[1]Khrushchev's rehabilitation of Josip Broz Tito and the Yugoslavia and his "Secret Speech" denouncing Joseph Stalin in February 1956 put the Soviet leadership at odds with its Albanian counterpart.

Hoxha replied that Albania's relations with Yugoslavia were "cold" and he gave Mao "a brief outline, dwelling on some of the key moments of the anti-Albanian and anti-Marxist activity of the Yugoslav leadership."

On the subject of Stalin, Hoxha stated that the Party of Labour considered him "a leader of very great, all-round merits, a loyal disciple of Lenin and continuer of his work."

[7][8] According to William E. Griffith, the Chinese position on international affairs had begun to shift to the left owing to deepening contradictions with the Soviet Union and the failure of the Hundred Flowers Campaign at home.

Although the seeds of the Sino-Soviet conflict were sown during Stalin's time, policy differences between Beijing and Moscow emerged during the mid- and the late 1950s, coinciding with the deterioration of Albanian-Soviet relations.

A remarkable combination of traditional Balkan fury and left-wing Marxist-Leninist fanaticism, the Albanian anti-Khrushchev polemics... were certainly much more extreme than the relatively moderate, flowery, and above all 'correct' language in which the Chinese Communists have normally couched their most icy blasts against Moscow...

The revolutionary spirit characterizing the Chinese society was highly regarded by the Albanian leadership, and was considered as an indication of the Marxist-Leninist character of the CCP and its policies.

'"[18] The informal alliance between China and Albania was considered by Jon Halliday to be "one of the oddest phenomena of modern times: here were two states of vastly differing size, thousands of miles apart, with almost no cultural ties or knowledge of each other's society, drawn together by a common hostility to the Soviet Union.

"[19] Biberaj wrote that it was unusual, "a political rather than a military alliance" without any formal treaty having been signed and "lacking an organizational structure for regular consultations and policy coordination," being "characterized by an informal relationship conducted on an ad hoc basis.

and that "we are not dealing with a person or a group that is making some mistakes, that in the middle of the road sees the disaster looming up ahead and turns back; in this case it would be essential to manoeuvre, without giving way on principles, 'to prevent him from going over to the imperialists'.

He accuses the Soviet Union (Lenin and Stalin because, this 'robbery', according to Chou En-lai, took place in their time) of having seized Chinese, Japanese, Polish, German, Czech, Rumanian, Finnish, and other territories.

Regardless of whether or not mistakes may have been made, to raise these things now, when we are faced, first of all, with the ideological struggle against modern revisionism, means not to fight Khrushchev, but on the contrary to assist him on his chauvinist course.

[24] With the downfall of Khrushchev and rise of Leonid Brezhnev in October 1964 the Chinese called for the Party of Labour of Albania to join in supporting the new leadership "in the struggle against the common enemy, imperialism.

"[27] Regardless of these and future differences between the two informal allies, the Albanians subsequently wrote that they "supported China publicly... in the international arena for those stands of the Chinese side which were correct.

"Following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 an Albanian delegation to Beijing was told by Zhou Enlai that "Albania, as a small country, had no need of heavy armament and that it was not at all in a position to defend itself alone from foreign aggression...

"[35] An indication of the Albanian position on Romania was shown by Nicolae Ceaușescu's visit to China in June 1971, with Hoxha writing in his diary that: "Hsinhua reported only that [Mao] said to him: 'Rumanian comrades, we should unite to bring down imperialism'.

"[36] Following Lin Biao's downfall the Chinese leadership began seeking an accommodation with the United States against the Soviet Union, viewing the latter as a more dangerous opponent to its interests.

It will exert a negative influence on the resistance and struggle of the American people themselves against the policy and aggressive activity of the government of Nixon, who will seize the opportunity to run for President again.

[51][52] In his diary at the time Hoxha wrote that, "The Chinese make a friend of any state, any person, whether Trotskyite, Titoite, or a Chiang Kai-shek man, if he says, 'I am against the Soviets'.

... Their pressure is not imaginary, but took concrete form in the military and economic plot headed by Beqir Balluku, Petrit Dume, Hito Çako, Abdyl Këllezi, Koço Theodhosi, Lipe Nashi, etc."

[57] According to the Albanians in their 1978 letter to the Chinese, the latter had tried to pressure them to denounce those who were not part of the ruling group in China: "As we did not do this, it comes to the conclusion that we are partisans of Lin Piao and 'the gang of four'.

... Glancing over all the main principles of Mao Tsetung's revisionist line, in regard to all those things which he raises against Stalin, we can say without reservation that Stalin was truly a great Marxist-Leninist who foresaw correctly where China was going, who long ago realized what the views of Mao Tsetung were, and saw that, in many directions, they were Titoite revisionist views, both on international policy and on internal policy, on the class struggle, on the dictatorship of the proletariat, on peaceful coexistence between countries with different social systems, etc.

The Chinese theories, which have their source in the bourgeois-revisionist views of Mao Tsetung, Chou En-lai, Teng Hsiao-ping and Chairman Hua, take no account at all of the peoples and the revolution."

[70] The Chinese temporarily revived their interest in the pro-Chinese parties in order to use them as polemicists against attacks on the "Three Worlds Theory" while pro-Albanian parties fought back; on November 1 People's Daily dedicated its entire issue that day to an article entitled "Chairman Mao's Theory of the Differentiation of the Three Worlds Is A Major Contribution to Marxism-Leninism" in recognition that China could no longer rely entirely on proxies in defending its foreign policy from the Albanians.

To any normal person it is unbelievable and preposterous that Albania, a small country, which is fighting against the imperialist-revisionist encirclement and blockade and which has set to large-scale and all-round work for the rapid economic and cultural development of its country, which is working tirelessly for the strengthening of the defence capacity of its socialist Homeland, should cause and seek cessation of economic cooperation with China, refuse its civil and military loans and aid."

Nevertheless, we thought, China was a very big country, with a population of hundreds of millions, it had just emerged from the dark, feudal-bourgeois past, had many problems and difficulties, and in time it would correct those things which were not in order, on the right road of Marxism-Leninism."

The policy of rapprochement with American imperialism, which Khrushchev was pursuing, likewise, was incompatible with the interests of the Chinese, because that would leave China out of the game of great powers.

When this second tactic turned out no good, either, they 'discarded' their second, allegedly Marxist-Leninist, flag and came out in the arena as they had always been, opportunists, loyal champions of a line of conciliation and capitulation towards capital and reaction.

"[85]In December 1978, Hoxha's Imperialism and the Revolution [zh] was released, the second half of which was a criticism of the "Three Worlds Theory," Chinese foreign policy in general, and Maoism.

Hoxha declared that China had become a "social-imperialist" country, aspiring to superpower status alongside the US and USSR by tactically allying with the former against the latter on account of the former's greater economic strength and willingness to invest in the Chinese economy.