 June 1954, Khrushchev dispatched a secret letter to Yugoslav leaders. It proposed normalisation of relations between the two countries and the two Communist parties.304 The Soviet initiative came as a shock. For two weeks, Tito chose not to show the letter to members of his Central Committee, fearing yet another Soviet ploy to discredit him. In a cautious response, sent almost two months later, Tito agreed only to re-establish state relations; the renewal of party relations was to follow once normalisation had become irreversible and only after the Kremlin acknowledged Stalin’s responsibility for the 1948 split. The exchange of letters continued in utmost secrecy for almost a year. Despite strong disagreements, both sides were careful not to jeopardise the opportunity that had been created. A significant change of pace happened after Khrushchev demoted his rival, Georgii Malenkov, in January 1955. The Soviet leader then boldly proposed to Tito that they meet face to face in Belgrade.
The Soviet delegation landed in Belgrade on 26 May 1955, causing a sensation around the world. Upon arrival, Khrushchev delivered a speech expressing regret for what had happened between the two countries. After several days ofintense talks and open exchanges, Khrushchev and Tito signed the 'Belgrade Declaration’ on 2 June. For the first time, the USSR officially and publicly accepted that relations with Yugoslavia - and with other socialist countries - should be guided by the principle of equality.305 But the visit failed to bridge the ideological chasm created after 1948. Yugoslav leaders rejected Soviet invitations to rejoin the socialist 'camp’ and to re-establish party relations. Still, the implications of the Belgrade meeting went beyond bilateral relations between the two countries. The visit ended a seven-year confrontation that had threatened the peace and stability ofEurope. Yugoslavia was also allowed to re-establish its presence in other satellite countries. Awareness of Yugoslavia’s independent socialism subsequently encouraged the liberalisation tide in Poland and Hungary in 1956.
Khrushchev’s Belgrade visit also forwarded the process of de-Stalinisation in the Soviet Union. For the first time in their lives, Soviet leaders who met Tito heard criticism of Stalin fTom a fellow Communist. As Khrushchev would admit later, 'I realized the falsehood of [the Soviet leadership’s] position [regarding Stalin] for the first time and in earnest when I arrived in Yugoslavia and spoke with Tito and other comrades there.’306 During the concluding session of the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CC CPSU), held in Moscow from 4 to 12 July 1955, Khrushchev reported on the visit to Belgrade. The discussion that followed represented a true landmark in the post-Stalin transition in the USSR. Using Yugoslavia as a pretext, Khrushchev managed to isolate Molotov and to re-assert his leadership credentials. By reviewing the causes of the rupture with Yugoslavia in 1948, Khrushchev and his supporters for the first time presented Central Committee members with evidence of Stalin’s despotism, thus initiating the destruction of the vozhd’s myth. The plenum resolution also called for equality in relations between the socialist countries and between Communist Parties. It is doubtful whether Khrushchev’s 'secret speech' would ever have happened had he and his supporters not passed the first hurdle at the July plenum. The dismantling of Stalin’s legacy thus began a full eight months before the Twentieth Congress.307
In his report on Stalin’s personality cult, the 'secret speech’, delivered at the end of the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU in February 1956, Khrushchev acknowledged Stalin’s responsibility for the 1948 rupture with Yugoslavia. Following this admission, Tito agreed that party relations be officially normalised during his visit to the USSR in June 1956. To appease the Yugoslav leader, Moscow timed the announcement of the dissolution of the Cominform and Molotov’s replacement as foreign minister to coincide with Tito’s visit. Khrushchev exerted enormous pressure during these talks in the Kremlin to persuade Tito to rejoin the socialist 'camp’. The situation in Poland and Hungary was increasingly worrying the Soviet leadership, and Khrushchev, as the main architect of de-Stalinisation, was under growing pressure from Kremlin hard-liners. Given his enormous prestige among East European reformists, Moscow hoped that Tito’s return to the 'fold’ would defuse tensions in Poland and Hungary. The Yugoslav leader, however, managed to resist the pressure. The 'Moscow Declaration’, a document signed at the end of Tito’s visit, represented his victory. It reaffirmed the principle of equality between Communist parties. The Soviets agreed to the declaration barely an hour before the scheduled formal signing ceremony. They understood that a collapse of the talks would further underline their impotence at a time when Moscow’s authority was being challenged in Poland and Hungary.308
Soviet pressure on Tito continued after the Moscow meetings. Khrushchev launched a last-ditch effort to bring Tito into the 'camp' in the second half of September and, once again, failed. In 1956, Tito actively supported reformers in Poland and Hungary in their efforts to topple Stalinist regimes, and he played an important role during the Soviet intervention in Hungary in November of that year.309 After suppressing the Hungarian uprising, Soviet leaders abandoned attempts to win Tito over and focused instead on undermining his influence in Eastern Europe.
World History
