ABSTRACT
The thaw of 1953 could not fail to affect Soviet attitudes toward Asia. The fundamental axiom of Stalin’s policy had been the inherent need for a constant sharpening of conflicts, which determined the internal affairs of the Soviet Union and involved the perspective of a third world war. All the arguments about the prevalence of feudal elements in the East, and the struggle against them, had already been known to ideologists of the “Third Period,” who had, nevertheless, reached very different political conclusions, namely, that the national bourgeoisie was incapable and unwilling to eradicate these feudal remnants, and that they were more afraid of the native proletariat than of foreign imperialism. The spring of 1955, the spring of Bandung, was the great divide in the Soviet attitude toward the national movement in the East. Soviet foreign policy and diplomacy were not, however, unduly affected by these traditional ideological considerations, when they faced new and highly promising realities in the East.
