In the early 1960s, Albania and Romania dramatically rebelled against the Soviet Union and gained the reputation of mavericks.Footnote 1 Each state pursued its own distinct approach. Albania abruptly and explosively broke with Moscow and switched alliances within the communist world in 1960–1. The country took on an important role within Mao Zedong’s broader efforts to form an alternative international communism movement. In contrast, Romania pursued a cautious, gradual emancipation. While remaining part of the socialist camp, it asserted autonomy by first defying reforms within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) and the Warsaw Pact. Second, it distanced itself from the Soviet Union in international politics through carefully establishing relations with China, the so-called ‘Third World’ and the West.
Historians have identified similar causes and motives for why the regimes in Tirana and Bucharest defied Moscow. They have invoked the two ruling communist parties’ reluctance to embrace de-Stalinisation, ambitions within the nomenklatura, undercurrents of nationalism and local elites’ fears concerning political and economic subordination to the Soviet Union.Footnote 2 Enver Hoxha, the first secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania (Partia e Punës e Shqipërisë; PLA), was particularly worried about Nikita Khrushchev’s rapprochement with Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia, which he considered an existential threat to his country and rule.Footnote 3 The leaders of the Romanian Workers’ Party (Partidul Muncitoresc Român; RWP) perceived the CPSU (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) as a fundamental danger to their ability to govern and defend national interests.Footnote 4 Over time, they articulated an anti-hegemonic position that rejected dependency on any great power.Footnote 5 The Sino–Soviet conflict provided essential room for manoeuvre that the PLA and the RWP exploited to emancipate themselves within the communist world.Footnote 6 For Romania, scholars have underlined the importance of steps taken during the second half of the 1950s that facilitated its defiance. A reform of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs created the conditions for more extensive engagement with countries outside the socialist camp.Footnote 7 Bucharest leveraged its oil expertise as a tool of diplomacy with post-colonial countries.Footnote 8 The RWP channelled the Soviet call to de-nuclearise the Balkans to facilitate Southeastern European cooperation as a blueprint for continental détente.Footnote 9 Romanian leaders used international organisations to expand ties with the West and the ‘Third World’.Footnote 10
While existing scholarship is indispensable, this article goes beyond it by reframing Albania’s and Romania’s defiance of the Soviet Union within global debates about sovereignty. We use sovereignty as an umbrella term that comprises concepts such as equality in international relations, economic self-reliance and self-determination against hegemony. These notions, as components of sovereignty discourse, constitute the analytical terms that we use to compare the PLA’s and the RWP’s representations. However, we underline the fact that these concepts also gained popularity across the world in the 1950s and 1960s because of decolonisation, non-alignment and the ‘dynamics of dissent’ within the international communism.Footnote 11 The article argues that the regimes in Tirana and Bucharest employed such concepts to assert autonomy and legitimacy in the postwar world. The narratives and actions of Albanian and Romanian party elites were not isolated expressions of national dissent. Instead, they were shaped by and actively contributed to transnational debates about sovereignty that had been catalysed by anti-colonial emancipation.
The article adopts an ideational approach to foreign policy, which focuses on ideas to provide ‘richer explanations of politics’ without claiming that they are the only causal factor.Footnote 12 We define ideas as social and mental constructs of beliefs, principles and attitudes that broadly guide behaviour and policy.Footnote 13 By examining their circulation across national and (trans-)regional contexts as well as the links between local preoccupations and international phenomena, our article draws on currents within global history.Footnote 14 We compare Albania and Romania by juxtaposing each party-state’s transnational politics of sovereignty in relation to the Soviet Union, China, world communism as well as decolonised countries.Footnote 15 Informed by cultural history, we perceive foreign policy as a thinking process during which actors’ perspectives experience numerous influences and, thus, evolve.Footnote 16 Sovereignty emerges as a social construction of party elites who constantly positioned themselves towards specific contexts: the Sino–Soviet split, integration within the socialist camp and the pressure of self-determination within the international system. We therefore go beyond the question of ‘real sovereignty’ during the Cold War. Instead, we compare how the PLA and the RWP used the niches of autonomy that emerged within the bipolar contest of power to place domination and emancipation at the centre of their foreign policies, thus aligning with post-colonial agendas.Footnote 17
The timeframe of the study extends from the Albanian ‘rebellion’ in Bucharest in June 1960 to the immediate aftermath of Romania’s so-called ‘Declaration of Independence’ in April 1964, which proclaimed that intra-socialist relations must be based on the principles of sovereignty, equality and non-interference. These years brought the acceleration of challenges against the CPSU’s hegemony on the part of the PLA and the RWP. Yet, dissatisfaction with Soviet leadership had been crystallising since the mid-1950s. Enver Hoxha despised Nikita Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation, his reproachment with Yugoslavia (PLA’s archenemy) and Moscow’s reluctance to support Albanian industrialisation.Footnote 18 Similarly, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the general secretary of the RWP, was uncomfortable with de-Stalinisation but used Khrushchev’s critique of the cult of personality to consolidate his supremacy within the party.Footnote 19 The Romanian Politburo rejected Moscow’s desire for Romania to become an agricultural producer within the CMEA. Dej, similarly to Hoxha, insisted that industrialisation was the main engine for national development.Footnote 20 Both parties’ emancipation from Moscow accelerated as the world transformed at breakneck pace: peaceful coexistence blossomed into détente, the Sino–Soviet polemic turned into an all-out split and the process of decolonisation accelerated. Albanian and Romanian narratives of sovereignty matured in the second half of the 1960s and throughout the 1970s. However, by concentrating on the period between 1960 and 1964, the article demonstrates that international struggles for self-determination and against domination were foundational for Albanian and Romanian leaders’ emancipation within the Soviet-led camp.
The contribution draws on various archival collections (documents of the Central Committees of the two parties and materials from the ministries of foreign affairs) and newspaper articles. We analyse and compare the political languages and foreign policy of party leadership across different layers of discourse: high-level diplomacy, Politburo discussions, Hoxha’s and Dej’s readings of documents pertaining to international problems and propaganda brochures. This study engages with and contributes to scholarship on the global Cold War, histories of world communism, studies of decolonisation and self-determination.
The article combines a chronological structure with a thematic focus on the key moments and arenas in which Albanian and Romanian notions of sovereignty took shape. It follows the turning points in the two countries’ contestation of Soviet hegemony and traces how these developments intersected with debates on decolonisation. The time-line is therefore not strictly linear. Moreover, because Albania’s defiance of Soviet authority preceded Romania’s, occasional vacillation between various moments in time is necessary to compare the two cases.
The first section explores the convergences between different socialist ideas about sovereignty and independence on the one hand and decolonisation and self-determination on the other. We thus establish the framework and conceptual baseline for the subsequent trajectories taken by the Albanian and Romanian leaderships. The second and third sections mainly focus on Albania, demonstrating how the two conferences of communist and workers’ parties in 1960 (Bucharest in July; Moscow in November) fuelled the PLA’s vision of sovereignty founded on equality, dignity and independence. Albania’s defiance of the Soviet Union triggered the PLA’s re-imagination of itself as standing at the forefront of anti-imperial self-determination. The fourth and fifth sections explore the Romanian case, showing how the RWP’s critique of CMEA specialisation went hand in hand with ideas of reforming the Council as a global space for all socialist and newly independent states who were interested in mutually beneficial cooperation. Albania’s trajectory was both a cautionary tale and partially inspiration for the regime in Bucharest upon crafting its ‘principled’ opposition within the CMEA and the Warsaw Pact. The sixth part of the article explores the similarities and differences in the worldviews of the two communist leaderships.
Sovereignty between Decolonisation and the Socialist World
In the two decades following the end of the Second World War, a new language of sovereignty, self-determination, equality and international justice emerged. In addition to formal political independence, leaders across Asia and Africa demanded freedom in economic, cultural and foreign policies. Advocates for decolonisation viewed self-determination as ‘a claim to independence and equality’ and ‘the foundation for a domination-free and postimperial international order’.Footnote 21 The Bandung Conference of April 1955 brought the first major codification of this language. Delegates of twenty-nine Asian and African nations, along with representatives of national liberation movements from across the colonial world, adopted ‘Ten Principles of peaceful coexistence’. These norms included respect for sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs and equality in international relations. Six years later, drawing on Bandung and at the initiative of Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito, twenty-five states and three observer countries gathered in Belgrade to endorse non-alignment, that is, a foreign policy that stood against bloc politics.Footnote 22 These developments attested to the universality of independence in domestic affairs and of nondomination in the postimperial order.Footnote 23
Communist regimes were highly influential in the international recognition of self-determination, anti-discrimination and non-aggression in the postwar world. These values were at the centre of the socialist camp’s condemnation of colonialism.Footnote 24 In December 1960, the Soviet Union made a fundamental contribution to the United Nations (UN) Resolution 1514, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. The document stipulated for all peoples the right to self-determination, including the freedom to determine their political system and shape their own economic, social and cultural development.Footnote 25 The Declaration coincided with the joint appeal issued by Tito, Jawaharlal Nehru, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sukarno and Kwame Nkrumah calling for the United States and the Soviet Union to end the Cold War. Even though the latter document was withdrawn, the idea of independent agency and sovereignty remained at the centre of global politics. While attending the UN General Assembly, Gheorghiu-Dej remarked to the Daily Mirror that ‘one cannot simply be a bystander in our contemporary, complicated world. Look at the neutral countries, they have such an important part to play at the UN and this is so because they are vitally interested in peace’.Footnote 26
Four years earlier, at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev had connected colonial peoples’ struggle for sovereignty to the fate of the socialist world after Stalin. The declarations issued at the international conferences of communist and workers’ parties in Moscow in 1957 and 1960 tied the global expansion of socialism to the national liberation of colonial and dependent peoples. As self-determination empowered the so-called Third World, it became entangled with the pluralisation of the socialist camp.Footnote 27 Yet, the Soviet Union’s efforts to promote self-determination and anti-colonialism as a way of winning ideological support in Africa and Asia only partially succeeded. Leaders of newly independent countries feared that Moscow exploited these ideals for propaganda purposes and noted Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe.Footnote 28 By the early 1960s, leaders of African countries, from Senegal to Guinea, from Algeria to Tanzania, accused the Soviet Union of paternalism both in international fora and bilateral relations.Footnote 29
In contrast, communist China skilfully bridged anti-colonialism and communist internationalism. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party)’s emphasis on sovereignty, conceived of as self-determination for peoples oppressed by empires, reflected China’s trauma of Western domination, the US policy of nonrecognition and the country’s exclusion from the UN until 1971. China played a decisive role in Bandung: Zhou Enlai, the country’s prime minister, advocated the centrality of equality and non-interference in international relations.Footnote 30 As the CCP distanced itself from the CPSU, China claimed the status of not only a revolutionary communist state, but also a former semi-colony leading the struggle of decolonising peoples against imperialism from either the West or the East.Footnote 31 When the PLA and the RWP engaged with China, they reforged their sovereignty with a view to the three global orders towards which the CCP positioned itself: first and foremost, the Soviet-led socialist camp; the post-colonial world; and the US-led order.Footnote 32 In different ways, both the Albanian and the Romanian leaderships perceived China as a paramount partner in re-imagining national identity within the global context. The growing cleavage between Beijing and Moscow during the 1950s was the trigger for this process. Mao Zedong despised Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation and peaceful coexistence. He accused the CPSU leadership of imposing ideological appeasement with the West on communist parties and national liberation movements, insisting that the Kremlin was unwilling to confront imperialism militarily. According to the CCP, the Soviet Union displayed hegemonic behaviour and great-power chauvinism.Footnote 33
These incriminations came at a time when a cautious discussion about sovereignty and the role of the Soviet Union was underway in the socialist world. Nikita Khrushchev’s rapprochement with Tito resulted in the Soviet–Yugoslav declarations of June 1955 and June 1956, which stated that the relations between the two countries were based upon respect for sovereignty.Footnote 34 In the context of the turmoil in Poland in 1956, Khrushchev issued a declaration on ‘the principles of full equality, respect of territorial integrity, state independence and sovereignty and non-interferences in the domestic affairs’ in relations among socialist states.Footnote 35 The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs lauded the statement as ‘highly significant’ because it counterbalanced the CPSU’s ‘mistake of great-power chauvinism’.Footnote 36 Finally, in November 1957, at the International Conference of Communist Parties in Moscow, participants discussed the role of the Soviet Union. Promoting the slogan ‘seeking common ground while respecting differences’, the CCP projected an image of supporting unity around the Soviet Union as the leader of the socialist camp. In reality, its delegation and subsequent criticism of Soviet policies planted the seeds for the erosion of the CPSU’s primacy in world communism.Footnote 37
Albania and the Principle of Equality at the Bucharest Conference in 1960
In 1960, Sino–Soviet disagreements escalated. In April, the CCP launched a polemical campaign targeting what it perceived as CPSU revisionism. In June, for the first time, the CCP openly criticised the CPSU at the congress of the World Federation of Trade Unions. Two weeks later, Khrushchev decided to take revenge at the Third RWP Congress, which coincided with the so-called Bucharest Conference – a gathering of the delegates of communist and workers’ parties from fifty-one countries.Footnote 38 Being informed about the Sino–Soviet dispute and, thus, anticipating trouble, Albanian leader Enver Hoxha decided to skip the conference. Instead, he sent his trustee Hysni Kapo, whom he instructed to avoid taking sides in case of conflict between the Chinese and Soviet delegations. By maintaining that the Sino–Soviet disagreement ought to be handled differently, the Albanian leader affirmed the PLA’s individuality. Furthermore, Hoxha proclaimed his party’s equal status with any other participant at the gathering in Bucharest: ‘our Politburo thinks that our party has as much responsibility as all other parties to strengthen the unity of our camp … [and] defend the purity of the party and Marxism-Leninism’.Footnote 39
The conference turned into a battlefield. The Soviets launched a massive, coordinated attack against China. One after another, Eastern European parties rallied behind Moscow. Gheorghiu-Dej presided over the proceedings and accused the CCP of interference in internal affairs, condemning its distribution of propaganda to RWP members. In later years, Romanians remained apprehensive about China’s hegemonic behaviour.Footnote 40 In June 1960, Dej provided the set-up for Khrushchev’s attacks against the CCP and the PLA. Four years later, he regretted that ‘in Bucharest was the first blow against unity [of world communism]’.Footnote 41
During the proceedings, Kapo was the only speaker who refused to condemn China, aside from the North Koreans and the Vietnamese who remained silent. Khrushchev reacted furiously, accusing Albania of taking China’s side.Footnote 42 Three years later, the RWP would face a similar situation: the CPSU general secretary accused the Romanians of being pro-Chinese when they proposed inclusive solutions to the conflict between Moscow and Beijing. In contrast with the PLA, the RWP avoided open criticism. The leadership in Bucharest affirmed sovereignty by mediating between the two socialist hegemons.Footnote 43
Back in Tirana, explaining Albania’s disobedience to the Soviets to his party comrades was not easy for Hoxha. On 11 July, four days after an initial analysis of the developments in Bucharest within the Politburo, Hoxha convened a party plenum.Footnote 44 He framed Soviet behaviour in Bucharest as a big country trying to silence a small one. He demanded respect for the PLA: ‘our Party is not a party of children incapable of understanding Marxism’.Footnote 45 Furthermore, he invoked the PLA’s primary existential concern: the CPSU’s rapprochement with Yugoslavia, ‘the bandits of Belgrade … who aim to liquidate Albania’.Footnote 46
Hoxha’s emancipatory narrative resonated with participants at the plenum, who connected it with anti-imperial self-determination. Vito Kapo, the wife of the Albanian delegate in Bucharest, recounted her experience with Soviet arrogance during the International Women’s Congress in Copenhagen earlier that year. The gathering signalled the pro-Soviet Women’s International Democratic Federation’s support for decolonisation. Fittingly, Kapo noted an Algerian delegate’s solidarity with Albania: according to the latter, both peoples struggled against discrimination by great powers.Footnote 47 Fiqrete Shehu, the prime minister’s wife, drove home the idea of linking ‘smallness’ to independence: ‘the heroism of our Party lies exactly in the fact that our Party and our country are small, that Albania is surrounded by enemies, and yet, despite all this, it has always upheld – and will continue to uphold – the banner of Marxism-Leninism without allowing itself to be influenced by anyone’.Footnote 48 Overall, in July 1960, the PLA rose against Soviet hegemony, echoing Chinese criticism of Moscow’s ‘great power chauvinism’: the CPSU sought to silence and control a small but principled party that represented a brave people.
In the following months, in correspondence with the CPSU and the CCP, the PLA framed its stance as a struggle over the right to freely express political opinions within the socialist camp. This argument echoed the Declaration of the meeting of communist and workers’ parties from socialist countries that was issued in Moscow in 1957.Footnote 49 Such a strategy was similar to the CCP’s, which described its opposition to the CPSU as a principled defence of the Marxist–Leninist principles formulated in 1957. A couple of years later, Romanians emulated the PLA’s and the CCP’s ‘principled’ dissent against Soviet hegemony. In February 1963, the Romanian Politburo discussed the importance of a guiding document that explained the party’s critique of the CPSU to postwar generations who had been ‘brought up to love the USSR’. Invoking the Soviet attacks against Albania and China, the Politburo decided that Romania’s stance should be grounded on ‘the socialist principles’ of equality, mutual benefit, non-interference, independence and sovereignty that had been codified in the Declarations of 1957 and 1960 and issued at the two world conferences of communist parties in Moscow.Footnote 50
The PLA’s Self-Determination at the 1960 Moscow Conference and the Aftermath
The PLA’s newfound voice in the Sino–Soviet conflict positioned Albania on the brink of a radical redefinition of its sovereignty within world communism and beyond. Although contact between Albania and China had intensified since the mid-1950s, consultations on how to confront the Soviets were initiated only after the conference of workers’ parties in Bucharest.Footnote 51 As a rule, CCP representatives praised the Albanian stance as brave and principled, whereas PLA leaders fashioned themselves as fearless fighters for the right to freely express their opinion.Footnote 52 As bilateral talks during 1960 revealed, the two allies adopted different tactics at this particular point. The Chinese were interested in keeping tensions high while avoiding an open break with Moscow. The Albanians kept pressing for all-out conflict with Nikita Khrushchev.Footnote 53
The PLA leadership likened its struggle for the right to freely criticise the CPSU to defending the motherland. Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu explained during a meeting with the Chinese ambassador in Tirana on 1 August 1960: ‘for any Marxist-Leninist party, there is nothing more sacred and more valuable than the defence of the people’s freedom, which was achieved through bloodshed’.Footnote 54 This narrative of independence, which was situated along a continuum of national, anti-imperial struggles, aligned the PLA’s political language with decolonisation. It mirrored the CCP’s earlier merger of patriotism, socialism and anti-colonialism. In 1952, Liu Shaoqi had argued that national liberation did not contradict socialist internationalism, but rather constituted a necessary precondition – a theme taken up in the text of the Moscow Declaration in 1957.Footnote 55
In the following months, the PLA’s narrative consolidated and intensified. In November, Enver Hoxha used the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in Moscow to publicly present the new party line.Footnote 56 The PLA leader’s speech caused a scandal, with other participants expressing indignation and anger.Footnote 57 Beyond accusations against Khrushchev, however, Hoxha emphasised the principle of dignity and equal rights for all peoples irrespective of their political, economic and military power. Mirroring the anti-colonialism underpinning self-determination at the UN, Hoxha portrayed Albanians as a people who had suffered for centuries under oppression and poverty. PLA’s duty was to continue this heroic fight to defend national freedom and sovereignty. The broader framing of this discourse was obvious when Hoxha attacked not only ‘the imperialists and their helpers’, but also the CPSU leadership. He accused the latter of taking advantage of its political and economic power to subjugate Albania, a poor country in great need of aid.Footnote 58
Hoxha insisted on the connection between inter-party relations and state sovereignty by underlining the existential danger faced by his country. He argued that Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence with the West, as well as his rapprochement with Tirana’s archenemies Yugoslavia and Greece, jeopardised Albania’s freedom. The PLA leader furiously recounted how Khrushchev had told the Chinese a few days before the conference, ‘we lost an Albania and you, Chinese, won an Albania’. Hoxha lambasted Khrushchev for ‘behaving like a “dealer” towards our Party, our people, and a socialist country’.Footnote 59 He angrily added: ‘No, the time has gone forever when the territory of Albania could be treated as a token to be bartered.’Footnote 60 His stance signalled the PLA’s self-determination in the world communist movement: Albania, though small, would not be a pawn within larger geopolitical games.
Following the conference, the relations with the Soviets dramatically deteriorated, as the Soviet Union began to withdraw its military personnel and equipment. To counter this pressure, the PLA declared its determination to fight ‘until the end to protect our freedom and Marxism-Leninism’.Footnote 61 The CCP reinforced the PLA’s self-representation. The Chinese ambassador to Tirana told Shehu in April 1961 that Soviet actions against Albania were ‘in violation of the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism, of the equality among nations and of proletarian internationalism’.Footnote 62 According to another Chinese official, the Soviet Union ‘want[ed] to subordinate a small nation and base[d] this on the wrong notion of being a large, powerful and rich nation’.Footnote 63 In contrast, Chinese representatives presented themselves as humble and respectful, honouring small Albania for bravely defending them in Bucharest.Footnote 64
By October 1961, Khrushchev had had enough with Albanian defiance. At the twenty-second congress of the CPSU, he launched a public, strongly worded attack on the PLA, openly criticising Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu. He appealed to the Albanian people to call their leaders to account.Footnote 65 Khrushchev did not spare criticism of China either. For him, the CCP was behind the PLA’s defiance, dismissing the idea that a small country like Albania had any political agency.Footnote 66 Khrushchev’s reckoning with the PLA leadership confirmed the CCP’s key charges against him: disregard of other parties’ sovereignty and of the principle of equality among socialist countries.
The CPSU’s public condemnation of Albanian leaders facilitated the PLA’s self-representation as defender of the right of small countries and parties to manifest independence against great powers. Less than a year after the congress in Moscow, a high-level PLA delegation travelled to Beijing, where its members discussed with Deng Xiaoping the possibility of creating a ‘revolutionary nucleus’ by finding allies across the world, from communist parties in India or Australia, to those in Tunisia or Brazil. The PLA delegates placed China at the centre of this new mobilisation: the CCP was ‘a colossal force’ in the struggle against ‘anti-Marxism’ and for world revolution.Footnote 67 After the worsening of the Sino–Soviet conflict in the summer of 1963, the Politburos of the two parties decided to build an alternative anti-imperialist movement. In June 1964, the PLA and the CCP created the Solidarity Fund, which offered financial assistance to various Marxist–Leninist and revolutionary groups.Footnote 68 Three years earlier, the PLA had faced the prospect of isolation and state collapse. With the help of the CCP, the Albanian leadership used its self-determination from the CPSU to initiate a revolutionary offensive promising national liberation and sovereignty to peoples across the globe.
Romania, Albania and Self-Reliance in the Socialist Camp
The RWP’s defiance of the Soviet Union was accelerated by the CPSU’s open condemnation of the PLA and Khrushchev’s deprecation of the CCP in October 1961, along with conflict within the CMEA and missteps in interpersonal relations. Scholars have often noted that Romania’s pull away from Moscow during the Cold War was surprising. In public, the RWP was an unwavering Soviet ally. In June 1960, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej hosted the Bucharest Conference – a key turning point in the Soviet–Albanian split and the Sino–Soviet conflict. In November, at the Moscow conference, Dej criticised ‘the Sinicization of Marxism-Leninism’, the denigration of the CPSU by the CCP, Chinese meddling in the internal affairs of other parties and, last but not least, the ‘monstruous fabrications’ of the PLA against the Soviet Union.Footnote 69 In his report to the PLA plenum about the conference, Hoxha listed Dej as one of his most aggressive critics during the Moscow proceedings.Footnote 70
Yet, at the peak of his demonstrative support for Nikita Khrushchev, the RWP leader articulated, in the intimate confines of his Politburo, two concerns that anticipated the party’s subsequent sovereignty discourse: Soviet great power behaviour and Khrushchev’s condescending attitude towards Romanian communists. First, Dej disapproved of Khrushchev’s ambiguous talk in November 1960 about ‘some parties having more rights because they are greater [i.e., they are larger and carry more weight in the socialist world]’.Footnote 71 In his view, such statements played into the hegemonic tendencies of the CCP and defied the conference declaration that codified equality among communist parties. His stance was similar to Hoxha’s, but still, Gheorghiu-Dej dared not express his opinion publicly. Second, he disapproved of Khrushchev’s mockery of Eastern European parties’ dependence on the Soviet Union and its Red Army to secure and retain domestic power. Mirroring Albanian criticism, Dej considered these remarks to be a wilful belittling of the centrality of the RWP to Romania’s revolutionary transformation and the construction of socialism. Though publicly belonging to opposite factions, the leadership of the RWP and the PLA loathed Khrushchev’s contempt towards their self-proclaimed status as revolutionary commanders of populations that were advancing on the road to socialism.
The narrative that the communist party was at the forefront of the nation’s emancipation – a position resembling self-representations by national liberation movements in Africa and Asia – fuelled Dej’s interest towards views expressed by the CCP. Despite his criticism of the Chinese, Gheorghiu-Dej observantly read Deng Xiaoping’s interventions at the Moscow gathering in November 1960. The RWP’s general secretary highlighted two ideas in the documents: the pre-eminence of national forces in the construction of socialism and the maximisation of a country’s resources to supersede intra-socialist mutual aid.Footnote 72
His criticism of Khrushchev paired with his reading of the CCP’s positions signalled Dej’s interest in self-reliance. Such curiosity developed in the context of the RWP’s emerging resistance to plans for a socialist division of labour within the CMEA. The CPSU, along with parties in Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, sought to maximise economic production and relations within the camp. Their solution was for some states to specialise in heavy industry, whereas others would focus on agriculture and the extraction of raw materials. Romania and Albania were assigned to the second category.Footnote 73 The RWP leadership, however, considered industrialisation as central to overcoming ‘backwardness’. When Dej met with the Indian ambassador in March 1960, he proclaimed that ‘the centre of gravity for economic development is heavy industry and the construction of machines’. He added: India too ‘had to industrialize as fast as possible’ to avoid Romania’s pre-1945 fate, when capitalists promoted agrarianism and thus fostered underdevelopment.Footnote 74 Dej’s extolment of industrialisation in socialist and post-colonial contexts explained the RWP’s particular reading of CMEA specialisation: other parties were disparaging Romania’s modernisation and attempting to control the country’s raw materials.Footnote 75 These views mirrored currents of decolonisation in Asia and Africa, where many governments insisted on the ownership of natural resources and the urgency of industry-driven development.Footnote 76
In June 1963, three years into the RWP’s opposition against the socialist division of labour in the CMEA, Dej accused the Soviet Union and the other Council members of considering Romania a ‘hinterland’ during a Politburo meeting. According to Dej, other communist governments targeted Romania’s riches and considered the country as merely a market for their industrial exports.Footnote 77 One month later, the RWP general secretary compared specialisation to neocolonialism: ‘in relations between developed capitalist countries and less developed ones, it is a rule to take from the former raw materials for production and develop only those sectors of the [local] economy that are required to facilitate taking those things [i.e., resources]. It is the same with us and specialization’.Footnote 78
Still, between 1960 and 1962, Bucharest’s pursuit of self-reliance was cautious, lacking the gumption of Tirana’s defiance. Romanian representatives adopted a ‘dual tactic’: at high-level gatherings they emphasised common ground with the Soviets, whereas at expert meetings, lower-level officials rejected economic integration initiatives.Footnote 79 Nevertheless, simmering Romanian opposition did not go unnoticed in Moscow. During his visit to Bucharest between 18 and 25 June 1962, Khrushchev expounded on the importance of a body that could coordinate planning within the CMEA, labelling those who were unwilling to prioritise intra-socialist cooperation as nationalists.Footnote 80 In August 1964, during a conversation with the Chinese ambassador to Romania, Dej reminisced about Khrushchev’s heavy-handedness two years earlier. He concluded: ‘one must understand that we have our dignity, you must not play games with it’.Footnote 81 Despite its prudent opposition to CMEA reforms, the RWP increasingly associated the struggle for sovereignty on economic matters with the party’s right to be recognised as equal within the camp. Just as the PLA connected its right to protest against Soviet hegemony to Albania’s dignity as a small, independent country, so too did the RWP use self-reliance to position itself as defender of national interests.
The PLA leadership was also obsessed with developing heavy industry and felt marginalised by the debates concerning the CMEA reform. For Hoxha, industrialisation was essential for creating an urban working class and achieving economic self-sufficiency. His plans were criticised by Stalin, who urged him to pay more attention to agriculture. Khrushchev adopted his predecessor’s perspective in the framework of the socialist division of labour. By 1959, he envisioned Albania as an agricultural country within the CMEA. As Ylber Marku has shown, these differences played a major role in Tirana’s rapprochement with Beijing. During the 1950s, the PLA closely studied China’s economic model despite limited interaction between the two countries. Its leadership concluded that it fitted them better than Soviet suggestions because of the PCC’s emphasis on industrialisation, mass mobilisation and self-reliance. It helped that China’s assistance came with no conditions attached.Footnote 82
However, while the RWP’s emancipation drew on a protracted debate about economic models, the PLA’s defiance had more immediate origins. It was a reaction to the Soviet decision to cut and suspend aid following the clash in Bucharest. By late 1961, Albania ceased its participation in CMEA meetings. Before that, the country’s delegates were indifferent towards the Romanians’ contestation of CMEA reforms.Footnote 83 In contrast, the RWP used Albania’s position within the CMEA to highlight the economic inequalities of the expanding socialist world. In July 1963, the Politburo met in Bucharest to discuss the latest high-level CMEA conference and the gathering of the Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Pact. Gheorghiu-Dej referenced Czechoslovakia’s past attempts to extract Albania’s nickel for its own industrial needs with little benefit for the government in Tirana. A few minutes later, he referred to Czechoslovakia’s attempt to transform China into a retail market for its own products. Simultaneously, he mentioned intra-socialist coordination to assist Guinea, where again Czechoslovakia led the way.Footnote 84 For the RWP, Albania, just like Romania, Guinea and even China, were ‘less developed countries’ who were constantly targeted by the exploitative practices of ‘developed states’ within the socialist world. Soviet-led plans for economic integration worsened such tendencies that endangered national sovereignty. Within the CMEA, Romania showed solidarity with Albania as both countries sought emancipation from intra-socialist inequalities. By the late 1960s, the RWP transformed this stance into a vision that focused on reforming the world order through mutual cooperation among small and medium-size countries against neocolonialism and the Cold War.Footnote 85
Romania against Hegemony within the CMEA
For the RWP, Albania also set a precedent in terms of the danger of inter-party conflict that could trigger the breakdown of diplomatic and economic relations with the Soviet Union. Within the Warsaw Pact, the PLA’s failed manoeuvres against Soviet hegemony triggered Albania’s exclusion from the organisation in 1961. This dénouement was a cautionary tale for the RWP about the permissible extent of feasible disagreement with the CPSU, especially considering Romania’s direct border with the Soviet Union.Footnote 86 In contrast to the PLA, Romanian communists sought acknowledgement as a legitimate partner on matters of international communism and sovereignty from both the CPSU and the CCP.Footnote 87 Reacting to notions such as supra-national planning, integration along economic sectors, pan-socialist enterprises and intra-socialist banking, as well as to Bulgarian and Soviet pressure for multinational participation in the Romanian–Yugoslav hydro-plant at the Iron Gates on the Danube, the RWP unambiguously labelled these initiatives infringements upon national independence.Footnote 88 On 21 June 1963, when preparing for a meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Bucharest, the Politburo decided to inform the Soviet leader that CMEA reform was ‘incompatible with sovereignty’.Footnote 89 Five days later, the RWP leadership rejoiced that they pushed Khrushchev into acknowledging that sovereignty remained a key part of any CMEA transformation.Footnote 90 This moment confirmed the scope of the RWP’s cautious opposition: it was a legitimate interlocutor of the CPSU rather than its antagonist, as the PLA’s opted to be.
At the same time, the RWP hardened its oppositional stance towards the Soviet-led offensive against its absolute prerogative for planning and governing the Romanian economy, and the Romanian leadership openly embraced the Chinese concept of self-reliance. On 22 June, as the Politburo discussed yet another polemical letter from the CCP to the CPSU, Dej reasoned:
they [the CCP] start from the principle that each state must mobilize their own forces and aid other countries… . The other side [the CPSU] responds through an interpretation, in my view, unilateral, according to which building socialism by yourself means autarchy, a lack of will to collaborate and provide mutual aid. And, this is a subjective interpretation. Objectively, each country, by using its own resources to the maximum and by collaborating with other socialist countries … will develop their economy.
Minutes later, during the same meeting, Dej was unequivocal: ‘I like this Chinese thesis that each has to develop their own resources.’Footnote 91
The extolment of self-reliance was combined with the RWP’s reform proposal concerning the CMEA, which stated that the statute would be changed so that all socialist countries could accede if they wished to. Romanians also suggested that China and its allies (North Korea and Vietnam) could be integrated into the CMEA. Newly independent states from Africa and Asia would be encouraged to associate with the Council on certain economic fields.Footnote 92 The RWP leadership insisted that CMEA integration was Eurocentric in its current form and not adjusted to a world altered by decolonisation.Footnote 93 These ideas harked back to the 1950s: China had played a significant role in Scientific-Technical Cooperation, which presupposed the free exchange of technical know-how inside the CMEA. The same system had greatly facilitated socialist construction in Romania.Footnote 94 The RWP considered that integration overlooked the success of earlier intra-socialist relations: what had allowed the creation of a Eurasian socialist camp could be the catalyst for the globalisation of the CMEA.
The RWP’s plans for the CMEA also endeavoured to build alliances (primarily with China) against the Soviet Union. On 11 March 1963, in a conversation with the Soviet ambassador to Romania, Dej argued that the camp could not call itself global without including a country, ‘whose people represented two-thirds of the total population in the socialist world’.Footnote 95 Already a year had passed since the RWP’s last public criticism of the CCP. Throughout this period, the RWP adopted a position of ‘listen but do not talk’.Footnote 96 By spring-summer 1963, Romanians positioned themselves as unbiased observers in the Sino–Soviet conflict. From talk about bringing back China into the CMEA, the RWP moved towards engaging with the CCP to strengthen its leverage against what they perceived as the CPSU’s planned infringement of sovereignty.Footnote 97
Romania’s Defiance Goes Global
Romania’s opposition within the CMEA had not gone unnoticed in Beijing. Chinese newspapers published the communique of the RWP Plenum (5–8 March 1963), which openly criticised integration for the first time. A month later, during a discussion with a Romanian journalist in Beijing, Chen Qunbi, the former Moscow correspondent of the newspaper Renmin Ribao, pointed out the emerging affinity between the RWP and the CCP. According to Qunbi, both parties advocated ‘full equality’ between socialist countries and opposed any disregard of the ‘will and interests of peoples’.Footnote 98 On 16 May and 5 June, Corneliu Mănescu, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, met with the Chinese ambassador to Romania. Mănescu emphasised that China and Romania similarly supported national sovereignty, independence, equal rights and mutual aid as the basis for relations among socialist states.Footnote 99 These exchanges, along with another meeting with the Chinese ambassador in December, resulted in a high-level RWP delegation visiting Beijing between 3 and 10 March 1964. The visit announced the global projection of Romania’s budding autonomy within the socialist camp.
The RWP’s involvement in the Sino–Soviet conflict aimed to show that any party had the right to express its opinion on the most pressing problems of international communism. The position was similar to the PLA’s, but the tactics were different: the RWP claimed ‘principled’ commitment to unity and equality without aligning with either the Soviet Union or China.Footnote 100 While the domestic origins of the strategy cannot be denied, notably the RWP emulated the letter of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party (VWP) from 5 April 1962 – an earlier attempt at mediating in the Sino–Soviet conflict. The Vietnamese proposed the organisation of a new meeting of communist parties where the conflict could be ‘calmly’ discussed to re-establish ‘cohesion’ within the camp. Parties in New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Indonesia supported the VWP.Footnote 101 Before, during and immediately after the trip of the RWP delegation to Beijing in March 1964, Romanians imitated the Vietnamese. They argued that the Sino–Soviet conflict weakened communism and de-mobilised national liberation movements. They added that public attacks ought to be replaced with ‘fraternal’ discussions at a future gathering. Just like the Vietnamese, the Romanians invoked support from other parties in Latin America, Africa and Asia, as well as in Europe.Footnote 102
The RWP’s mixing of communist unity and national sovereignty structured its dialogue with the CCP. The Politburo delegation pleaded with their interlocutors to suspend, even for a few months, the conflict with the CPSU. Yet, concerns about Sino–Soviet disagreements set up the RWP’s explanations for their defiance of the Soviets, which they framed along motifs of self-determination. Upon detailing Romania’s stance against CMEA integration, Emil Bodnăraș compared Soviet attempts to control the economic potential of the Danube with Western colonial powers’ imposition of their rule over the Suez Canal in 1956.Footnote 103 Chivu Stoica, a member of the Central Committee Secretariat, linked pan-socialist enterprises to quasi-imperialism. He referred to the precedent of Sovroms – joint companies created to manage the fulfilment of Romania’s postwar reparations to the Soviet Union. The RWP considered this example a warning about the inherent exploitative nature of CMEA specialisation and unified planning. Liu Shaoqi confirmed his opinion, invoking China’s pre-1949 experience with companies that were controlled by colonial powers.Footnote 104 The two parties situated their experiences with Soviet ‘great power chauvinism’ within the context of decolonisation.
Yet, on 10 March, Mao Zedong advised the Romanians: ‘your friends in Eastern Europe will not suffice. You must expand your work with them … in the struggle against those … meddling in others’ affairs’.Footnote 105 By spring 1964, Romania was already using foreign policy to solidify its defiance of the Soviet Union. In Beijing, Bodnăraș underlined that Romania, Yugoslavia and Albania were united by their ‘defence of sovereignty, of independence’.Footnote 106 His interlocutors from the CCP disapproved of the RWP’s positive view of Yugoslavia, but the Romanians were undeterred. Proving they ‘were able to think with their own head’ – Dej’s formulation that epitomised the party’s emancipation – since mid-1962 Romanian communists had decided ‘to pay more attention’ to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY).Footnote 107 The fact that the two countries collaborated in the construction of a massive hydro-plant on the Danube eased their rapprochement.Footnote 108 In 1963, the RWP reinterpreted the significance of the 1958 Programme of the LCY, which had been excoriated across world communism as revisionist. The leadership in Bucharest argued that such attacks reflected the Soviets’ anger at the Programme’s condemnation of ‘ideological monopoly and political hegemonism’.Footnote 109
Another sign of Romania’s autonomy was the decision to resend the Romanian ambassador to Tirana in March 1963. By this point, Dej doubted the judiciousness of Khrushchev’s public attack against Hoxha in October 1961. Yet he noted that the PLA had pushed its open critique of the Soviet leader too far. The Romanian leadership believed that despite the PLA’s defence of equality and sovereignty, its rhetoric forced it into switching one communist hegemon (CPSU) with another (CCP).Footnote 110 The RWP opted for more subtle tactics: within the CMEA and the Warsaw Pact, its leadership intensified criticism of their allies (be they the Soviets or more junior ones such as East Germany or Czechoslovakia) but remained within the confines of the alliance. Romanians accelerated their contact with the Chinese, but never openly embraced the CCP’s foreign policy line. They even criticised the regime in Beijing, especially on matters pertaining to relations with the West and peaceful coexistence, or the RWP’s different view of the LCY.
While the regime in Bucharest showcased autonomy from the Soviet Union in relations with China, Yugoslavia and Albania, its leadership perceived the LCY’s policies as relevant for re-imagining Romania’s role in the Cold War. The RWP considered that the LCY had successfully sourced credit, technology and know-how from Western capitalist countries without compromising its ideological integrity. This marked a sharp change of approach when compared to the RWP’s criticism of Yugoslavia during the 1950s. The LCY was also a model for expanding relations with developing countries in order to tap into new economic and political opportunities. These issues were highly relevant in the context of Khrushchev’s threat, in the summer of 1963, to end the Soviet Union’s economic relations with Romania. On 26 June, the Politburo tasked economic officials to identify alternative sources for raw materials and markets for national products. The two countries highlighted were Brazil and Algeria. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also compiled information on socialist states’ economic policies in Africa. These materials singled out Yugoslavia as a model for engaging with newly independent countries on the continent.Footnote 111
At the end of November, when Dej visited Yugoslavia, he aligned with Tito’s perspective on Western and developing countries. Dej rejoiced when Edvard Kardelj, the LCY ideologue, agreed with Romania’s rejection of CMEA integration because of the limiting effects of such policy on national modernisation. According to Kardelj, ‘if a small country [both Romania and Yugoslavia saw themselves as such] focuses on a narrow market, it will not have a modern industry. If it orients itself toward the world market, it will have a modern industry’.Footnote 112
In spring 1964, the Politburo drafted the Declaration on the RWP’s position concerning the problems of the international communist movement and published the document, which caused significant international uproar. The Declaration reiterated criticism against CMEA integration and rejected Western economic discrimination against Romania.Footnote 113 The document embraced Kardelj’s advice by stating: ‘experience shows that as socialist countries increase their economic potential, their possibilities to broaden economic relations with socialist as well as capitalist countries increase’.Footnote 114 Developing a party line that had emerged in 1960, Romanians considered emancipation as inextricably tied to an industry that could withstand the demands of the world market. Any criticism against such policy’s reliance on Western credits, like the Soviets argued since 1963 or the Albanians a year later, infringed upon Romania’s sovereignty. On 24 August 1964, during an exchange on the matter with Manush Myftiu, Albania’s Minister of Education, Dej curtly proclaimed: ‘we are nobody’s servants, we are free men. We have our dignity’.Footnote 115
On 26 April, the publication of the Declaration codified Romania’s self-determination within the global context along three principles: the party’s freedom to express its opinions in the world communist movement; economic self-reliance embracing global opportunities beyond ideological divides and rejecting regional integration; and emancipation against the inequalities fostered by hegemons. The Declaration merged these three principles into what became the cardinal doctrine of Romanian foreign policy until 1989. In June 1963, Nicolae Ceaușescu, at the time member of the Secretariat and chair of the Personnel, Agrarian and Administrative sections of the Central Committee, was the first to formulate this doctrine. According to him, decisions within the socialist camp and in the world more generally could not be made without the involvement of ‘small and medium-size countries’, who constituted the majority of states in global affairs.Footnote 116
Discussions over the draft of the Declaration highlighted the fabric that bound together these small and medium-size states: anti-imperial revolution. During the plenum that discussed the Declaration draft (16–22 April), Dej and other speakers insisted on the exemplar nature of Romania’s liberation from fascism and communist take-over (August 1944–December 1947). For them, these transformations epitomised the successful combination of violent and peaceful means to achieve revolution in a way that reflected local conditions and national aspirations. According to such self-representation, Romania was in the same category as Cuba. These experiences inserted the country into broader conversations about socialism and self-determination across the world from Brazil to Iraq, from Syria to South Africa.Footnote 117 Anti-fascist, national liberation aligned Romania with the anti-imperial struggle of small and medium-size countries. In this manner, the RWP re-imagined its internationalism as the commitment to the sovereignty of all peoples. Dej heralded that after the Declaration’s publication, ‘we will be at the centre of the world… . [Our country] will be valued’.Footnote 118 The RWP had come a long way: from muffled opposition against the CPSU to an anti-imperial partner of small and medium-size countries in their struggles against the Cold War and for decolonisation.
Albania and Romania Speaking to the World
While the RWP constructed its opposition to the CPSU mostly behind closed doors, the PLA embarked on a propaganda offensive targeting multiple continents. At the heart of this campaign was the narrative initially formulated at the Moscow Conference (November 1960): heroic Albania, a small country, stood up to a great power, the Soviet Union, which had betrayed Marxism-Leninism and world revolution. Hoxha and his inner circle combined this stance with shrill criticism of ‘Titoism’ – the worst kind of revisionism that pushed newly liberated peoples into the arms of Western exploiters. In numerous propaganda pieces published in English between 1961 and 1964, the PLA leaders appeared as fearless fighters for ideas that were popular in the decolonising world: national liberation, sovereignty and equality in international relations.Footnote 119 While expressing solidarity with the struggles of post-colonial states – from Vietnam and Cuba to Algeria, Congo and Kenya – they connected imperialism to ‘modern revisionists’ (that is, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union).Footnote 120 Hoxha argued that Yugoslav non-alignment was a ploy to ‘curb the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist spirit’ in the decolonizing world.Footnote 121 When he attacked Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence, Hoxha invoked the betrayal of national liberation: ‘contrary to the wishes and plans of the revisionists, the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America who are fighting side by side against the imperialist invaders cannot afford to lay down their arms and wait until imperialism consents to disarmament’.Footnote 122 The PLA revelled in their alliance with China, which they considered to be a beacon for ‘all peoples in their struggle against oppression and slavery, for freedom, democracy and socialism’.Footnote 123
The PLA’s ideological offensive generally converged with the CCP’s deprecations of both Soviet and American hegemony as detrimental to decolonisation and sovereignty. Yet, as shown earlier, Enver Hoxha actively pushed the Chinese into embarking on a joint venture for global revolution. He developed extensive pronouncements on world politics and on war and revolution. He placed Albania at the centre of a new revolutionary front that was sustained through cooperation with the CCP. Moreover, the Albanian leader accorded Yugoslavia far greater weight and attention than Beijing did. The PLA’s discourse thus served Enver Hoxha’s ambition to assert ideological distinctiveness and elevated Albania’s global visibility while also reflecting the country’s strategic anxieties within Southeastern Europe. This approach functioned as a tool of both domestic mobilisation and international propaganda. The statements above were first published in the PLA newspaper Zëri i Popullit, then translated into English and circulated abroad.
The PLA emphasised common bonds between Albania and other small nations who were engaged in struggles against oppression. In reportage on his 1962 visit to Cuba, an Albanian journalist remarked:
How many things there are in common in the struggle, work and defence of the gains of the revolution between the People’s Republic of Albania and Cuba! The Cubans, in the same way as Albanians, won their freedom and independence arms in hand, dealing a heavy blow to their enemies and traitors. Cuba shows what a small people can do when inspired by ardent feelings and when led with faithfulness, without compromise, without wavering, without opportunism on their revolutionary pathway.Footnote 124
The Albanian leadership assessed developments in the so-called Third World in order to draw lessons from decolonisation. At a party plenum in January 1963, Enver Hoxha analysed the internal evolution of Cuba towards communism, Soviet–Cuban relations and Fidel Castro’s speeches, drawing explicit parallels with Soviet–Albanian relations. He then situated the PLA’s anti-imperialism in relation to the challenges of sovereignty in Latin America and Europe.Footnote 125
By 1964, Albania’s and Romania’s global projections of sovereignty intersected. Yet, they relied on different visions of the world – an obvious fact once the PLA and the RWP rekindled their dialogue. In July and August, Dej met several Albanian officials. Talks revealed a common struggle against Soviet hegemony. They also showed the RWP’s dislike of the PLA’s critique of ‘modern revisionism’ centred on anti-Titoism and Albania’s rejection of détente.Footnote 126 Between 26 and 30 November, a RWP delegation led by Dumitru Coliu, a member of the Politburo, participated in the anniversary of Albania’s independence. Romanians first met Hoxha and Shehu, who insisted that foreign interests (Soviet, Yugoslav, imperialist and so on) aimed to dismantle both countries as states. Their stance resonated with the RWP: its leadership had made a similar argument with a view to plans for inter-state economic complexes that merged parts of Romania with regions from neighbouring socialist countries.Footnote 127 Yet, the Romanian delegation rebuffed, just as Dej did in previous talks with PLA officials, their Albanian interlocutors’ insistence that accepting Western credits played into imperialists’ subversion of socialism from within. Coliu argued instead that trade with the West, if it helped build a modern economy, only ‘strengthened Romania’s independence’. He reiterated the idea of CMEA expansion to include all socialist countries and post-colonial, non-capitalist states.Footnote 128
The RWP delegation remarked that the Albanian communists’ diplomatic protocol during the celebrations showcased their membership within a socialist camp built around China. It also comprised North Korea, Vietnam, prominent non-ruling communist parties (for example, from Japan or Indonesia) and ‘Marxist groups’ (that is, Maoist) from across the world. The RWP opposed the idea of switching from one camp to another.Footnote 129 Its dealings with the PLA confirmed that Romanian foreign policy was now founded on the principle that states fighting for sovereignty should stand united for a world without domination. Nevertheless, Tirana’s and Bucharest’s positions converged on questions of sovereignty, equality and non-interference in internal affairs. The representatives of the two parties considered these issues to be fundamental for international relations and within the socialist world. ‘It does not matter whether a party is big or small. We are all equal’,Footnote 130 Coliu remarked during the meeting, thereby repeating one of Enver Hoxha’s central claims since the Moscow conference of 1960.
By the second half of 1964, the RWP’s worldview overlapped with post-colonial visions of self-determination. In early November, a delegation travelled to Algeria and met Ben Bella. Bella praised Romania’s industrialisation and emancipation within the CMEA. He added: ‘I know about the difficulties you faced, especially those caused by Khrushchev.’ Saïd Mohammedi, the Vice-President of the Council of Ministers, considered that Romania ‘eminently enjoys the values most precious to all peoples: freedom, justice and independence’.Footnote 131 These remarks confirmed the RWP’s re-imagined solidarity with newly independent peoples. On 7 September, while discussing about non-alignment with Tito, Dej declared:
some socialist states underappreciate the countries that are newly liberated from the colonial yoke and poorly understand their problems and difficulties… . Additionally, disagreements within the communist movement diminish its international prestige… . Nowadays, not only communists talk about socialism, but also leaders of the national liberation movements… . Ben Bella, Nasser, Ne Win, Nkrumah support socialism; of course, there are differences in how they and we understand it… . Our movement must take into account these massive transformations of the world. Instead, some use old, outdated formulas.Footnote 132
Dej included Romania in a global front of countries that affirmed sovereignty and constructed national paths to socialism. In the process, they changed the international order and challenged hegemons from either the East or the West.
In turn, the PLA saw itself at the forefront of an international revolutionary movement and an alternative to the Soviet-led camp that fought against the dominance of great powers. In 1967, Albania’s UN ambassador proclaimed at the General Assembly in New York:
We are the overwhelming majority in the world. We are those who smashed Italian and German fascism, we are the immortal heroes of Vietnam, Algeria, the Congo, Cuba, Latin America, China and Pakistan, the heroes of the Arab peoples, of the peoples of Asia and Africa, the heroes of the enslaved peoples of Europe and the whole world.Footnote 133
Conclusion
Albania’s and Romania’s defiance of the Soviet Union unfolded within a global context. The two parties formulated their strategies in relation to the dynamics of world communism and anti-colonial self-determination. Their emancipation was not solely about crafting a new foreign policy in the Cold War. It was also a process of re-imagining their position in the world and a phenomenon typical for the end of empires, ‘when declarations of independence were equally proclamations of interdependence’.Footnote 134 The PLA thought of itself as part of ‘a colossal socialist, Marxist-Leninist force’ that was led by China and struggling for the independence of small states against ‘modern revisionism’.Footnote 135 The RWP remained within the confines of the Soviet-led socialist camp. Yet, in affirming national autonomy, its leadership became an anti-hegemonic advocate for the freedom of small and medium-size states. Tellingly, in 1964, Romania considered joining the Group of 77, which was mostly comprised of decolonised states, at the first UN Conference for Trade and Development. The party-state also flirted with the idea of Romania being a ‘developing country’ in order to consolidate alliances with post-colonial states and obtain preferential access to Western markets. These paths would only be fully pursued during the 1970s.Footnote 136
Viewed as a whole, this comparative, entangled analysis of two peripheral members of the socialist camp complements current de-centred understandings of the Cold War. This article highlights the agency of the PLA and the RWP in the Sino–Soviet split and in the early politics of détente. Examining sovereignty from the vantage point of the margins of Eastern Europe brings the tremendous impact of decolonisation upon the pluralisation of state socialist identities during the 1960s into sharp focus.Footnote 137 The interconnected story of Albania and Romania demonstrates that socialist sovereignty was constantly evolving. It was a construct that depended on (trans)regional communism, the continental and global Cold War, and the shifting meanings of decolonisation – from flag independence to economic emancipation to reforging the international order from its margins.Footnote 138
The PLA and the RWP used similar notions (equality, independence, self-reliance) to reject their status as subalterns within the socialist world. In the process, these parties blazed new trails for their respective countries. Since 1964, Albania and Romania became allies of the so-called Third World against ideological and military hegemons, joining different but adjacent barricades of liberationist anti-imperialism.Footnote 139 We demonstrate the inescapable permeability of the Cold War and decolonisation: Albanian and Romanian regimes’ narratives of sovereignty aligned with post-colonial alternatives that sought, on a planetary scale, to reform the asymmetrical power relations that plagued the international system.
Funding statement
This research was funded in whole by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [grant DOI: 10.55776/PAT6757023].
Open access
