The Causes and Consequences of the Tito-Stalin Split

Hunter Herring

History 450
C. Esposito
December 1, 2014

Herring 2
In American historical and cultural ideology, the Cold War is seen as the division of the
world between the two post-war nuclear powers: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, known
better as the Soviet Union, and the United States. At the end of the Second World War, the Untied
States turned its attention to containing communism and Soviet influence by the use of the
Truman Doctrine and also rebuilding war-ravished Europe and Japan through the Marshall Plan.
On the opposing side, the Soviet Union began spreading its influence into Eastern Europe where
communist governments formed from the Baltics to the Balkans. This is the basic story of the
Cold War; however, the conflict was entirely too complicated to simply cast it as just a petty
rivalry between the United States with its democratic ideals and the Soviet Union with its allencompassing and encroaching communist ideology. The Cold War has many different stories
and each one must be examined closely in order to get the complete historical picture of the postWorld War II era. One such story that must be examined is the break in relations between the two
major communist powers in Europe: the Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin and Yugoslavia led by
Josip Broz Tito.
The Tito-Stalin Split, as it would eventually be named, occurred in June of 1948. The
split was announced by Yugoslavias expulsion from the Communist Information Bureau known
as Cominform.1 The official wording of the announcement and press releases that came out of
Bucharest, where Cominterm convened to decide the fate of Yugoslavia, stated that Tito and
other high-ranking Yugoslavian officials were not keeping with the Soviet Unions hardline
Marxist-Leninist ideology. This led the world to believe that the split was purely ideological in
nature.2 The split, however, was not primarily ideological, but personal and political. The split
1 Telegram from the Ambassador of Yugoslavia to the Secretary of State, June 1948, United
States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: Eastern Europe; Soviet Union
1948, (Washington, DC: GPO) 1948.
2 Jernonim Perovi, The Tito-Stalin Split, The Journal of Cold War Studies 9, No. 2 (2007),
32.

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had consequences for all parties involved including the United States which sought to increase its
own influence over Yugoslavia in the absence of the Soviet Union. The consequences of the Split
include the purges that occurred throughout Eastern Europe, the emergence of the concept of
non-alignment in Yugoslavia, the ability for the United States to deal with a European communist
government on friendly yet still uneasy terms, and the ability of Yugoslavia to become a more
independent nation and create its own domestic, economic, and international decisions in the
face of Soviet opposition.
Background Information
To understand how the rift between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia occurred, there must
be some understanding on how Tito came to power in Yugoslavia. During the Second World War,
Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia, which caused the royal family to flee to London.3 This
caused an absence of a ruling class in Yugoslavia, which led to the creation of a power vacuum,
and resulted in a brutal civil war between Tito, who led the socialist faction and army, and
Mihailovi, who led the royalist forces for the exiled government.4 Tito fought to gain power by
liberating Yugoslavia from the Axis Powers and by defeating Mihalovis royalist faction. Tito
proved successful in both efforts and did so with little help from the Soviet Unions Red Army,
which was fighting to liberate Romania and Bulgaria, two countries that neighbored Yugoslavia.
When Tito realized victory was close at hand for his faction at the end of the Second World War,
he declared Yugoslavia a communist state, based on the principles of Marxism and Leninism.
Tito placed himself as Yugoslavias leader and began a process known as Sovietization, in
which Yugoslavian farmland and industry were nationalized in accordance with communist

3 Beatrice Heuser, Western Containment Polices in the Cold War: The Yugoslav Case, 1948-53
(London and New York: Routledge, 1989), 20-21.
4 Ivo Banac, Josip Broz Tito. Encyclopedia Britannica (September 2014): Research Starters.

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ideology and practice.5 The move to set up a communist regime in Yugoslavia and to nationalize
the Yugoslavian economy was thought by the West to be a direct order given by Stalin. Recent
research suggests, however, that Stalin was advising that Tito not be hurried in setting up a new
communist government in Yugoslavia for fear of retribution from his western wartime allies,
mainly Great Britain.6
Stalin, even before the War was over, called a meeting with Tito to advocate for a
temporary restoration of the Serbian monarchy in order to appease his British allies, further
enraging Tito who was already upset over the lack of assistance from the Red Army in liberating
his country from the Nazis. Tito was also upset over the lack of recognition as the leader of
Yugoslavia from Stalin.7 A similar tactic was used in France and Italy when Stalin met with the
French and Italian communist forces during World War Two. Stalin advocated that the western
communist parties attempt to work with the democratic regimes in power, which angered party
leaders who felt distance between themselves and Moscow.8 This talk of restoring the monarchy
to appease the western allies according to Tito was when the hostile relations began to emerge
only to result in the break some years later in 1948.9 It was also possible, according to Milovan
Djilas that Stalin was trying to stall the Yugoslav Revolution because he believed that Yugoslavia
could in the future become strong enough to rival the Soviet Union.10 This shows that the
relationship between Tito and Stalin was explosive from the start making it almost inevitable that
some sort of conflict would arise later on.
5 Perovi, Tito-Stalin Split, 32.
6 Heuser, The Yugoslav Case, 20 and 25.
7 Richard West, Tito (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994), 190
8 Silvio Pons, Stalin and the European Communist after World War Two (1943-1948), Past
and Present 210, no. 6 (2011): 124.
9 Perovi, Tito-Stalin Split, 36.
10 Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, trans. Michael Petrovich (New York: Harcourt,
Brace & World, Inc., 1962), 132.

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Causes of the Split: Internal Policy
At the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union began to expand its influence
through political, economic, and even military domination of its immediate neighbors and the
nearby communist states, including Yugoslavia. Since Tito rose to power with little aid from the
Soviet Union or any other group during the chaotic years of the Second World War, he felt that
he had leeway to enact his own internal and foreign policies. Other communist states in Eastern
Europe at the end of the Second World War were propped up and aided by the Soviet Union,
which made them vulnerable to domination by the Soviets, and less likely to create and act on
independent policy.11
According to Beatrice Heuser, the Yugoslavian economic and internal policies were
nearly identical to that of the Soviet Union, which was enacted after their revolution following
their exit from the First World War and Stalins eventual rise to power. The model that the Soviet
Union followed was designed to provide strength to Russia while depending upon the resources
of the surrounding weaker nations to fuel the industrialization and the advancement of the
Russian economy.12 When Tito began planning Yugoslavias economy he based it on the same
system, this was an effective warning sign to the Russians: Yugoslavia would not be an easy
target to extract resources from because Tito wanted to better his own country at the expense of
his Balkan neighbors through an aggressive foreign policy, which was exactly the Soviet plan for
every country in the Eastern Bloc. Based on the observations of the United States ambassador to
Yugoslavia in early 1948, Tito wanted his policies to create situations that would allow him to be
seen as the leader of expansionist communism in the Balkans and eventually Europe.13 This is
11 Perovi, Tito-Stalin Split, 59.
12 Heuser, The Yugoslav Case, 20.
13 Telegram from the Ambassador of Yugoslavia to the Secretary of State June 8, 1948; FRUS:
Eastern Europe; Soviet Union 1948; 1070.

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one of the underlying causes for the Tito-Stalin Split. Other internal policy differences also
emerged between Tito and Stalin.
Tensions Increase
Between 1945 and 1947, there were several failed covert attempts by the Soviets to
establish a wide reaching espionage ring inside Yugoslavia, as well as Stalins attempts to
infiltrate and control the Yugoslavian military, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), and
Titos inner circle.14 There was also trouble with the Red Army who occupied parts of
Yugoslavias countryside. The Yugoslavian government would often get reports of atrocities that
the men of the Red Army were committing against Serbians and the other ethnic groups within
Yugoslavia. Tito began to demand the withdrawal of the Red Army after learning of 121 cases of
rape and murder and over a 1000 cases of looting in the small towns outside of Belgrade.15 In
Stalins mind, these demands and accusations were conceived as insults directed at him and his
armys superiority.16 When the Yugoslav delegate Milovan Djilas reported these crimes to of
Stalin, he records Stalin as saying Does Djilas, who is himself a writer, not know what
human suffering and the human heart are? Cant he understand it if a soldier who has crossed
thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some
trifle?17 Djilas reflects later that Stalins reaction and subsequent actions towards the members
of the Yugoslavian regime regarding the complaints of the atrocities committed by the Red Army
could have been when Stalin began to formulate a plan to isolate the Yugoslav regime in order to

14 Richard West, Tito, 220-221. There is also information on this from Heuser, The Yugoslav
Case, 22-23.
15 Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, 89.
16 West, Tito, 218-221.
17 Djilas, Converstations with Stalin, 95.

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increase his own control and power over the other Communist states.18 With each failed attempt
at infiltration and every perceived insult, Tito and Stalin grew more hostile towards one another.
Tito was becoming more agitated at Stalins increasing dominance and meddling and
Stalin was becoming increasingly frustrated at Titos insistence that Yugoslavia would act
independently of foreign pressure from both the East and West.19 To speak out against
encroaching Soviet influence, Tito gave a speech in Ljubljana on May 27, 1945 stating, We will
not be dependent on anyone ever again, regardless of what has been written and talked about
and a lot is being written, and what is written is ugly and unjust, insulting and unworthy of our
allies. Todays Yugoslavia is no object for bartering or bargaining.20 Stalin later sent a
reactionary letter condemning this speech to Milovan Djilas, Titos minister, stating: We regard
Comrade Titos speech as unfriendly to the Soviet Union Tell Comrade Tito that if he should
once again mount such an attack on the Soviet Union, we would be compelled to respond openly
in the press and disavow him. 21 This shows that Stalin was already considering Tito a major
problem as early as 1945 and was even at this stage ready to exclude and remove him from
Soviet support.
Causes of the Split: External/ Foreign Policy
Since Tito saw himself as roughly independent of complete Soviet domination and
possibly as Stalins equal, he felt he could formulate an aggressive foreign policy that set
Yugoslavia on the road for the regional domination of southeast Europe.22 The foreign policy that
Tito implemented, according to most recent historians, was what brought about the clash and
18 Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, 90-2.
19 Heuser, The Yugoslav Case, 31.
20 Borba, 28 May 1945, quoted in Milovan Djilas, Rise and Fall, 91.
21 Milovan Djilas, Rise and Fall, 92, quoted in West, Tito, 222.
22 Nicolai N. Petro & Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Russian Foreign Policy: From Empire to NationState (New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc., 1997), 61.

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eventual split with the Soviet Union. There are three points in Titos foreign policy that relate to
the eventual break in relations between himself and Stalin. The first is the Yugoslavian claims to
the Italian region around Trieste, the second is Yugoslavias involvement in the Greek Civil War,
and the third is Titos domination over other Balkan states.23 In each of these foreign policy
disputes, there seem to be two points of contention, especially in regards the Greek Civil War.
The first point is that Tito believed that Stalin was not acting in the interest of
communism, but was rather playing a game of appeasement with the West. The idea of
appeasement of the West came from what is called the Percentages Agreement and Stalins
handling of the Yugoslavian claims to Trieste. The Percentages Agreement was an agreement
made at the end of the Second World War during the start of the peace negotiations between the
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Stalin. The agreement stated that Eastern Europe
would be divided into spheres of influence in which Great Britain and the Soviet Union would
share a percentage of influence in certain countries including a fifty-fifty split of Yugoslavia and
a ninety percent (British) and ten percent (Soviet) split of Greece. The agreement was made in
order to avoid conflict between the British, who were propping up the Greek democratic
government fighting communist rebels in the Greek Civil War, and the Soviets who wanted to
expand further west into Romania -- during the Second World War Romania had supported Hitler
and had been subsequently liberated by the Red Army.24
The Trieste claims were just as detrimental to Yugoslavian-Russian relations. In order to
keep the peace between the Soviet Union and the West at the end of the Second World War, the
23 Heuser mentions all three of these throughout her book Western Containment Policies in the
Cold War, but she only goes into detail in regards to the Greek Civil War and Titos plans to
merge with Albania through economic and military domination and his latter attempt to join with
Bulgaria. Trieste seems to be a minor point of contention between the two communist leaders
and dealt more with Western objections.
24 Petro &Rubenstein, Russian Foreign Policy, 46.

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Soviet Union refused to accept or support Yugoslavias expansion into the Italian region of
Trieste, which had been liberated by the western Allied forces. Tito saw this also, as an act of
cowardice and appeasement committed by Stalin towards the West.25 After Tito found out about
the inclusion of Yugoslavia in the Percentages Agreement without his knowledge, he began to
realize that he was nothing more than a puppet in the eyes of Stalin or even worse an obstacle
that needed removing to make way for Soviet expansion.
The second point is that Stalin believed in complete domination over what he considered
his puppet state (Yugoslavia), which Tito swore he never would or could be.26 With Stalins
policies of domination over Eastern Europe becoming more clear and with Titos insistence on
his countrys independence the two communists leaders clashed and it resulted in a final break in
relations on June 28, 1948.27 The wording of the official expulsion document was entirely
ideological in nature stating that Tito and his government were not following Marxist principles.
Silvio Pons, who wrote Stalin and the European Communists after World War Two (19431948), and Jeronim Perovi, who wrote The Tito-Stalin Split, both argue that the ideological
wording of the announcement just proves that the split had nothing to do with ideology but
everything to do with the foreign relations crises, (mainly the Yugoslavian involvement in the
Greek Civil War), which were plaguing the Soviet Union and caused to an extent by
Yugoslavia.28
Consequence: Purges
After the breach in relations, the world was in shock. Before 1948, the world was led to
believe that Stalin and Tito were on the best of terms and that Tito was one of Stalins closest
25 Perovi, Tito-Stalin Split, 36.
26 Heuser, The Yugoslav Case, 25.
27 Editorial Note; FRUS: Eastern Europe; Soviet Union 1948; 1075-1076.
28 Silvio Pons, Stalin and the European Communist after World War Two (1943-1948), 136.
This also alludes to Perovi, Tito-Stalin Split, 58

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friends and allies.29 According to western media Tito and Yugoslavia were Satellite Number
One.30 This shows that the June 28th announcement was a great shock to the world and affected
the future of the Cold War. After the announcement on June 28, serious consequences began to
take place. The first of these consequences, and the most relatable to the breach itself, was the
round up and the purging of persons suspected of being disloyal in both Yugoslavia and in the
Soviet Union. These purges were more common in the Soviet Union where there were fears that
high-ranking officials might be sympathetic to Titos plight. Stalin strong-armed leaders and high
raking minsters of Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania all of whom were
forced from power and into obscurity or disappeared altogether.31 It was suggested by Jeronim
Perovi that Stalins sole motive in expelling Tito from Cominform was to give him a legitimate
reason to tighten his grip around the other Eastern Bloc countries.32 When taking into account
that Stalin purged the other satellite countries of supposed titoists Perovis proposal is hard to
refute, but it also seemed to help explain the foreign policy issues that were the plaguing the
Soviet Union at the time of the split such as the Greek Civil War and the Yugoslav plans to merge
with Albania. After Yugoslavia lost its influence in the Eastern Bloc, due to the isolation caused
by the split and Soviet propaganda, Albania fell back into Soviet control.33 The Soviet Union
after the announcement of the split was in a much better political position than Yugoslavia and
Tito who had to work harder to keep the split from ruining the fragile Yugoslavia.
Purges also took place inside Yugoslavia, but on a much smaller scale. Richard West, who
wrote a biography of Tito, suggest that Tito was much more lenient than Stalin during these years
29 Yugoslavia is Expelled from the Cominform, in Great Events, 589 (US: Salem Press, 1999)
History Reference Center.
30 West, Tito, 217.
31 Petro & Rubinstein, Russian Foreign Policy, 62.
32 Perovi, Tito-Stalin Split, 61.
33 Perovi, Tito-Stalin Split, 62.

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of purges against supposed Stalinist. West suggests that Tito simply wished to educate the people
he detained of his benevolence and the evil ways of Stalin who was committing mass killings of
the peoples under control.34 Tito wished to rid Yugoslavia from Soviet influence once and for all
and began arresting people he suspected as being loyal to Stalin or the Cominform. Many of the
people that Tito arrested were refugees from Eastern Bloc satellites trying to evade Stalins
torturous hands. These refugees, according to West, were led to believe that Tito had
westernized his views and was going to allow democracy into Yugoslavia. These refugees were
arrested and then sent temporarily to work camps or the frontlines to instill loyalty to Tito and
Yugoslavia.35 Very few upper level officials in the government were purged in Yugoslavia. Tito
seemed to be more concerned with the masses of Serbs, Croats, and Montenegrins who had
always had an unusual allegiance to Russia.36 As a consequence of these arrests, Tito ordered the
creation of a slave camp on a remote island in the Adriatic called Goli Otok, also known as
The Naked Island. The way that West describes this work camp is akin to a German
concentration camp during the Second World War or the Russian gulags created by Stalin around
this same time period.37
Consequence: The Nonaligned Movement and the Third World
Although the Nonaligned Movement was not an immediate consequence of the TitoStalin split, the Movements foundations can be traced back to the events that transpired in June
1948. Jumping forward to the 1950s, Yugoslavia and Tito are completely isolated from global
affairs. Initially isolated from the West (the First World) even before 1948 due to disputes over
Greece and Trieste, as well as, Titos commitment to communism. Then Yugoslavia was even
34 West, Tito, 236.
35 West, Tito, 241.
36 West, Tito, 235.
37 West, Tito, 237.

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more isolated after the break in 1948 with the Soviet Union and the other communist nations of
the Eastern Bloc (the Second World). Tito began to search for alternative allies to counter the
Soviet Union, the United States, and their respective spheres of influence. Some scholars argue
that Titos search for non-aligned allies after his expulsion from Cominform and Soviet influence
was because he had a need to legitimize Yugoslavia and his rule over the country.38 This motive
has been challenged by other scholars who have noted that after the split Tito and his regime had
a huge amount legitimacy amongst the Yugoslavian population.39 Titos motivations to seek allies
against the two superpowers of the Cold War were more than likely concerned with securing
himself on the world stage and removing Yugoslavia from obscurity following the split with the
Soviet Union.
No matter the motivation behind Titos search, he found his first ally in Ethiopias
emperor Haile Selassie.40 The two countries shared an affinity for being dominated by other
countries. The Ethiopians, during World War Two, were conquered by Italy which sought to
expand its empire at the start of the war, and Yugoslavia had successfully ended both German
and Soviet influence over its future.41 The two new allies both benefited through economic
assistance, educational exchanges, and trade. After displaying his willingness to work with other
countries in a constructive manner, Tito found himself playing the honored guest and diplomat to
many other counties who felt the pressures of the United States, the Soviet Union, and European
colonialism. These countries included India, Egypt, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and
Cambodia.42 At the end of a diplomatic tour that took him to all of these new yet unofficial allies
38 Robert Niebuhr, Nonalignment as Yugoslavias Answer to Bloc Politics, Journal of Cold
War Studies 13, no. 1 (2011): 147.
39 John C. Campbell, Tito: The Achievement and the Legacy, Foreign Affairs 58, no. 5 (1980):
1048.
40 West, Tito, 282.
41 West, Tito, 282.
42 West, Tito, 282-4.

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Tito found himself at a conference in 1955 that took place in Bandung, Indonesia. The
conferences members included twenty-nine states from around the globe including Yugoslavia.43
This was the first conference to center around the concept of nonalignment and anti-colonialism.
There were five guiding principles of the attending nations and their commitment to
nonalignment: mutual respect for one anothers territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual
non-aggression; non-interference in one anothers internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit;
and peaceful coexistence.44 All of these commitments can be seen as transgressions that the
Soviet Union had committed against Yugoslavia and many other countries before the split.45 The
presence of the Red Army inside the borders of Yugoslavia and then on them after the split; the
dictating of policy and the political pressure placed on Yugoslavia through Cominform by Stalin
before his death in 1953 ensured Soviet interference in Titos regime; and the Soviet Unions
unequal trade agreements made with the entire Eastern Bloc before the split surely did not create
an atmosphere of mutual benefit; and the Soviet assassination attempts against Tito and the split
itself were acts of hostility and did not ensure peaceful coexistence in Eastern Europe between
the two communist neighbors.
If Tito was seeking international recognition for his regime, he definitely got it after the
Bandung Conference. Robert Niebuhr suggests that Tito and Yugoslavias participation in the
Nonalignment Movement helped mold Titos domestic policies. Tito felt that adopting a more
center left political stance, and a more capitalistic economic stance46, rather than a hard leftist
43 West, Tito, 283.
44 Robert Niebuhr, Nonalignment as Yugoslavias Answer to Bloc Politics, 157.
45 Robert Niebuhr, Nonalignment as Yugoslavias Answer to Bloc Politics, 158.
46 Coleman Mehta, The CIA Confronts the Tito-Stalin Split, 1948-1951, Journal of Cold War
Studies 13, no. 1 (2011): 122. Tito begins to move toward what Coleman defines as market
socialism, in order to attract western governments and business firms to invest in the
Yugoslavian economy. Market socialism can be seen as a more central economic stance that does
not have as much governmental intervention as that of strict communist, centrally planned
economies. This system in some ways can be seen as a foundation for modern socialistic models

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political stance similar to the Soviet Union meant he could attract more people to the Movement
and more people to socialism.47 This was an effective policy at the start. Titos main allies in the
Movement were Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Norodom Sihanouk
of Cambodia, and Indira Gandhi of India all of whom had a more progressive stance in ruling
their respective countries.48 Throughout the 1950s and right up until his death in 1980, Tito used
his founding influence in the Nonaligned Movement to push for his brand of socialism to be
adopted and for the members of the Movement to trade amongst themselves, especially with
Yugoslavia.49 After the foundation of the Nonaligned Movement, the members of the movement
accounted for nineteen percent of Yugoslavias foreign trade.50 By the time of the Belgrade
Conference in 1961, Tito and the other founding members of the Nonalignment had effectively
created a Third World, that could position itself between the two superpowers of the Cold
War.51
Consequence: Changing Western Relations and Restructuring
As early as 1948, immediately following the split, there were uneasy talks of rekindling
the relationship between Yugoslavia and the West from both sides. Tito, however, was mainly
concerned with keeping his country independent of the looming Soviet threat and keeping
himself in power. Titos regime became a bit shaky due to an economic blockade that the Soviet
Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc began to impose following the split in 1948, which caused
a food shortage and an economic/trade crisis in Yugoslavia.52 After enough time had passed, Tito
began to ease and look for ways to end his complete isolation on the world stage. One way he did
of many countries around the world.
47 Robert Niebuhr, Nonalignment as Yugoslavias Answer to Bloc Politics, 154.
48 West, Tito, 281-84.
49 Robert Niebuhr, Nonalignment as Yugoslavias Answer to Bloc Politics, 151.
50 Robert Niebuhr, Nonalignment as Yugoslavias Answer to Bloc Politics, 160.
51 Robert Niebuhr, Nonalignment as Yugoslavias Answer to Bloc Politics, 158.
52 Coleman Mehta, The CIA Confronts the Tito-Stalin Split, 1948-1951, 121.

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this was though the policy of nonalignment as previously discussed. The other way that he did
this was to attempt the cooling of relations with the West, including the United States.
High-ranking American officials in Belgrade at the time of the split immediately reported
that a break in relations occurred between Belgrade and Moscow and began to make suggestions
on how the United States could intervene and turn the situation in favor of American foreign
policy. In a telegram dated June 29, 1948 these officials asked how the United States could assist
Tito and to what extent, as well as, what the United States could demand of Tito in return for any
aid or support granted.53 Tito and his ministers began to willingly negotiate with Western
countries in order to make deals that would offer Yugoslavia economic aid, military aid, and
possibly espionage aid in order to counter any threat that the Red Army and the Soviet Union
posed to the Balkans. The American stance on Yugoslavia and the split was officially established
in a policy paper dated June 30, 1948. The paper takes a hesitant yet optimistic tone. U.S.
officials hoped that the rift between Stalin and Tito would put pressure on other satellite states to
defect from Soviet influence and move toward more open relations with the West. The paper also
states that the United States would be willing to work with Tito and Yugoslavia, but would keep
in mind that he is still an avowed communist that could cause problems for American interest, as
well as, cause possible conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States.54
Consequence: Western Relations and Military Aid
Over time American policy became less hesitant and began to see Yugoslavia as a
strategic point of interest in winning the Cold War. At the height of the Cold War, President
Eisenhower officially stated that the United States would defend Yugoslavian independence in
53 Telegram from the Military Attach (Partridge) and the Naval Attach (Sweetser) in
Yugoslavia to the Secretary of State June 29, 1948; FRUS: Eastern Europe; Soviet Union 1948;
1076.
54 The Attitude of the Government toward Events in Yugoslavia, June 30, 1948; FRUS:
Eastern Europe; Soviet Union 1948; 1079.

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the face of Soviet aggression.55 This protection came in the form of economic and military aid
that both the United States and other European states were glad to offer in exchange for met
demands. The economic aid that Yugoslavia accepted from the West had far reaching effects on
the governance of the country. After the split, Yugoslavia was in dire need of economic
assistance that had been provided by the Soviets.56 The ailments of central planning, mainly
overproduction of a limited amount of goods and lack of diversity between the industrial and
service sectors, had ruined Yugoslavias economy after World War Two.57 After receiving
massive loans as a form of economic assistance from various western sources, which failed to
improve the economy, the United States and other western countries forced Tito to agree to an
overhaul of the Yugoslavian economy in exchange for the continuation of western aid. In 1965
after years of bad economic management, Yugoslavia, at the behest of Western governments,
adopted a more right leaning approach to economics than it had since the days of the monarchy
before World War Two. 58 The provisions that the West demanded mostly revolved around
reducing central control over the economy over the long run and allowing the free market to take
shape within Yugoslavia. The first four provisions seem to be the most capitalist provisions in the
document:
1. Greater responsibility to industry for its gains and losses and an
effort to remove politics from the economy
2. Wages to be linked with productivity, and productivity to stress
quality as well as quantity.
3. Competition with the West by stress on quality and price without
subsidy, to determine a domestic price level based on supply and
demand in a free economy.

55 Robert Niebuhr, Nonalignment as Yugoslavias Answer to Bloc Politics, 164.

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4. No subsidizing of unprofitable ventures, no subsidizing of basic
imports, no subsidies or tax relief to stimulate exports59
These new economic changes and regulations opened Yugoslavia up to further changes that
stabilized its banking industry, weakened the Communist Party of Yugoslavias hold over politics
while directly strengthening Titos personal hold, and opened the country to private western
firms to invest in factories, infrastructure, and labor.60
As mentioned previously, Western governments, mainly the United States and Britain,
began to view Yugoslavia after the split in 1948 as a strategic point of interest in the fight against
the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The United States, Austria, Italy, and Great Britain all
make agreements with Tito that allowed them to use Yugoslavia as the first line of defense
against a possible Soviet invasion of Western or Southern Europe.61 The United States
ambassador to Yugoslavia is quoted as saying on February 24, 1951:
Yugoslavia is a shield for Italy and Greece. She also has a vital
strategic position on the Adriatic Sea. It is not difficult to see how
she protects the southern flank of a defense system that runs from
he North Sea down through the Netherlands, Belgium,
Luxembourg, France, Western Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, and
Turkey.62
In exchange for Yugoslavias inclusion in Western defense plans, Tito began to ask for military
aid in the form of arms trade and training. In 1950, Tito attempted to broker a deal with Charles
de Gaulle of France for the sale of arms between France and Yugoslavia, but the deal fell through
due to French financial expectations. Beatrice Heuser states that if this deal would have came to
fruition it would have been a very lucrative deal for both the French and the Yugoslavians in the
long run.63 After the French deal fell through, Tito sent his minster, Djilas, in early 1951 to
59 Margold & Woods, Yugoslavias New Economic Reforms, 66.
60 Margold & Woods, Yugoslavias New Economic Reforms, 67-73.
61 Heuser, The Yugoslav Case, 155-83.
62 Interview of George Allen the American Ambassador to Yugoslavia by US National
Broadcasting system February 24 1951; quoted in Beatrice Heuser, The Yugoslav Case, 155-6.
63 Heuser, The Yugoslav Case, 160.

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London to broker a deal with the British, NATOs high command, and the Americans. When the
deal was approved in 1952 the United States became the main supplier of arms to Yugoslavia. In
its 1951-1952 military budget, the United States allotted a $63,000,000 surplus to the new
Yugoslavian arms trade and military build-up.64 Tito and the Western governments agreed that all
arms sales were to be covert in order to not provoke the Soviet Union in any manner.65
Consequence: Changing Western Relations and Espionage Aid
Even before the end of World War Two, The United States and the United Kingdom had a
great interest in Yugoslavia both militarily and as a field for espionage. The United States and the
United Kingdom supported Mihailovis royalist/democratic army in opposing Titos guerilla
partisan fighters in World War Two and the Yugoslavian Civil War. The way that these
governments showed their support was to provide the royalist forces with small amounts of
moral support, military aid, and espionage aid.66 After Titos rise to power, Western covert
operations remained minimal inside Yugoslavia until 1948. Rumors in early 1948 caught the
attention of the American embassy in Belgrade of a possible rift in relations between Tito and
Stalin. These rumors were passed along to American intelligence agents who began investigating
the situation until the official split was announced in June 1948.67 American intelligence officials
in Belgrade were told to assess the situation and then attempt to formulate a plan on how this
developing information could be used to draw other Soviet satellite states away from Moscow
and Stalin. In a memo, the United States Policy Planning Staff states, The possibility of
defection from Moscow, which has heretofore been unthinkable for foreign communist leaders,

64 Heuser, The Yugoslav Case, 164.

Herring 19
will from now on be present in one form or another in the minds of every one of them.68 The
operatives, however, found that this break was to complicated and to personal to be used as a tool
to lure other eastern governments away from the Soviet Union.69
By the early 1950s, Tito is looking for ways to secure Yugoslavian borders from the
threat of the Red Army, which had kept a presence in the nearby Eastern Bloc countries.70 As
discussed in the previous sections, Tito made economic and military deals with NATO, the
United States, and the United Kingdom to secure his country and his place in power. Another
form of aid that he began to ask for in order secure Yugoslavia was espionage or covert aid.71
While negotiating the military and arms deals, Tito engaged the Untied States in a separate secret
deal in which Tito would allow CIA operations to resume in Yugoslavia in exchange for CIA
support in training Yugoslav intelligence agents as well as building a better system to prevent
KGB operations into Yugoslavia.72 The operatives begun working immediately after the deal was
finalized from their base inside the American embassy in Belgrade. When the Korean War broke
out in the 1950s, the United States used its new ties with the Yugoslav Intelligence Service and
Titos government to form possible counter operations, fearing a Soviet coup in Yugoslavia or
possibly an invasion.73
Changing Soviet-Yugoslav Dynamic and Conclusion
As previously discussed, Stalins possible motives in abandoning Tito and Yugoslavia
was to tighten his grip on the other eastern bloc countries and to eliminate his rival and
eventually dominate Yugoslavia himself afterwards. Only the former came to fruition before
68 The Attitude of the Government toward Events in Yugoslavia, June 30, 1948; FRUS:
Eastern Europe; Soviet Union 1948; 1080.
69 Coleman Mehta, The CIA Confronts the Tito-Stalin Split, 1948-1951, 113.
70 Coleman Mehta, The CIA Confronts the Tito-Stalin Split, 1948-1951, 116.
71 Coleman Mehta, The CIA Confronts the Tito-Stalin Split, 1948-1951, 101.
72 Coleman Mehta, The CIA Confronts the Tito-Stalin Split, 1948-1951, 101.
73 Coleman Mehta, The CIA Confronts the Tito-Stalin Split, 1948-1951, 125.

Herring 20
Stalin died in 1953. By the time of Stalins death, Tito had begun his move towards opening up
relations with the West and was enjoying what would become a decades long run of stable
control over Yugoslavia.74 In an article in the Saturday Evening Post, Fred Neal went so far as to
call Tito and Yugoslavia Our Communist Ally, which showed how far the rift had grown
between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.75 Although Stalin died in 1953 this did not mean that
relations between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia improved. Nikita Khrushchev, who rose to
power after Stalins death, continued to act in a standoffish manner toward Tito and Yugoslavia.
In a report written by M. Zimyanin detailing the situation in Yugoslavia, Zimyanin takes a
propagandistic tone and reports that Yugoslavia is on the brink of destruction economically due
to western imposed reforms and that the Yugoslav people were being mercilessly repressed and
murdered by Titos regime.76 Despite the rough start between Tito and Khrushchev and Tito,
eventually Khrushchev made improving relations between the two European communist
countries a main focal point in his foreign relations policy and his policy of destalinization,
which was a policy to move forward and away from the harsh and brutal actions of the Soviet
Union under Stalins regime.77
In 1956, Khrushchev held a banquet in which Tito was an honored guest. Previously, the
two leaders had negotiated deals in which the Soviets would accept the concept on
nonintervention in Yugoslav affairs and would recognize different roads to socialism.78 This
was supposed to be somewhat restart of the relations between the entire Eastern Bloc and
74 John C. Campbell, Tito: The Achievement and the Legacy,1045.
75 Fred W. Neal, Our Communist Ally, The Saturday Evening Post 223, no. 36 (1951): 25.
76 About the Situation in Yugoslavia and its Foreign Policy, May 27, 1953, History and Public
Policy Program Digital Archive, AVPRF, fond 06, opis, 12a, portfel 74, papka 617, listy 7-12;
translated for CWIHP by Daniel Rozas; Wilson Center Digital Archive.
77 Johanna Granville, Hungary, 1956: The Yugoslav Connection, Europe-Asia Studies 50, no.
3 (1998).
78 Petro &Rubenstein, Russian Foreign Policy, 71.

Herring 21
Yugoslavia, but Titos independence streak and Khrushchevs unclear intentions over how much
influence in Yugoslavia he would like to have made the two leaders distrustful towards one
another and their attempts at reconciliation difficult.79 Khrushchev and other Soviet officials once
again began to see Tito as a threat; just had Stalin did before them. This all came to a head during
the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 in which Tito supported the opposition to the Soviet led
government. This support of Imre Nagy and his eventual stay in the Yugoslav embassy in
Budapest due to Titos grant of asylum became known as the Nagy Affair.80 The Soviet Union
saw the Hungarian Revolution as a threat to communism, and as being inspired by Titos
independent form of governance away from Soviet control.81 The fact that the Soviet Union saw
Titos form of socialism as a threat to its mighty empire proves that the dynamic had changed
from the early years of the split between the two countries.
During World War Two, Josip Broz Tito was a guerilla fighter fighting to liberate his
country from the Nazis and Joseph Stalin was one of the most powerful men in the world
working against Hitler with the help of the United States and Great Britain. A decade later Tito
was on his way to becoming a leading world statesmen and Stalin was dead and his legacy being
obliterated by his predecessor, Khrushchev through the policy of destalinization. Stalin had
hoped for a quick toppling of Titos regime after the isolation that the split and subsequent
blockade had caused, but instead true to Titos nature he rose above it and kept Yugoslavia
together until his death in 1980. Despite Stalins and other Soviet and western attempts to
marginalize him, Tito became an world-renowned international monolith that helped bring the
79 Johanna Granville, Hungary, 1956: The Yugoslav Connection, Europe-Asia Studies 50, no.
3 (1998).
80 Johanna Granville, Hungary, 1956: The Yugoslav Connection, Europe-Asia Studies 50, no.
3 (1998).
81 Johanna Granville, Hungary, 1956: The Yugoslav Connection, Europe-Asia Studies 50, no.
3 (1998).

Herring 22
third world into fruition, defend a weak and vulnerable Yugoslavia from outside and inside
threats, and create a new form of socialism that rivaled Marxist theory itself. All of this was
possible because Joseph Stalin threw away his closest ally in June 1948 in order to take more
control over the weaker Eastern Bloc countries.