Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in the Early Cold War

Reconciliation, comradeship, confrontation, 1953-1957

Svetozar Rajak

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136905513
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This book provides a comprehensive insight into one of the key episodes of the Cold War – the process of reconciliation between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.

At the time, this process had shocked the World as much as the violent break-up of their relations did in 1948. This book provides an explanation for the collapse of the process of normalization of Yugoslav-Soviet that occurred at the end of 1956 and the renewal of their ideological confrontation. It also explain the motives that guided the two main protagonists, Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and the Soviet leader Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev.

Based on Yugoslav and Soviet archival documents, this book establishes several innovative theories about this period. Firstly, that the significance of the Yugoslav-Soviet reconciliation went beyond their bilateral relationship. It had ramifications for relations in the Eastern Bloc, the global Communist movement, and on the dynamics of the Cold War world at its crucial juncture. Secondly, that the Yugoslav-Soviet reconciliation brought forward the process of de-Stalinization in the USSR and in the Peoples' Democracies. Thirdly, it enabled Khrushchev to win the post-Stalin leadership contest. Lastly, the book argues that the process of Yugoslav-Soviet reconciliation permitted Tito to embark, together with Nehru of India and Nasser of Egypt upon creating the new entity in the bi-polar Cold War world – the Non-aligned movement.

This book will be of interest to students of Cold War History, diplomatic history, European history and International Relations in general.

Svetozar Rajak is a lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the Managing Director of the LSE Cold War Studies Centre and is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Cold War History.

1
Overtures

Yugoslavia’s specific brand of socialism, often called in the literature ‘Tito’s national Communism’ or ‘Yugoslavia’s road to socialism’, was conceived after the 1948 Tito–Stalin split. Clearly not the cause of the confrontation, it crucially pushed Moscow and Belgrade to drift apart ideologically in the subsequent years. The schism that was thus created preconditioned the course and the limitations of the Yugoslav–Soviet normalization between 1953 and 1957. In particular and as will be shown, it determined the strength of opposition within the Kremlin to the change of policy towards Belgrade, as well as the Yugoslav caution in embracing Soviet overtures in 1953 and 1954. Neither was ‘Tito’s independent foreign policy’, another attribute used in the historiography to explain the split, responsible for Stalin’s excommunication of the Yugoslav leadership in 1948. Tito’s cooperation with the West and his later pursuit of non-alignment, the cornerstones of his independent foreign policy, came in response to the strategic isolation into which the conflict with the USSR and Cominform had plunged Yugoslavia. Belgrade’s strategic alignment with the West, prior to Stalin’s death, was in response to a very real Soviet threat and was equally responsible for Yugoslavia’s reluctance to accept Soviet initiatives towards the normalization of their relations prior to autumn 1954. Thus, the beginning and the course of the Yugoslav–Soviet normalization in 1953 and 1954 were a function of the transformation of Yugoslavia’s political system and its ideological underpinning, and of its strategic realignment, both created in the period between the 1948 break up and Stalin’s death in March 1953.

Between 1948 and 1953, the Yugoslav regime waged a life and death battle against the very authority that formatted its identity and legitimacy – Stalin. During this period, Yugoslavia’s domestic political system and its foreign policy underwent changes of revolutionary magnitude. Remarkably, and seemingly paradoxically, the regime had initiated a profound transformation of itself and society at the time of the gravest threat to its existence. The character of the transformation fostered an irrevocable break with Stalinism. Its wider, global effect was to create a heresy against the ruling Stalinist interpretation of Marxism, introducing new approaches to socialism.

The sudden drama in Yugoslavia’s relations with the West that occurred at the end of 1952 triggered panic in Belgrade and would have a critical impact on the dynamics of Yugoslav–Soviet relations in 1953. Tito¹ and his aides² interpreted the inconclusive adjournment of the strategic planning discussions between Yugoslavia, the US, Britain and France, held in Belgrade in November 1952,³ as a grave threat to Yugoslavia’s national security. The concurrent resurgence of the Trieste problem with Italy only exacerbated the Yugoslav leadership’s consternation. These two challenges shaped Yugoslav foreign policy priorities during the following year and a half. With utmost urgency, Yugoslavia set out to create a military alliance with its pro-Western Balkan neighbours, Greece and Turkey, both members of NATO. Belgrade’s predicaments during this period were augmented by a catastrophic economic situation. The second consecutive drought in 1952, coupled with the disastrous consequences of forced collectivisation resulted in widespread food shortages, even famine in some regions of the country, while the spiralling balance of payment deficit was depriving Yugoslav industry of badly needed raw materials. Life-saving dependence on Western economic aid and assistance underlined the importance of maintaining a strategic partnership with the West, particularly the US.⁴

Very soon after Vozhd’s death on 6 March 1953, the new post-Stalin leadership in the Kremlin initiated unprecedented, albeit very subtle, conciliatory overtures towards Yugoslavia. Tito’s pursuit of a closer association with the West and the creation of the Balkan Alliance forced the new Soviet leadership to seek ways to normalize Yugoslav–Soviet relations. Yugoslavia’s foreign policy priorities, however, together with accumulated mistrust towards the Soviets, attributed to Belgrade’s lack of responsiveness to the Kremlin’s overtures. Only after the escalation of the Trieste crisis in October 1953 did the Yugoslav leadership decide to slightly moderate its attitude to the Soviet approaches.

The genesis of the heresy: the ‘Yugoslav road to socialism’

Excommunication of the Yugoslav Party and its ‘Fascist’ leadership from the Cominform had stripped Tito’s regime of its socialist credentials within the international Communist movement. Stalin, the ultimate ideological authority, immediately presented the confrontation with the Yugoslavs as the struggle against their revisionism and betrayal of Marxism–Leninism. The Yugoslav leadership’s Communist legitimacy, in the eyes of the global proletarian movement, was further undermined when, fighting for survival, it committed the gravest ‘sin’ and solicited support from the ‘class enemy’, the USA and the capitalist Bloc. In spite of this, Tito and his aides never abandoned their Marxist convictions and would remain determined to regain their previous standing within the international Communist movement, an aspect that would play an important role during the period of normalization. Restoration of ideological credibility became one of the key strategic and tactical goals for the Yugoslav leadership. On the one hand, they saw in this a way to weaken support within the Communist movement for Stalin’s campaign against Yugoslavia, in particular for possible military aggression. On the domestic front, the loss of Stalin’s seal of approval threatened Tito’s leadership of the Party. The regime in Belgrade was forced to seek re-establishment of ideological legitimacy in order to fend off external and internal threat. This explains what many saw as paradoxical and too adventurous – Tito’s decision to embark upon a political, socio-economic and cultural metamorphosis of the country almost immediately after the 1948 break up. Unquestionably laden with enormous risks, the gamble would, nevertheless, prove crucial for his survival. The revolution of the Yugoslav domestic political system in the early 1950s was unprecedented within the existing communist paradigm and established the Yugoslav concept of socialism as an alternative to Stalin’s model.

The Yugoslav ‘domestic metamorphosis’ was a case of a top-down revolution – the changes were initiated by the Yugoslav Party leadership. Available documents suggest that debates regarding new strategic options intensified within Tito’s innermost circle during 1949. A very rare occurrence in the preceding years, seventeen Politburo meetings were held in 1949 and 1950, including two Central Committee plenums in 1949 alone.⁵ Of particular significance for the charting of the new course was the Third Plenum, held on 29 and 30 December 1949.⁶ The raising of the stakes and added pressure from Stalin after August 1949, as described in detail in the introduction, provided perhaps the crucial impetus for the Yugoslavs to embark on their own journey. It finally convinced the Yugoslav leadership to abandon, once and for ever, the notion of possible reconciliation with Stalin. Disillusioned with Moscow and Stalinism and faced with an imposed imperative to find new ideological identity and legitimacy, Tito and his closest associates began contemplating in earnest a departure from Stalinist dogmas, as the ‘correct and only road to socialism’. Additional encouragement came from a realization, perhaps more of a hope at the time, that existence outside the Soviet Bloc was feasible. Rather than posing a threat, the West was increasingly demonstrating willingness to buttress Yugoslavia’s regime.

To reclaim its own legitimacy and Communist credentials, however, Yugoslavia had to redefine its own ideological identity in a manner that would position it as an alternative to that of Stalinism. This implied creating a new identity founded on ‘true’ understanding of Marx and Lenin, as the only way to disqualify Stalin’s interpretations. In circumstances when every aspect of Yugoslavia’s social, political, economic and cultural life and organization was rigidly ideological, implementation of a new ideological foundation inevitably led to a comprehensive overhaul of the political system, leaving few aspects of the country’s socio-economic structure unchanged. Crucially, Tito and his comrades understood that the new legitimacy was possible only if founded on wider mass participation and inclusion. Popular support was critical if the regime was to fend off the overwhelming foreign threat and overcome its fundamental crisis of identity. The Yugoslav leadership also realized that in addition to the political, the economic and cultural strata of social organization needed to be transformed. The most dramatic break with Stalinism occurred when the Yugoslav regime, hitherto considered the most radical within Cominform, accepted that wider inclusion and participation necessitated liberalization, democratization, decentralization and intellectual freedoms. The aim however, was to ‘democratize’ socialism, not to replace it with a multi-party system. This is something Milovan Djilas, an unyielding radical always on the lookout for a new cause, clearly misunderstood.

The new Yugoslav ideological identity was thus being constructed as an antithesis to Stalin’s ideological precepts and a negation of the Soviet model. Preserving the true spirit of socialism against the Soviet betrayal and Stalin’s falsifications became the justification for the introduction of Yugoslavia’s road to socialism. In his report to the Sixth Congress of the Yugoslav Communist Party in November 1952, Tito stressed that what gave him and his comrades strength to confront Stalin in 1948 was ‘our revolutionary consciousness telling us that we are conducting ourselves as true Communist-revolutionaries and as such obliged to defend both – the socialist principles and our own people’.⁷ Time and again, the Yugoslavs would stress that their approach reflected adherence to scientific axioms of Marxism–Leninism, as opposed to falsifications created to fit Stalin’s deviant system. In his speech before the First Extraordinary Session of the Yugoslav Parliament, in June 1950, which promulgated legislation introducing self-management, Tito stressed that,

prior to the infamous Cominform Resolution, [the Yugoslav] Party nurtured too many illusions, uncritically accepting and implementing everything that was being done in the way it was being done in the USSR, even things that were not in accordance with [Yugoslavia’s] specific conditions or in the spirit of Marxism–Leninism…. Today, however, we are building socialism in our country ourselves, without clichés and guided only by the science of Marxism …⁸

The Yugoslav leadership was also keen to promote Yugoslavia’s positive experience in the pursuit of independence from Moscow’s tutelage, as an invaluable contribution to the theory and practice of socialism. They hoped that by awarding their experience and their new ideological identity universal character and value, they could successfully challenge Stalin’s authority as the interpreter of the Marxist doctrine. As Tito emphasized,

successful implementation of Marxist science in [Yugoslavia] enabled us to successfully fight revisionism in this science … [Marxist science] does not need additional [to Marx, Engels, and Lenin] authorities, much less tutors or surrogates of the Marxist science who can only divert it from the correct socialist way into revisionism.⁹

The legitimacy of the new Yugoslav ideological concept was dependent on a successful challenge against the existing axiom that only one road to socialism, the Soviet one, existed. Tito addressed this at the First Extraordinary Session of the Yugoslav Parliament in June 1950, when he declared that ‘different economic, cultural and other conditions in different countries demand different forms [of construction of socialism], without prescriptions or clichés’.¹⁰ He then defined points of demarcation between the Yugoslav and the Soviet models, as

a) the question of the role of the state in the transitional period, in its withering stage; b) the role of the [Communist] pa...