Our relations with the CPC and the PRC up till 1956. Invitations from China, Korea and Mongolia. An astounding event in Korea: two members of the Political Bureau flee to. . . China! Ponomaryov defends the fugitives. Mikoyan and Peng Dehuzi “tune up” Kim Il Sung. The meeting with Mao Zedong: “Neither the Yugoslavs nor you were wrong”, “Stalin made mistakes”, “It is necessary to make mistakes”. Li Lisan at the 8th Congress of the CPC: “I ask you to help me, because I may make mistakes again.” Disappointment and concern over the 8th Congress of the CPC. Meetings in Beijing with Dej, Yugov, Zhou Enlai and others. Bodnaras as intermediary to reconcile us with Tito.
In regard to the relations between our Party and the Communist Party of China, from 1949 to 1956, and indeed for several years later, the term “normal”, more or less in the sense that it is used in diplomatic language, would be quite appropriate. For our part, however, from the years of the National Liberation War, and especially after the liberation of our Homeland, we had followed with sympathy the just war of the fraternal Chinese people against the Japanese fascists and aggressors, Chiang Kai-shek reaction and the American interference, and we had backed up and supported this struggle with all our strength. Moreover, we rejoiced at the fact that, at the head of this struggle there was said to be a communist party recognized by the Comintern, which enjoyed the support of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, led by Stalin.
We knew also that at the head of the Communist Party of China was Mao Zedong, about whom personally, as well as about the party which he led, we had no information other than what we heard from the Soviet comrades. Both during this period and after 1949 we had not had the opportunity to read any of the works or writings of Mao Zedong, who was said to be a philosopher and to have written a whole series of works. We welcomed the victory of October 1, 1949 with heartfelt joy and we were among the first countries to recognize the new Chinese state and establish fraternal relations with it. Although greater possibilities and ways were now opened for more frequent and closer contacts and links between our two countries, these links remained at the level of friendly, cultural and commercial relations, the sending of some second-rank delegation, mutual support, according to the occasion, through public speeches and statements, the exchange of telegrams on the occasion of celebrations and anniversaries, and almost nothing more.
We continued to support the efforts of the Chinese people and the Chinese leadership for the socialist construction of the country with all our might, but we knew nothing concrete about how and to what extent this great process was being carried out in China. It was said that Mao was following an “interesting” line for the construction of socialism in China, collaborating with the local bourgeoisie and other parties, which they described as “democratic”, “of the industrialists”, etc., that joint private-state enterprises were permitted and stimulated by the communist party there, that elements of the wealthy classes were encouraged and rewarded, and even placed in the leadership of enterprises and provinces, etc., etc. All these things were quite incomprehensible to us and however much you racked your brains, you could not find any argument to describe them as in conformity with Marxism-Leninism. Nevertheless, we thought, China was a very big country, with a population of hundreds of millions, it had just emerged from the dark, feudal-bourgeois past, had many problems and difficulties, and in time it would correct those things which were not in order, on the right road of Marxism-Leninism.
This is more or less what we knew about the Communist Party of China and the Chinese state up till 1956, when the Central Committee of our Party received Mao Zedong’s invitation to send a party delegation to take part in the proceedings of the 8th Congress of the CP of China. We welcomed the invitation with pleasure and satisfaction, because we would be given the opportunity to gain first-hand experience of and direct acquaintance with this sister party and fraternal socialist country. At this time period we had also received invitations from the People’s Republic of Mongolia and the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea to send top-level government and party delegations to those countries for friendly visits.
We discussed the invitations from our friends in the Political Bureau and decided that, using the occasion of the trip to China for the 8th Congress of the CP of China, on the way to China, our top-level delegation should also go to Mongolia and Korea.
The Political Bureau appointed me, Comrades Mehmet Shehu and Ramiz Alia, and our then Foreign Minister, Behar Shtylla, as the delegation. Comrade Mehmet would lead the delegation in Mongolia and Korea, since it would be a government delegation, while I would lead the party delegation in China.
We made the necessary preparations and set out at the end of August 1956.
It was the time when modern revisionism, advanced by the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, had not only spread in the Soviet Union and the other countries of people’s democracy, but was bringing out all its inherent filth, the split, the quarrels, the plots, and the counter-revolution. In Poland the cauldron, which had been simmering for a long time, was bringing out the notorious Gomulka as the finished product, in Hungary black reaction had broken out as never before and was feverishly preparing the counter-revolution. During those days Tito had been invited to the Crimea “on holiday” and together with Khrushchev, Rankovic and others, was putting the nails in Gerö’s coffin. It seemed as if the revisionists of various countries were engaged in a villainous contest to see who could outdo the other in the practical application of Khrushchevism. In Europe the revisionist earthquake was rocking the foundations of everything, with the exception of our Party and country.
Those 3 or 4 days of our visit to Mongolia passed almost unnoticed. We travelled for hours on end to reach some inhabited centre and everywhere the landscape was the same: vast, bare, monotonous, boring. Tsedenbal, who bounced around us as mobile as a rubber ball, harped on the sole theme—livestock farming. So many million sheep, so many mares, so many horses, so many camels, this was the only wealth, the only branch on which this socialist country supported itself. We drank mare’s milk, wished one another successes and parted.
On September 7 we arrived in Pyongyang. They put on a splendid welcome, with people, with gongs, with flowers, and with portraits of Kim Il Sung everywhere. You had to look hard to find some portrait of Lenin, tucked away in some obscure corner.
We visited Pyongyang and a series of cities and villages of Korea, where both the people and the party and state leaders welcomed us warmly. During the days we stayed there, Kim Il Sung was kind and intimate with us. The Korean people had just emerged from the bloody war with the American aggressors and now had thrown themselves into the offensive for the reconstruction and development of the country. They were an industrious, clean and talented people, eager for further development and progress, and we whole-heartedly wished them continued successes on the road to socialism.
However, the revisionist wasp had begun to implant its poisonous sting there, too.
In the joint talks we held, Kim Il Sung told us about an event which had occurred in the plenum of the Central Committee of the party held after the 20th Congress.
“After the report which I delivered,” Kim told us, “two members of the Political Bureau and several other members of the Central Committee got up and raised the question that the lessons of the 20th Congress and the question of the cult of the individual had not been properly appreciated amongst us, here in Korea, that a consistent struggle against the cult of the individual had not been waged, and so on. They said to the plenum: ‘We are not getting economic and political results according to the platform of the 20th Congress, and incompetent people have been gathered around the Central Committee.’
“In other words, they attacked the line and unity of the leadership,” continued Kim Il Sung. “The whole Central Committee rose against them,” he said in conclusion.
“What stand was taken towards them?” I asked.
“The plenum criticized them and that was all,” replied Kim Il Sung, adding: “Immediately after this the two fled to China.”
“To China?! What did they do there?”
“Our Central Committee described them as anti-party elements and we wrote to the Chinese leadership to send them back to us without fail. Apart from other mistakes, they also committed the grave act of fleeing. The Chinese comrades did not send them back. They have them there to this day.”
We said openly to Kim Il Sung: “Although we have no detailed knowledge of the matters which these two members of the Political Bureau raised, and it is not up to us to pass judgement on your business, since you have told us about this problem, we think that this is a serious event.”
“In our country, too,” we told him, “after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, there was an attempt by anti-party elements to organize a plot against our Party and our Central Committee. The plot was a deed organized by the revisionists of Belgrade, and as soon as we became aware of it, we crushed it immediately.”
We went on to speak about the Party Conference of Tirana in April 1956 about the pressure which was exerted on us, and the unwavering, resolute stand of our Party towards external and internal enemies.
“You are right, you are right!” said Kim Il Sung, while I was speaking.
From the way he spoke and reacted I sensed a certain hesitation and uncertainty that were overwhelming him.
I was not mistaken in my doubts. A few days later in China, during a meeting I had with Ponomaryov, a member of the Soviet delegation to the 8th Congress of the CP of China, I opened up the problem of the Korean fugitives.
“We know about this,” he replied, “and have given Kim Il Sung our advice.”
“You have advised him? Why?” I asked.
“Comrade Enver,” he said, “things are not going well with the Koreans. They have become very stuck up and ought to be brought down a peg or two.”
“I am not talking about their affairs in general, because I know nothing about them,” I told Ponomaryov, “but about a concrete problem. Two members of the Political Bureau rise against the Central Committee of their own party and then flee to another socialist country. Where is Kim Il Sung at fault in this?!”
“The Korean comrades have made mistakes,” insisted Ponomaryov. “They have not taken measures in line with the decisions of the 20th Congress, and that is why two members of the Political Bureau rose against this. The Chinese comrades have been revolted by this situation, too, and have told Kim Il Sung that if measures are not taken, they are not going to hand over the two comrades taking refuge in China.”
“Astonishing!” I said.
“You have no reason to be astonished,” he said. “Kim Il Sung himself is retreating. A plenum of the Central Committee of the Korean party has been held these days and the Koreans have agreed to correct the mistakes.”
And this turned out to be true. The two fugitives returned to Korea and the places they had had in the Political Bureau. Under pressure, Kim Il Sung bowed his head and gave way. This was a joint act of the Soviets and the Chinese, in which a special “merit” belonged to Mikoyan. He had been sent to China at the head of the Soviet delegation to the 8th Congress of the CPC, and without waiting for the Chinese congress to finish, the man of the Khrushchevite mafia together with Peng Dehuzi, whom Mao Zedong gave him as the representative of China, hastened to Korea to tune up the wavering Kim Il Sung to bring him into harmony with the Khrushchevites. Later, other “tuning up” trips would be made to Korea by the Soviets, the Chinese, and others, but we were to see these in the future. Let us return to September 1956.
In Beijing, which we reached on September 13, they welcomed us with crowds of people, music and flowers, not forgetting the horde of portraits of Mao Zedong. Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and others whose names I can’t remember, had come out to the airport.
We exchanged greetings with them, wished them success in the congress, which was to begin two days later, and could hardly cope with their stereotyped expressions: “great honour”, “great assistance”, “brothers from the distant front of Europe”, “please, offer us your criticism”, etc., etc., expressions with which, in a few years’ time, we would be full up to our necks. (However, in those days these expressions, which were served up ready-made everywhere, did not make any bad impression on us—we considered them expressions of the Chinese simplicity and modesty.)
Mao Zedong received us during an interval between sessions of the congress in one of the adjoining rooms. This was the first time that we met him. When we entered the reception room, he stood up, bowed a little, held out his hand, and thus, without shifting from the spot, waited to give his hand and a smile to each of us in turn. We sat down.
Mao began to speak. After saying that they were very happy to have friends from distant Albania, he said a few words about our people, describing them as a valiant and heroic people.
“We have great admiration for your people,” he said among other things, “because you have been liberated much longer than we.”
Immediately after this he asked me:
“How are things between you and Yugoslavia?”
“Cold,” I replied, and immediately noticed that he expressed open surprise. “Apparently he is not well acquainted with our situation with the Yugoslavs,” I thought, therefore I decided to explain something from the long history of the relations of our Party and country with the Yugoslav party and state. I gave him a brief outline, dwelling on some of the key moments of the anti-Albanian and anti-Marxist activity of the Yugoslav leadership, expecting some reaction from him. But I noticed that Mao only expressed surprise and from time to time looked at the other Chinese comrades.
“On this question,” said Mao, “you Albanians have not made mistakes towards the Yugoslavs, and neither have the Yugoslav comrades made mistakes towards you. The Information Bureau has made great mistakes here.”
“Although we did not take part in the Information Bureau,” I replied, “we have supported its well-known analyses and stands towards the activity of the Yugoslav leadership and have always considered them to be correct. Our longstanding relations with the Yugoslav leadership have convinced us that the line and stands of the Yugoslavs have not been and are not Marxist Leninist. Tito is an incorrigible renegade.”
Without waiting to hear the end of the translation of what I said, Mao asked me:
“What is your opinion of Stalin?”
I said that our Party had always considered Stalin a leader of very great, all-round merits, a loyal disciple of Lenin and continuer of his work, a . . .
He interrupted me: “Have you published the report which Comrade Khrushchev delivered in the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union?”
“No,” I replied. “We have not done and never will do such a thing.”
“You Albanian comrades have acted very correctly and the line of your Party is right,” he said. “We, too, have acted as you have done. As long as the Soviet leadership does not publish this report officially, there is no reason for us to act as some have done.”
After a pause, he continued:
“Stalin made mistakes. He made mistakes towards us, for example, in 1927. He made mistakes towards the Yugoslav comrades, too.”
Then he continued calmly in a low voice:
“One cannot advance without mistakes.” And he asked me: “Has your Party made mistakes?”
“We cannot say that there have been no mistakes,” I told him, “but the main thing is that we struggle to make as few mistakes as possible or none at all, and, when mistakes are discovered, we struggle to eliminate them immediately.”
I was too “hasty”. The great philosopher was getting at something else:
“It is necessary to make mistakes,” he said. “The party cannot be educated without learning from mistakes. This has great significance.”
We encountered this method of “education” of Mao Zedong’s materialized everywhere. During the days we were at the congress, a Chinese comrade told us:
“A terrible fear has existed amongst us. People tried to avoid making mistakes, because they were afraid of being expelled from the party. However, with the correct policy of Chairman Mao, that fear has now disappeared, and initiative and drive in creative work has increased among the party people.
“You see that comrade who is speaking?” he said. “He is Li Lisan, one of the founders of our Communist Party. During his life he has made grave mistakes, not just once, but three times on end. There were comrades who wanted to expel this old man from the party, but on the insistence of Chairman Mao, he remains a member of the Central Committee of the party, and now he works in the Central Committee apparatus.”
Meanwhile Li Lisan was making a new “self-criticism” before the 8th Congress.
“I have made mistakes,” he said, “but the party has helped me. Comrades,” he continued, “I ask you to help me still because I might make mistakes again. . .”
But let us return to the meeting with Mao Zedong. After he philosophised about the “great significance of making mistakes”, I seized the opportunity to add to what I had previously said about the Yugoslavs and spoke about the work of the Belgrade revisionists through their agents to organize the plot in the Party Conference of Tirana of April 1956.
“In our opinion,” I said, “they are incorrigible.”
Mao’s reply, in the Chinese style, was a phrase out of context:
“You have a correct Marxist-Leninist line.”
The time had come for us to leave. We thanked him for the invitation, for receiving us and for the aid given us by the People’s Republic of China.
“There is no need to thank us,” interrupted Mao, “first, because the aid we have given you is very little,” and he closed one finger. “Second,” he continued, closing the other finger, “we are members of the great family of the socialist camp, which has the Soviet Union at the head, and it is just the same as passing something from one hand to the other, parts of the same body.”
We thanked him once again and stood up. We had several photographs taken together, shook hands again and departed.
To tell the truth, our impressions from this meeting were not what we had expected, and when we came out, I talked over with Mehmet and Ramiz what we had heard. From the talk with Mao we did not learn anything constructive, which would be of value to us, and the meeting seemed to us mostly a gesture of courtesy. We were especially disappointed over the things we heard from the mouth of Mao about the Information Bureau, Stalin and the Yugoslav question.
However, we were even more surprised and worried by the proceedings of the 8th Congress. The whole platform of this Congress was based on the theses of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, indeed, in certain directions, the theses of Khrushchev had been carried further forward by Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi and other top Chinese leaders.
We felt that the epidemic of modern revisionism had infected China, too. To what proportions the disease had been spread we could not judge at that time, but the things which had occurred and were occurring in China, showed that at that time the Chinese leaders were hurrying to avoid lagging behind, and indeed, to grab the motley flag of the Khrushchevites with their own hands.
Apart from other things, in the reports which Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai delivered one after the other at the 8th Congress they defended and further deepened the permanent line of the Communist Party of China for extensive collaboration with the bourgeoisie and the kulaks, “argued” in support of the great blessings which would come to “socialism” from treating capitalists, merchants, and bourgeois intellectuals well and placing them in high leading positions, vigorously propagated the necessity of collaboration between the working class and the national bourgeoisie, and between the communist party and the other democratic nationalist parties, in the conditions of socialism, etc., etc. In fact, the “hundred flowers” and the “hundred schools” of Mao Zedong, which blossomed and contended in the sessions of the congress, blossomed and contended throughout the whole Chinese party and state. This Mao Zedong’s theory of a hundred flags, widely proclaimed in May 1956 by the alternate member of the Political Bureau of the CC of the CP of China, Lu Dingyi, constituted the Chinese variant of the bourgeois-revisionist theory and practice about the “free circulation of ideas and people”, about the coexistence of a hotch-potch of ideologies, trends, schools and coteries within socialism.1
Many a time later I have turned back to this period of the history of the Communist Party of China, trying to figure out how and why the profoundly revisionist line of 1956 subsequently seemed to change direction, and for a time, became “pure”, “anti-revisionist” and “Marxist-Leninist”. It is a fact, for example, that in 1960 the Communist Party of China seemed to be strongly opposing the revisionist theses of Nikita Khrushchev and confirmed that “it was defending Marxism-Leninism” from the distortions which were being made to it, etc. It was precisely because China came out against modern revisionism in 1960 and seemed to be adhering to Marxist-Leninist positions that brought about that our Party stood shoulder to shoulder with it in the struggle which we had begun against the Khrushchevites.
However, time confirmed, and this is reflected extensively in the documents of our Party, that in no instance, either in 1956 or in the ’60s did the Communist Party of China proceed or act from the positions of Marxism-Leninism.
In 1956 it rushed to take up the banner of revisionism, in order to elbow Khrushchev out and gain the role of the leader in the communist and workers’ movement for itself. But when Mao Zedong and his associates saw that they would not easily emerge triumphant over the patriarch of modern revisionism, Khrushchev, through the revisionist contest, they changed their tactic, pretended to reject their former flag, presented themselves as “pure Marxist-Leninists”, striving in this way, to win those positions which they had been unable to win with their former tactic. When this second tactic turned out no good, either, they “discarded” their second, allegedly Marxist-Leninist, flag and came out in the arena as they had always been, opportunists, loyal champions of a line of conciliation and capitulation towards capital and reaction. We were to see all these things confirmed in practice, through a long, difficult and glorious struggle which our Party waged in defence of Marxism-Leninism.
After the proceedings of the congress were over, they took us on visits to a number of cities and people’s communes, such as to Beijing, Shanghai, Tientsin, Nanking, Port-Arthur, etc., where we saw the life and the work of the great Chinese people at first hand. They were simple and industrious people with few pretensions, humble and attentive to their guests. From what the Chinese leaders and those who accompanied us told us, and from what we were able to see for ourselves, it seemed that they had achieved a series of positive changes and developments. However, these were not of that level they were claimed to be, the more so if account is taken of the exceptional human potential of the Chinese continent, and the desire and readiness of the Chinese people to work.
In China they had managed to eliminate the mass starvation, which had always plagued that country, had built plants and factories and were organizing the people’s communes, but it was obvious that the standard of living was still low, far from the level, not just of the developed socialist countries, but even of our country. From the visits we made throughout this vast country, from the contacts we had with the masses, we were impressed that their behaviour really was good, correct, but we observed a certain hesitation, both towards us and towards those who accompanied us. It was obvious from their words and their attitude towards the cadres that something from the past was still retained. It was clear that the many centuries of the past, the absolute power of the Chinese emperors, feudal lords and capitalists, of Japanese, American, British and other foreign exploiters, Buddhism, and all the other reactionary philosophies, from the most ancient to the most “modern”, had not only left this people in terrible economic backwardness, but had cultivated the slave mentality of submission, of blind belief, and unquestioning obedience to authorities of every rank, in their world outlook. Of course, these things cannot be wiped out all at once, and we considered them as forms of atavism, which would be eliminated from the consciousness of this people, who with their positive qualities and with sound leadership, would be capable of achieving miracles.
Apart from meetings with Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders, during the days of our stay in China, we also had occasion to meet a number of delegations of communist and workers’ parties which had attended the 8th Congress of the CP of China.
All of them enthusiastically hailed the “new line” of the period after the 20th Congress.
The Bulgarians called it “the April line”, since they had organized a plenum of their Central Committee in April, at which they had cancelled out the stands of Blagoyev and Dimitrov, and had embraced the Khrushchevite line.
“We rehabilitated Traycho Kostov, because we could not find any proof of his guilt,” Anton Yugov told us.
He spoke as though with some trepidation. Apparently, he sensed that sooner or later they would bring him down, in order to enjoy the whole of the revisionist line which had been prepared in Bulgaria according to Khrushchev’s orders. Dej, the man of the Information Bureau, who a few years earlier had delivered the report of the Information Bureau on the condemnation of the activity of the revisionists of Belgrade, had now made peace with Tito in Bucharest and was preparing to trite his kisses in Belgrade.
“I am going to Belgrade to meet Tito,” he told us, as soon as we met in Beijing, where he, too, had gone invited to the congress. Tito is a good positive comrade, not like Kardelj and Popovic,” he continued. (Three months before we had heard this in Russian, and now we had to hear it in Rumanian, too!) “When Tito was to go to Moscow in June,” continued Dej, “we invited him to stay in Bucharest, too, and hold talks with us, but he did not accept. Then what did we do? We gathered up all the leadership of the party and state and went to meet him at the railway station. What -could Tito do, he was cornered! And we obliged him to stay not just 45 minutes to rest, as he had planned, but two full hours! (A fine “obligation” you have imposed on Tito, I said to myself.) When Comrade Tito was about to return from the Soviet Union,” said Dej, “he informed us that he wanted to stay for talks in Bucharest. We welcomed this request, met him and talked with him . . .” and Dej went on to give us all the details about how they had smoothed things over with Tito.
“Now that I am going to Belgrade myself, would you like me to speak on your behalf?” he asked me.
“If you wish to speak on our behalf,” I told Gheorghiu Dej, “tell him to give up his secret activity and plots against the People’s Republic of Albania and the Party of Labour of Albania. Tell him that before and after the Tirana Conference the Yugoslav diplomats were involved in vicious activity . . .” and I told him briefly what had occurred in our country after the 20th Congress.
“Is that so?” he said and I saw that he was put out. He was not pleased that I exposed Tito. Dej displayed the same sentiments later, too, when I met him after he had made his long-desired visit of reconciliation to Belgrade and had put himself on Tito’s side. Some months after that visit I passed through Bucharest where, I met and talked with Dej and Bodnaras.
In the course of the talks Bodnaras (Emil, the elder) began to tell me that they had been to Tito, and in talks with him the conversation had come around to Albania. “Tito spoke well and with sympathy of your country, of your heroic people,” said Bodnaras, “and expressed his wish for good relations with you”, etc. In other words, this Titoite “spokesman” was making himself an intermediary for conciliation with Tito, trying to achieve what Khrushchev had failed to do.
I put Bodnaras in his place, telling him that we would be in struggle to the end against Tito and Titoism, because he was a renegade from Marxism-Leninism.
“For our part there will be no conciliation with Tito,” I told Bodnaras bluntly.
During the time that I was sounding off about Tito to Bodnaras, I observed that Dej was scribbling with a pencil on a piece of white paper, without doubt from irritation, but he did not speak at all—my words had a bitter taste for him.
But let us return to China, to the meetings which we had those days with other comrades of the sister parties.
It was interesting: everyone we met was talking about rehabilitations and Tito. Even Zhou Enlai said to us in a meeting we had with him:
“Tito has invited me to go on a visit to Yugoslavia and I have accepted the invitation. If you agree, I can come to Albania too, on this occasion.”
“We agree whole-heartedly that you should come to Albania,” we told him and thanked him for making the proposal, although it did not sound at all pleasant to us that the premier of China linked his coming to Albania “with the occasion” of his visit to Yugoslavia.
However, as I wrote above, it was the time when the fever of revisionism had infected everyone and they were all trying to go to Belgrade as quickly as possible to receive the blessing and “the experience” of the veteran of modern revisionism. One day Scoccimarro came up to me and complained that Togliatti had gone to Belgrade but had not got on well with Tito.
“What do you mean?” I asked, not without irony. “Did they quarrel?”
“No,” he replied, “but they did not agree about everything. Nevertheless,” he continued, “for our part we are going to send a delegation to Belgrade to gain experience.”
“In what direction?” I asked.
“The Yugoslav comrades have fought bureaucracy effectively and now there is no bureaucracy in Yugoslavia,” he replied.
“How do you know that there is no bureaucracy there?” I asked.
“Because there the workers, too, get profits,” was his reply. I told him about the stand of our Party on this problem, but the Italian could think of nothing but Tito. Mehmet intervened and asked him:
“Why do you want to send people ‘to get experience’ only to Yugoslavia? Why haven’t you sent such delegations to the countries of people’s democracy, too, such as Albania, for example?!”
The Italian comrade was confused for a moment and then he found the solution:
“We shall send them,” he said. “For example, the experience of China in regard to the collaboration of the working class with the bourgeoisie and of the communist party with the other democratic parties is very valuable to us. We shall study it . . .”
He had hit the nail on the head. And from now on, the Italian revisionists could go not only to Yugoslavia and China, but everywhere, to give and take experience of the betrayal of the cause of the proletariat, the revolution and socialism. Only to our country they did not come and they had no reason to come, because only Marxism-Leninism is implemented in our country. But this experience was of no use to them.
On October 3, 1956, we set out on our return journey. This whole trip made us even more convinced about the great and dangerous proportions which Khrushchevite modern revisionism had assumed.
In Budapest we were to see one of the monstrous consequences of the Khrushchevite-Titoite “new line”: the counter-revolution. It had been simmering for a long time, now it was about to burst out.
1. It turned out later that Mao Zedong’s utterly revisionist Decalogue “On the Ten Major Relationships” belongs precisely to this period of the “spring” of modern revisionism. (Author’s note)
Next: 9. The “Demons” Escape From Control