ZABORAVLJENA EPIZODA: JUGOSLOVENSKO-KINESKI ODNOSI 1947. GODINE
A Forgotten Episode: Sino-Yugoslav Relations in 1947

Summary/Abstract: This paper is based on first hand research in major domestic archives. With this article and its new archival findings the author intends to depict until today completely unknown episode in Sino-Yugoslav relations which fits in the larger frame of Soviet-Yugoslav relations and Yugoslavia's role in the hierarchy of the world communist movement. The whole story started with a passage from the famous book on the Korean War that brifely mentions a visit of the Chinese Communists to Yugoslavia in 1947. Meticulous research in domestic archives elucidated a completely new episode of the Yugoslav foreign policy in the early Cold War period. Documents show us an interesting interaction between Yugoslavia, the USSR and the Communists and Nationalists in China. Everything had started as a decision that the Soviet Union would protect Yugoslav interests in China, but the whole thing evolved into a clandestine diplomatic recognition of Chiang Kai-shek's Republic of China with the clear support from Moscow. As far as we know, this was, besides the Soviet Union, the only formal recognition of the Republic of China (even if clandestine) by any other communist country. The visit of the Chinese Communists was no titoist conspiracy, as above mentioned book claimed, but a quick reaction of the CCP leadership on the news of recognition and an attempt to strike a deal with Yugoslav side, making Belgrade a propaganda center of the Chinese Communist Party for the whole Europe. When the conflict between Tito and Stalin broke out, any further development of these schemes was interrupted. These are completely new findings that add new details to the history of Yugoslav foreign policy, pushing back the watershed in Sino-Yugoslav relations from 1949 to 1947 and opening new chapter in the interactions between European and Asian Communist Parties. Also, it sheds light on some aspects of Stalin's China policy and raises questions about the Yugoslav role in the communist world.

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