1957 International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties

[1][7] The 1957 meeting occurred in the aftermath of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, at which Joseph Stalin had been denounced, and revolts in Hungary and Poland.

[8] The 1957 meeting sought to reaffirm communist unity, demarcating against the revisionism represented by the Yugoslav party and the hardliners resisting "de-Stalinization".

[8] As per the line given by the meeting, transition to people's democracy was possible through parliamentary elections, as long as the communist parties combined electoral work with mass struggles against reactionary forces.

[10] The Chinese communist leader addressed the meeting on November 18, 1957, at which he publicly affirmed support for Khrushchev's leadership in his struggle against the "Anti-Party Group".

[16] On the other hand, the meeting was preceded by a few months of gradual normalization of relations between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and the Yugoslav party was invited to the event.

[20] The Chinese Communist Party had managed pushed the Soviets to adopt a tougher stand against Yugoslav revisionism,[21] and at the Moscow meeting Mao was supported by Maurice Thorez and Mikhail Suslov on this point.

[23] Meanwhile, the Polish communist leader Władysław Gomułka had unsuccessfully lobbied to exclude the wording 'with the Soviet Union at the fore' from the declaration of the meeting.

[23] The fallout marked a setback for Khrushchev, who had hoped to be able to gather both Mao and Tito (representing opposite extremes of the increasingly divergent world communist movement) in a show of grand unity at the podium.