ABSTRACT
Expansion has been a characteristic feature of Soviet foreign policy ever since the revolution of 1917. The expansionist character of communism was also seen in the attitude that the Bolsheviks took to the non-Russian nationalities of the old Tsarist empire. It seemed that the death of Joseph Stalin, like the deaths of some of the Tsars, would be followed by a period of troubles. That it did not do so shows much for the strength of the Soviet system and for the iron discipline of the communist party. ‘The Thaw’, or ‘the spirit of Geneva’, required a change in the ideological basis of Marxism-Leninism. One of the most important immediate tasks of the Nikita Khrushchev-N. A. Bulganin leadership was to regulate the relations with Yugoslavia. Relations with Yugoslavia never ran smoothly, especially after the Hungarian invasion and again after the Czechoslovak invasion, but no Soviet government ever suggested that Yugoslavia was not a socialist state.
