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Yugoslavia The Yugoslav-Soviet Rift
Fearing that Soviet control of Eastern Europe was slipping,
Stalin ceased advocating "national roads to socialism" in 1947
and ordered creation of a Soviet-dominated socialist bloc. In
September the Soviet, East European, Italian, and French
communist parties founded the
Cominform (Communist Information
Bureau--see Glossary), a successor to the prewar Comintern
(Communist International) that Stalin had hoped to manipulate for
the benefit of the Soviet Union.
Establishment of Cominform headquarters in Belgrade
strengthened the image that Yugoslavia was the staunchest Soviet
ally in Eastern Europe. Stalin, however, saw Yugoslavia's
independent Communists as a threat to his hold on Eastern Europe,
and hidden resentment strained relations between the Yugoslav and
Soviet leaders. Resentment had grown on the Yugoslav side during
the war because of Stalin's objections to the Partisans'
political initiatives, his refusal to provide the Partisans
military aid early in the struggle, and his wartime agreements
with Churchill and Roosevelt. After the war, Yugoslav leaders
complained about Red Army looting and raping in Yugoslavia during
1944 and 1945, and about unfair trade arrangements. The Yugoslavs
also resisted establishment of joint companies that would have
allowed Moscow to dominate their economy.
In early 1948, the Soviets stalled negotiations on a
Yugoslav-Soviet trade treaty, and they began claiming that the
Red Army had liberated Yugoslavia and facilitated the Partisan
victory. In March, Moscow withdrew Soviet military and civilian
advisers from Yugoslavia, charging the Yugoslavs with perversion
of Stalinist dogma. The Yugoslavs rejected the charges,
criticized the Soviets for recruiting spies within the Yugoslav
party, military, police, and enterprises, and defiantly asserted
that a communist could love his native land no less than the
USSR. This insubordination infuriated Stalin, and Yugoslav-Soviet
exchanges grew more heated. Finally, at a special session in
Bucharest that the Yugoslavs refused to attend, the Cominform
shocked the world by expelling Yugoslavia and calling upon
Yugoslav communists to overthrow Tito.
At first the Yugoslav party responded to the Cominform
measures with conciliatory overtures. Portraits of Stalin, Marx,
Engels, and Tito hung side by side at the Fifth Party Congress in
July 1948, and the delegates chanted pledges of support for
Stalin and the Soviet Union. In a lengthy address, Tito refuted
Soviet charges against Yugoslavia, but he refrained from
attacking Stalin. The vast majority of Yugoslavs supported Tito.
The press publicized Soviet attacks widely; Moscow appealed for
loyalty, but its appeals were nullified by renewed claims that
the Red Army had liberated Yugoslavia from fascism. A few
prominent Yugoslav communists did defect, and for five years
after 1948 the regime imprisoned thousands of suspected
pro-Soviet communists.
The Yugoslav regime strove to prove its allegiance to Stalin
after 1948. It answered Moscow's criticisms by supporting Soviet
foreign policy and implementing additional Stalinist economic
measures. In 1949 the Yugoslav government began collectivizing
agriculture; over the next two years, it used a carrot-and-stick
approach to induce 2 million peasants to join about 6,900
collective farms. The campaign, however, caused a decrease in
agricultural output, and the use of coercion eroded peasant
support for the government. Peasant resistance and a 1950 drought
that threatened the cities with starvation soon stalled the
collectivization drive. The government announced the program's
cancellation in 1951.
In 1949 Yugoslavia stood isolated. Relations with the West
worsened because of the bitter dispute with Italy over Trieste,
the regime's refusal to compensate foreigners for nationalized
property, continued Yugoslav support for the communists in
Greece, and other issues. The Soviet-bloc governments launched an
economic blockade against Yugoslavia, excluding it from the
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
(
CEMA--see Glossary). The
Soviets propagandized harshly against "Judas" Tito in
Serbo-Croatian broadcasts, attempted to subvert Yugoslav party
organizations, and sought to incite unrest among the Hungarian,
Albanian, and Russian minorities in Yugoslavia.
Troop movements and border incidents convinced Yugoslav
leaders that a Soviet-bloc invasion was imminent, requiring
fundamental changes in foreign policy. In July 1949, Tito closed
the Yugoslav-Greek border and ceased supplying the pro-Cominform
Greek communists, and in August Yugoslav votes in the United
Nations began to stray from the Soviet line. Welcoming the
Yugoslav-Soviet rift, the West commenced a flow of economic aid
in 1949, saved the country from hunger in 1950, and covered much
of Yugoslavia's trade deficit for the next decade. The United
States began shipping weapons to Yugoslavia in 1951. A military
security arrangement was concluded in 1953, but the Western
powers were unable to bring Yugoslavia into the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO). Italy won control of Trieste in 1954.
Data as of December 1990
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