Albania Defies the Kremlin:

...Jansenism" is a logical posture for a party breaking with the center to adopt: It allows the deviant to be plus catholique que le Pape, thus protecting it from the charge of treason...

...Zbigniew Brzezinski is Associate Professor of Public Law and Government at the Russian Institute of Columbia University and author of The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict...

...Both the Soviets and the Poles warned the Albanians not to stray from the common line by "arbitrary" interpretations of its meaning...

...Wladyslaw Gomulka of Poland is no exception to this rule, since, lacking strong domestic support for Communism, his moderate policy is only possible through continued membership in the Soviet bloc...

...The bloc today is more like a "city machine," controlled to be sure by a ruthless boss, but he must deal with powerful interest groups within his organization and sometimes even has to compromise with them...

...Party Congress publicly reveals significant differences in ideology among nations of the Communist bloc Albania Defies the Kremlin By Zbigniew Brzezinski The Albanian Party Congress, held last month in Tirana, suggests some tentative generalizations about current divergences within the Communist bloc as well as providing some specific evidence regarding proSoviet or pro-Chinese alignments in international Communism...

...In the past, such disputes would have been impossible...

...Albanian defiance of the line set by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev—revealed by even a cursory reading of local newspapers and the speeches of Party leaders—is similar in certain respects to the earlier Yugoslav and Chinese acts of selfassertion against Moscow...

...The similarity is not accidental: All three Parties came to power essentially by their own effort and hence have indigenous sources of power...

...Chinese Party leader Mao Tse-tung differs with Khrushchev in the same way...

...The Russian delegation stressed the dangers of war, decried attacks on the Soviet Party which came even from within Communist ranks and studiously balanced its criticism of revisionism with an attack on dogmatism (allocating an identical amount of time for each...

...The most forceful attack on the Albanians came from Gomulka's delegate (ironically, a former Stalinist), but all the East European parties supported the Soviets, studiously ignored Hoxha and failed to praise "the correct leadership" of his Party...

...There have already been some hints that a previous Soviet effort to displace him failed, and it is unlikely that Khrushchev would be prepared to court Hoxha the way he once courted Tito...

...It must have been a strange sight to see the Chinese delegate stressing the profound international significance of Chinese-Albanian friendship—almost as if China were adopting a "big brother" attitude toward the tiny European nation...

...Yugoslavia's President Tito in 1948 was certainly more radical domestically and externally than Marshal Stalin thought opportune...

...Stalin's leadership of the bloc was similar to gangster politics: All deviants were physically liquidated...

...These parties made flattering personal remarks about Hoxha, castigated Yugoslav revisionism but practically ignored ideological dogmatism...

...Today, Enver Hoxha, Albania's Party chief, adopts the radical pose...

...Also revealing was the relatively mild attitude of the various European parties toward Yugoslavia in view of Hoxha's categorical statement to his foreign guests at the Congress that "it is a crime against the Socialist camp, it is a crime against the Socialist countries of the Balkans and it is a crime against Albania not to denounce publicly the aggressive plans of the Titoists...

...It is questionable, however, how long the Soviets will be willing to tolerate Hoxha's impudent defiance...

...Perhaps most significant was the fact that all of this squabbling took place within the framework of the Communist bloc...

...Even the Soviets probably know the popular Warsaw epigram: "You have to bow low to dwarfs...

...It is also noteworthy that in all three cases the defiance took the form of adopting positions more extreme than those favored by Moscow...

...Moscow might now legitimately conclude that defiance of the Kremlin is a malaise from which indigenous Communist regimes suffer, small and big alike...

...Greater extremism ("Jansenism") seems to be the contagious malaise of the ruling and self-supporting Communist regimes and the basis of their departure from Soviet direction...

...The Albanians generally were supported by the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Vietnamese and some of the nonbloc Asian parties (such as Indonesia and Malaya...

...They are not dependent on Soviet support...

...More specifically, the Congress served to illustrate publicly how some of the parties differ...