ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the 1960s the Soviet Union was confronted with a simultaneous challenge from two opposite ends of the spectrum: on the one hand the Soviet leadership was increasingly undermined by the adversarial, extremist stance of its Chinese ‘comrades’, who regarded themselves as Lenin’s real heirs, and on the other hand it had to deal with the increasing defiance of its smallest Warsaw Pact comrade, Albania. United in their criticism of Soviet ‘revisionism’, the Chinese behemoth and the Albanian dwarf turned in tandem against their official ally. Caught in the middle of this unlikely partnership, the WP became an increasingly important base for support of the Soviet Union, which was further undermined by the Romanian ‘Declaration of Independence’ in 1964. The Soviet leadership therefore had to tread its ground carefully in order not to alienate any more allies and end up in isolation. Khrushchev also had to deal with the second Berlin Crisis in this period, but ‘the German Question was not considered pressing’ in relation to the potential repercussions of a schism between China and the Soviet Union.2
