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This need to cut everyone down to size (leveling is its economic equivalent) made the satellite leaders an unlikely source of revolt. Seemingly, there is not a potential Tito in the lot. The man who pulled Yugoslavia out of the Moscow solar system was a Yugoslav hero in his own right; he fought his own battles, liberated his country and built his reputation without need of the bayonets of the Red army. Unlike Tito, the East European satellites have no orbits of their own; they are just the men in Moscow's moons—without popular following in their countries, their power dependent on slavish obedience to the Kremlin.
Of all who sat in Malenkov's cold-war council, only one—Czechoslovakia's Klement Gottwald—had ever been tinged with even a hint of Tito-like, nationalist aspirations, and that was long ago. The issue of his loyalty quickly became irrelevant: he took cold at the funeral, went home and died.
Among the satellite nations, Poland and then Bulgaria are considered the most discontented—but neither has a border on the West. Then come the Czechs and the Albanians. Restless as they are, they are under control of the army and the police, and the army and the police are under control of men who are unlikely Titos.
"Comrade Stalin's Behest." Facing East, Georgy Malenkov could not be so sure of his biggest and most important ally—Mao Tse-tung, conqueror of China.
The only man since Stalin himself to achieve a great revolution, Mao now ranks ideologically as the world's No. 1 Red—and is probably quite conscious of it. Even to Stalin, he was more the strong-minded disciple than the servant. To Malenkov, the hothouse-bred, second-generation Soviet man, he owes no personal allegiance, no ideological debt. As if to underline his sense of independence, Mao did not go to Moscow for Joe Stalin's funeral, instead sent a delegation under his Premier and Foreign Minister Chou Enlai. At the first news of Stalin's death, Mao cabled President Shvernik, and Chou En-lai cabled Vishinsky; their condolence messages must have reached Shvernik and Vishinsky just as they were being fired, suggesting that Peking had no advance word of Malenkov's shake-up plans.
Mao's newspapers and radio orators bathed the country in praise of Stalin and his works, but the Chinese Reds handled Malenkov's succession with almost cold reserve, were slow to slip into anything resembling a real buildup of the new Kremlin boss. In a long panegyric to the late Stalin, Mao's only reference to Stalin's successor was: "We fully believe the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet government, headed by Comrade Malenkov, will definitely be able to follow Comrade Stalin's behest to drive forward . . ." First the party, then the government, then Malenkov. One possible explanation: Mao recognizes that any struggle for power in Russia would inevitably spill over into China; alone of all subordinates, he dared pursue a course of semi-neutrality until certain who is in the saddle in Moscow.