Khrushchev's Attack on Albania and Sino-Soviet Relations

Abstract

Albania's defiance of the Kremlin, which goes back to 1956, but became “especially distinct” in the middle of 1960 according to Khrushchev himself, could scarcely have endured so long if China had not given the Balkan country considerable political and economic support. Khrushchev's open attack on the Albanian Party leadership at the 22nd Party Congress in October 1961 was, of course, an attack on the Chinese Communist leadership as well. Khrushchev made his principal target plain enough when he said in his opening speech that the course laid down by the Russians at the 20th Congress in 1956 would not be changed because they could not yield on a question of principle “either to the Albanian leaders or to anyone else.” No one in the Communist world could have any doubts about who the “anyone else” was after Chinese Premier Chou En-lai had failed to applaud Khrushchev's attack on the Albanians, implicitly condemned it two days later, and abruptly returned home before the Congress had concluded. Moreover, less than twenty-four hours after the Soviet leader's attack on Albania, the Chinese Communists made public a speech delivered several days earlier by a Chinese delegate to the fifth congress of the Women's Union of Albania in Tirana; she pointedly noted that “the friendship between the Chinese and Albanian peoples, based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, is unbreakable and no force can destroy it.”