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Case
study
1
I. Yugoslavia and Stalin's politics
1. Unquestionable unity -
Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and
the onset of the Cold War
While one of the
most devastating wars on the soil of
Europe was nearing the end, the
first foundations of the new
Yugoslavia were being created. In
this process, the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia (CPY) distinguished
itself as the main political force,
due to its great capital, brought
from the National Liberation
Struggle. The old Royalist Yugoslav
project was deeply compromised, both
by its failure to build a stable and
prosperous state in the interwar
period, and by the political and
military failure of the forces that
stood behind it during the war. The
Yugoslav communists, crowned by the
victory over the occupying and
collaborationist forces, offered a
different vision of Yugoslavia, in
which the anti-fascist heritage
would be merged with the future
socio-economic transformation of
socialist modernization. From the
very beginning, the main support in
such an ambitious project was the
Soviet Union. The endless
inspiration of all pre-war Yugoslav
communists, the Soviet state under
Stalin's leadership, offered hope in
the feasibility of a special vision
of a prosperous communist society,
applicable in the poor agrarian
societies of Eastern Europe. The
glorious war alliance with units of
the Red Army had instilled in the
consciousness of Yugoslav Partisan
fighters the notion that the
expected goals of the Yugoslav
revolution are inextricably linked
to the support and help of the
Soviet Union.
The Second World
War significantly changed the role
of the Soviet Union in Europe. From
an isolated and ideologically
undesirable state within the
Versailles Order in the interwar
period, the war achievements and the
massive mobilization of the Soviet
Union's human and material power
against the Axis Forces made the
ruling Kremlin the chief arbiter of
the construction of a part of
post-war Europe.1 Starting from the
interests of protecting its own
security in a new international
order, Stalin's policy at the end of
the war was focused on defining and
preserving Soviet interest spheres,
affirmed by allies at conferences in
Yalta and Potsdam.2 Stalin's
“realpolitik”, which did not abandon
the Bolshevik vision of the world
for a single moment, implied the
conduct of international politics on
the principle of respect for the
“balance of powers”. The victorious
Red Army was paving the way for the
confirmation of Moscow's influence
zone in Eastern Europe. Although,
according to many authors, Stalin
did not initially have a clear plan
to create an Eastern Bloc
immediately after the war, it was
evident that the vacuum of power
created in Eastern Europe imposed a
new transformation of these backward
societies, in which the Communists,
with the support of the Soviet
Union, would represent a decisive
political factor.
Yugoslav
communists, unlike most Eastern
European communists, did not base
their triumphal march towards power
exclusively upon the merits of the
incursion of the Red Army units.
Relying on their own strength in a
four-year war against occupation
forces, they managed to build a
respectable military power, and at
the same time, by thorough
ideological and educational work,
tie a significant part of the
fighters to the ideal of a future
socialist society. Within post-war
Yugoslavia, a sufficiently strong
and organized political opposition
that could jeopardize the monopoly
of the CPY power did not exist.
Relying on the victorious war
performance and the promise of
creating a new socio-economic order,
the CPY was far ahead in comparison
to all communist parties in Eastern
Europe. In the period of Stalin's
concern over the organizational and
political incapacity of the
communist parties in Poland,
Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, the
Yugoslav party leadership in the
late 1945 already strongly held
power in its hands. In this process
of building the so-called “people’s
democracy”, the Soviet Union was the
main foreign policy and ideological
support of the new Yugoslavia.
The first steps of
socialist Yugoslavia on the
international scene were made with
the whole-hearted support of the
Soviet Union. The experience of
Yugoslav communists in conducting
international (but also state)
 affairs was extremely modest, and
could be reduced to the last several
war years of diplomatic struggle for
the affirmation of the partisan
movement and the revolutionary
authorities.3 Adjusting the policy
towards Yugoslavia to its wider
approach in the Balkans region,
Soviet foreign policy had taken care
to link its interests deeply with
those of Yugoslavia, while
presenting Western interests as
“ideologically” undesirable. The
solid foundation for post-war
Yugoslav-Soviet cooperation was
defined by the Treaty of Friendship
and Cooperation, signed on April 11,
1945, in Moscow, between the Soviet
and the Yugoslav delegation, led by
Josip Broz Tito. The importance of
this act for the interests of the
new Yugoslavia were expressed by
Tito in his toast, as he assessed
that the treaty was “the achievement
of the long-standing aspirations of
the peoples of Yugoslavia - to live
in close friendship with the great
Soviet people”, who, under the
“genius leader” Stalin, won the
victory against the common enemy.4
The foreign policy orientation of
the new Yugoslavia (FPRY) was built
on the belief that the Soviet Union,
along with the countries of
“people’s democracy”, was the only
guarantor of the protection of
Yugoslav interests in international
relations. Josip Broz Tito, as the
prime minister of the FPRY and the
minister of defense, pointed out
himself in his speech in the
National Assembly on February 1,
1946, that the “unbreakable
alliance” between Yugoslavia and the
Soviet Union represented “one of the
strongest factors for the safety of
our independence and peaceful
development of our country”.5
Yugoslav diplomacy regularly
consulted with Moscow on all foreign
policy issues, and with the
beginnings of the Cold War, it
provided unreserved support to
Soviet politics. The first
international problems that
Yugoslavia faced as an actor after
the war, such as the issues of
Trieste or Carinthia, were resolved
by relying on the support of Soviet
diplomacy. Over time, it became
expected that Yugoslav and Soviet
representatives would act and vote
in a unified manner in many
international institutions and
forums.6 The belief that the power of
the Communist Party in Yugoslavia
was secured, and that the society
was being built in accordance with
the Soviet model, convinced Stalin
in the possibility that Yugoslavia
itself could be the first exponent
of Soviet interests in the Balkans.
Plans to build a Balkan federation,
with the decisive role of
Yugoslavia, testified to the
intentions of Soviet politics to
additionally consolidate the
position of the USSR in that part of
Europe, by manipulating the
pan-Slavic feelings among the Balkan
peoples.7
The ideological
closeness of Yugoslav communists and
“the first country of socialism” was
one of the strongest post-war ties
between Yugoslavia and the Soviet
Union. The Communist Party of
Yugoslavia, from the very beginnings
of organized political activity, was
based on the success of the idea of
the October Revolution of 1917.
Lenin's codification of Marxism, by
building a coherent and rounded
theoretical conception, became the
main ideological orientation of
Yugoslav communists. The Soviet
Union was idealized as an example of
the successful construction of the
new socio-economic order, and the
Bolshevik Party, as an example of
the perfect organized political
power of the proletariat. With Josip
Broz Tito's arrival at the head of
the CPY in 1937, the process of
Bolshevization of the party was
largely completed. The infallibility
of the Bolshevik line was expressed
through the popularization of the
History of the Soviet Communist
Party (b). A short course, the basic
and mandatory ideological “textbook”
of all communists. Stalin was
celebrated and exalted as a great
theorist, whose contribution to
Marxist theory was equated with that
of Marx, Engels and Lenin. On the
occasion of the celebration of the
66th anniversary of Stalin's birth,
Edvard Kardelj proudly claimed in an
article in Borba, on December 21,
1945, that writing about Stalin
meant “writing about the most
important historical epoch in the
development of humanity” and “a
great triumph of the human mind”.8
Dedicating the ideological panegyric
to Stalin, Kardelj actually
emphasized the values that the
Yugoslav communists would firmly
adhere to in the post-war
Sovietization of Yugoslavia, and
whose ideological founder was the
Soviet leader: “Stalin gave the
foundations for the international
policy of the socialist state and
for the line of internal building of
socialism. The socialist
reconstruction, industrialization,
collectivization, five-year plans,
the building of the Red Army and the
defense forces of the USSR in
general - all this is the result of
the theoretical and practical
leadership activity of Stalin in the
struggle for the victory of
socialism in the USSR.”9
The construction
of the “people's democracy” in
Yugoslavia was intended to
theoretically express the
“transitory” period in the
development between civil democracy
and socialism.10 The consistency and
speed of the transition was
determined by the leadership role of
the CPY, which consistently pursued
the planned Soviet model in this
process. In January 1946, the
National Assembly voted on and
approved the FPRY Constitution,
which, with certain corrections,
represented a copy of the Soviet
constitution of 1946.11 The new
constitution established a clearly
expressed centralization of the
state and the party, with the
abolition of even the slightest
presence of institutions of
“bourgeois” democracy. Remnants of
 the civil opposition parties within
the People's Front were eliminated
from political and public life by
various methods, from arrest to
intimidation. The restoration of the
economy of the country, after the
severe consequences of war
destruction, was carried out
exclusively by copying Soviet
economic policy (nationalization,
central planning, collectivization).
The ambitious first five-year
development plan was introduced in
April 1947, and was the first such
plan in Eastern Europe. The
viability of the planned development
of the Yugoslav economy was closely
linked to an orientation towards the
eastern market, trade relations with
the Soviet Union and the countries
of “people’s democracy”. In April
1946, the Yugoslav ambassador to
Moscow, Vladimir Popović, in a
conversation with Soviet Ambassador
Lavrentiev, emphasized the fact that
Yugoslavia could not independently
develop its economy without close
cooperation with the Soviet Union.
Yugoslavia did not want, Popović
considered, to “fall under the
economic influence of England and
the United States”.12 To that end,
many bilateral agreements between
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union were
signed.13 Yugoslav communists expected
economic, military and personnel
assistance from the Soviet Union as
a contribution to the construction
of a new socialist order. Soviet
instructors took part in the
building of the Yugoslav Army and
State Security Service, while
hundreds of military cadets went to
school in Moscow.14 According to
Ambassador Popović, “educating
personnel with a Marxist-Leninist
view of the world, in the Soviet
spirit” was a fundamental issue for
Yugoslavia.15 In the middle of 1947,
acting on the instructions of the
party’s top leadership, the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet
Union made an analysis of the
results of the development of
“people’s democracies” in Eastern
Europe. In a separate memorandum,
the CPY's performance was presented
in superlatives, commendations of
the war success and the construction
of the communist government with the
appropriate socio-economic model.
Regarding the conduct of foreign
policy, the memorandum confirmed the
fact that Yugoslavia stood firm
against the West and supported all
Soviet foreign policy goals.16 The
image of “loyal” Yugoslavia was
aimed at completing the success of
the construction of the Soviet
sphere of interest, especially with
the escalation of the Cold War in
Europe during 1946-47, and for
preparing the ground for the
constitution of a more solid bloc of
socialist states under the direct
control of Moscow.
Faced with the
challenges of post-war
reconstruction, the anti-Hitler
coalition failed to reaffirm the
strength of its wartime alliance.
Allied conferences in Yalta and
Potsdam briefly offered hope for the
possibility of a compromise on the
basis of long-term and shared
concern for peace in Europe.
However, different ideas about the
basis on which the new international
order should be built, with the
strong presence of diametrically
opposed ideological points of view
and state interests, alienated the
positions of Moscow and the majority
of the Western states. The expansion
of the Soviet Union in Eastern
Europe, related with numerous
incidents in other parts of the
world (the issue of controlling
Turkish straits, the occupation of
northern Iran, support to Greek and
Chinese communists), was perceived
as the forcible creation of the
Soviet “socialist empire”. It was
interpreted as “a traditional and
instinctive Russian sense of
insecurity”, which could only be
curbed by the “logic of power”.17 On
the other hand, Stalin's policy,
proceeding from deeply rooted
ideological prejudices about
constant antagonism with the
capitalist world, interpreted the
British and American opposition to
Soviet interests as a renewal of a
“Hitlerian” war policy, directed
against Soviet security.18 The
unresolved issue of Germany and the
initiation of a plan for the
economic reconstruction of Europe
(the Marshall Plan) created an
atmosphere of total mistrust, in
which one party perceived the other
as a fundamental threat to national
security.
With the first
beginnings of the Cold War in
Europe, Yugoslavia was speedily
ranked on the West among the states
- instruments of Soviet politics.
Reports from the British Embassy in
Belgrade illustrated such views in
one of the telegrams to Foreign
Office, in June 1946, which stated
that the situation in Yugoslavia was
difficult to assess because it was
“not a free actor, and its actions
are not a reflection of Yugoslav,
but rather Soviet politics.”19 The
Trieste crisis, which began in May
1945, with the arrival of the
Yugoslav Army, was interpreted more
as expansion of the Soviet sphere of
influence to the Adriatic, than it
was perceived as a struggle for the
fulfillment of Yugoslav interests.
The same alarm for the West was the
escalation of the civil war in
Greece in the spring of 1946, in
which Yugoslavia consistently
provided significant assistance to
the armed forces of Greek
communists, and for which it was
condemned in the UN. In the Western
press and diplomatic reports,
Yugoslavia received the epithet of
the Soviet “satellite no. 1”, while
Tito was portrayed as a true
advocate of Stalin's policy.20 During
numerous conversations with Western
diplomats the Yugoslav authorities
periodically tried to reassure them
that the state policy was aimed at
developing good relations with all
countries, but ideological
differences, however, could not have
been overcome. Articles in the press
and party newsletters intensified
anti-Western rhetoric, creating a
black and white image of the
existence of a permanent fight
between “progressive” and
“reactionary” forces. With
increasing tensions in international
relations, the Yugoslav press wrote
more and more about “imperialist”
plans of the Western states, which
were opposed by the Soviet Union, as
“the main foothold, the strongest
weapon, the most important position
of progress, freedom and
independence of the people and true
democracy”.21 For the Yugoslav
communists, it was “natural” and
expected that Yugoslavia, as part of
the “progressive and advanced
world”, would support the
empowerment of the USSR and its
active role in international
relations, with the aim of achieving
an “advanced path in the development
of humanity”.22 Soviet Ambassador A.
J. Lavrentiev was pleased to note
(in March 1947), summarizing a
report for Moscow, that it became
clear to the Yugoslav leadership
that “the basis of Yugoslavia's
foreign policy, the guarantee of
strengthening its international
position, is reliance on the Soviet
Union”.23 Belgrade was the first
capital in Eastern Europe which
refused to take part in the
consultations of European countries
in July 1947, on the issue of the
implementation of the so-called
Marshall Plan, adopting the Soviet
view that the Plan envisages
“interference in the internal
affairs of European states”, and
making the economy of European
countries “dependent of US
interests”.24 Unlike Jan Masaryk, who,
after the Soviet ultimatum to
Czechoslovakia in connection with
the Marshall Plan, viewed himself as
a “Soviet lackey”, Yugoslav
diplomacy was proud of fulfilling
its “international duty”.
 Moscow's decision
to reject the Marshall Plan for the
economic reconstruction of Europe
led to the radicalization of
Stalin's policy, the rejection of
the “national path” towards
socialism, and a firmer binding of
the communist parties under the
ideological and political suzerainty
of the Soviet Union. In the attempts
to achieve this goal representatives
of the European communist parties
held a meeting in Szklarska Poręba
(Poland), from September 22 to 28,
1947.25 The main tone of the entire
meeting was set by the presentation
of the Soviet representative Andrei
Zhdanov, one of the key figures in
the implementation of repressive
ideological dogmatization in the
Soviet Union since 1946. To the
gathered communists, Zhdanov
presented a picture of the postwar
world, in which, in his opinion, two
opposing blocs had crystallized -
“imperialist”, led by the United
States, and “anti-imperialist”, led
by the USSR. Presenting the policy
of former allies as “imperialist”
and “bellicose”, designed for
restoration of fascism and the
struggle against socialism, Zhdanov
craftily ideologically summed up the
Soviet view of the new Cold War
divisions, towards which communists
must have a clear standpoint. The
leading role, Zhdanov stressed, in
opposing the American plan for “the
enslavement of Europe” and the
imperialist aspirations of Western
capitalism, belonged to the Soviet
Union, which was “foreign to any
aggressive exploitative motives”,
and which was a “devoted supporter
of freedom and independence for all
peoples”.26 However, the presentation
of Zhdanov did not fundamentally
change the perception of the postwar
world and the character of the
capitalist society, which all
communists, sincere proponents of
Marxism-Leninism, shared. What
Moscow was demanding at that time,
was a change in the strategy of the
European communist parties, the
adoption of a more robust and
uncompromising approach to the plans
of “imperialist expansion”.
Communist ranks had to be
consolidated and they had to work
closely, said Zhdanov, and to that
end, the meeting in Poręba was
concluded with the establishment of
the Communist Information Bureau
(Cominform), a separate coordinating
body, in charge of harmonizing the
joint approach of European communist
parties. Belgrade was designated for
the headquarters of the Bureau.
The Yugoslav party
delegation had a prominent role at
the Poręba consultations, and acted
as the main “prompter” of the
standpoints of the Soviet
delegation. The reports by Edward
Kardelj and Milovan Đilas were
noticed, and concentrated on the
criticism of the Italian and French
communists and the unsustainability
of their “parliamentary illusions”,
as a means of political struggle in
their countries. The report on the
attitude of the CPY at the
consultations was overall positive,
and the designation of Belgrade as
the seat of the new Information
Bureau testified about the special
attention Moscow showed to
Yugoslavia.27 During the meeting
between Stalin and Edward Kardelj,
the Soviet leader underlined the
difference between the needs of
Yugoslavia and the needs of
“satellite states”. Soviet
propaganda shared positive news
about Yugoslav politics, while the
memoranda on Yugoslavia within the
Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs
noted mostly positive things. The
Sovietization of Eastern Europe,
which emerged with the establishment
of the Cominform, did not raise any
doubts among Yugoslav communists.
Vladislav Gomulka's lonely attempt
to promote the “national path” to
socialism was rejected in the name
of ideological uniformity and firm
discipline. In October 1947,
Yugoslav communists solemnly
celebrated the 30th anniversary of
the October Revolution, in a
celebration “noisier than in
Moscow.”28 In a telegram to Stalin,
Tito declared that the peoples of
Yugoslavia would cherish “sincere
friendship” with the peoples of the
Soviet Union, and that they would
jointly defend the legacy of the
revolution, as the guarantor of the
“victory of democracy and peace in
the whole world”.29 It seemed that
there was little that could disrupt
the unquestionable unity of
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.
2. The Cominform Resolution and the
breaking up with Stalin.
The Cominform
resolution, of June 28, 1948,
represented the peak of the crisis
in the Yugoslav-Soviet relations,
which started at the end of 1947.
Until then, the differences that
existed between the foreign-policy
positions of Belgrade and Moscow
were minimal. Yugoslavia was firmly
standing by the Soviet Union,
loyally following the Soviet model
of socio-economic relations in its
internal development. Identical
ideological beliefs had contributed
to mutual trust, especially when it
came to the understanding of
contemporary events and deepening
the differences with the Western
capitalist world. However, over
time, notable differences in mutual
relations, which were a logical
consequence of the hegemonic
aspirations of the Kremlin, as well
as occasional misunderstandings in
bilateral cooperation, became a
sufficient nuance that changed the
impression of Yugoslavia as a loyal
“satellite” and the Soviet Union as
a defender of “independence and
sovereignty” of countries. At the
end of May 1945, when the Trieste
crisis took an alarming turn, Josip
Broz Tito delivered a far-sighted
speech to the gathered citizens of
Ljubljana: “It has been said that
this was a just war, and that is
what we considered it to be. But we
also ask for a just ending, we ask
that everyone be the master of his
realm, we will not pay the bills of
others, we will not be a bargaining
chip, we will not be involved in
some politics of interest spheres.
Why would the will of our people to
be independent in every way be taken
amiss, and why would this
independence be limited or disputed?
We will no longer be dependent on
anyone, regardless of what is being
written and what is being said - and
a lot is being written, it is being
written unsightly, it is being
written unjustly, it is being
written offensively, unworthy of
those who live in our allied
countries. (...) There is no
brokering, no dealing with this
Yugoslavia.”30
 Tito's speech
expressed Yugoslav dissatisfaction
over the allied forces’ denial of
the right of Yugoslavia to dominate
Trieste, but it was also a protest
against possible pressures on
Yugoslav independence, where no
difference among the possible states
that might try to exert it was made.
Although it was obvious that the new
socialist Yugoslavia stood
steadfastly by the Soviet Union in
post-war relations, the negative
reaction to Tito's speech came
precisely from Moscow. Tito was
criticized for equating the
interests of Western imperialists
and the USSR in his speech, and for
the fact that Yugoslavia did not
lead a cautious enough policy on
Trieste.31 “Comradely” criticism from
Moscow was accepted in Belgrade, but
it did not stop sporadic suspicions
in mutual relations, which became
increasingly pronounced over time,
especially when the actions of the
Yugoslav authorities questioned the
position of Moscow as the key
arbitrator. Yugoslavia could not
conceal its dissatisfaction with the
unfavorable epilogue to the solution
of the issue of Trieste at the Paris
Conference in 1946, whereas the
Soviet Union took steps to restrain
the excessive hastiness of the
Yugoslav Balkan policy on several
occasions. It became particularly
expressed in 1947, when
representatives of Yugoslavia and
Bulgaria closed negotiations on
close cooperation and contours of
the future Balkan federation. The
plan for the federation of the
Balkan peoples has had a long
history since the mid-19th century,
to be reaffirmed after the Second
World War, but this time as a useful
means of further rapprochement of
precarious Balkan communist parties
and states. Consultations of the
Bulgarian and Yugoslav delegations,
on the form and manner in which the
federation would be created, were
run sporadically since the end of
the war, and were getting their
final outlines in the summer of
1947. The Bled Agreement between
Bulgaria and Yugoslavia was signed
on August 1, 1947, and represented
the basis of common interests in the
Balkans. However, Stalin expressed
his reservations and disagreements
from the very beginning. He believed
that the signing was premature,
especially since Bulgaria's peace
agreement had not yet come into
force. He sent his objections to
Tito and Dimitrov in separate
messages. By its negative reaction
to the Belgrade-Sofia agreement,
Moscow showed its growing suspicion
that it was being gradually excluded
from consultations on the definition
of strategic policy in the Balkans.32
The signing of the
Yugoslav-Bulgarian agreement took
place at a time when Moscow changed
its strategy towards Eastern Europe,
and when clear signs of Stalin's
intention to put the communist
parties in Europe under tougher
control and discipline had already
appeared. The favorable reports on
the work of the CPY, as well as the
reports of Ambassador Lavrentiev on
Yugoslav-Soviet relations, besides
numerous praises, carried with them
a dose of criticism as well. In the
spring of 1947, Lavrentiev reported
on the tendencies of
“local-nationalism” in Yugoslavia,
which, in his opinion, could not be
neglected. The Soviet ambassador
noted that with the “over-emphasis”
of the Yugoslav partisan struggle,
the role of the Soviet Union was
diminished, and that the leading
Yugoslav communists were trying to
credit only themselves for the
liberation of Yugoslavia and the
success in economic reconstruction.33
At the end of 1947, Lavrentiev
strengthened his criticism against
the regime in Yugoslavia, becoming
even more critical towards the CPY
leadership, and especially towards
Tito, to whom the label of
“nationalist narrowness” was
attached.34 At the beginning of 1948,
the Soviet Embassy had already
considerably alarmed Moscow that its
position in Belgrade was being
ignored, and the Soviet military
attaché General Sidorovich
recommended that Cominform must
investigate Yugoslav “mistakes”.35 The
unfavorable reports from the
Belgrade embassy supported Stalin's
doubts about the flaws of Yugoslav
politics in the Balkans. The
relations between Yugoslavia and
Albania also attracted attention at
the end of 1947. The situation in
the Balkans started to become
overcomplicated for the interests of
the Soviet Union at a time when
mobilization against Soviet policy
in Western Europe was taking place.
On the one hand, the consequences of
the civil war in Greece became more
and more unpleasant, and on the
other hand, the independent actions
of Sofia and Belgrade, without
consulting Moscow, directly
challenged the emerging lager policy
of the Soviet Union. Stalin carried
out the first consultations with
Milovan Đilas in early 1948 in order
to try to clarify the directions of
Yugoslav and Soviet policy towards
Albania.36 Đilas reported to Tito from
Moscow that the Yugoslav and Soviet
views on Albania were “identical”,
which encouraged Tito to send two
Yugoslav divisions to Korcë
(Albania), as a preventive measure
from the alleged possible intrusion
of the Greek “monarchofascists”.37
The decision to
send the army to Albania, which was
ultimately prevented by the
intervention of the Soviet
government, was interpreted in
Moscow as yet another indication of
the unrestrained Yugoslav foreign
policy. In a telegram of V. Molotov
sent to Josip Broz Tito, on January
31, 1948, it was noted that there
were “serious differences in the
understanding of mutual relations
between our countries.”38 Moscow had
also related Bulgaria's intentions
to the issue of the existence of
various foreign policy concepts,
following the controversial
statement by G. Dimitrov at the
railway station after the signing of
a bilateral agreement with Romania.
Elated by the successful realization
of cooperation with neighboring
countries, the Bulgarian party
leader said that the plan was to
create a large Eastern European
federation, which would include,
besides Bulgaria and Romania, also
Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland,
Hungary and Greece, despite the
ongoing civil war in that country.39
The statement was related by
Moscow's Pravda without commentary,
and in suited the West to create an
even more “anti-Soviet” hysteria, as
a clear example of the expansionist
intentions of Soviet policy. The
meeting with Stalin and the Soviet
party’s top leadership, on February
11, 1948, was a breaking point in
Yugoslav-Soviet relations. Expecting
constructive talks and “comradely”
criticism, members of the Yugoslav
and Bulgarian delegations, E.
Kardelj and G. Dimitrov, faced an
avalanche of humiliating accusations
by Stalin. Bulgaria and Yugoslavia
were accused of leading their
foreign policies without the
slightest consultation with the
Soviet Union (“You and the Yugoslavs
do not report anything you do, we
have to find out everything in the
streets - you just present us with a
fait accompli”).40 At the meeting
nothing was left to chance anymore.
Stalin demanded that both
delegations unconditionally accept
his criticism and undertake urgent
measures - the uprising in Greece
had to end, and the federation of
Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria had
to be realized as soon as possible.
In order to avoid future
“misunderstandings”, E. Kardelj was
forced to sign the Protocol to the
Treaty of Friendship, Mutual
Assistance and Post-war Co-operation
between the USSR and Yugoslavia from
April 1945, in which the Yugoslav
party committed itself to “mutual
consultations on all important
international issues concerning the
interests of the two countries”.41
The political
pressure demonstrated in Moscow,
which the members of the Yugoslav
delegation faced for the first time
in this form, was unexpected and
shocking for Belgrade. The first
reaction of the Yugoslav party’s top
leadership leaned towards a belief
that there were no major
disagreements with the Soviet Union,
followed by mild self-criticism that
a mistake had been made with the
decision to send troops into
Albania.42 However, the events that
followed at the end of February,
primarily the growing pressure on
Yugoslavia made by the refusal of
Moscow to extend the trade
agreement, strengthened the belief
among the leading Yugoslav
communists that Soviet policy
towards Yugoslavia was jeopardizing
the main accomplishment of the
Yugoslav revolution and the national
liberation struggle - the
independence of the state. The
debate at the session of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia (CC CPY) Politburo, on
March 1, 1948, raised within the
party’s top leadership the issue of
a critical assessment of the
politics of the Soviet Union and the
resulting “ideological
disagreements” for the first time.
The Politburo noted that the policy
towards the Soviet Union would
remain unchanged, but with an
important reserve “that we are
obliged to keep watch over the
interests of our country”.43 The
Politburo's session was secret, but
the Soviet Embassy found out about
its content through a member of the
Politburo, Sreten Žujović, who, by
doing so, decided among the first to
bow to Moscow in the dispute. The
atmosphere of mistrust created in
March 1948 had increasingly cooled
the relations between Yugoslavia and
the Soviet Union. In only two days,
March 18 and 19, Moscow withdrew all
its military and civilian
instructors from Yugoslavia. Without
waiting for the deepening of the
dispute, the Yugoslav party’s top
leadership began a series of
consultations in republic party
bodies in order to timely inform
members about the conflict with the
Soviet Union. On the other hand, in
mid-March, a draft document (“On the
anti-Marxist orientation of the
leaders of the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia in the issues of foreign
and internal politics”) was already
prepared in Moscow, which
represented an ideological criticism
of the CPY and the foundation of the
future Stalin's letter of March 27,
1948.44 Similar documents on the
“anti-Marxist” actions of other
communist parties in Europe appeared
at the same time, which suggested
that, by disciplining Yugoslav
communists, Moscow was preparing for
a more extensive subordination of
European communists to its
interests.
 The correspondence
between the Soviet and the party’s
top leadership, which took place
from March to May 1948, strengthened
the irreconcilable positions of the
two parties and led to the
deterioration of interstate
relations. Criticism against the CPY
in a series of Stalin's letters
(March 27, May 4 and May 17) came
basically down to ideological
accusations and to proving the
deviation of Yugoslav communists
from the positions of
Marxism-Leninism. Accusing part of
the Yugoslav party and state
leadership that they were
“semi-Marxists” and “English spies,”
and that they supported
“anti-Sovietism” in their
surroundings, the letters accused
the CPY of being in a “semi-legal
state”, lacking “the spirit of the
politics of class struggle”, that
Yugoslav communists, following the
example of the Mensheviks,
vulgarized Marxist theory, and that
the French and Italian parties had
more credit for the revolution than
the Yugoslav party.45 Stalin's letters
had a crystal clear goal. The
self-confidence of Stalin and the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU), as already confirmed
authorities in the international
communist movement, was meant to add
to their influence in undermining
the legitimacy of the CPY, and
therefore the independence of
Yugoslavia. As the same type of
pressure began from other European
communist parties, the aim was to
create the impression that the
dispute was not only between Moscow
and Belgrade, but that the Yugoslav
communists had violated the main
principles of proletarian
internationalism, and that they had
stepped into the area of inexorable
ideological heresy, and as such, had
to bear the consequences. Expressed
within the political vocabulary of
Bolshevik political culture - they
had to show self-criticism and take
responsibility. The repentant
self-criticism of the CPY was being
prepared at a conference of the
Information Bureau in Bucharest, at
the end of June 1948.
The responses of
the top leadership of the CPY to
Stalin's letters did not intend to
sharpen the polemic and deepen the
dispute (especially the first letter
of the CPY, of April 13), but they,
for the most part, dismissed all
critical remarks. A somewhat
reconcilable tone transpiring from
the letters of the Yugoslav party
was intended to send a message to
Stalin that Yugoslavia would not
backtrack from any change in its
internal and external course.46 In the
letters of the CPY, it was
emphasized that Yugoslavia was
advancing “steadily towards
socialism” and that the USSR had
“the most loyal friend and ally” in
it.47 Persistence in answers that
would not contribute to a complete
break was noticeable even after the
second sharp and more elaborate
Stalin's letter of May 4, 1948, when
the top leadership of the CPY
declared that it would persistently
continue to build socialism and
would remain faithful to the Soviet
Union, and the teachings of Marx,
Engels, Lenin and Stalin.48 Thus, the
Yugoslav side expressed its desire
to shift the dispute to an
interstate basis, rather than it
being an interparty ideological
polemic, which Stalin insisted on.
The criticism that came from Moscow
was interpreted by the Yugoslav
leadership as a result of
“erroneous” and “malicious”
information, while the differences
Stalin insisted on in his answers
were explained as the results of the
“specific conditions” in building
socialism in Yugoslavia.49 The
Yugoslav communists emphasized the
greatest difference in relation to
the Soviet Union by their attitude
towards their own country: “No
matter how much one loves the
country of socialism, USSR, they
must not in any case love their
country less (...) for which
hundreds of thousands of its most
progressive people have fallen”.50
The Cominform
resolution, published on June 28,
1948, was the final act in the
polemic between the CPY and CPSU top
leaderships. The text of the
resolution was drafted after the
meeting of the Information Bureau in
Bucharest, where the assembled
communist parties discussed the
“case of the CPY”. Following a
decision of the CPY Politburo,
leading Yugoslav communists declined
the invitation to participate in the
meeting in Bucharest, which made
Stalin accuse them in advance of
“betrayal of the unified front of
national democracy and the USSR.”51
The resolution accused the CPY of
anti-Sovietism, deviation from
Marxism-Leninism in internal and
external politics, poor organization
of the party, and failure to accept
criticism. The main decision of the
Resolution was to expel Yugoslavia
from the Information Bureau. A
special appeal was made to the
“healthy forces” of the CPY to
resist its party leadership, force
it to acknowledge errors and change
its policy, or simply oust it
eventually if it came to that. In
the conclusion of the Resolution,
the Information Bureau expressed its
hope that the “Communist Party of
Yugoslavia would fulfill this
honorable task”.52 The CPY's response
to the Resolution followed on June
30 in the party organ Borba, and on
that occasion, all the accusations
against the CPY voiced in the
Resolution were rejected. The CPY
top leadership urged its membership
to “close its ranks” and achieve
absolute unity in the party, towards
the necessary construction of
socialism in Yugoslavia, because it
was “the only way and manner to
prove the unjustified nature of
these charges in practice”.53
Stalin's hope that
the appeal to the high level of
internationalist consciousness of
“healthy forces” among Yugoslav
communists would contribute to the
destabilization of the CPY and,
consequently, of the entire country,
turned out to be pretty illusory as
early as the summer of 1948. The
Fifth Congress of the CPY (from July
21 to 28, 1948) demonstrated the
full unity of Yugoslav communists
and support to the policy of the
party's top leadership, headed by
Josip Broz Tito. Speeches of leading
CPY communists at the Congress
glorified the party's performance in
the construction and reconstruction
of the country, its organizational
ability and commitment to
Marxism-Leninism. There were no open
criticisms against the Soviet Union.
In his congressional report, Tito
mentioned the “monstrous”
accusations in the Resolution,
refuting the criticisms made against
the CPY, but also left room for
reconciliation. Tito was convinced
that the Yugoslav party would
succeed in improving its relations
with the SCP (b) and that it would
prove successfully that it was
faithful to the “teachings of
Marx-Engels and Lenin”. Radical
changes were not initiated or even
contemplated, but the consequences
of the publication of the Resolution
began to leave a trail among the
party nomenclature. Party membership
inevitably passed through a serious
transformation, unaccustomed to the
dilemma for or against Stalin.
Declaring ones standpoint on the
Resolution was a dilemma with which
many Yugoslav communists failed to
cope. The expulsion of Andrija
Hebrang and Sreten Žujović from the
party, even before the publication
of the Resolution, testified that
even the party’s top leadership
would not be immune to the issues of
adherence to the Soviet Union. The
tragic death of General Arso
Jovanović in early August 1948, who
planned to escape to Romania with a
group of like-minded fellows,
tightened the attitude of state
authorities towards internal
pro-Soviet forces.54 Arrests of the
Cominform supporters were initiated
in the summer of 1948, as a measure
that did not protect only the unity
of the CPY, but also the
independence of the country.
There Resolution
did not result in any significant
change of direction in the foreign
policy of Yugoslavia, or in the
internal model of development.
Yugoslav diplomacy continued to
support the Soviet Union in
international relations, which was
publicly demonstrated at the Danube
Conference in Belgrade in late July
and at the General Assembly of the
UN in September 1948. This was part
of the general (and short-term)
strategy of the Yugoslav communists
aimed at demonstrating in practice
that the allegations of
“anti-Sovietism” in Yugoslavia were
not true, and thus remove any doubts
about the sincerity of Yugoslavia's
intention to remain faithful to
“internationalist” principles.
However, the numerous moves by the
Soviet government during 1949,
namely canceling arrangements and
international support in the
disputes that Yugoslavia had, led to
the aggravation of the dispute with
Yugoslavia and its isolation on the
international scene. Stalin used the
negative example of Yugoslavia to
initiate his plan for full
Sovietization of Eastern Europe. The
criticism against Yugoslav
communists was used by the CPSU to
create an indictment for “Titoism”,
and use it to remove all suspicious
elements in the Eastern European
 parties. It was the beginning of
mass party cleansing and mock trials
in Eastern Europe at the end of the
forties and the beginning of the
fifties. One after another
high-ranking party officials fell
under charges of co-operation with
Yugoslavia: Kochi Gorgi in Albania,
László Rajk in Hungary, Traicho
Kostov in Bulgaria, Vladislav
Gomulka in Poland, Ana Pauker in
Romania, and Rudolf Slánský in
Czechoslovakia. At the trial of
László Rajk in Budapest, in
September 1949, under the charge of
espionage and high treason, the
Hungarian group of officials was
accused, among other things, of
being an active ally of “an
international Titoist clique, which
applies fascist terror, and which is
the assault squad of imperialist
warmongers”.55 On the basis of the
charges against László Rajk, Moscow
sent a note to the Yugoslav
government of September 28, 1949,
unilaterally terminating the
Cooperation Agreement from April
1945, under excuse that the trial
showed that the leadership of the
CPY carried out and continued to
carry out “hostile and subversive
activities against the USSR”.56 Other
countries of “people’s democracy”
sent notes of similar content,
terminating their agreements with
Yugoslavia.57 The Yugoslav economy,
relying on the implementation of a
five-year plan exclusively based on
the inflow of funds from Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union, was
seriously jeopardized, with the
unforeseeable consequences for the
internal conditions in the country.
The indictment against Rajk was used
by the Soviet government to declare
Yugoslav ambassador to Moscow, Karl
Mrazović, persona non grata, since
his name was mentioned as one of the
accomplices in the Budapest
conspiracy.58
The anti-Yugoslav
campaign in the Soviet Union and
satellite countries grew in
intensity with mocked trials, the
contents of their indictments being
used as ultimate proof of the stray
of Yugoslav communists from the
right path.59 In numerous texts in
press and in radio shows, the CPY
leadership was portrayed as a “spy
fascist clique”, selling itself to
the imperialists and establishing a
“gestapo-terrorist regime of the
fascist type” in Yugoslavia.60 In the
second half of November 1949, a new
consultation of the members of the
Information Bureau took place in
Budapest, where the case of
Yugoslavia was analyzed through the
prism of court proceedings for
László Rajk. Based on the submitted
reports, at the end of the session
Cominform published the Second
Resolution against Yugoslavia, under
the heading “Yugoslav Communist
Party in the hands of murderers and
spies”. The Resolution stated that
Tito's spy group was “the enemy of
the people of Yugoslavia”, and that
it reflected the “will of the
Anglo-American imperialists”, which
was why it had lost the right to
call itself “communist.” The Second
Resolution sent a message to all
communists that the fight against
“Tito's clique” was actually an
“international obligation” that had
to be fulfilled. Creation of a
hostile and belligerent atmosphere
against the CPY was aimed at
convincing European communists that
all means were actually legal in
ousting “Tito's clique”, because it
was a “fascist” regime serving
Western imperialism. This
contributed to adding military
pressure from the East to the
economic pressure and international
isolation of Yugoslavia. The
military pressure was apparent in
1949 in numerous movements of troops
on the Yugoslav border.61 The
possibility of military intervention
against Yugoslavia, which was a
constant threat until 1953, with
numerous border incidents, resulted
in a “psychosis of war” in
Yugoslav-Soviet relations.62
In the period
1948-1949 Yugoslav communists found
themselves in a situation that was
not envisioned by any communist
manual on which they based their
ideas and hopes. Domestic Stalinism
was crushed by the economic
blockade, military and political
pressure from the East. The leftist
response in the form of more
consistent nationalization,
collectivization and a more rigid
repressive apparatus did not yield
the results sufficient for
Yugoslavia to survive. It turned out
that it was impossible to live only
on “revolutionary enthusiasm”.63
Looking for new paths, Yugoslav
communists tried to build an
alternative. Total isolation from
the East, which openly threatened to
ruin the independence of the
country, led Yugoslavia to open
itself towards the West. Ideological
demarcation with the Soviet Union
became not only a necessary defense
against unjust ideological attacks
by an anti-Yugoslav campaign, but
also a cognitive and intellectual
demarcation with the system created
by Stalin's policy. Yugoslav
communists created a new Yugoslav
identity. In its center was the
antifascist struggle from 1941-1945,
and resistance to Stalin in 1948.
II Post-Stalin transition -
origins of Yugoslav-Soviet
normalization 1953-1956
1. Belgrade declaration - foundation
of new relations.
Stalin's death in
March 1953 symbolically marked the
end of an epoch. With his death, the
Soviet Union lost its key leader,
who laid the foundations of Soviet
foreign and internal politics for
more than three decades, while the
international communist movement
lost the pillar of its illusions.
His charisma as party and state
leader could not be substituted by
the authority of any other person in
the Soviet party leadership, which
paved the way for the creation of
the power of collective leadership
in the Soviet Union, a symbolic
change in the concept of supreme
power. The Soviet party oligarchy,
who, whether obediently or
wholeheartedly, shared with Stalin
all the endeavors in building the
Soviet Union, announced a number of
changes after Stalin's death. The
main contours of the Stalinist
closed society were being changed
cautiously by releasing the main
grips of repression and gradual
opening of the Soviet Union to
foreign countries. The “new course”
policy, as announced by the Kremlin,
wanted to break up with the unique
treats of Stalin's policy that
turned out to be counterproductive
and bad, especially in international
relations, where the policy of the
Soviet Union was widely perceived as
an elementary global threat.
The new foreign
policy orientation of the collective
Soviet leadership, of which Nikita
Khrushchev would gradually become
the main exponent, was based on the
principle of “peaceful coexistence”
- abandonment of the inevitability
of war between two opposing
political systems, and independent
existence of the two blocs in
international relations. According
to the opinion of the Soviet
diplomat Alexander Agentov, the new
strategy of Soviet foreign policy
was focused on three main
directions. First, normalizing
relations with NATO countries,
either through economic, cultural or
political cooperation, advocating
for a more flexible foreign policy,
similar to that of the twenties.
Secondly, maximum effort to make the
Eastern Bloc more monolithic, by
alleviating some of Moscow's earlier
rigid actions against governments
and party leaders of Eastern
European countries. Thirdly, provide
a neutral shield between the two
military-political blocs, which
would be composed of Austria,
Finland, Sweden and Yugoslavia.64 The
Soviet Union would thus demonstrate
its interest in reducing the tension
in international relations, while
preserving its spheres of interest,
created at the time of Stalin.
The normalization
of relations with Yugoslavia had
become one of the key strategic
steps of the new Soviet foreign
policy initiative. Given the
consequences of stern interstate and
party relations since 1948, the
process of rapprochement between
Belgrade and Moscow was filled with
a series of mutual suspicions and
reserves. In the analyses of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the
USSR, in May 1953, Yugoslavia was
portrayed as a country whose
internal policy was aimed at
“restoring the capitalist order” and
“promoting fascism within the state
apparatus and military”, and its
foreign policy a part of an
aggressive bloc of Anglo-American
imperialists. Several key approaches
of Soviet foreign policy towards
Yugoslavia were underlined as the
most important task in this
analysis: “a detailed study of the
internal changes that are taking
place in Yugoslavia, and its foreign
policy relations, the use of all
possibilities to spread truthful
information about the USSR into
Yugoslavia, and implementation of
measures that can weaken the
American-English influence in
Yugoslavia and prevent the creation
of anti-Soviet strategic place
d'armes in the Balkans”.65 A year
later, the basic elements of this
plan were confirmed by a resolution
of the Soviet Presidium, which
confirmed the desire of the Soviet
Union to normalize relations with
Yugoslavia, with the aim to destroy
the “anti-Soviet plan” of
Anglo-American imperialists, and use
every means to increase the Soviet
influence on the Yugoslav people.66
The adoption of a favorable platform
for talks with Yugoslav communists
had to pass through a serious and
prolonged dispute of two fractions
in the Soviet party leadership.
Observed in the broader context
related to numerous internal
political polemics within the CPSU,
the normalization of relations with
Yugoslavia had become part of the
process of “de-Stalinization” and
liberalization of the Soviet
society.
The beginning of
the normalization process with
Moscow came at a time when some of
the key issues of further
development of Yugoslav socialism
and foreign policy orientation were
opened among Yugoslav communists. In
the harsh conditions of the Cold War
confrontation in the early fifties,
when the prospects of the outbreak
of a new world war became more
realistic, Yugoslavia used
diplomatic channels to try to secure
a stable place in international
relations, which would guarantee the
preservation of its independence.
The several years long conflict with
the Soviet Union and the countries
of the Eastern bloc had demonstrated
in a harsh way the consequences of
an uneven struggle with one of the
military-political blocs - complete
economic and political isolation, an
anti-Yugoslav campaign, and a
permanent “war psychosis” at the
borders. On the other hand, Yugoslav
communists, no matter how many
positive things they found in
cooperation with the Western
countries, did not perceive
themselves as part of an integrated
Western system, ideologically
unacceptable and tinted with
anti-communism. However, economic
and military support from the West
was welcomed, due to the lack of a
different alternative that would
protect the interests of Yugoslavia.
The establishment of the Balkan Pact
(the agreement in Ankara in 1953,
and the agreement in Bled in 1954)
was one of the attempts to protect
Yugoslav security, by political and
military co-operation with NATO
members, Greece and Turkey. At the
same time, the ending of the Trieste
crisis successfully eliminated the
burdening issue of security of
Yugoslav borders. Analyzing these
two foreign policy successes during
1953 and 1954, Josip Broz Tito was
convinced that they represented, in
his words, “a decisive step in the
further stabilization of the
situation and in strengthening
security in this part of Europe”.67
In the new setting
following Stalin's death, relations
with the Soviet Union became part of
a more broadly envisaged Yugoslav
foreign policy strategy, in which it
would be possible, on the one hand,
to solve the problem of Yugoslav
security (i.e. preserve the legacy
of the Yugoslav revolution) and, on
the other, further strengthen the
 Yugoslav international position,
making it less dependent on the
West. Initiatives for the
normalization of relations that
started to flow in from Moscow,
despite all the reserves of
Belgrade, were accepted as part of
the process of change in the USSR,
and the efforts to support the
creation of political stability in
Europe, in which the struggle for
“peaceful coexistence” was an
important contribution to world
peace. Thus, as pointed out by Moša
Pijade at one of the meetings of the
Executive Committee (EC) of the CC,
it would be demonstrated that
coexistence is possible also between
two countries that follow different
paths of socialism.68 The renewal of
diplomatic relations between
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union
began with the exchange of
ambassadors, in July and September
1953, with the arrival of Vasily
Valkov to Belgrade, and departure of
Dobrivoje Vidić to Moscow. The
Trieste crisis in the autumn of the
same year demonstrated the first
good intentions of Soviet diplomacy
by supporting the Yugoslav
territorial demands, although the
official Belgrade dissociated itself
from such support. In early November
1953, the State Secretariat for
Foreign Affairs (SSFA), following a
decision of the state-party’s top
leadership, instructed Yugoslav
diplomatic representatives to take
the necessary measures to normalize
relations with Soviet diplomats.
Finally, the letter of Nikita
Khrushchev, sent to Josip Broz Tito
on June 22, 1954, officially
initiated the process of normalizing
the relations between the two
states.
Renewed diplomatic
relations between Yugoslavia and the
Soviet Union, accompanied by the
establishment of stable bilateral
relations, as well as more moderate
and more conciliatory tones in the
correspondence between Khrushchev
and Tito, could not fully pave the
way for overcoming old conflicts.
The inheritance of irreconcilable
ideological disputes burdened
relations and created the impression
of great distrust. Unlike the Soviet
party’s top leadership, in which
Nikita Khrushchev, with his new
policy towards Yugoslavia, was
building his position as a reformer,
and crushing hard Stalinist
strongholds, the Yugoslav party’s
top leadership was unified, both in
showing optimism and suspicion
toward the intentions of Soviet
policy. The State Secretariat for
Foreign Affairs of Yugoslavia warned
that behind every foreign policy
initiative of the Soviet Union
towards Yugoslavia, an intention of
Soviet imperial aspirations was
hidden. Such a picture of the USSR
has become the main landmark of the
cautiousness of Yugoslav diplomats.
On the other hand, the leading
Yugoslav communists perceived the
Soviet initiatives to normalize
relations as a great “victory” of
Yugoslavia after the 1948 conflict.
This unconcealed optimism within the
LCY (League of Communists of
Yugoslavia) was a consequence of the
belief that internal changes in the
Soviet Union after Stalin's death
were sufficiently convincing to
confirm the sincerity of the Soviet
foreign policy and its intentions
towards Yugoslavia. The discussion
at the CC LCY session, on November
26, 1954, confirmed the resolve of
the Yugoslav party leadership to
accept the normalization of
relations with the Soviet Union and
the CPSU, while respecting two
essential conditions - independence
of the country and independent
socialist development. However, in
their conception of future
development of relations with the
USSR, Yugoslav communists went much
further, highlighting their resolve
to become the main beacon for
changes in the entire Eastern bloc.69
Such a role of Yugoslavia Moscow
would reject and restrain with great
contempt.
The arrival of a
high-ranking Soviet delegation to
Belgrade on May 26, 1955,
represented an event of great
importance, not only for future
Yugoslav-Soviet relations, but for
overall relations in the
international communist movement.
After removal of Malenkov from the
post of Chairman of the Council of
Ministers, Khrushchev's position in
the CPSU strengthened considerably,
making him the chief leader of
future negotiations in Belgrade and
Geneva. For the Yugoslav side it was
important in the negotiations that
Molotov and the orthodox current in
the Soviet leadership were gradually
being more and more suppressed,
which opened the possibility for
better mutual understanding.70 Before
the arrival of the Soviet
delegation, Yugoslavia expanded its
international contacts. The journey
of Josip Broz Tito to Afro-Asian
countries in 1954/55 significantly
expanded the views of Yugoslav
foreign policy and consolidated some
of the already established contacts
with the leaders of the Third World.
On that occasion, Yugoslavia had the
opportunity to re-emphasize the
principles of its foreign policy
orientation that would become
inseparable from its activities in
international relations - non-bloc
policy, peaceful resolution of
internal conflicts, respect of
independence and sovereignty, and
struggle against colonialism. The
extent to which these principles
were important in relations with the
Soviet Union was soon testified by
criticism from Belgrade about the
establishment of the Warsaw Pact,
just before the Yugoslav-Soviet
talks. It was important for
Yugoslavia to emphasize that future
talks with the Soviet delegation
would not question its independence
and relations with the West.
The Belgrade
Declaration, signed in Belgrade on
June 2, 1955, was one of the most
important documents in the
development of future relations
between Yugoslavia and the USSR. The
talks that preceded the signing of
the declaration, led between the
Soviet delegation, formally headed
by Nikolai Bulganin, and the
Yugoslav delegation, headed by Josip
Broz Tito, testified to the
difficulties in reaching a
compromise between the Soviet
position of being the main
ideological arbitrator and the
Yugoslav non-block position. The
open polemics of the two sides
during the talks revealed the main
directions of disagreements. Several
important objections, expressing
Soviet policy in building its
dominant position in the Eastern
bloc, were presented to the Yugoslav
delegation - close cooperation with
the West (economic relations,
foreign policy cooperation, the
Balkan pact), attitude towards the
interests of Moscow (Yugoslav
criticism of Soviet hegemony,
interpretation of the 1948
conflict), and ideological
misconceptions (attitude of Belgrade
towards social democracy,
interpretation of Marxism-Leninism).
On the other hand, the Yugoslav
delegation rejected objections and
firmly advocated the principles of
its independence during the talks,
as well as its non-block policy and
respect for the right of every
country to develop socialism in its
own way.71 At the end of the meeting,
the Yugoslav delegation was more
satisfied, because the Belgrade
Declaration encompassed the largest
number of these principles. This
extremely important and unique
document, the first to regulate the
relations between Moscow and another
socialist country on the principles
of equality, publicly proclaimed
that the CPSU recognized “a
different way to socialism”. By
emphasizing the principles of the
Belgrade Declaration as the basis
for new relations with the Soviet
Union, Yugoslavia could expect that
any document signed in the future
concerning mutual relations, would
always affirm the following
principles: respect for sovereignty
and independence, development of
“peaceful coexistence” regardless of
ideological differences and
different social orders,
non-interference in internal
affairs, cooperation on the
principles of the UN Charter,
elimination of propaganda war and
disinformation, condemnation of any
aggression and “attempts to impose
political and economic domination”,
and the danger of the existence of
military blocks.72
The talks in
Belgrade and the Belgrade
Declaration were received
differently in Yugoslavia and in the
Soviet Union. Yugoslav diplomacy
sent reports lacking excessive
euphoria. It was assessed that the
Declaration represented Soviet
recognition of the mistakes in the
policy towards Yugoslavia that had
been in place since 1948, and that
future relations with the Soviet
Union would depend on the state of
relations within the Soviet society.73
However, the Yugoslav party
leadership intended to keep the
development of better relations with
the Soviet policy of “peaceful
coexistence” as long as possible,
reassuring Moscow of its willingness
to cooperate in all fields. Certain
shifts in relation to former
priorities of the Yugoslav foreign
policy had to take place. During a
meeting with representatives of the
United States of America (USA),
France and Great Britain, at the end
of June 1955 in Belgrade, Yugoslav
diplomacy refused further commitment
to strategic co-ordination with the
West, which was immediately conveyed
to the Soviet Ambassador Valkov.74 The
Balkan pact, which was one of the
main obstacles to Soviet politics in
the Balkans, became less and less
pointed out as a “military alliance”
in official addresses of Yugoslav
diplomacy, and very quickly its
significance became extremely
symbolic. Nevertheless, Yugoslavia
did not want the international
community to get the impression that
changes in its foreign policy were
happening in line with Soviet
interests. The arrival of US
Secretary of State Dulles to Brioni,
on November 6, 1955, dispelled
doubts of the US administration
about possible harmful consequences
of Yugoslav-Soviet normalization to
American interests. To the overall
satisfaction of the first man of
American diplomacy, Tito emphasized
the independent policy of Yugoslavia
in relation to the lager, as well as
the optimism that the normalization
with Moscow will also influence
further relaxation of the Soviet
leverage within the socialist bloc.
The role of Yugoslavia as a “wedge”
that led to the weakening of the
cohesion of the Eastern Bloc, was a
confirmation of the US Cold War
strategy towards the Soviet Union,
and Dulles could return from
Yugoslavia fully satisfied.75
 In the Soviet
Union, Nikita Khrushchev used
normalization of relations with
Yugoslavia as an important element
of his own “new course” policy. The
intention to form better relations
with the Western countries was
confirmed shortly before the Geneva
Conference by resolving, in a
peaceful manner, several open
international issues that threatened
world peace - agreement with
Austria, Yugoslavia and the end of
the war in Korea. In relation to the
internal course of gradual changes,
Khrushchev subordinated the new
policy towards Yugoslavia to a
further breakdown of the Stalinist
heritage. Many challenges stood on
that path. A wholehearted support
for the normalization of relations
with Tito's Yugoslavia could not be
felt in Eastern European capitals,
as almost the entire party
nomenclature had been consolidating
its rise within the party on
anti-Yugoslav propaganda and
persecution of the “Titoists” for
years. There was no less resistance
within the Soviet party organs,
fundamentally indoctrinated by
resistance to Yugoslav
self-management socialism, who
perceived Yugoslavia more as an
opponent than a Soviet partner. The
change of attitude toward
Yugoslavia, which would be
instigated by Nikita Khrushchev, was
thus linked to the process of
post-Stalinist transition, in which
previously unthinkable criticism of
Stalin's foreign policy decisions
would be referred to the party's
judgment. The Party Plenum of the CC
CPSU, from July 4 to July 12, 1955,
was the starting point of
Khrushchev's strategy of opening the
process of “de-Stalinization”.
During that session, the question of
the responsibility of Stalin's
policy, especially toward
Yugoslavia, was raised for the first
time. The blame for the
deterioration of the Soviet Union's
relations with Yugoslavia was laid
on Beria and Avakumov, who,
according to Khrushchev, fed Stalin
with false information.76 The
discussion at the session confirmed
Stalin's responsibility for the
omissions and mistakes made, and the
problem of “personal cult” was
already offered as a response to the
question of the causes underlying
such a policy. Vyacheslav Molotov,
the then Minister of Foreign Affairs
of the USSR, was the only one to
loudly oppose these theses at the
session. However, Molotov found
himself in the minority in his
efforts to defend Stalin's post-war
policy, in which he actively
participated as Stalin's close
associate. The meeting ended with a
complete triumph of Nikita
Khrushchev and his ideas. This event
represented the starting point for
future changes in the Soviet Union.
The July Party
Plenum of the CC CPSU paid a lot of
attention to the relations with
Yugoslavia. The course of the
discussion at the session showed how
the Soviet leadership perceived the
normalization of relations with
Yugoslavia, its internal policy and
its strategic and international
position. The importance of
Yugoslavia in Soviet foreign policy
combinations was emphasized as
crucial. Nikolai Bulganin stressed
at the session that Yugoslavia was
holding “a very important and very
vulnerable position for the Soviet
Union” in the potential future war
with the West.77 Its importance,
Bulganin said, rose from the fact
that Yugoslavia controlled the
Adriatic Sea, while the further
connection to the Mediterranean
represented the position of the “key
communication line of the
Anglo-American military forces”. By
pointing out the important position
of Yugoslavia as a strategic point
of Soviet policy in the Balkans,
along with criticism of Stalin's
policy of 1948, Khrushchev justified
his new attitude towards Belgrade.
At the session of the CC CPSU, he
underlined that the main motive for
normalizing relations with
Yugoslavia was the intention of the
Soviet Union to liberate Yugoslav
military potential from the hands of
the West.78 Khrushchev hoped that such
a policy would consequently lead to
Yugoslavia approaching the lager, as
close as possible. The example of
Yugoslavia as an independent factor
in the Balkans, which maintained
stable relations with the West, had
to be reduced. As a notable proof
that such a policy has already
yielded results, Khrushchev read a
letter from Josip Broz Tito at the
session, in which Tito invited him
to rekindle inter-party relations,
and announced his visit to the
Soviet Union. However, at the same
session, Khrushchev dissociated
himself from the Yugoslav internal
system, namely from some of the
principles of Yugoslav
self-management socialism, which
were not in compliance with the
ideological worldview in Moscow. At
the session, he professed his
disagreement with the “revision” of
Yugoslav communists regarding the
basic principles of
Marxism-Leninism, such as the
leading role of the party. Although
he was not inclined to theorizing,
Khrushchev gave special attention at
the session to completing the
indictment against “Yugoslav
revisionism”, adding to the
criticism of the role of the party,
disapproval of Yugoslav revisionist
theory of peaceful evolution towards
socialism in developed Western
states, and Yugoslav criticism of
the existence of block policy.
Khrushchev underlined that
Yugoslavia’s hope that it could
develop as a socialist state
“independent of other socialist
countries” was self-delusion.79
Khrushchev's reserves towards
Yugoslav socialism were close to
Molotov's standpoints at the same
session, despite the fact that the
two represented entirely different
poles of Soviet party leadership.
Molotov, like Khrushchev, believed
that Yugoslavia had made numerous
controversial ideological changes,
and that the primary goal of Soviet
policy was to prevent Yugoslavia
from joining NATO, to support its
withdrawal from the Balkan Pact, and
to prevent further links with
Western countries. As a remark that
would become a constant in
Soviet-Yugoslav relations in the
future, Molotov warned that “it must
not be forgotten that, by accusing
the Soviet Union of imperialist
tendencies and the so-called
‘hegemonistic policy’, the Yugoslav
government closed its ranks to stand
against the USSR at any time in all
matters of international relations”.80
The policy towards
Yugoslavia after the Belgrade
Declaration had two permanent Soviet
goals. The first was to establish a
relationship of trust with Belgrade,
which would overcome previous
conflicts, and which would drive
Yugoslavia closer to the interests
of the lager. The second goal was
focused on the elimination of the
potential threat of the Balkan pact
on Soviet interests in the Balkans,
and at the same time on diminishing
the importance of Yugoslav ties to
the West. An analysis of both goals,
leads to the conclusion that both
were based on Stalin's policy of
“power relations” and the rounding
up of the Soviet post-war sphere of
influence in Eastern Europe. The
Belgrade Declaration, however, could
not have been interpreted
differently. It offered a precedent
that would not be repeated with
other communist parties, but would
emphasize the special position of
Yugoslavia in the international
communist movement.
2. The Moscow declaration and the
danger of Yugoslav revisionism.
The process of
division of the Eastern European
communist parties, into liberal and
conservative ones, was imposed by
the dynamic era of efforts to reform
European communism in the
post-Stalinist period. The reach of
possible reforms was explored in the
long process of de-Stalinization in
Eastern Europe, in which European
communists sought various paths to
greater democratization and
liberalization of the post-Stalinist
society. Yugoslav communists were
the earliest heralds of this
process, by opposing Soviet
ideological authority and Stalin's
hegemonic foreign policy as early as
1948. The result of these years long
efforts was the establishment of the
new Yugoslav ideological identity,
based on the experiences of the
Yugoslav Revolution and on the
classics of Marxism-Leninism. The
new independent Yugoslav way to
socialism, partially liberated from
the heavy and troublesome burden of
the Stalinist heritage, perceived
itself as an antithesis of Soviet
state socialism, boldly stepping
into the field of Marxist thought
during the fifties, as a desirable
alternative for many East European
reformist communists. The relevance
of Yugoslav self-management
socialism became particularly
prominent after Stalin's death and
the promotion of the “new course”
policy of the of USSR leadership.
The secret report of Nikita
Khrushchev at the closed session of
the 20th Congress of the CPSU in
February 1956, and the beginning of
de-Stalinization, contributed to the
appearance of a certain euphoria in
the Yugoslav party leadership, which
interpreted the messages from the
Congress as a great victory of
Yugoslavia in the international
communist movement. From that moment
on, the Yugoslav communists
self-confidently perceived
themselves as the main promoters of
the process of de-Stalinization and
liberalization of European
communism. Self-confidence was
further enlarged with many years of
contacts with the newly independent
Third World countries, after which
Yugoslavia had built foundations for
joint international action, albeit
with notable ideological pretensions
of directing Afro-Asian countries
towards the Yugoslav model of
socialism. On the other hand, the
post-Stalin Soviet leadership under
Nikita Khrushchev, declaratively
dissociated from Stalin's policy,
had quite different pretensions and
foreign policy priorities. It hoped
that, with the principles of the
policy of “peaceful coexistence”, it
might find the best possible form
under which Yugoslavia would return
to the socialist bloc, while, at the
same time, the erosive influence of
Yugoslav self-government socialism
would be curtailed. Nevertheless, as
the years long negotiations with
Belgrade would show, Yugoslav
communists firmly resisted every
kind of ideological tutelage of
Moscow, as well as concessions that
would call into question the
independence of the state. This
vicious circle of inability of
overcoming Moscow's intentions and
the unwavering position of Belgrade
made Soviet-Yugoslav relations one
of the most sensitive topics in
Yugoslav society, but also in the
entire international communist
movement.
The post-Stalinist
transition opened various tendencies
in the communist parties throughout
Europe, both reformist and
anti-reformist, which used the same
rhetoric and Marxist terminology in
opening or closing possible
perspectives in the society. In
Eastern and Central Europe,
according to Ivan Berend, state
socialism was being changed as a
result of a constant inter-party
struggle between the shortsighted
representatives of the conservative
hardline and liberal reformers.81 The
speech of Nikita Khrushchev at the
20th Congress of the CPSU provided
the possibility for a post-Stalinist
transition to gain even more zest,
as well as the concrete support in
its effort to define the framework
for changing the Stalinist social
concept in Eastern European
countries. The agreement with
Yugoslavia in 1955 complied with the
new trends of Khrushchev's policy,
encouraging reforms outside the
Soviet Union, and more importantly,
legitimizing the possibility (and
coexistence) of alternatives to the
Soviet model. The Resolution of the
July Plenum of the CPSU in 1955,
shortly after the signing of the
Belgrade Declaration, stressed the
possibility “of introducing
different forms and methods in
solving a particular problem of the
establishment of socialism, in
relation to historical and national
specifics”.82 Public criticism of
Stalin and his mistakes, without
touching the essence of the
Leninist-Marxist ideological matrix,
initiated the liberalization process
in Eastern Europe. Yugoslavia, in
the opinion of the Yugoslav party
top leadership, had to be at the
forefront of this process,
supporting the reformist idea of
Khrushchev and actively contributing
to “the collapse of Stalinism in
Eastern Europe”.83
 A Yugoslav
delegation led by Josip Broz Tito
stayed in Moscow from June 2 to June
23, 1956. Supporting the reform
orientation of the 20th Congress of
the CPSU, the leaders of the
Yugoslav party were convinced that
the new atmosphere in the
international communist movement,
initiated by the process of
“de-Stalinization”, offered the
possibility of normalizing the
relations between LCY and CPSU. One
year after the signing of the
Belgrade Declaration, which proved,
in practice, to be effective in
improving interstate relations, an
attempt to overcome the burdensome
legacy of ideological disagreements
was made by a new round of
high-level talks. Just before the
arrival of the Yugoslav delegation,
V. Molotov resigned as Foreign
Minister, which was a good sign for
the upcoming talks. However, talks
in Moscow showed all the complexity
of the Yugoslav-Soviet relations in
the domain of inter-party
cooperation. The close views of the
two delegations on many issues of
international relations could not
influence a conformity of
standpoints when the issue of
leadership in the international
communist movement (ICM) and respect
for the “independent path” of the
development of socialism came to the
agenda. The persistence of
Yugoslavia, that as a socialist
country, it wanted to remain out of
political, military and economic
integrations within the lager, and
therefore beyond the “control” of
Moscow, was not met with
understanding by the Soviet party
leadership. Nikita Khrushchev denied
the existence of a “middle path”
between East and West, strongly
insisting on the need for “unity” of
all socialist countries, under the
sovereign leadership of the Soviet
Union. In explaining what looked
like an expression of old Soviet
hegemonic pretensions, Khrushchev
went so far as to present the former
Cominform policy as “progressive”,
contributing to the improvement of
cohesion in the Eastern Bloc. Talks
in Moscow, despite no shortage of
traditional cordial manifestations
of welcome and rallies, did not
reduce the differences, nor allow
for the creation of any form of
inter-party unity between the LCY
and the CPSU.
The Moscow
Declaration, signed on June 20,
1956, by Josip Broz Tito and Nikita
Khrushchev, renewed the cooperation
between the LCY and the CPSU and
formulated the principles on which
these new relations would be based.
The signing was preceded by a long
harmonization of disparate drafts of
the two party delegations, followed
by serious Soviet objections and
frequent disagreements. The
declaration prescribed a mode of
developing the relationship that was
of utmost importance to Yugoslav
communists - the principle of
respect for equality in relations,
free exchange of opinions and
criticism of the practice of
imposing a model of socialism. The
principles of the Moscow
Declaration, although addressed to
regulate the relations between the
LCY and the CPSU, in a broader sense
dismissed the basic assumptions of
the Soviet hegemony over the Eastern
Bloc. The declaration supported more
the Yugoslav view of the relations
among the socialist parties, which
is why the Yugoslav delegation,
unlike the Soviet one, was satisfied
with its signing.
In the
interpretation of the leadership of
the CPSU, the Moscow Declaration had
to remain strictly limited to
Yugoslavia. The principles
highlighted in the declaration, such
as respect for equality in
relations, or respect for different
models of socialism, were not
desirable as a model for relations
between parties in the lager. Only
one day after the departure of the
Yugoslav delegation from Moscow,
Khrushchev was particularly explicit
on this issue at a meeting with
leaders of the socialist countries,
held on June 21. A few months after
his speech at the 20th Congress, N.
Khrushchev faced the troublesome
political consequences of his
decision. In Eastern European
parties, the criticism of
“Stalinism” had gradually turned
into a universal appeal for a
greater degree of democratization
and liberalization of society. The
entire party leadership in Eastern
Europe, which strengthened and
maintained its power by its own
“Stalinist” methods and its
subjection toward Moscow, was losing
its legitimacy faced with the
whirlwind of new demands, becoming
stigmatized and undesirable. Bloody
unrests in Poznan, on June 28, 1956,
when 53 Poles were killed in a
conflict with the police during
workers' demonstrations, were a
warning to the Soviet leadership
that they might have gone too far
with “de-Stalinization”, and that
the situation threatened to get out
of control, and seriously endanger
the fate of socialism in Eastern
Europe. The suppression of the
influence of Yugoslavia and its
negative example was set as the
primary political and ideological
task. In this sense, the just signed
Moscow Declaration, would be
challenged only a few months after
it was signed.84
The Hungarian
Revolution, at the end of October
1956, directly challenged the unity
of the Eastern Bloc, faced with the
surge of demands of the
post-Stalinist transition. All the
reticent fears of party
conservatives in Moscow that the
process of “de-Stalinization” was
politically dangerous, already
expressed during the normalization
of relations with Belgrade in 1955,
appeared in almost war scenes in the
streets of Budapest as brutally
justified. Problems in Poland were
successfully solved, although not
without some compromise with
Gomulka's leadership on how to
implement minimum changes.85 In the
moments of the political crisis in
Eastern Europe, successful
resistance to Western politics
during the Suez crisis was a unique
case of successful unified action of
all the “progressive” forces
gathered around Moscow.86 However, the
Soviet military intervention in
Hungary, at the end of October and
the beginning of November, sent a
dual message - Moscow's interests in
Eastern Europe against the
independence of socialist countries
could be defended by force only, and
Nikita Khrushchev's idea of a
unified international communist
movement was destroyed. Yugoslavia
supported the second military
intervention as a “necessarily
evil”, convinced, after the visit of
Khrushchev to Brioni on the eve of
the intervention, that the situation
in Hungary threatened to escalate
into counterrevolution. Despite the
support of Yugoslavia to the newly
established government of János
Kádár, the refuge of ousted Imre
Nagy in the Yugoslav Embassy and his
subsequent arrest, opened a dispute
between Belgrade and Moscow on the
causes of the Hungarian revolution,
which would again irreversibly
aggravated relations. The Yugoslav
party leadership refused to bow to
the interpretation of the Hungarian
events articulated by Moscow,
intending at the same time to leave
an impression in the international
public that it was not a mere
executor of Soviet politics. Such a
stance had collided with the change
in the policy of Nikita Khrushchev
and his former “more flexible”
attitude towards Belgrade. The
Hungarian events were too big a
political sobering up, for the
independent Yugoslav polemical tone
to be tolerated. Mutual accusations
that dominated the Yugoslav-Soviet
dispute at the end of 1956, used
once again the old qualifications
that resembled the 1948 conflict. As
the dispute seriously disrupted the
relations between the LCY and the
CPSU, Tito, at a session of EC CC
LCY in January 1957, expressed his
opinion that the Russians were
“trying to disparage the reputation
of Yugoslavia” by their actions.87
The struggle
against “Yugoslav revisionism”
became an integral part of the new
anti-Yugoslav campaign in 1957 and
1958. The ideological settling of
accounts with revisionism in Europe
since the mid-1950s implied the
struggle of party conservatives and
dogmatists against democratic
tendencies in the communist parties.
The Yugoslav experience of
independent development of a
socialist society offered a
dangerous precedent for the
monolithic unity of the Eastern bloc
and the legitimacy of post-Stalinist
party top leaderships. Taking
Yugoslavia as an example, became an
expression of the aspirations of
reformist currents in the communist
parties, not only due its emphasis
on state sovereignty and equality in
the socialist block, but also due to
its demands for democratization of
political life, the abolition of the
Stalinist repressive system, the
enabling of more intra-party
democracy, etc. Under the impression
of a more free interpretation of
official orthodoxy in the
post-Stalinist transition, new ideas
appeared, such as that of Palmiro
Togliatti about polycentrism in the
communist movement - resistance to
greater control of Moscow over other
communist parties. Hungary in autumn
1956 was therefore a warning, and
Yugoslavia, by its actions, a
destructive “revisionist” competitor
to be isolated. As much as he was
one of the proponents of the policy
of “moderation” in the Soviet
society and the principle of
"peaceful coexistence" in
international relations, Nikita
Khrushchev remained a “prisoner” of
the hegemonic interests of the
Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, and
therefore a fiery defender of the
firm monolithic unity of the
international communist movement. In
implementing this plan, more than by
the Hungarian events, Moscow was
increasingly being helped by
Beijing, which started to build the
reputation of a principled promoter
of the Stalinist dogma. Yugoslavia
did not want to accept the
“ideological unity” of Moscow and
Beijing, in response to a crisis for
which it was not responsible,
putting the Belgrade and Moscow
Declaration documents in the
forefront, and refusing to bow to
the politics of the lager.
 Yugoslav
Ambassador to Moscow, Veljko
Mićunović, described the resulting
atmosphere in the Soviet Union as a
“psychosis of a defeat”. Summing up
talks with numerous Soviet
officials, V. Mićunović told the
Central Committee in February 1957
that the conclusion drawn by the
communists in the USSR about the
causes of the events were not
realistic, but that they believed
“that the policy of democratization
was the policy of acquiescence”, and
that the policy of “de-Stalinization
led to the defeat of the USSR in
Poland, and then to a war in
Hungary, and that something similar
would happen in the Soviet Union,
should the same policy continue”.88
The creation of such an atmosphere,
which escalated in the autumn of
1957, prevented the restoration of
confidence, which was briefly
established in 1955 and 1956. The
hostile attitude toward the members
of the Yugoslav delegation at the
Conference of Communist Parties in
Moscow, in November 1957, and the
refusal of the LCY to sign the Joint
Declaration, contributed to a strong
ideological confrontation between
Belgrade and Moscow. Attacks on
“Yugoslav revisionism”, which began
after the Conference, were the
answer of the “lager” to the
extra-bloc position of Yugoslavia.
In Tito's opinion, the desire of the
Russians was that Yugoslavia would
become part of the lager, without
“representing anything” there.89
The new program of
the LCY, adopted at the 7th congress
in April 1958, summarized the
experiences of Yugoslav socialist
development since the break-up in
1948. By mitigating certain
formulations of the 6th congress of
the LCY, the new program remained on
the course of the “antithesis” of
the Soviet model of development. All
future reform attempts in Yugoslavia
would be based on a reference to the
1958 program, whether they were
about improving self-management in
the society, or different
constitution of the Yugoslav
federation. For Moscow, the program
was corpus delicti of “Yugoslav
revisionism”. The anti-Yugoslav
propaganda, which gained in strength
after the 7th congress of the LCY,
did not contribute to a complete
breakup between Yugoslavia and the
rest of the socialist community. The
struggle against the revisionism of
Yugoslav communists was an
ideological justification, on the
one hand, for the failure to
“democratize” the post-Stalinist
society, and, on the other, for
failing to maintain an eternal image
of the Soviet Union as the pillar of
socialist thought and progress. The
Moscow Declaration, although
disputed as soon as it was signed,
survived all Yugoslav-Soviet
conflicts. Nikita Khrushchev, one of
the initiators of its creation,
would challenge its essence, by
challenging the good intentions of
the Yugoslav system. His outcries
against the “Trojan horse of
American imperialism” would last
exactly as long as Beijing's will to
recognize its susceptibility to
Moscow. The Moscow Declaration, the
Hungarian Revolution and Chinese
dogmatism, were equal parts of the
common origin of post-Stalinist
transition.
III. Partnership of common interests
1962-1967.
1. New normalization of
Yugoslav-Soviet relations and
resistances
The Belgrade
Conference of non-aligned countries
(in 1961) provided an opportunity
for Yugoslavia to affirm its new
foreign policy course on the
international stage. Together with
Third World countries, the Yugoslav
international position was
strengthened, and some of the
formulated principles were presented
as essential for the future survival
and development of socialist
Yugoslavia. The LCY top leadership,
and especially Tito, who will regard
the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) as
his personal political project, was
satisfied with the results of the
conference. Tito assessed, with
undisclosed optimism, that the
status of Yugoslavia in the world
was “better, than ever before”.90
Complaints and criticism from the
West, primarily the United States,
were rejected as unfounded, by
linking them with the foreign policy
of the US administration which was
“concerned about the policy of
non-engagement”. On the other hand,
the absence of discontent from the
Soviet Union, and a sort of support
that Tito provided to Soviet policy
from the rostrum of the Belgrade
Conference, according to Tito, were
not a result of Soviet pressure, but
of the fact that in many foreign
policy issues, such as disarmament,
colonialism, or Berlin, Yugoslav
positions coincided with Soviet
positions.91
The new
normalization of Yugoslav-Soviet
relations at the beginning of the
1960s, unlike the former, took place
in completely different
international and internal
circumstances, both for Yugoslavia
and the Soviet Union. The key
impulses that led to a better
understanding of Belgrade and
Moscow, and the overcoming of
earlier conflicts, were linked to
several important changes.
First of all, the
Yugoslav economy in the early
sixties entered a negative trend,
showing serious problems in the
dynamics of industrial production
and foreign trade. The attempt of
the reform in 1961 did not yield the
expected results, and a drop in
industrial production of only 4.1
percent and high budget deficits
triggered serious debates within the
party’s top leadership. At the same
time, after the Belgrade Conference
(BC) and prominent anti-Western
rhetoric, Yugoslavia's relations
with almost all Western countries
were worsened, which was
automatically reflected on the
Yugoslav economic situation.92 The
new, strict protectionist policy of
the European Economic Community
further detached Yugoslavia from the
Western market and impeded the
solution of numerous problems of
Yugoslav exports (and thus worsened
the state of the trade deficit). In
his reports to the State Department,
US ambassador to Belgrade George
Kenan warned that the burdensome
problems of the Yugoslav economy and
the restrictive measures of the
Western countries were motive enough
for a new advance of Belgrade
towards Moscow.93
Secondly, the
debate within the LCY, which had
been growing in the second half of
the fifties, and which culminated at
the EC CC session in March 1962, led
to a harsher party course during
1962 and 1963. The conservative part
of the CPY party leadership, headed
by Josip Broz Tito, saw the cause of
the economic and political crisis in
“subjective factors”, a lack of
respect for democratic centralism
and a general decline of Party's
authority in the society. The
solutions offered referred to the
legacy of the Yugoslav revolution,
the promotion of the “unity of
thought and action” and the removal
of any inter-party opposition. The
letter of the EC CC LCY from April
1962, as well as Tito’s May speech
in Split, were the main guide for
the implementation of a rigid
ideological matrix in Yugoslav
society. In the Soviet Union, the
measures of the Yugoslav party
leadership were assessed positively,
as an important prerequisite for a
new normalization. In his speech in
Varna in 1962, widely transmitted in
all media in Yugoslavia, Nikita
Khrushchev acknowledged Yugoslavia
as a socialist country, and thus
abolished one of the basic premises
of the anti-Yugoslav campaign in the
Eastern Bloc. The arrival of Foreign
Secretary Andrei Gromyko in March
1962, and Leonid Brezhnev in
September 1962, suggested a clear
path towards the normalization of
relations between Yugoslavia and the
Soviet Union, which would finally be
confirmed at the end of the same
year.
 Thirdly, new
changes in the Soviet Union, as well
as divisions in the international
communist movement, drew the
attention of the leading Yugoslav
communists. The break-up between
Moscow and Beijing in the early
1960s contributed to a new
differentiation in the ICM
(International Communist Movement) -
to “dogmatic” and “progressive”
forces, and this time the reason was
not Yugoslavia. The militant
revolutionary approach of Mao Zedong
had become too radical for Moscow,
with its pretension to establish
Beijing as the new ideological
authority of world communism. In
this new conflict, the years long
anathematized Yugoslav socialism
became more acceptable to the CPSU,
as a possible balance against
Chinese “dogmatism”, while the
influence of Yugoslavia in the Third
World was needed as another barrier
to the advancement of Beijing's
influence. At the same time, in
response to the Chinese version of
“Stalinism”, Khrushchev launched a
new wave of de-Stalinization,
promoted at the 22nd Congress of the
CPSU, in October 1961. Yugoslav
Communists assessed the new changes
in the Soviet Union as one of the
decisive reasons for accepting the
outstretched hand of Moscow in 1962.
Finally, the new
foreign policy strategy of
Yugoslavia as an unaligned country,
demanded a rigorous balance between
the two Cold War blocs. The modified
policy of the Soviet Union towards
the Third World, which was
especially popularized during the
time of Khrushchev, was assessed by
the Yugoslav communists as a welcome
“evolution” of standpoints within
the CPSU, and a significant
contribution to the strengthening of
the principles of NAM that were of
crucial importance, and which the
Soviet Union, as a great power,
could support - the struggle against
colonialism and imperialism;
economic independence from the West,
promotion of the path of socialist
modernization, etc. The policy of
the Soviet Union, however, was not
always displayed in a favorable
light in Belgrade, especially when
it took into account only its
“narrow” bloc interests.
A work visit by a
Yugoslav delegation to the Soviet
Union in December 1962, headed by
Josip Broz Tito, was a symbolic
introduction to the beginning of the
normalization of relations between
Belgrade and Moscow. Numerous
examples of mutual understanding,
which were manifested during the
visit, testified to the existence of
sincere motives to overcome
disagreements and animosity. The two
sides agreed that there was complete
unity in relation to all important
international issues and that this
unity was based on the fight for the
principles of “peaceful
coexistence”. Differences on
ideological issues were declared,
but followed at the same time by the
wish not to “dramatize” them in the
future, and not to emphasize them as
part of mutual propaganda
confrontation. By declaring that
there existed a common ideological
goal - the achievement of a
socialist society - both Tito and
Khrushchev emphasized in their
speeches the merits of the two
parties for the development of
socialism. Although a new document
important for the improvement of
Yugoslav-Soviet relations was not
signed in Moscow (because the visit
was also unofficial), Tito was
extremely pleased in front of
Yugoslav journalists after returning
from the Soviet Union, because, in
his opinion, there was “a better
understanding of a lot of what was
happening in our country” in Moscow,
and that due to such newly
established understanding, anything
that interfered with relations with
other socialist countries,
especially with the Soviet Union,
should be avoided.94
From the moment of
the establishment of diplomatic
relations between Belgrade and
Moscow, Yugoslav diplomacy, with its
SSFA, represented one of the
important links within the Yugoslav
state policy in formulating an
acceptable form of new relations
with the USSR. However, at the same
time, it persisted the longest in
expressing serious reservations
about all salient features of Soviet
politics and its approach to
Yugoslavia. The very essence of such
an attitude resulted from the fact
that Yugoslav diplomacy actively
worked on the elimination of the
negative effects of the
anti-Yugoslav campaign and all forms
of political, economic and military
pressure on Yugoslavia, both by the
Soviet Union and the lager
countries, for more than a decade.
On the other hand, the new Yugoslav
foreign policy strategy required in
particular that the principle of
maintaining an equal distance from
both military-political blocs in the
world be taken into account,
perceiving its affirmation among the
newly independent Third World
countries in the criticism of the
“bloc” policy of great powers. The
leadership of SSFA cherished such a
way of representing Yugoslav
interests and understanding of
international relations, especially
with the arrival of Konstantin Koča
Popović at its head. In his
reflections on the priorities of the
Yugoslav foreign policy, K. Popović
proceeded from the experience of the
break-up of Yugoslavia with the
Eastern Bloc, considering 1948 as
the central event that formed the
“solid basis of non-alignment”, and
represented a consistent defense of
the country's independence.95 The
attitude towards the Soviet Union
was central in these reflections.
With his arrival at the head SSFA,
at the very beginning of the process
of normalization of Yugoslav-Soviet
relations, Koča Popović accepted the
main thesis of the party’s top
leadership that it was in the
interests of Yugoslavia, as a
socialist state, to establish good
relations with the Soviet Union, and
to support the process of
“de-Stalinization” in Eastern
Europe. However, although a pre-war
communist, K. Popović did not have
too much illusions about the
possibility of major reformist
changes in the Soviet Union.96 Under
his direct influence, SSFA, at the
very beginning of the establishment
of new Yugoslav-Soviet relations in
1953/1954, acted as a corrector of
excessive expectations of the
Yugoslav party leadership, warning
of the existence of insincere Soviet
motives, which arose from the fact
that “the Soviet Union was a great
power, which remained the enemy of
our political system and
independence”.97
At the earliest
stage of the deliberation of the
possibility of overcoming
Yugoslav-Soviet disparities,
Yugoslav diplomacy assessed the
prospect of better relations as
extremely small, citing as the
reason that in “political issues and
ideology nothing can be normalized
between us, because we are states
with incompatible political
systems”.98 Huge doubts that prevailed
in SSFA regarding Soviet politics
were not diminished even at the
moments when certain political
changes in Moscow contributed to a
positive attitude of the LCY
leadership towards the “reformist”
commitment of N. Khrushchev in the
CPSU. Nikita Khrushchev experienced
this personally, as he complained to
the Yugoslav delegation in Moscow in
October 1957 about a sarcastic
comment Koča Popović addressed to
him, that in seeking the discipline
in the “rota” (“the company”, i.e.,
the lager as Khrushchev thought), he
did not know who was the “rota” and
who was the “soldier”.99 Even when the
Soviet side showed a certain
cooperation in relations with
Belgrade, especially in foreign
policy issues, the head of Yugoslav
diplomacy demanded from the Yugoslav
ambassadors to be able to recognize
the ultimate meaning of such Soviet
policy, and “not be deceived” by the
Soviet tactics, which “changed
according to their interests and
existing circumstances”.100 His
critical attitude towards Soviet
politics created in Moscow a halo of
“pro-Western man” around Koča
Popović101, while Western diplomats
had similar assessments of many
representatives of SSFA.102
 The attitude of
distrust towards the policy of the
Soviet Union that dominated in SSFA,
was not only encouraged by Koča
Popović, but was also acquired
through numerous experiences of
Yugoslav diplomats who were heads of
Yugoslav diplomatic missions in
Moscow and other Eastern European
capitals. Under constant pressure of
the anti-Yugoslav campaign, Yugoslav
ambassadors in lager countries were
often perceived as the main
saboteurs of the internal system and
promoters of “Yugo-revisionism”, and
local security services established
special treatments for their
surveillance accordingly. The gloomy
picture of a closed society in
Eastern European capitals, where the
crucial content was to mimic Soviet
policy in all social spheres, was a
valuable experience for many
Yugoslav diplomats as a specific
continuation of their own
“ideological sobering”. Veljko
Mićunović, the Yugoslav ambassador
to Moscow (1956-1958), left an
important source of such an
experience in his diary notes. Since
the time of the Cominform Resolution
in 1948, V. Mićunović was one of the
most determined Montenegrin
communists who firmly advocated the
censure of Stalin's assaults in the
CC CP of Montenegro, and his
appointment as ambassador to Moscow
represented a high degree of trust
of the party’s top leadership.
Before being sent to the diplomatic
post in Moscow, V. Mićunović
belonged to the part of the Central
Committee membership, who perceived
the intentions of the Soviet
“peaceful offensive” towards
Yugoslavia with distrust. During the
discussions on the issues of
Yugoslav-Soviet relations at the
sessions of the Central Committee,
he advanced opinions that warned
that the “remainders of the
Stalinist conception” were very
strong in the Kremlin, and that they
contributed to the perception of
normalization with Yugoslavia as a
“bloc matter”. According to
Mićunović, such normalization of
relations would be “at the detriment
of Yugoslavia” and “the policy of
coexistence”.103 Leaving Moscow as the
Yugoslav ambassador, in the moments
of a new tightening of relations
with the Soviet Union in 1958, V.
Mićunović did not significantly
change his vision of Soviet politics
much. Although he emphasized the
importance of some important steps
forward in the policy of the “new
course” of Nikita Khrushchev, such
as his speech at the 20th Congress
of the CPSU, and the initial
promotion of the policy of “peaceful
coexistence”, Mićunović believed
that the Soviet leadership did not
fully free itself from the Stalinist
heritage. According to the Yugoslav
diplomat, relation towards Yugoslav
socialism and the anti-Yugoslav
campaign, which persisted throughout
Mićunović's stay in Moscow, were a
result of a continuation of Stalin's
policy of “consolidating the
socialist lager and Soviet hegemony
within the lager”, which was fully
embraced by Khrushchev.104 Mićunović
also linked these principles of
Soviet foreign policy to internal
policy, where the policy of
decentralization was reduced to an
“administrative character”, without
significant changes in social
relations, while party doctrine and
state control were maintained
continuously in all spheres of life.
Yugoslav-Soviet relations should
have therefore been interpreted
through the great contradiction of
Khrushchev's policy, in which,
according to Mićunović's final
assessment, the old and the new
struggled.105
The difficult
period of the isolation of
Yugoslavia after the Cominform
resolution, which openly threatened
to crush the independence of the
country and jeopardize the
independent socialist path, not only
provoked a more thorough work of the
Federal Secretariat for Foreign
Affairs, but also decisively
influenced the important political
maturation of the new generation of
Yugoslav diplomats. Unlike the older
generation of Yugoslav communists,
who reached their ideological
maturation idealizing the
achievements of the Soviet Union,
the younger post-war generation
grew, and was ideologically shaped,
in the atmosphere of strong
anti-Sovietism in Yugoslav society.106
While senior Yugoslav party
officials wrote dozens of texts on
the “deformations” of the Stalinist
bureaucracy and the repressive state
apparatus, the foreign policy of the
Soviet Union and its attitude
towards Yugoslavia were also
interpreted as an expression of the
“undemocratic character of the
Bolshevik Party”.107 On the eve of his
departure to assume the position of
Yugoslav diplomatic representative
in Cairo, Marko Nikezić said from
the rostrum of the City Committee of
LC in Belgrade that there should be
a persistent struggle for “the
liberation from the smallest
remainders of illusions about the
role of the USSR”. He was convinced
that the main goal of the party
organization in Belgrade was to
“fully explain to each member of the
party and to every citizen the true
character and causes of its (USSR,
P.Ž.) enslaving policy towards other
nations”.108 The conflict with the
Soviet Union contributed to gradual
development of numerous
“self-management” centers of thought
within the society, out of
proclaimed ideas of democratization
and liberalization of Yugoslav
socialism, where each Yugoslav
communist had the opportunity of
discovering “their powers, their
denials and their misconceptions” in
themselves.109 The boundaries of such a
reconsideration certainly changed
over time, depending on the reform
potentials of the new Yugoslav
ideological model, but also on the
compromises related to the foreign
political interests of Yugoslavia.
The complex
history of relations between
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union
exceeded in importance the issue of
inter-state relations, and often
produced direct consequences, both
to the internal development of
Yugoslavia, and to the dissension
within the Yugoslav party
leadership. At the beginning of
normalization of relations with the
“first country of socialism”,
Yugoslav Communists faced dilemmas
similar to those of most East
European communists, who temporarily
put charges of “Titoism” away in
party files, during imposed
observance of better relations with
Yugoslavia. In the Yugoslav case,
the numerous party membership, up to
that moment thoroughly purified from
Cominform adherents, and the local
public, accustomed to the
demystification of Soviet policy,
had to be reassured that all
agreements reached with the Kremlin
did not mean a return to the
relationship of 1948, and that they
did not subordinate Yugoslavia to
the interests of the Soviet Union.
However, doubts were not unfounded.
The price of manifestations of good
relations between Belgrade and
Moscow was paid by suppression of
more critical manifestations towards
Soviet politics in the Yugoslav
public, with the pretext that, under
the new circumstances, such practice
was to be considered politically
ill-timed and harmful to the
Yugoslav foreign policy interests.
In addition, the basis for
initiating any reform in Yugoslavia,
whether in the political or economic
sphere, proceeded from theoretical
postulates of the ideas of Yugoslav
self-management socialism of the
late 1940s and early 1950s, i.e.
from the results of the ideological
divergence from Soviet state
socialism. This created, in time, a
setting for each new conflict with
the Soviet Union to strengthen
positions and open opportunities in
the party to individuals who wanted
further reforms in the Yugoslav
party and state, while the creation
of a more favorable atmosphere in
Yugoslav-Soviet relations served the
conservative party forces to obtain
the necessary backing to restrain,
what were in their opinion, the
undesirable and politically damaging
reformist ideas in Yugoslavia.110
Shortly after the secret report of
Nikita Khrushchev at the 20th
Congress of the CPSU, Tito demanded
unity from the top part leadership
in accepting the new policy towards
the Soviet Union, because in his
words “it would be very inconvenient
if members of our League had
different viewpoints, if they failed
to create a clear picture of what is
happening in the Soviet Union now.”111
However, in a private conversation
with Nikita Khrushchev at Brioni in
September 1956, J. B. Tito insisted
that future talks should be
conducted eye to eye, in order to
avoid the difficulties from the
reactions of numerous Yugoslav
communists, for whom Khrushchev
himself knew “what kind of education
they received”.112 Unlike the
conservatives in the Eastern
European communist parties, who
could rely on direct action support
from like-minded persons in Kremlin,113
in time a strong orthodox barrier
was also built in the League of
Communists of Yugoslavia, which used
already tested mechanisms to
suppress the inner party opposition,
discovering ideological closeness to
Soviet “hardliners” on many issues.
This closeness was expressed above
all in the common fear from the
results of uncontrolled
liberalization of the post-Stalinist
society, which, with its initial
ideas, would have intended, among
other things, to deprive the
communist party of its power, and
diminish its sovereign position of
the main ideological beacon of
social actions. The confrontation
with the ideas of Milovan Đilas in
1954 testified about the earliest
relation between the restrictions of
reform policy in Yugoslavia and the
normalization of relations with the
Soviet Union. Đilas’s critical
thought, directed against the
surviving forms of state socialism
in Yugoslav society, had become too
radical for the Yugoslav party
leadership, both for criticizing the
fundamental principles of the
Leninist party, and for the new
foreign political context. Although
the party indictment against M.
Đilas did not encompass his critical
attitude towards the Soviet Union,
the condemned ideas were clearly
related to Đilas’s public criticism
of Soviet state socialism and
hegemonic foreign policy. His
“heretical” texts did not avoid
criticism of the new Soviet
post-Stalinist leadership, with
which the Yugoslav party's top
leadership initiated a normalization
of relations, while Đilas assessed
its policy as “the epoch” of the
socialist collective oligarchy and
bureaucratic “democracy”.114 For the
Soviet leaders, the removal of
Milovan Đilas was a “positive”
change in the Yugoslav leadership,
which removed from the party's top
leadership a man known for
“mimicking the West” and cultivating
“negative feelings” toward the
Soviet Union.115 Although the Yugoslav
party leadership rejected the
intention of the Kremlin to
personalize the blame for earlier
deterioration of the relationship
(by censuring equally Đilas and
Beria), the attitude towards Milovan
Đilas and his criticism successfully
united, at least in the approach to
one issue, the positions of the two
communist parties that were
irreconcilable until then. With the
commencement of Đilas’s more radical
criticism of communism and policy of
the Soviet Union, the Yugoslav party
leadership saw in his further
ostracization and punishment not
only the internal policy goal of
suppressing the idea of “Đilasism”,
but also a foreign policy one,
proving in this way a certain
“orthodoxy” in the international
communist movement, at the moment of
harsh anti-Yugoslav campaign in the
Eastern bloc.116
 The decision of
the Yugoslav party leadership to
initiate the process of normalizing
relations with the Soviet Union
during 1962 had different
reverberations. The Western press
and some diplomats reported about
Yugoslavia getting closer to the
lager, linking the tightening of the
party's course with becoming closer
to Moscow. The arrest of Milovan
Đilas, in April 1962, on the eve of
Andrei Gromyko’s visit, because of
his book “Conversations with the
Stalin”, and numerous rigid
ideological propaganda attacks on
Western modern art at the end of the
year, identical to those in the
Soviet Union, left no doubt about
the general character of new
relations between Belgrade and
Moscow. On the other hand, the
party’s top leadership, faced with
rising problems in the country, was
becoming increasingly aware of the
volume of dissonance among party
groups, which threatened to question
the basic elements of party’s
Leninist monolithism. The struggle
for a unique party line in 1962 led
to SSFA coming under suspicion of
diverting from the “revolutionary”
course, and disregarding the basic
guidelines outlined in the Letter of
the Executive Committee. The
confirmation of the implementation
of the party line in an important
institution of Yugoslav diplomacy
would be demanded precisely during
the new normalization process with
the Soviet Union.117
Marko Nikezić, a
Yugoslav diplomat since the
beginning of the 1950s, and State
Secretary for Foreign Affairs of
Yugoslavia since 1965, believed that
it was an undisputable fact that
“over 90% of SSFA employees
perceived the Soviet Union as the
most significant foreign political
threat to the independence of the
country”.118 The decision of the
party's top leadership in the early
1960s to renew co-operation with
Moscow in all areas, was accepted
within the SSFA as an important
foreign policy initiative, but
accompanied by well-known
reservations. The wariness within
the SSFA was related to proper
understanding of the character of
the Soviet strategy towards
Yugoslavia, which was often treated,
according to Yugoslav diplomats, as
an “object” of the USSR policy.119 In
periodic analyses of SSFA, the
approach of Soviet foreign policy to
Yugoslavia was still characterized
as excessively “bloc oriented”,
ideologically paternalistic, and
insincere. In the opinion of
Yugoslav diplomats, the Cuban crisis
in November 1962 demonstrated that
Yugoslavia was “invisible” as an
independent international subject
for the Soviet Union, which placed
Yugoslavia in an unequal position in
its relations with Moscow. Koča
Popović, as the State Secretary for
Foreign Affairs, persistently sent
out instructions warning Yugoslav
diplomatic missions of the necessary
“reciprocity” in relations with the
Soviet side, and of the need for
continuous care that Yugoslavia
defended its own interests at all
times.120 However, Tito believed that
the Yugoslav motives to initiate a
new normalization of relations with
the Soviet Union were sufficiently
clear and undisputable. Different
stances within the party’s top
leadership were not allowed to
exist. In a conversation with
Yugoslav Ambassador Cvijetin
Mijatović, in February 1963, the
official in charge for Yugoslavia in
the Soviet Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, V. A. Bakunov, referred to
the testimony of the Komsomol
delegation present at the Yugoslav
National Youth Congress, when Tito
told members of the Yugoslav youth
organization that “heads would roll”
should there be anti-Soviet
incidents during the congress.121
Officials of the Soviet party and
diplomacy were convinced, and this
conviction never left them, that the
LCY leader was one of the strong
guarantors and advocates of better
relations with the Soviet Union.
They believed that in the period of
the crisis, Tito's personal
authority would be a sufficient
guarantee that Yugoslavia would not
break all ties with the Soviet
Union, and that any resistance would
be suppressed to that end.
The existence of a
“SSFA concept” in Yugoslav foreign
policy was mentioned for the first
time at the session of the EC CC
LCY, on April 23, 1963. The reason
for convening the meeting was the
conviction of the party's top
leadership that there was no unity
in the party in accepting the new
policy towards the Soviet Union, and
that one of the centers of such
resistance is the SSFA. At the EC
meeting, criticism of the main
institution of Yugoslav diplomacy
headed by Konstantin Koča Popović
since 1953, was led by Tito. He
censured some members of the Party
for failing to understand the depth
of changes in the USSR and the
impact of the dogmatic policy of the
Chinese communists. In his opinion,
Yugoslavia, as a socialist country,
had to fulfill its “international
revolutionary duties”, and maintain
good relations with all socialist
countries. In relation to the
principles thus formulated, Tito
considered that two concepts in the
Yugoslav foreign policy came into
being - one of the SSFA and the
other of the Central Committee.
Recalling his authority as head of
state, he warned that such a
situation was “unhealthy”, and could
no longer be observed peacefully.122 As
a welcome proof of the existence of
a “SSFA" concept, the activity of
several Yugoslav diplomats was
criticized at the session. The case
of the Yugoslav ambassador to
Bulgaria, Predrag Ajtić, was the
most problematic. The party
commission summoned for his case,
assessed that Ajtić showed “major
reservations and disagreements over
the LCY foreign and domestic
policy”.123 On the basis of the
evidence collected, the LCY
Disciplinary Committee banned
Predrag Ajtić from the party, and
his diplomatic engagement in
Bulgaria was terminated. At the end
of the session, Josip Broz Tito
mentioned the improper attitudes of
Veljko Mićunović, the Yugoslav
ambassador to Washington, and Marko
Nikezić, the State Undersecretary
for Foreign Affairs. Specifying
Nikezić's views in particular, Tito
assessed that they had “stunned”
him, and that they were “totally in
contradiction with our policy”. He
expressed his opinion that “such
people could not be leaders and
determine the line and guidelines of
our foreign policy”.124
Although almost
all EC members accepted and
elaborated Tito's critique of the
“SSFA concept”, Koča Popović refused
to agree with almost all elements of
the charge. He reckoned that a
critique of SSFA could not be built
around the “Ajtić case”, as well as
that a special “SSFA concept” did
not exist, although SSFA was a
"special institution". Facing the
party leadership, he said that he
disagreed with critical assessments,
but would accept them “as a
disciplined communist”.125 Tito
condemned this approach by Popović
at the session, insisting that all
those who were not ready to pursue a
given policy had to be removed from
the SSFA. Only “good communists”
were supposed to be brought to SSFA.126
The session of the Executive
Committee was only one of the steps
of the party leadership in ensuring
maximum support to the new
normalization of relations with the
USSR. However, the existence of
resistance to close relations
between Yugoslavia and the Soviet
Union would not be constrained by
the decision of a single party
session. It had become a permanent
component of Yugoslav-Soviet
relations, arising from the 1948
conflict, and upgraded by the
different paths of Soviet and
Yugoslav socialism. The turbulent
currents of the sixties would
contribute strongest to the
escalation of these differences.
2. Principled Cohabitation -
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union
against Maoism and imperialism in
the Third World
2.1. Restraining China
The conflict
between Moscow and Beijing, which
escalated in the early 1960s, with
its far-reaching consequences, could
be compared to the break-up of
Yugoslavia with the Soviet Union in
1948. Both important events in the
history of world communism had a
major impact on the dwindling of
ideological unity in the ICM
(International Communist Movement),
and contributed decisively to the
intensification of Cold War
conflicts in the Third World until
the early eighties. The criticism of
“Yugoslav revisionism” after the
Hungarian Revolution, which
substantially homogenized the
communist parties under the auspices
of the "leading role" of the Soviet
Union, became radicalized by the
ideological concept of Chinese
communists. Advocating principles of
militant anti-imperialism, Mao
Zedong challenged the idea of
“peaceful coexistence” of Nikita
Khrushchev, the strategy pursued by
the post-Stalinist Soviet leadership
in international relations. The
position of Chinese communists -
that the war against imperialism
(the West) was inevitable, and that
insisting on coexistence actually
meant moving away from the
revolutionary essence of
international communism, became an
object of harsh criticism by the
leading figures of the Soviet
party's top leadership. Opposing the
surges of Chinese dogmatism, which
openly rehabilitated the “Stalinist”
vision of the society, Khrushchev,
in his address at the World
Communist Party Conference, in
November 1960, tried to maintain the
position of the CPSU, as the leading
ideological authority. The Chinese
standpoint at the conference did not
contribute to reducing the support
of the majority of communist parties
to Moscow, but it prepared the
ground for a very long and harsh
ideological dispute. The results of
the 22nd Congress of the CPSU
affirmed the new period of
“de-Stalinization” in the Soviet
Union, as a specific response to the
Chinese Communists, but also brought
the first serious indications of the
collapse of the unity of the Eastern
Bloc, when Albania sided with
Beijing. In mid-1962, Mao began a
critique of “Soviet revisionism”,
using revolutionary rhetoric, while
Zhou Enlai believed that Beijing
had, at that time, become the center
of the world revolution.127
By coincidence,
Yugoslav communists remained outside
the Chinese-Soviet polemic, until
the beginning of the sixties. Since
Yugoslav socialism had been a common
subject of criticism of Moscow and
Beijing for many years, referring to
it within the ICM was intended
solely for demonstrating negative
ideological straying. However, as
the polemic became public,
standpoints of Yugoslav communists
became more pronounced and needed.
In February 1962, the Yugoslav
ambassador to Moscow, Cvijetin
Mijatović, reported to Belgrade that
the polemic with the Chinese
contributed significantly to the
affirmation of the policy of
“peaceful coexistence”, and that, as
part of these shifts, a positive
change towards Yugoslavia could be
readily observed. In the
ambassador's conclusions, which were
meant to assist further
 understanding of new elements in
Soviet politics, Mijatović concluded
that the speed of normalization of
Moscow-Belgrade relations would be
decisively influenced by further
development of the conflict between
the Soviet Union and China.128
Mijatović's forecasts soon proved to
be correct. The harsh secret
correspondence between the CPSU and
the CPC (Communist Party of china),
in the first half of 1962, opened a
significant perspective for the
“rehabilitation” of Yugoslav
socialism in Moscow. In a surge of
criticism against “Soviet
revisionism”, in mid-1962, Mao
Zedong identified Tito and
Khrushchev as two main enemies of
China, along with Kennedy and Nehru.129
The renewed co-operation between
Belgrade and Moscow, despite many
unresolved ideological issues, would
contain the attitude towards Chinese
“dogmatic” politics as a key
feature. The mutual interest was
forged with the intention to curb,
by adopting the strategy of
promoting “peaceful coexistence”,
the adverse impact of the militant
radicalism of Chinese communists in
the ICM, in particular the spreading
of “Maoism” in the Third World,
where they proceeded from different
positions, the Yugoslav non-aligned
policy and Soviet hegemonic
aspirations.
Meetings of top
leaderships of Yugoslavia and the
Soviet Union, during 1963 and 1964,
consolidated the foundations of the
“anti-Chinese” coalition, and
briefly overshadowed earlier
disputes. Moving against
anti-Sovietism in the LCY, by
restraining the “SSFA concept”,
Josip Broz Tito, for the second
time, supported the “reformist”
policy of Nikita Khrushchev. With
his report at the CC LCY Plenum in
May 1963, Tito went one step
further. Defending the vision of
relations of equality within the ICM
before the party's top leadership,
on which LCY persisted practically
from the break with Stalin, and
which the new (old) concept of the
Communist Party of China opposed,
Tito told the Yugoslav communists
that they had to take, once again,
the prominent role of the main
promoters of new relations among
communist parties. Referring to the
need for promotion of
“internationalist duties”, which
involved active struggle of
communists for all “progressive”
ideas in the ICM, Tito stressed the
importance of advocating for the
realization of the principle of
"peaceful coexistence”, which, in
his opinion, “was one of the
strongest political means of the
struggle of the international
workers' movement for social
progress and the strengthening of
socialist forces and factors in the
world”.130 From the plenum roster, Tito
declared that the leaders of the
Chinese CP stood on “dogmatic
positions”, that they simultaneously
supported “Stalinist” relations and
methods in the communist movement
and the “Trotskyist” standpoints of
war, and that, by their overall
action, they directly threatened
world peace. The new line of
division, in Tito's opinion, was
clear. In the ICM, there were
dangerous Chinese warlike and
“dogmatic” positions on one side,
and peaceful and “anti-dogmatic”
ones, supported by the largest
number of parties, on the other.
Tito stressed that the League of
Communists of Yugoslavia was obliged
to actively participate in the fight
against all negative phenomena,
against all those who were splitting
the ICM, and against the policy that
hindered the further development of
socialism. At the end of the
session, the 5th Plenum of the CC
LCY adopted Tito's report (“LCY's
standpoint on current international
issues, and tasks of the
international workers' movement in
the struggle for peace and
socialism”), as the party line and
future guidelines for further action
of Yugoslav communists.131
Just a few months
after the CC LCY Plenum, the results
of the visit of a high-ranking
Soviet delegation to Belgrade, from
August 20 to September 3, 1963,
confirmed the justifiability of the
new path of the LCY in the fight for
“progressive” forces in the ICM.
Just before the arrival of the
delegation to Belgrade, the Soviet
Union normalized its relations with
the United States of America, which
were impaired by the Cuban crisis in
November 1962, and started a total
break-up with the Chinese Communist
Party. As opposed to the previous
visit of Nikita Khrushchev to
Yugoslavia, in June 1955, this time,
the complete unity of standpoints of
the two delegations was expressed,
with a special emphasis on “Chinese
dogmatism”. Noting that the
differences in the inter-party
relations between the CPSU and the
LCY were minimized, during their
talks, the two delegations used
every opportunity to reflect the
consequences of Chinese politics in
a negative light. Khrushchev was
explicit that the Chinese
performance was damaging to the ICM,
and that it was trying to influence
a change of the concepts in many
communist parties, while Tito
promised that the Yugoslav
communists would work actively on
the “dismantling” of Chinese
theories in the future.132 The united
joint front against China once again
pushed to the foreground the
principles of the Belgrade and
Moscow declarations, documents that,
due to the anti-Yugoslav campaign,
since 1958, have been circumvented
several times. In their joint action
against “Maoism”, both parties
seemed to intend to put an end to
some fundamental controversies, and
to concentrate all their attention
on overcoming the challenges that
came from the Far East. In February
1964, the exchange of letters
between the LCY and the CPSU
confirmed the unity of the
standpoints on the harmful effects
of the CP of China. At an encounter
with Tito, on June 8, 1964, in
Leningrad, Khrushchev expressed his
wish that the Yugoslav side
contribute to overcoming the crisis
that began in the relations between
the Romanian and Soviet leaderships.133
This appeal was fully in line with
Tito's proclaimed policy of
performing an “internationalist
duty” and fighting for a
“progressive” course in the ICM, and
thus his meeting with the leader of
the Romanian party, Gheorghiu-Dej,
in June 1964, was an attempt on the
Yugoslav side to mend the dispute
between Bucharest and Moscow.134 Up to
1968, following the Yugoslav
contribution to “peaceful
coexistence”, Tito met with almost
all communist party leaders in
Eastern Europe. Apart from the
expressed mutual desire for further
improvement of interstate bilateral
and party relations, in each of
these encounters, a relationship of
understanding for the need to oppose
China was present. However, there
were no major changes in the final
analyzes of Yugoslav diplomacy about
the perception of Yugoslavia in the
lager. Resistance to China had
pacified the resistance to Yugoslav
self-government socialism and its
solutions, at least for a short
period of time.
The joint
resistance to Chinese influence in
the Third World, and the commitment
to the principles of “peaceful
coexistence”, moved Yugoslav-Soviet
relations into a period of stable
relations. Bilateral cooperation was
successful, and the Soviet Union
became one of the important foreign
trade partners of Yugoslavia.135
However, the Yugoslav foreign
policy, bearing in mind the
preservation of its non-aligned
policy, was becoming more and more
sensitive to the possible
consequences of close coordination
with Moscow. Primarily, this was
related to Moscow's intention to,
traditionally, tie Yugoslavia, as
much as possible, to the political
and economic interests of the lager,
but also to use the Yugoslav
influence in NAM in order to expand
the sphere of its influence in the
Third World countries. At the
beginning of 1964, the Soviet press
wrote positively about the
preparations for the start of the
Second non-alignment conference in
Cairo, supporting the convening of
the second summit of non-aligned
countries, and especially
emphasizing that their voice often
“sounded in harmony with the voice
of the USSR and other socialist
countries”.136 Yugoslavia did not want
its policy to be perceived as a
“satellite policy" and “extension of
Kremlin's hand”, and SSFA reacted
decisively to such Soviet efforts,
continually sending instructions to
Yugoslav diplomatic missions on the
conduct of diplomats on such
occasions. On the other hand, the
LCY party’s top leadership also
dismissed, as early as 1964, all the
initiatives that came from Moscow on
the need to organize consultations
of communist parties in which
“fraternal” parties would assemble
and discuss a strategy of joint
action against Chinese politics. In
direct talks with Khrushchev, in
June 1964, in Leningrad, Tito
reiterated LCY's position that the
conditions for such consultations
had not yet “matured”, while in a
conversation with Andropov, two
months later, he added to his
dismissive attitude on the
consultations, the need to respect
the principle of non-alignment, on
the eve of the Second conference in
Cairo.137 The defense of the original
principles of NAM, which would
become a specific obligation of
Yugoslav politics, was in serious
collision with the consequences of
the Chinese-Soviet conflict. This
was especially evident during the
Cairo Conference, October 5-10,
1964, when polarization to radical
and moderate forces among the
delegates of non-aligned countries
became manifest. In his speech at
the Conference, Indonesia's leader
Sukarno accepted some Chinese
ideological conceptions, about the
need for an active revolutionary
struggle against Western
imperialism, opposing the
Yugoslav-Soviet strategy of
“peaceful coexistence”. Yugoslav
diplomacy assessed Sukarno’s speech
as pro-Chinese and strongly opposed
it.138
The removal of N.
Khrushchev, in October, 1964,
questioned, for a moment, the
firmness of the “coalition” between
Belgrade and Moscow. After more than
a decade at the helm of the CPSU,
Nikita Khrushchev had been removed
from all leading positions in the
party and state, in an upheaval that
had been planned for a long time,
and has brought to the surface the
enormous dissatisfaction of the
majority of the party leadership
with the results of Khrushchev's
“new course”. One part of the
dissatisfaction was directed at the
attitude of Khrushchev towards
China, since not such a small number
of conservative party leaders
regarded the long-term tightening of
Soviet policy towards China as
detrimental, sympathizing with
China's pro-Stalinist and
anti-Western views. It seemed that
the new Soviet leadership had not
yet developed an elaborate foreign
policy strategy, as an erroneous
internal policy was emphasized on
the occasion of removal of
Khrushchev at the summit in October,
and a significant number of new
Soviet leaders had a negligible, or
almost no international experience.
The Soviet ambassador in Belgrade,
A. Puzanov, was calming down the
Yugoslav leadership, by saying that
Khrushchev's removal would not
contribute to changes in Soviet
foreign policy, especially towards
China. During a conversation with
Josip Broz Tito, on November 11,
1964, explaining the essence of the
removal of N. Khrushchev, Puzanov
conveyed Moscow's firm conviction
that, in spite of the renewed
contacts with Beijing, a compromise
on “issues of principle” would not
be made. However, the new collective
leadership in the Kremlin, led
initially by the trio Brezhnev,
Kosygin and Podgorny, had set an
attempt to reconcile with Communist
China as its first priority in
foreign policy.139 The Yugoslav Embassy
in Moscow warned about this fact, in
early November 1964, notifying that
tendencies in keeping the Soviet
policy “on two tracks” were observed
- approaching China, and moving away
from Yugoslavia.140 Part of Tito's
speech at the 8th Congress (November
1964), in which Yugoslav criticism
of the Chinese “dogmatic” policy was
even more clearly underlined,
followed by a support to
Khrushchev's former line toward
Beijing, was completely omitted in
the Soviet press.
 Kosygin's mission
at the Far East, in February, 1965,
dispelled all the hopes of the new
Soviet leadership that
reconciliation with China was
possible. During his meeting with
Mao Zedong, Kosygin became convinced
of the unchanged ideological views
of the Chinese communists, and the
persistence of criticism against
“Soviet revisionism”. The attempt to
restore unity was unsuccessful, and
China continued to radicalize its
foreign policy, opposing the idea of
“peaceful coexistence” and the
alliance with nationalist regimes in
the Third World. The Chinese
Cultural Revolution of 1966 led to
the climax of the ideological
concept of the Chinese Communist
Party, making China completely
isolated from the outside world,
especially from the revolutionary
and liberation movements in the
African countries. In Chinese public
approach, the Soviet Union was
assessed as an imperialist state and
a major threat to the world
revolution.141 Despite numerous
initiatives, mainly from Moscow, the
Vietnam War, which escalated in
1965, failed to result in full unity
of all communist forces to jointly
provide help to Vietnamese
communists, but it did manage to put
the struggle against American
imperialism in the forefront. It is
on this platform that the Soviet
Union built its presence among the
Third World countries, but also the
tactics for attracting Yugoslavia to
its sphere of interest.
2.2 The antiimperialist paradigm of
Yugoslav-Soviet cooperation.
For communists,
the attitude towards “imperialism”
represented the affirmation of the
basis of Marxism-Leninism teaching,
and for the communist parties, the
affirmation of the “revolutionary”
and “class” essence of their own
political platform. Relying on
Lenin, who devised its theoretical
foundations on the eve of the
October Revolution, the communists
defined imperialism as “the highest
stage of capitalism”. The struggle
against imperialism meant the
realization of Lenin's tactics of
confronting the capitalist order in
every place, by supporting movements
that demolished such a global
system, from the liberation
movements in colonial countries, to
peasant and national movements
directed against (mainly) Western
imperialists.142 The popularity of the
“antiimperialist” struggle gained in
significance with the process of
post-war decolonization, which made
the Soviet Union gain more
popularity in postcolonial
countries. The Cold War division,
which was most prominent in
promoting two different ideological
concepts (capitalist and socialist),
allowed the Soviet Union to increase
its influence on various continents,
especially in the countries that
were liberated from the Western
colonial system, under the umbrella
of promoting socialist
modernization. Unlike Stalin's inert
policy, which looked down on the
prospects of the liberation and
decolonization movements in the
Third World, considering them too
“reactionary”, the CPSU, under the
leadership of Khrushchev, began to
devise a new Soviet strategy towards
the Afro-Asian countries. It
involved military and economic
support to all liberation movements,
the pursuit of the policy of “peace
offensive” against the Western
states, and as its final result, an
increase of the Soviet influence in
comparison to the West.
Since the
mid-1950s, Yugoslav non-alignment
policy had gained its main outlines
through numerous international
contacts with countries and leaders
of the Third World. From the very
beginning, the new Yugoslav
diplomacy was one of the main
expressions of the new attitude of
the independent path of Yugoslav
socialism. In the period of the
first open conflict with the Soviet
Union, when Yugoslavia formulated
the initial basic principles of its
new internal policy, Yugoslav
foreign policy also discovered new
roads, atypical for Europe, divided
by Cold War. Affirming the
principles of independence, non-bloc
position, disarmament,
anti-colonialism and peaceful
resolution of conflicts, Yugoslav
diplomacy opened up a much wider
range of engagements, from UN
sessions to numerous international
conferences. The non-alignment
movement, in its emergence, became
an expression of the Yugoslav world
policy and fully reflected the
Yugoslav attitude towards the
bipolar world.143 The non-bloc
character of the movement, the lack
of communist states in it, and the
persistence on its independent
existence in international
relations, caused misunderstanding
and resistance in the Soviet Union
for a long period of time. The
significant role of Yugoslavia in
the establishment of the movement
became too “unpleasant” for Soviet
diplomacy, especially in the moments
when relations with Belgrade were
colder, and the potential of
Yugoslav resistance to Soviet policy
had the possibility of becoming
especially destructive to Soviet
global interests.144 However, similar
standpoints on many international
issues, the Soviet promotion of
“peaceful coexistence” and support
for the goals of the African
countries, with the support of the
Marxist-Leninist vision of the
world, eliminated, in time, the
disagreements, and strengthened the
common interests.
Before the arrival
of Nikita Khrushchev to Belgrade in
August 1963, the Yugoslav side
positively analyzed the policy of
the Soviet Union towards non-aligned
and underdeveloped countries.
Starting from the decisions of the
22nd Congress of the CPSU, which
portrayed the non-aligned countries
as the main allies of the socialist
countries in the struggle for peace,
Yugoslav communists noted that
Soviet politics was undergoing a
process of “evolution” in relation
to the newly liberated countries.
Their opinion in Belgrade was that
there were many signs of such an
“evolution” of Soviet attitudes,
which suggested that the progressive
part of non-aligned countries could
“contribute to the spreading of the
global socialist system”.145 The
conflict with China was perceived in
the context of these changes, and it
was emphasized with satisfaction
that the Soviet-Chinese conflict
would “strengthen real opportunities
for cooperation between the USSR and
non-aligned countries”.146 Analyzing
the role of the Soviet Union in many
parts of the world, Yugoslav
communists believed that it could
play its most important role in
South East Asia, as its politics
insisted on some important strategic
goals that were complementary with
those of non-aligned countries -
appeasing the situation and removing
the focal points of conflicts, while
preserving the independence of
countries. On the whole, the new
orientation of the Soviet Union
towards non-aligned and
underdeveloped countries was
assessed in Belgrade as extremely
important “for further expansion and
success of non-alignment policy as
an important factor in the struggle
for peace and progress”.147 During a
conversation with Khrushchev in
Belgrade, Tito emphasized his
resolve to steer NAM towards the
left. He conveyed to his
interlocutor the firm convictions
that Yugoslavia was doing everything
in its power to suppress the
influence of the West in Afro-Asian
countries, thus contributing to
their “progressive orientation”.
Tito used an example to support the
statement that the influence of
Yugoslavia in this regard was not
small, stating that on the occasion
of his visit to Egypt, on the eve of
a rally, he persuaded Nasser to
reject the criticism of the Soviet
Union, and that, in his opinion, in
the future implementation of his
planned policy Nasser “would move
more and more towards the left”.148 The
Soviet Union strengthened its
alliance with Egypt with the visit
of Nikita Khrushchev to Cairo in
1964, which enabled a significant
presence of Soviet policy in the
Middle East in the late sixties.
After the removal
of Khrushchev, the new Soviet
leadership intensified its
ideological campaign of the struggle
against imperialism, especially
after the buildup of the Vietnam War
in 1965, and the significant US
military engagement in the area of
Southeast Asia. The idea that common
support to Vietnamese communists
would alleviate the antagonisms
between Beijing and Moscow proved to
be unrealistic, but the Soviet
leadership did not abandon the basic
guidelines of its foreign policy
 strategy, aimed at creating a tight
unity of all Communist parties. The
Yugoslav Communists were no
exception. In the first talks of the
Yugoslav delegation with the new
Soviet party leadership, from June
18 until July 1, 1965, in Moscow, a
common desire was demonstrated to
condemn American policy in Vietnam,
and the need was stressed for “unity
of action” and cooperation among
socialist countries in defending
world peace against imperialism.
Tito informed Brezhnev in Moscow of
his impressions after his trip to
the UAR and Algeria, about the
calamity of Chinese influence, and
the activities of American
imperialism (“Americans want to make
the whole of Africa a new Katanga”).149
He conveyed the concern of Arab
leaders that the Soviet Union did
not use its authority sufficiently
in the events that took place in
Africa, and that it avoided
political engagement and more
straightforward criticism of
imperialists. On the other hand,
according to Tito, the Yugoslav
delegation came to Moscow convinced
of the appropriateness of Soviet
foreign policy. At the end of the
conversation Tito did not hesitate
to stress that, during his visit to
the African countries, he used the
opportunity to “raise the confidence
of these countries in the Soviet
Union”. The new leader of the CPSU,
Leonid Brezhnev, followed a similar
tone in his analysis of the
Yugoslav-Soviet relations and the
situation in the world. Both leaders
had identical attitudes towards the
Vietnam War and the strategy that
should be applied. Tito believed
that all socialist countries should
help the movement in South Vietnam
and publicly oppose American policy,
while Brezhnev pointed out that the
most important plan of Soviet
foreign policy was the struggle
against American imperialism,
portraying it as the “most
aggressive force” in the world.
Criticism of China persisted in the
talks as an important and permanent
stance on the suppression of Chinese
adventurous and dangerous
warmongering policy.150
The joint strategy
of combating Chinese dogmatism and
Western imperialism did not yield
great results, and testified to the
limited possibilities of the
Yugoslav-Soviet actions in the Third
World. The Soviet Union provided
extensive material and military
assistance to North Vietnam, but
failed to impose itself as a key
political player in Hanoi. The
Vietnamese communists, on the other
hand, did not welcome the diplomatic
approach of Yugoslavia, believing it
was too passive and indecisive. The
radicalization of the war in Vietnam
contributed to a growing popularity
of militant anti-imperialist groups,
both in many guerilla movements in
Southeast Asia, and in many
communist parties. The principles of
“peaceful coexistence” were the main
target of criticism. The
Tricontinental Solidarity Conference
in Havana, in January 1966, offered
the “ultra-antiimperialist” rhetoric
of these radical groups. The
Yugoslav policy towards Vietnam was
sharply criticized by
representatives of Cuba, Vietnam and
Korea. The ideological
qualifications directed against
Belgrade, as one of the main
promoters of coexistence, reminded
of the Cominform campaign against
Yugoslavia after 1948. Cuba, as the
leader of the “new forces”, would
eventually become the main
opposition to Yugoslavia in NAM,
advocating the change of the
principles of the movement, and an
enhancement of the “revolutionary”
essence.151
Yugoslav politics
resisted equally the radicalism of
certain Third World countries, and
the “lager” aspirations of the
Soviet Union. Trying at the same
time to find the necessary balance
with the Western countries, Yugoslav
diplomacy wore itself out in the
elaboration of a foreign policy
strategy that would best preserve
the interests of the country.
Non-bloc policy continued to imply
disagreement on tight policy
coordination with Moscow. New CPSU
initiatives for convening
Consultations of Communist Parties
and a Conference of the Communist
Parties of Europe (in 1966 and 1967)
were rejected by the LCY. A similar
attitude was also expressed when it
came to the possibility of the
overflight of Soviet aircraft
through the airspace of Yugoslavia
(in 1965), as well as to the joint
approach to the non-aligned
countries. However, one part of the
LCY party's top leadership was still
convinced that the political and
military power of the Soviet Union
in resolving international crises,
was the only guarantor of successful
opposition to US imperialism. Such
assessments became even more
pronounced after dramatic events in
the Third World countries since the
mid-1960s. Influential leaders of
non-aligned countries (Sukarno, Ben
Bela, Nkrumah) were ousted in
violent coup d’états, while the
Indonesian left suffered a major
defeat in 1965 and 1966, after
Sukarno was ousted, as it was
completely exterminated from
Indonesia, by bloody military
reprisals of the new military regime
in Jakarta. American interventionism
in Vietnam and the Dominican
Republic was experienced by Yugoslav
communists as resilient persistence
of American imperialist politics.
The Middle East in 1967 was a new
dramatic warning.
The six-day war in
the Middle East, in June 1967,
between the military forces of
Israel and the Arab states,
completely changed the balance of
power in the Middle East. Since the
beginning of the 1950s, Yugoslavia
had increasingly better relations
with Egypt and the majority of Arab
countries, while relations with
Israel, especially after the Suez
crisis, were declining. Tito
considered Nasser as “a
progressive”, an important leader of
the Arab world and NAM, who,
although not a leftist, led his
country more and more according to
socialist and non-alignment
principles. Since the mid-1960s, the
Soviet Union had invested heavily in
the Nasser regime, which was the
focus of Soviet influence in the
Middle East, along with Syria and
Yemen. The sudden harsh defeat of
Egypt and other Arab states by the
Israeli army, in just a few days at
the beginning of June 1967, and the
loss of a significant part of the
territory, practically challenged
many years of political and material
investments, both of Belgrade and
Moscow. Nasser faced a total
military and political collapse, and
the other leaders of the Arab world
were in a similar situation. Israel
refused to withdraw from occupied
territories, and a tense
international crisis threatened to
intensify the conflict.
For Josip Broz
Tito, there were no dilemmas as to
the understanding of the causes and
character of the war in the Middle
East. Yugoslavia stood firmly on the
side of the Arabs since the first
days of the war, until the end of
the crisis at the UN at the end of
the year, leading virtually all
initiatives to assist Arab states.
Having aligned himself fully with
the interests of the Arab world
(“the struggle of the Arab peoples
is our struggle”), Tito believed
that the war showed the true face of
global imperialism, and that in such
a conflict, one had to reason solely
as a communist.152 Linking the coup in
Greece and the Middle East war, Tito
instructed all his interlocutors,
from Ulbricht to Bumedian, that the
Six Day War was in fact part of a
“general imperialist plan”, which
was directed primarily against the
“free world”, and even against
Yugoslavia (“we also feel a lot of
military ‘meddling’ around us”).153
Israel was declared a “pawn of
American imperialism”, which used
the same methods as the Nazis in the
war, and was labeled by Yugoslavia
in the UN as the sole culprit for
the war (along with the United
States). Tito believed that, in
order to prevent imperialist plans,
a “sharper dialogue” had to be
conducted, and that a situation had
to be created for speaking from a
“position of power”.154
Tito's “position
of power” involved the gathering of
as many countries as possible
(preferably "progressive") in aiding
the Arab states. The rescue of
Nasser's regime in Cairo had become
the number one foreign policy task
of Yugoslavia. To this end,
Yugoslavia began the closest
foreign-political cooperation with
the Soviet Union since the period
before the 1948 conflict. In the
name of the defense of Egypt from
the conspiracy of the imperialists,
Yugoslavia marched along the bloc
line of Moscow. In 1967, the
Yugoslav president participated in
two Conferences of socialist
countries (on June 9 in Moscow, and
on July 11 and 12 in Budapest), and
called for maximum support to Egypt,
and establishment of a common
platform of socialist countries. In
September 1967, defining economic
aid to Arab countries was discussed
in Zagreb, at the level of deputy
prime ministers, while at the end of
the year, a meeting of the ministers
of foreign affairs of the socialist
countries began, to discuss the
implementation of the UN Security
Council Resolution on the Middle
East crisis, and the mitigation of
the crisis. Yugoslavia was the only
socialist country that offered free
aid to Arab countries.155 The crisis in
the Middle East was terminated,
although in the short term, by the
resolution of the Security Council
no. 242, of November 11, 1967. The
resolution envisaged the withdrawal
of military forces from the occupied
territory, the abolition of the
state of war, and recognition of the
sovereignty, territorial integrity
and political independence of all
countries in that area. The entire
Yugoslav approach in the UN was
assessed by the Western states as
“one-sided” and “extreme”, in the
service of the interests of the
USSR. Since 1967, the Middle East
had become the main strongpoint of
the Yugoslav-Soviet partnership.
IV. Detente and Yugoslav-Soviet
relations 1968-1980.
1. Beginning of the detente. The
“Prague Spring”
and the repeated contradictions of
Yugoslav-Soviet relations.
The military
intervention of the Warsaw Pact
forces in Czechoslovakia, on August
21, 1968, aimed against the reform
policy of the Czechoslovak party
leadership, is interpreted today as
one of the groundbreaking events in
the history of European communism
and Cold War relations. On the one
hand, the violent suppression of
“Prague Spring” testified to the
impossibility of accepting any
reform ideas of European communist
parties, which would challenge both
the basic ideological foundations of
Marxism-Leninism, and Soviet
ideological and political hegemony
in Eastern Europe. On the other
hand, military intervention had
confirmed the right of the Soviet
Union to use all available means in
the name of “proletarian
internationalism” to ensure
unhindered control over its “sphere
of interest”, while at the same
time, given the lack of any
significant intervention from the
West, this fact became generally
accepted, tracing the path to the
detente. The role of Yugoslavia in
the events related to the rise and
fall of the “Prague Spring”, which
led to worsening relations with the
Soviet Union, was sufficiently
intense to pinpoint the many
problems that Yugoslavia faced in
the late 1960s.
 Until 1968,
Yugoslav-Czechoslovak relations did
not differ much from Belgrade's
relations with the majority of
Eastern European countries. The
normalization of Belgrade's
relationship with Moscow at the
beginning of the 1960s traced the
path to the improvement of bilateral
relations between the SFRY and the
CSR, and coincided with the changes
in Czechoslovak society, fueled by
the second wave of
“de-Stalinization” in the Soviet
Union. In Prague, an atmosphere of
increasingly bolder criticism of the
“Stalinist” Gottwald cadre
prevailed, which had been missed in
the 1950s, and in the early 1960s
announced the arrival of a new
generation of educated and more
far-sighted party leaders. The head
of the party, A. Novotný,
confidently declared in 1960 that
socialism in Czechoslovakia had been
realized. Only a few years later,
the country's economy experienced
complete collapse. Under the
impression of the sharp fall in
industrial production and,
consequently, of the national
income, the critique of the
Stalinist policy of
industrialization and centralized
bureaucratic planning inspired the
first demands for radical reforms in
the CSR. In September 1964, the
Central Committee of the CP CSR
adopted the principles of a
market-oriented economic reform, as
a result of the work of a special
Committee of experts under the
leadership of the economist Ota Šik.
The economic reform in
Czechoslovakia, which was on the
track of many similar attempts in
Eastern Europe, was met with
sympathy in Belgrade. Yugoslav
communists assessed that the
improvement of relations between
Belgrade and Prague was closely
linked to the “anti-dogmatic
processes” in Czechoslovakia. The
change of attitude towards
Yugoslavia was interpreted in
Belgrade as “an evidence of the
readiness of the leadership” to free
itself from the ideological heritage
of Stalinism and begin the processes
of democratization of internal
relations. It was noted with
manifest satisfaction that the
interest in the "Yugoslav experience
of internal development” was
increasing among Czechoslovak
communists, and that popularization
and promotion of cooperation with
Yugoslavia were realized by many
“progressive circles”.156 On the other
hand, a concern was also noticeable,
regarding possible prevalence of a
more conservative group, which would
reduce the good relations with
Yugoslavia by restricting the
reform.157
In January 1968,
at the plenary session of the CC CP
CSR, a new Czechoslovak party
leadership was established, headed
by Alexander Dubček.158 The resignation
of the long-time party leader A.
Novotny occurred as a result of a
large inter-party debate of October
1967, and the prevalence of the
reformist group. Novotny failed to
suppress further reform attempts in
the economic system initiated in the
mid-1960s, an could not secure the
necessary political support in
Moscow. His final political downfall
occurred at the end of March 1968,
when he withdrew from the remaining
two functions. By removing his
political followers from the party,
a process of defining a new
political reform took place, which
was considered to be the necessary
predecessor to the successful
realization of economic changes. The
strong new reform team of the
Czechoslovak party leadership won
growing massive support in the CSR.
The reform plan was outlined in the
so-called Action program, in April
1968. The reform plan represented,
as Ivan Berend pointed out, the most
comprehensive and most radical
“version of an attempt at a serious
‘reform from the inside’ in Central
and Eastern Europe”.159 In Prague, a
massive democratic movement was
born, initiated by the party
establishment, and independent of
Moscow.
The understanding
of the essence of the “Prague
Spring” became from the very start
the seed of discord between
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.
Stable relations from the beginning
of the 1960s were founded on the
respect of mutual trust, created
against the challenges of radical
currents in the international
communist movement. The joint
restraint of Chinese dogmatism did
not entail an infinite
identification of Yugoslav interests
with those of the Soviet Union. This
meant that the Yugoslav party
leadership was ready to contribute
to creating a positive atmosphere in
relations between socialist
countries, by promoting “peaceful
coexistence”, but it did not see
itself as an “extended arm” of the
Kremlin in the Balkans. And while
Belgrade succeeded, on Moscow's
request, to calm the troublesome
independent policy of the Romanian
communist party, such expectations
were fundamentally changed when the
situation around Czechoslovakia was
concerned. The Yugoslav party’s top
leadership remained consistent, in
the first place, in respecting the
rights of every socialist country to
launch its own path to socialism,
especially if it supported the
democratic tendencies expressed in
the Yugoslav system. The events in
Czechoslovakia from January 1968,
widely popularized in the press,
were assessed positively in
Yugoslavia, as a conflict between
the “old” and the “new”,
incomparable with the events in
Hungary in 1956, and completely
“progressive” for the development of
socialism in Europe.
On the other hand,
the Soviet Union, with the support
of the majority of lager countries,
initiated a major campaign in the
spring of 1968 to suppress the
controversial and undesirable
content of the Prague reformists’
program. Starting with the meeting
of representatives of European
parties in Dresden in March 1968
(with the exception of Romania),
until the July meeting of five WP
member states in Warsaw, an
uninterrupted sharp criticism of
Dubček's leadership took place. The
reformist aspirations of the party
in the CSR were equated with “silent
counterrevolution” under the
auspices of imperialist conspiracy.
Ideological censure had become
binding and sufficiently mobilizing
for the European communists in the
perception of the danger to the ICM,
as in the case of Hungary in 1956.
Harsh measures against
Czechoslovakia were demanded, their
abandoning of the Action program,
and a change in the essence of the
proposed reforms. Brezhnev was
afraid that, as the new leader of
the CPSU, he would witness a process
of disintegration of the lager, and
the loss of hard-won Soviet spheres
in Europe. The joint policy of
pressuring Prague had already been
opposed by the Romanian, Yugoslav,
French and Italian parties, which
supported the thesis that Moscow was
losing its traditional role as a
sponsor of ideological “unity”. In
mid-May 1968, Yugoslav diplomacy
analyzed with concern that the
Soviet Union had estimated “that it
was more worth to use all available
resources and keep the situation
under control, than to allow the
process of democratization in the
CSR”.160
 Yugoslavia tried
to play the role of intermediary in
the peaceful resolution of the
crisis. At the end of April 1968,
Josip Broz Tito paid a brief visit
to the Soviet Union (April 28-30,
1968). During the talks with the
Soviet party’s top leadership, Tito
tried to defend the position of
Dubček's leadership, assessing that
Czechoslovak socialism would not be
endangered, and that there was no
reason for great concern. However,
the opinion of the Soviet party's
top leadership, which was completely
exclusive and ideologically rigid,
was not only sharply expressed
during the talks, but it also
reiterated the old “Cominform”
tendencies, not shying in its
criticism from “hitting” the reforms
in Yugoslavia. According to the
Soviet top leadership, the events in
Czechoslovakia were leading to the
creation of a “war headquarters of
counter-revolution”. Brezhnev denied
the ability of A. Dubček to
establish control over events in
which Czechoslovakia was undermined
by “fans of Beneš and Masaryk”. He
believed that the struggle between
capitalism and socialism was taking
place in the CSR. The criticism of
the Czechoslovak communists was
concluded by a criticism of the
Yugoslav press, which promoted
positive articles on Czechoslovakia,
and of some fallacious reform
attempts in Yugoslavia (“your
economic reform does not lead where
it should”).161 The attitude of Soviet
party leadership in talks with Tito
was fully in line with the Yugoslav
analysis of the basic theses of the
April party plenum of the CPSU (from
April 9 to 11, 1968). In the
conclusions of the analysis, it was
pointed out that the measures taken
by the Soviet leadership after the
plenum testified to the
unwillingness to “look deeper into
the existing internal contradictions
in socialist countries”. The plenum
was assessed as a step further in
“the direction of tightening on the
wider front of ideological activity
in the USSR”, which should
ultimately serve as “an example to
other socialist countries”. The
Yugoslav communists assessed that
the intention of the CPSU was to
dispose of all the forces in the
Soviet Union, which, through the
support of “de-Stalinization”,
called for “democratization and
deeper changes in the Soviet
society”.162
The definitive
existence of different views on the
events in Czechoslovakia gradually
cooled the relations between
Belgrade and Moscow. Communication
between the two leaderships after
the talks in Moscow fell silent, and
Yugoslav initiatives for peaceful
resolution of the crisis went in a
totally opposite direction from the
actions taken by the USSR and the
lager countries. The Yugoslav press
was criticized for publishing
materials that were “unfriendly to
the USSR”, which misinterpreted the
decisions of the April plenum, and
which “arbitrarily interpreted the
struggle of the CPSU and the USSR
government for unity and for closing
of ranks within the international
communist movement.”163 In the opinion
of Soviet diplomats, Yugoslavia was
“less cautious than even America” in
that respect.164 The attempt by the CC
CPSU to influence the views of the
LCY, by a letter of July 11, ended
without major shifts in the attitude
of Yugoslavia towards the CSR.
Moscow warned Tito that the forces
of political opposition “which
disclaim Marxism-Leninism” had
appeared in Czechoslovakia, that
anti-socialist forces were
“splitting the Czechoslovak
society”, and influencing a
“reorientation of the foreign policy
of the CSR”. Belgrade was invited by
Moscow to resist the obvious
spreading of “revisionism” and
“counterrevolution in
Czechoslovakia”.165 The Yugoslav
attitude toward the development of
the events in Czechoslovakia was
criticized by Brezhnev and the
majority of Soviet party leaders at
a meeting of the CPSU Politburo in
mid-July.166 At the Warsaw Pact meeting
in early August, Brezhnev already
defined the ideological
justification of the future military
intervention, by his view that “the
weakening of any connection with the
world system of socialism directly
affected all socialist countries,
and they could not watch it
indifferently”.167 Yugoslavia, which
entered a period of serious internal
crises with student demonstrations
in June 1968, did not diverge from
the attitude towards the development
of socialism in Czechoslovakia. This
was confirmed by the impressions
following the visit of the Yugoslav
delegation led by J. B. Tito to
Czechoslovakia, from August 8 to 10,
1968. In agreement with Tito,
Mijalko Todorović informed the
Soviet Ambassador Ivan Benediktov
about the results of the visit, and
conveyed the mainly positive
impressions of the Yugoslav
delegation. In the opinion of the
Yugoslav communist, Dubček's
leadership in Czechoslovakia was
building democratic socialism that
was meeting the specific conditions
of that country, and for which it
had the full support of the entire
population (“it is a true national
leadership”). The extreme bourgeois
forces, on the appearance of which
Eastern European parties expressed
their concern, were, according to M.
Todorović, “of second degree
significance”. The Yugoslav
leadership opposed the
"dramatization" of the situation,
and expressed full confidence in the
“working class and the current
leadership of the CSR”.168 However, at
that moment, the decision on
military intervention was already
made in Moscow, which could also be
noticed by the attitude of the
Soviet ambassador in Belgrade. The
views of Yugoslavia, as well as
Romania, were successfully isolated
and discarded.
The military
intervention of the Warsaw Pact
forces in Czechoslovakia and the
forcible removal of Dubček's
leadership, in the night between
August 20 and 21, 1968, led to a
serious deterioration of the
relations between Belgrade and
Moscow. The use of army as a means
of interfering with the internal
affairs of another country was
fundamentally contrary to everything
that Yugoslavia, as part of the
wider front of non-aligned
countries, stood for in
international relations. As the
initiative for intervention was led
by the Soviet Union, and later
ideologically justified by the
“doctrine of limited sovereignty”, a
critical overview of the Soviet
imperialist ambitions was renewed in
the Yugoslav public. At two special
sessions immediately after the
intervention (9th joint session of
the Presidency and the Executive
Committee on August 21, and 10th
session of the Central Committee, on
August 23, 1968), the party
leadership was united in condemning
the aggression against the CSR. For
the first time since the break with
Stalin, the Yugoslav communists
found themselves in a position to
elaborate harsh criticism of the
policy of the Soviet Union at the
highest party forums. Military
intervention was assessed as the
resurrection of a “greater state
policy” that, in the act of
“occupation”, affirmed the elements
of a “dark ideology”. It was a
moment, according to State Secretary
for Foreign Affairs Marko Nikezić,
when “illusions about the USSR
collapsed”.169 Edvard Kardelj believed
that, by censuring the intervention,
Yugoslavia gained a new historical
opportunity to be at the head of
forces that would censure
bureaucratism, hegemonism and
deformations of socialism.170 The
Yugoslav communists returned to the
theses of 1948 that the foreign
policy of the Soviet Union could not
be explained without recognizing the
rules regulating the development of
the Soviet society. At the
above-mentioned sessions, Tito also
supported such a view, pointing out
that the reasons for military
intervention should be sought in the
embracing of “old methods”, which
the Soviet Union and other lager
members knew well how to use. Both
party sessions demanded great
mobilization in achieving unity
among party membership, necessary
military preparations, alertness
towards all enemy elements, both
from the right and from the left,
changes in foreign policy, as well
as proper understanding of what
happened in Czechoslovakia. By
defending the socialist character of
the reforms of the ousted CSR
leadership, Yugoslavia defended both
its independent position and its
socialist development. All the
reasons justifying military
intervention, presented to Josip
Broz Tito by Soviet Ambassador
Benediktov on August 30, were
totally rejected.
 The negative and
harsh reaction of Yugoslavia to the
military stifling of the “Prague
Spring” caused the usual propaganda
“restraint” of Yugoslav politics in
the lager. In this, the activities
of the Soviet Union were most
prominent. From the first day of
military intervention, the Yugoslav
Embassy in Moscow reported on the
beginning of strong political
pressure, in the form of a harsh
anti-Yugoslav campaign. The
ambassador, Dobrivoje Vidić, sent
urgent reports to Belgrade, in which
he noted numerous measures of Soviet
official bodies directed against
Embassy members and Yugoslav
citizens in the Soviet Union.171
According to the Yugoslav Embassy,
the content of the anti-Yugoslav
campaign testified to the “renewal
of the course from the 1948 era”.172 In
numerous articles in the Soviet
press, the censure of the critical
attitude of Yugoslavia had a dual
role. On the one hand, it justified
military intervention in
Czechoslovakia by opposing Yugoslav
arguments, and popularizing the
thesis of the Soviet party
leadership according to which “the
sovereignty of socialist countries
depended on the unity of the
socialist lager”.173 In talks with
Yugoslav diplomats, many Soviet
party leaders justified the use of
the WP troops in Czechoslovakia,
pointing out that military
intervention “had to happen”, that
it was directed against
“counterrevolution”, and that
history would show that it was
justified.174 At the same time, it
could be observed that the views of
Soviet officials were conveyed
calmly, that an understanding of the
Yugoslav views was occasionally
expressed, and that space for future
normalization of relations was left.
On the other hand, the criticism of
the Soviet (and the lager) press was
also aimed at the Yugoslav system,
and many articles insisted that the
Yugoslav position was actually the
result of a “long-standing political
conception of the LCY”, and that the
non-bloc policy of Yugoslavia was
openly directed against the
social-political countries.175 The aim
of such a campaign was to “unmask
the Yugoslav model”, which served as
a model for “Czech
counterrevolutionaries”.176
After the censure
of the intervention in
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslav foreign
policy gained the possibility of
distancing itself further from close
cooperation with the Soviet Union,
which was based on the partnership
established in the early 60's, by
recovering a balance in maintaining
good and stable relations with
Western countries.177 Intensive
contacts with the US administration
ensured the support of Washington
for Yugoslav independence by the end
of the year.178 The activation of
non-aligned countries, which started
at the beginning of the year with
the intention of convening a new
conference, was also carried out in
the desire to obtain support in
relation to Czechoslovakia.179 From the
perspective of Yugoslav diplomacy,
relations with Moscow had to be
based on an understanding of the
events in Czechoslovakia, proper
analysis of the intentions of Soviet
foreign policy, and the role and
place of Yugoslavia in it. At the
beginning of September 1968, at a
new session of the Presidency and
the Executive Committee, Marko
Nikezić, representing SSFA, outlined
a thesis about the obvious expansion
of Soviet politics, which was, in
his opinion, directed towards the
Mediterranean and the Middle East,
with Yugoslavia as an obstacle on
that road. According to Nikezić's
opinion, such a policy was a
“permanent tendency” of Soviet
foreign policy, and it did not
depend on the actual group of Soviet
leaders in the Kremlin.180 Similar
analyses were made by SSFA in the
first weeks of the escalation of the
crisis. The Soviet action in CSR was
assessed as “an expression of a much
broader Soviet strategic foreign
policy concept”, the essence of
which could be found in the
intention of USSR “to accomplish
some of its long-standing
aspirations by various means and
even military force”.181 Soviet policy
in the Balkans was interpreted as
part of a larger strategy for
strengthening the Soviet influence,
and suppressing the independence of
Yugoslavia (and Albania), with the
aim of realizing full military
control over the greater part of the
Balkan Peninsula. In early October,
Belgrade sent warning instructions
to Yugoslav diplomatic missions in
West European countries, asking them
to observe the intentions of Soviet
pressure on certain Western
countries regarding their
relationship with Yugoslavia,
especially with regard to the
support of these countries in
regulating Yugoslavia's relations
with ECM.182 What worried Yugoslavia
most after Czechoslovakia, was the
promotion of the Soviet doctrine of
“limited sovereignty”.183 The articles
in the Soviet press, as well as the
speech of Gromyko in the UN, had
raised dilemmas and fears that
Yugoslav independence was constantly
under scrutiny of Soviet
interventionist intentions,
justified by the ideological reasons
of the alleged “international duty”.
The decline of
relations between Yugoslavia and the
Soviet Union, in the autumn of 1968,
as a result of the existence of
totally different views of the
military intervention in
Czechoslovakia, did not lead to full
deterioration, nor did it imply
consequences similar to
post-Hungarian events in 1956. From
the first weeks of the crisis,
Soviet party officials sent dual
messages - public censure of
Yugoslavia, but with room left for
improvement of relations. Many
interlocutors to Yugoslav ambassador
Vidić in Moscow, in his view, had
tried to leave the impression that
Yugoslavia was not threatened with
military intervention, and that with
acknowledgment of different
standpoints, they intended to
continue cooperation in bilateral
relations of the two countries.184 The
correspondence between Brezhnev and
Tito, which was the usual practice
for exchanging Yugoslav and Soviet
views on important issues, began
only two months after the August
crisis, and in some way summarized
the dissatisfaction of the two
parties by the actual crisis in
relations.185 In the first letter of
Brezhnev, dated October 17, Soviet
dissatisfaction was focused on
criticizing the presence of an
“anti-Soviet sentiment” in
Yugoslavia, which was initiated by
an “incorrect assessment” of the
Warsaw Pact military intervention.
Brezhnev blamed this new atmosphere
for the deterioration of
Soviet-Yugoslav relations,
especially with the insistence of
officials in Belgrade that an
identical military intervention
threatened Yugoslavia. As opposed to
the crisis in relations a decade
ago, Brezhnev emphasized, this time
the issue was not in “different
approaches to the theory and
practice of socialism”, but rather
in the disturbing course that
Yugoslavia began to implement with
the help of the “anti-Soviet
campaign”.186 Tito's answer on November
5, 1968, started from pointing out
the principles on which Yugoslavia
based its foreign policy for decades187
Refusing to accept the reasons for
the deterioration of relations that
L. Brezhnev stated in his letter,
Tito replied that the crisis was not
a consequence of the “anti-Soviet
propaganda”, but rather of a change
in Soviet foreign policy, which used
military force against the CSR and
disregarded the independent position
of Yugoslavia regarding that event.
Tito criticized all elements of the
anti-Yugoslav propaganda that was
being carried out in the Soviet
Union and other socialist states,
especially attacks on Yugoslavia's
foreign policy orientation and its
internal system, which resembled a
“similar campaign against our
country in the past, which caused
enormous damage, not only in the
mutual relations of our countries,
and much beyond that.”188 Yugoslavia
was particularly worried, Tito
pointed out, by the justification of
military intervention by the
doctrine of “so-called limited
sovereignty”, which “legalized
intervention and interference in the
internal affairs of other sovereign
states.” The suggestion of Soviet
policy that an improvement in
relations between the two countries
might follow if Yugoslavia changed
its policy, was rejected by Tito as
unacceptable conditioning, stressing
that the existence of different
positions was a “normal situation”
in the relations of sovereign
states. The principles of the
Belgrade and Moscow declarations
were the only true foundation of
Yugoslav-Soviet cooperation on equal
terms, and Tito had to conclude at
the end of the letter that they were
missing, and asked “if they still
represented the basis on which the
USSR government is ready to
cooperate with socialist
Yugoslavia?”189
The
irreconcilability of differences
manifested in the correspondence
between the two party leaders was a
confirmation of the divergent
directions of interests of the two
socialist countries. The crisis that
arose due to the military
intervention in CSR was unexpected
for the Yugoslav communists, but it
was not a new event in understanding
the essence of Soviet policy in
Eastern Europe. The process of
finding the right modus vivendi in
the Yugoslav-Soviet relations had
gone through various stages, testing
the possibility of Soviet foreign
policy to be sufficiently
“flexible”, and Yugoslav to be
sufficiently unaligned. Drawing from
the experience of 1948 and 1956,
Soviet policy was based on the fact
that any tightening of relations
with Yugoslavia was politically
harmful, not only because of the
possible spreading of
“anti-Sovietism” in Yugoslavia, but
also due to the fact that a complete
break with Belgrade would lead to a
greater military and economic
dependence of Yugoslavia on the
West. On the other hand, Yugoslav
policy firmly stood on the non-bloc
position, believing that too close
relations with one of the parties in
the Cold War were harmful to
Yugoslav interests. In the late
1960s, Yugoslavia and the Soviet
Union had enough experience and
developed diplomatic mechanisms for
sufficiently overcoming the crisis.
The problem related to the events in
the CSR did not jeopardize the
Soviet-Yugoslav bilateral relations
at any moment, and the Soviet Union
was already becoming one of the
important foreign trade partners of
Yugoslavia. Moscow had focused its
hopes on Josip Broz Tito's
statesman’s experience, whom it
perceived as a strong guarantor of
stable relations, unlike many in the
Yugoslav party leadership who were
characterized by the Soviets as
“anti-Soviet” and “pro-Western”. At
the celebration of the Republic Day,
on November 29, 1968, in Jajce, Tito
spoke about the desire of Yugoslavia
to develop good relations with all
socialist countries. Positive
messages heard at Tito's press
conference in Jajce, in the opinion
of the members of the CC CPSU, were
immediately welcomed at the highest
level in Moscow (“they gave wings to
the Soviet leadership”).190 The Soviet
ambassador to Yugoslavia, Ivan
Benediktov, in a conversation with
the acting State Secretary for
Foreign Affairs Miša Pavićević, on
December 25, also expressed
satisfaction with Tito's stance,
pointing out that responsible people
in the USSR concluded that “after
some deterioration, a basis for
improving the atmosphere in our
relations had been created.”191
 Mitigation of the
political damage caused by the
Soviet intervention in the CSR to
Yugoslav-Soviet relations did not
last too long. It could be said
that, in comparison to previous
crises in mutual relations, such as
the break with Stalin in 1948, or
the Hungarian Revolution of 1956,
the crisis of 1968 was the shortest.
By relying on Tito's support, Soviet
policy managed to open a dialogue
with Yugoslavia in 1969, and to
improve communication with Belgrade
in less than a year. For the Soviet
interests, it was the achievement of
one part of the strategy after the
stabilization of the situation in
the CSR, by the establishment of
unity in the ICM and the reduction
of resistance that appeared in many
European communist parties. Already
in the spring of 1969, talks between
Josip Broz Tito and Soviet
Ambassador I. Benediktov
significantly raised the issue of
normalization of relations. After
consultations in Moscow, at a
meeting with Tito and the new State
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Mirko
Tepavac, on May 18, the Soviet
ambassador conveyed a message from
the CC CPSU stating that the
principled line of Soviet party and
state leadership towards Yugoslavia
remained unchanged, and that it
entailed “consistent fulfillment by
the USSR of treaties and agreements
signed with Yugoslavia, strict
adherence to the principle of
equality and respect for the
sovereignty of the SFRY, the absence
of any restrictions in the
development of economic, military,
scientific-technical and cultural
cooperation with Yugoslavia.”192 The
Soviet Union, in its message to the
Yugoslav leadership, insisted on the
existence of a number of common
interests, which enabled the
strengthening of mutual cooperation,
and on the rejection of those bad
practices, such as writings in the
press. In contrast to fierce
anti-Yugoslav course present in the
Soviet public since August 1968, as
well as Brezhnev's criticism in his
letter to Josip Broz, a new
orientation towards Yugoslavia in
mid-1969 calmed the rising tensions.
Stable bilateral cooperation,
enhanced by many favorable economic
and military arrangements, had been
highlighted as an indicator of the
good will to improve overall
interstate relations. This was
especially emphasized by the
statement from the Soviet side that
there was not a single country that
would, with bad intentions towards a
country, “offer economic and
military assistance, help it to
prepare military personnel and
install the latest military
technique.”193 The CPSU message was
received by Tito without major
objections, with expressed desire to
talk about all the problems. The
conciliatory tone in the
conversation bypassed the usual
dispute on the writings of the press
and the problem of Czechoslovakia.
Tito reiterated that the
intervention in the CSR was wrong,
but believed that its future
development was “a matter of the
people and the party”, bearing in
mind also the changes brought with
the new party leadership. Asked by
Benediktov, whether he could convey
to the government of the USSR and
the CC CPSU that Tito’s attitude was
“that by taking appropriate measures
it is possible to overcome existing
difficulties and to improve and
further develop our mutual relations
and cooperation”, Tito answered
affirmatively.194
The Yugoslav
response to the May message was
delivered to Brezhnev by Ambassador
D. Vidić on June 23, and it
contained Yugoslavia's readiness to
improve all forms of cooperation
with the Soviet Union, which were in
line with the well-known principles
of “the self-management system and
the principles of our foreign
policy.”195 However, the desire of the
party's top leadership to start a
dialogue with Moscow did not go
along with the criticism of Soviet
politics in the Yugoslav press and
opinion journalism. In mid-June
1969, the Yugoslav ambassador to
Sweden, Lazar Latinović, sent
negative remarks on the forwarded
circular letter about
Yugoslav-Soviet relations, opposing
the somewhat changed views on Soviet
politics. Based on the experience of
his diplomatic activity in
Stockholm, Latinović warned that the
USSR “was intensely working to
compromise the SFRY and its
leadership, by using all available
means”. Describing his negative
experiences after his trip to the
Soviet Union in 1969, where he met
with “crafty” and “knavish” Soviet
leadership, Latinović said that any
“indulgence toward a large country
would negatively affect the small
country”.196 On the other hand, in
early July 1969, the Yugoslav
ambassador to the United Kingdom, I.
Sarajčić, sent confidential reports
to Belgrade, where he conveyed
valuable information from certain
British and American services
regarding the foreign policy
positions of the Soviet Union.
According to the assessments from
London, the USSR was not prepared to
undertake new pressure measures
against Romania and Yugoslavia in
the nearest future, and a group
within Soviet leadership was
strengthening that opposed the
policy of crude pressure, and
advocated a “more flexible
resolution of misunderstandings
within the socialist lager, as well
as with Yugoslavia.”197 Sarajčić’s
information from London contributed
to confirming the correctness of the
party's top leadership decision to
initiate the process of normalizing
relations with the Soviet Union, so
that the doctrine of limited
sovereignty would be less mentioned
in relation to Yugoslavia. The
Czechoslovak case was now isolated,
and the Yugoslav side ceased to
exploit it publicly. Critical texts
about the Soviet Union, repressive
skirmishes in Czechoslovakia, and
the Cino-Soviet relations,
occasionally appeared in the titles
of the Yugoslav press, but since the
summer of 1969, they were reduced,
either forcibly, or by insisting
that the press had to follow the
objectives of Yugoslav foreign
policy.198
The visit of
Andrei Gromyko, the head of Soviet
diplomacy, at the beginning of
September 1969, was used by the
Yugoslav leadership to formalize, in
a direct dialogue with the Soviet
Union, the principles on which the
new Yugoslav-Soviet relations would
be based. Prior to the start of the
talks, A. Gromyko read the response
of the Soviet government and the CC
CPSU to the Yugoslav message of July
16, delivered to Brezhnev. Invoking
the respect of the “Leninist
principles of foreign policy”,
Soviet officials reiterated their
readiness “to follow the principles
of equality and sovereignty of the
socialist states, and to respect
their full right to solve their
internal affairs”, in their
relations with Yugoslavia.199
Disagreements had been noticed, but
the message emphasized that the
basic issue was “to remove
disagreements and to improve the
comprehensive cooperation”.200 During a
substantial discussion on many
issues, Tito reiterated that there
was an interest in Yugoslavia to
maintain good relations with the
Soviet Union and other socialist
countries, advocating the policy of
active co-existence in foreign
affairs. Persuading the Soviet
delegation that the leading
political power in Yugoslavia was
solely the League of Communists, and
that the course of removing all
“anomalies” secured “proper
socialist development”, Tito
responded to the many erroneous
conclusions of the anti-Yugoslav
campaign since August 1968 about the
Yugoslav system, with the primary
desire to make the “specific path of
Yugoslav socialism” publicly
recognized once again. The attitude
towards military intervention in
Czechoslovakia was, in principle,
unchanged. Tito reiterated that this
move had been a mistake “both for
socialism in Czechoslovakia and for
socialism in general”.201 However, at
the same time, the Yugoslav shift
regarding the issue of the CSR was
expressed, with Tito's attitude that
he did not wish to get involved in
the interpretation of the substance
of the changes with the new
Czechoslovak leadership, and his
clear instructions to Yugoslav
communists that writing about the
Czechoslovak case had to end.
According to Tito, the overall
situation about the CSR was no
longer to be “dramatized”, because
“we could not be bigger Czechs than
Czechs”. Tito clearly emphasized
that Yugoslavia's position was that
Yugoslavia's relations with the
Soviet Union were not allowed to
deteriorate due to the issue of
Czechoslovakia, which was accepted
by A. Gromyko with great pleasure.
In the text of the
joint statement on the visit of
Minister Gromyko, it was pointed out
that the two parties declared their
will to further develop the
friendship between the USSR and the
SFRY. The fact that the Yugoslav
side wanted to be highlighted in the
statement, and which was also
emphasized in the message of the
CPSU read by Gromyko, was that the
principles of the Belgrade and
Moscow declaration were “the
permanent basis for cooperation
between the two countries”.202 By a
statement in which the key common
standpoints were outlined, both
parties expressed their belief that
the exchange of views would have a
positive impact on further
development and consolidation of the
relations between the SFRY and the
USSR. For the Yugoslav party's top
leadership, the debate on the
forcible crash of Dubček’s reform
leadership was ended. Yugoslav
interests to support the
international detente through better
relations with the Soviet Union
overpowered the debates that emerged
in European communism about the
essence of military aggression, and
the possibilities of democratic
reform. In October 1969, Brezhnev
was able to note with pleasure that
no one was speaking “against our
intervention” any more. In his
words, his decision to send troops
was motivated by the decisive
awareness that “Czechoslovakia was
not Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia could do
it one way or the other, but it had
undergone a revolution and remained
socialist."203 It was a far-sighted
conviction of the Soviet leader.
2. The rise of detente and
Yugoslav-Soviet agreements
1971-1973.
 In a later
reference to the events in
Czechoslovakia of August 1968,
Leonid Brezhnev assessed that the
military intervention of the Warsaw
Pact forces significantly
contributed to setting the ground
for the implementation of the
detente. The successful completion
of military and political measures
in the CSR, the suspension of all
program interventions of Dubček’s
leadership, the stabilization of the
situation in Czechoslovak society
through the imposition of a more
restrictive party course, and, most
of all, the absence of any
significant consequences for the
international position of the Soviet
Union, convinced the Soviet
leadership that a big political
victory had been won on the
international scene. In his
September 1968 report to the
Politburo, the Minister of Foreign
Affairs of the Soviet Union, A.
Gromyko, assured the party's top
leadership that the invasion had
sobered many in the West as to the
possibility of developing their
potential in that part of Europe,
and convinced them of the
determination of the USSR to defend
its interests.204 The prospect that the
intervention in Czechoslovakia would
jeopardize the already fragile unity
of the ICM and undermine Moscow's
authority among European communists
had also failed to materialize. Some
opposition that appeared with the
military intervention among certain
European Communist parties,
especially French, Italian and
Yugoslav, had been gradually
successfully muted. The World
Conference of Communist Parties,
held after many years of
preparations in June 1969 in Moscow,
showed the CPSU's skill to assert
unity in the ICM and its sovereign
position at the conference, by
offering the topic of confronting
imperialism and Maoism, and
reiterating the importance of
“peaceful coexistence”. Brezhnev
perceived the conference as an
expression of great support for
successful policy implementation in
Czechoslovakia and censure of
Chinese politics.205
The possibility of
achieving a detente in cold-war
international relations was a
fundamental issue that, in various
ways, affected the post-war period
of development of the bipolar world.
Drawing from the firmly set and
irreconcilable interests of the
established blocks, impulses towards
supporting adherence to the
principle of “peaceful coexistence”
among states with different
socio-political systems, constituted
a periodic, rather than permanent
feature of the policies of key
actors in international relations.
Analyzing all the international
crises since 1945, in particular
with reference to the Cuban rocket
crisis of 1962, it seemed that the
detente was an unattainable project
in a complex ideologically
distributed discourse of world
politics. However, at the end of the
1960s, along with the end of the
crisis in Czechoslovakia, new
political platforms in Washington
and Bonn appeared, which enabled the
resolution of a number of open and
unresolved problems in post-war
relations with the Soviet Union. The
increased confidence of the Soviet
leadership after the break-up of the
“Prague Spring” made the Soviet
foreign policy more pervasive, while
the new danger from China, after the
border incident on March 1969 on
Ussuri, made it more adaptable to
the initiatives from the West. For
Leonid Brezhnev, undoubtedly the
strongest political figure in
Politburo since 1968, the detente
was perceived as a personal project.
The statehood of the Soviet leader
in securing world peace, and the
assertion of Soviet post-war spheres
of interest, had become an effective
substitute for the anti-reform
course in internal policy and the
stagnating effect of “real
socialism”. Embracing the “Eastern
policy” of the new West European
government of Willy Brandt, after
its election triumph in 1969, led to
the first important agreements
between Moscow and Bonn, which
opened the door to the detente.206
Regulating the most controversial
problems with West Germany, which
was until then, the main ideological
and geostrategic rival in Europe,
enabled Brezhnev's stable
negotiating position with
Washington. Relations with the
United States, and the new
administration of Richard Nixon,
were enduring grave temptations of
the unfinished war in Vietnam, great
resistance in both the Soviet and
the American leadership, and the
simultaneous need to maintain
cohesion in both military-political
blocs. Summit meetings between Nixon
and Brezhnev in 1972 and 1973, and
numerous signed bilateral
agreements, represented the peak of
the detente in international
relations.
Yugoslav foreign
policy had closely monitored the
changes in the relations between the
great powers, trying to find in them
enough elements to match its
interests. At the beginning of 1970,
the new Yugoslav ambassador to
Moscow, Veljko Mićunović, sent the
first preliminary reports on the
state of relations with the USSR.
Besides a critical overview of the
many negative features of Soviet
policy and strategy towards
Yugoslavia, Mićunović noted that
there were many favorable factors in
international relations that could
influence further development of
Yugoslav-Soviet relations - the
interest of the USSR to preserve the
status quo in Europe, cooperation of
the USSR with all countries of
Western Europe, and the long-term
cooperation between USSR and the
United States, in both directions.
Mićunović pointed out, and this
became an obvious fact from the
beginning of the 1960s, that the
danger from the People's Republic of
China strengthened the “pro-Western
policy of the USSR”.207 Some of the new
moments observed in Soviet politics
were on the agenda during
Yugoslav-Soviet contacts in 1969.
During the visit of A. Gromyko,
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union
agreed, in a joint statement, that
one of the priorities in mutual
cooperation between the two
countries had to be the issue of
security and cooperation in Europe:
“The two parties believe that
holding a general European
conference could present a useful
path towards solving European
problems, contributing to the
rapprochement of viewpoints and to
the efforts of all interested states
to consolidate peace in Europe, and
to develop common European
cooperation in various fields.”208 Each
in its own way, Belgrade and Moscow
had committed themselves to
cooperating and exchanging views on
the issue of European security in
the future. During the talks with
Gromyko at Brioni, Tito suggested to
the Soviet side that their policy
should be much more “flexible” in
providing support to the forces in
West Germany that promote peace and
security. Insisting on the support
to the Social Democrats of Willy
Brandt, with whom he already had
successful co-operation, Tito
expressed concern that their
political option might not win in
the upcoming elections (“Our
interest is to strengthen Social
Democrats in West Germany. Brant is,
nevertheless, in favor of a
different foreign policy than
Kissinger.”)209 In a letter to
Brezhnev, of December 7, 1969, Tito
was encouraged that there were
numerous initiatives among European
countries to organize a European
conference, which, in Tito's view,
could be regarded as “a favorable
sign that a climate and readiness
for creating better and more stable
conditions in Europe exist.”210
Yugoslav politics
tried to be visible enough in
moments when the detente was
developing. The crisis in the CSR in
August 1968 was sobering for
Yugoslavia, and it emphasized more
the need to return the balance in
relation to the great powers. In
addition, the international prestige
of Yugoslavia was on the increase
with the resistance of Belgrade to
the military intervention in
Czechoslovakia, which was used by
Yugoslav diplomacy for a greater
engagement in international
relations. The initiative for
convening of the third NAM
conference had been one of the most
important priorities of the Yugoslav
foreign policy. Although preparatory
meetings in Belgrade (1969) and Dar
es Salaam (1970) showed different
views among non-aligned countries,
caused by the action of radical
currents in the Third World, they
did not prevent the successful
holding of the Lusaka conference.
Tito's visit to the African
countries in January and February
1970 (Tanzania, Zambia, Ethiopia,
Kenya, Sudan, Uganda, UAR and Libya)
was part of the Yugoslav campaign to
support the new conference, and
Tito's travel to Benelux, France and
West Germany, at the end of the
year, was the first official visit
of the Yugoslav president to Western
Europe since the mid-1950s. The
meeting with Willy Brandt was
important not only for strengthening
the bilateral relations between
Yugoslavia and West Germany, but
also for Yugoslav support to the
first agreements between Moscow and
Bonn. As Tito conveyed to the
members of the Soviet delegation of
the Supreme Soviet of the USSR
during their visit to Belgrade in
October 1970, Brandt was willing to
continue the policy of improving
relations with socialist countries,
despite the opposition's antagonism,
with the message that the atmosphere
in Europe for the planned European
conferences should continue to be
improved. With great optimism, Tito
viewed the visits to West European
countries as very important,
especially in sending the message to
European hosts, that the issue of
security in Europe was incompatible
with the bloc division.211 Finally, the
visit of Richard Nixon to Yugoslavia
from September 30 to October 2,
1970, was a confirmation of the rise
of Belgrade's cooperation with
Washington since 1968, which would
be reinforced by Tito's return visit
to the United States at the end of
October 1971. The new political
platform between the SFRY and the
US, harmonized with the Washington
declaration of 1971, laid the
foundations of new Yugoslav-American
relations on principles that
reflected the intentions of detente
- overcoming international tensions,
respect for equality among states
with different systems, and
maintaining relations in line with
“the spirit and principles of the UN
Charter”.212
The path to the
Yugoslav-Soviet agreements of
1971-1973, which represented a
turning point in establishing stable
relations of the 1970s, faced
various challenges, both in
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The
invitation to Leonid Brezhnev to
visit Yugoslavia, sent by Josip Broz
Tito in late 1969, was not accepted
in Moscow until mid-1971. There was
an impression that in the process of
improving the relations between
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, the
former was much more active.
Yugoslav ambassador to Moscow,
Veljko Mićunović, in his first
reports on the perspectives of
Yugoslav-Soviet relations, at the
beginning of 1970, pointed out
numerous negative features of Soviet
policy towards Yugoslavia. Mićunović
believed that the political
reservations of the USSR towards
Yugoslavia did not significantly
change even after A. Gromyko’s
visit, and that this was a direct
consequence of the political
activity against Yugoslavia since
1968. Assessing the Soviet approach
towards Yugoslavia as less and less
improvised, as it results from the
work of “special teams composed of
experts from various institutes”,
Mićunović pointed out that, apart
from the official attitude towards
Yugoslavia, there existed an
internal one, which was
anti-Yugoslav, as well as another,
which used all means to establish
relations within the Yugoslav
society “in order to strengthen the
Soviet presence and influence in
Yugoslavia”. The report warned that
the activities of the Cominform
emigration in the Soviet Union were
running without interference, that
Soviet politics was a longstanding
patron of “Greater Bulgaria” threats
to Yugoslavia, and that, with its
independent position, Yugoslavia
represented an obstacle to the
Soviet expansion towards the
Mediterranean. As to the Yugoslav
non-aligned policy, in the opinion
of Mićunović, there were clear
tendencies of challenging the
influence of the role of Yugoslavia
and efforts to adapt the activities
of the NAM to the Soviet interests.213
Regarding the prospects for future
development of relations between
Yugoslavia and the USSR, Mićunović
emphasized positive factors in the
change of Soviet policy towards
Western Europe and America, but he
generally believed that the
hegemonic policy of the Soviet Union
towards socialist countries and
Europe was a significant impediment.
His decades long significant
experience in diplomacy, enriched by
ambassadorial positions both in
Moscow (twice) and in Washington,
had allowed V. Mićunović to
continuously follow the ups and
downs of Yugoslav-Soviet relations.
Unlike earlier periods of
“reconciliation”, Mićunović claimed
at the beginning of the 1970's that
the Soviet leadership based its
policy towards Yugoslavia on “more
reliable factors”.214 They were based
on the conviction of the Russians
that their presence and influence in
Yugoslavia, Mićunović concluded, was
directly “linked to the rise of our
internal problems, and to our
possible problems in foreign
relations”.215
 The internal
crisis in Yugoslavia, which started
in the early 1970s, significantly
influenced the course of
Yugoslav-Soviet relations. The
deterioration in relations with the
Soviet Union, due to military
intervention against the reform
leadership in Prague, gave wings to
the reform group within the LCY to
take some of the key positions in
the republican and federal
institutions at the end of 1968. It
was a conviction, in the words of
Mirko Tepavac, State Secretary for
Foreign Affairs since 1969, that it
became possible to defend in
Yugoslavia what had been defeated in
Czechoslovakia.216 The election of
Marko Nikezić, former State
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, as
president of the CC LC of Serbia,
was a clear consequence of such a
conviction, since Nikezić was not
only one of the proponents of the
reform in the 1960s, but also a
harsh critic of Soviet policy, which
was why he was considered in Moscow
as belonging to the “pro-Western”
group in LCY. From its reform
position, Nikezić's leadership
continuously criticized the Soviet
system (“we must be critical of this
system because of our evolution
also”), opposing the conservative
party leaders gathered around Tito.217
The reform tendencies among Yugoslav
communists were traditionally
critically received in Moscow, and
after the events in Czechoslovakia,
they were opposed to the strategy of
the CPSU to curb “liberal”
tendencies in the communist parties
of Eastern Europe. The campaign
against Yugoslavia since August 1968
insisted on the criticism of the
Yugoslav self-government system, its
ideological shortcomings and
problems.218 At the same time, numerous
Soviet party officials critically
emphasized, in conversations with
Yugoslav diplomats, that there were
many pro-Western and anti-Soviet
forces in Yugoslavia, which opposed
cooperation with the Soviet Union.
During the talks with Tito, in
September 1969, A. Gromyko pointed
out that some events in Yugoslavia,
related to its internal organization
and political life, were met with
reservations in the Soviet Union.
Stating that the system was “without
a doubt your internal question”,
Gromyko stressed that, nevertheless,
the USSR, as a “fraternal socialist
country”, could not “ignore internal
relations in socialist countries.
That was in line with socialist
internationalism and proletarian
internationalism”.219
Attempts to
reaffirm the principles of social
and economic reform from the
mid-1960s were not extensively
supported by the party, and the
problems that arose in that period
set the sharp tone of
inter-republican and, consequently,
inter-ethnic conflicts in
Yugoslavia. The Tenth session of the
CC CP of Croatia, in January 1970,
opened many questions of possible
changes in Yugoslavia, viewed from
the perspective of Zagreb, which
intensified the inter-party polemic
and polarization. In such an
atmosphere, which was presented in
foreign press as a process of
disintegration of the country,
apprehension of a more extensive
Soviet interference in internal
problems was growing in Yugoslavia.
Edward Kardelj explained the
possibilities of achieving “more
liberal changes” in Yugoslav society
and their relation to the attitude
of the Soviet Union at a meeting of
the CC CP Slovenia, where he pointed
out that the greatest success in
Yugoslavia after 1948 was in
resisting “the political tendencies
represented by Đilas and other
pseudo-liberal or social
ultra-radicals”, as Yugoslavia would
otherwise most likely experience the
fate of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
There was not need to live in the
illusion, Kardelj warned, that “this
danger for us had completely
disappeared”.220 The warnings of the
ambassador to Moscow V. Mićunović,
in the reports of 1970 and 1971,
went in that direction. Prior to the
planned official visit by the
President of the FEC (Federal
Executive Council), M. Ribičić, to
the Soviet Union, V. Mićunović wrote
that in a series of statements by
Soviet representatives, “acts of
direct interference in our internal
affairs, divisive perceptions of our
leadership, and suggestions for
measures that should be undertaken
in our internal and foreign policy”
could be found.221 The unpleasant talks
that Ribičić held with Kosygin, as
well as the fact that Brezhnev
refused to meet with him, convinced
Mićunović that the USSR “did not
perceive Yugoslavia as an equal
partner”.222 At the end of 1970, the
Yugoslav Embassy also made an
analysis of Soviet texts criticizing
Yugoslavia, which led to the
conclusion that the policy of
Yugoslavia and LCY were
“systematically treated as a basic
ideological opponent” in the USSR.223
The crisis in Yugoslavia did not
subside, but grew increasingly
complicated by a total paralysis of
the federal institutions, the
inter-republican conflicts and
distrust, which was widely commented
in the Soviet press and party
newspapers as evidence of the crisis
of the Yugoslav system.
Meetings between
Tito and Brezhnev in 1971, 1972 and
1973 took place at a time when the
policy of detente was at its peak.
Both leaders were willing to leave
their disagreements behind, and
frame the principles of cooperation
between the SFRY and the USSR in
direct negotiations. There was a
understanding that the policy of
detente should be supported,
regardless of whether initiatives
came from Moscow or from Belgrade,
for the sake of the common goal of
achieving peace on the Old
Continent. In April 1971, at the
24th Congress of the CPSU, later
dubbed the “Congress of Peace”,
Brezhnev's concept of “peaceful
coexistence” completely triumphed.
Although there was still significant
resistance, Brezhnev successfully
traced a path to accepting his
conception of international
relations by the CPSU. The Congress
offered great support to convening
the European Conference on Security
and Cooperation, and, consequently,
further improvement of relations
with Yugoslavia had to be part of a
general Soviet European policy.224 The
arrival of L. Brezhnev to Belgrade,
in September 1971, took place after
a successful meeting of the Soviet
leader with W. Brandt in Yalta, and
the first agreements with the US
President R. Nixon on holding a
joint Soviet-American meeting in
1972. In a short conversation with
S. Dolanc, Brezhnev summed up his
expectations prior to the talks with
Tito, stating that the talks should
concentrate on the situation in the
world globally, setting aside mutual
disagreements.225 The meeting with Tito
was rich in important messages of
mutual understanding, and showed
common attitudes on most
international issues. Brezhnev
assessed that a socialist society
was being built in Yugoslavia, and
that, if there were “different
approaches”, they could not be the
subject of a dispute. The importance
of the documents from 1955 and 1956
was confirmed by the Soviet side,
and found its place in the joint
statement after the visit. Several
times during the meeting, the
impression was that Brezhnev wanted
close Yugoslav-Soviet relations akin
to his cordial relations with Tito.226
A mutual desire for good interstate
and inter-party relations was
expressed. Brezhnev emphasized the
issue of foreign policy as extremely
important. He briefed Tito on his
talks with W. Brandt, which in his
view offered hope that the
organization of the European
Security Conference had great
support from West Germany, as well
as on contacts with the United
States, with which the first
important strategic consultations on
strategic weapons and West Berlin
were underway. For the first time,
the view of the Soviet Union that
one of the preconditions for
European security was to end the
existence of both military blocs,
Warsaw Pact and NATO, could be heard
from the Soviet side. Brezhnev was
hoping that a part of the
conciliatory tone of Soviet policy
would be transmitted through Tito to
the United States, during a planned
visit at the end of October. The
only reservations Brezhnev expressed
were related to Moscow's relations
with Beijing, but Belgrade could no
longer support the isolation of
China. On the other hand, Tito was
more focused on internal issues of
Yugoslavia, rejecting malicious news
about the country's disintegration
and the overall crisis, but also
emphasized his wish for establishing
relations with the Soviet Union on a
“sound basis”.227 The joint
Soviet-Yugoslav statement after the
talks, which resulted from long and
not in the least pleasant
negotiations between the members of
both delegations, was the most
important document of the visit. The
statement outlined the basic
principles of cooperation on which
the relations of the two countries
and parties would be based in the
future. Starting from the notion
that cooperation was determined by
“the closeness of historical fates,
identical bases of social order, the
closeness of approach to many
international problems, adherence to
the principles of socialist
internationalism”, the joint
statement emphasized that the
development of Yugoslav-Soviet
relations was based primarily on the
principles of the Belgrade and
Moscow declarations. The acceptance
of these principles, both parties
agreed, meant ensuring mutual
cooperation based on “mutual respect
for the specifics in the development
of socialism” in both countries,
based on the struggle for peaceful
coexistence and peace in the world,
and which was of particular
importance, “on the basis of
equality and respect for sovereignty
and independence, and the principle
of non-interference in the internal
affairs of another country for any
motive whatsoever”.228 In the
statement, both parties noted a
number of troublesome issues in the
world, where joint action was
expected to resolve them, starting
from an unfair monetary and trade
system, an expansionist imperialism,
the conflicts in Vietnam and the
Middle East, and finally the removal
of all remainders of colonialism.
However, particular attention was
paid to the process of detente, i.e.
relaxation of tensions in Europe.
The statement recognized the
conclusion of the treaty between the
USSR and Poland, and the Federal
Republic of Germany, the Four Power
Agreement on West Berlin issues, and
the efforts of all parties to
support the “healing” situation in
Europe by a general European
conference on security and
cooperation issues. As a special
place in the Statement, it was
underlined that Yugoslavia, as a
non-aligned country, received with
understanding the readiness of the
USSR and other socialist countries
“for simultaneous dissolution of the
Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization”.229
The impression in
Belgrade concerning Leonid
Brezhnev's visit was extremely
favorable. Yugoslavia received
strong assurances from the Soviet
Union that its internal development,
with its independent foreign policy,
would be guaranteed by respecting
certain principles. With great
optimism, Tito told members of the
National Assembly that Brezhnev's
visit clarified many issues,
contributed to a better mutual
understanding, and recognition of
Yugoslav independence in internal
development and activities on the
international scene. In Tito's
opinion, the role and significance
of the USSR in global proportions
was indisputable. Analyzing the
talks with the Soviet and American
leaders, as well as the positive
moments in renewing cooperation with
China, Tito emphasized with pleasure
that the situation in the world was
changing, and that it was being
realized more and more “that peace
is indivisible, that ultimately
everyone shares the common destiny,
and that neglecting these needs
jeopardizes the positive trends and
stabilization of mutual relations”.230
Before Tito's return visit to the
Soviet Union, from June 5 to June
10, 1972, a platform was defined by
SSFA, to be used when talks with the
Soviet party leadership of September
1971 were resumed. By its visit to
Moscow, the Yugoslav delegation was
to express interest in further
stabilization and expansion of the
relations, confirm the non-alignment
policy at the moment of detente, and
receive from the Soviets yet another
 confirmation of independent internal
development. As to international
issues, Tito's visit was to insist
on providing support to all steps
“resulting from a summit meeting
within the triangle that
strengthened peace and security”, in
particular issues of European
security, emphasizing that the
approach to the CSCE had to confirm
“the sovereign right of every
country to independent and
unhindered internal development”.231
The talks in Moscow between the two
delegations confirmed the basic
premises of the Yugoslav platform
prior to the visit. In front of the
Yugoslav delegation, Brezhnev
commended the results of the 24th
Congress of the CPSU, proudly
pointing out that not a single other
party “managed to make such a
progress towards peace”.232 Brezhnev
also commended the relations with
Yugoslavia, although he related them
once again to his personal relations
with Tito (“maybe it is because of
my personal sympathies that I have
for you, comrade Tito, and let it be
so for the rest of our lives, as we
have agreed”.)233 Brezhnev considered
that there should be no military
secrets between the two countries,
because the Soviet Union expected
this from Yugoslavia, if it asked.
(“Comrade Tito knows all our
secrets”). The Yugoslav delegation
paid more attention to its own
internal development. Tito was
pleased to notify the members of the
CPSU top leadership that, following
the replacement of the republic's
leadership in Croatia, the party was
again “standing on its feet”.
Secretary of the EC CC LCY Stane
Dolanc, added to Tito’s speech by
informing the Soviet leadership that
a new line of the 2nd Conference of
the LCY was being implemented in
Yugoslavia, which implied
“strengthening the ideological and
political leadership of the LCY,
clearer attitudes towards democratic
centralism and the fight against all
ideological, opposition deviations
in the party”.234 The removal of the
Croatian leadership, emphasized
Dolanc, was a “proof of LCY's
strength”. Communications of changes
in the LCY were received positively
by the Soviet leadership, as the
bulk of earlier Soviet objections
against the Yugoslav system was
expressed by Moscow's concern that
Yugoslavia was heading in an unknown
direction. Tito told the Soviet
leadership that the job had not yet
been completed in Yugoslavia, that
more matters needed to be cleared,
which was a clear allusion to the
uncertain position of Nikezić's
leadership in Belgrade. The talks
were concluded with the composition
of a communique, which did not
depart significantly from the Joint
statement of 1971. The significance
of the Belgrade and Moscow
declarations was reiterated. Support
for European cooperation and
security had been supported as a
priority of Soviet and Yugoslav
foreign policy. On the occasion of
the visit, a special honor was paid
to Tito, who was awarded the Order
of Lenin.
At the ceremony of
awarding the Order of Lenin in
Moscow, Tito made an apposite speech
in order to express his thanks for
the honor, and used that occasion to
point out that Lenin was for him “a
great teacher” and “a revolutionary
strategist” who set “theoretical and
practical foundations for the
revolutionary transformation of
society”.235 Lenin's ideas were
certainly significant in the
continuation of the inner-party
confrontations in Yugoslavia in late
1972. The replaced members of the
Croatian leadership were expelled
from LCY in 1972 alongside hundreds
of others. The Sixth party congress
of 1952, which was the main decisive
point in relations with the Soviet
system, was gradually being
challenged. Within the party's top
leadership, especially Tito and
Dolanc, a new (old) party line was
established, advocating a new
reunified, recentralized,
redistributed and thoroughly
purified party, which would assert
firm control over the country's
internal affairs.236 These ideas were
close to the Soviet party
establishment, and served in the
final defeat of another reform
leadership in Yugoslavia, at the end
of October 1972, with the
resignations of the leaders of the
CC LC Serbia. In Moscow, party
cleansing in Yugoslavia was
welcomed. In a conversation with S.
Dolanc and R. Dugonjić, at the end
of December 1972, a member of the
Soviet Politburo, A. Kirilenko,
conveyed that the Soviet party's top
leadership was glad that LCY “leads
an active struggle against
nationalism, liberalism and other
counterrevolutionary forces, for the
introduction of order in the party,
and for the strengthening of its
leadership role”.237 The report on the
participation of the state-party
delegation of the SFRY on the
occasion of the 50th anniversary of
the USSR, from December 20 to 25,
1972, emphasized the satisfaction of
leading figures in the Soviet Union
with the new “Marxist-Leninist”
course, initiated by Tito, which
“makes Yugoslavia closer, and leads
it to the positions of the CPSU and
the USSR policy in all areas”.238
The possibility
that the internal crisis in
Yugoslavia could serve as the main
means of Soviet pressure was removed
by the end of 1972, and all of
Belgrade's attention was focused on
strengthening bilateral cooperation
and the feasibility of a European
detente plan in relations with the
Soviet Union. Periodical
disagreements, as a relic of decades
long distrust, did not disappear,
and ranged from the use of Cominform
emigrants, to Soviet criticism of
Yugoslav press, and the publication
of controversial books. The
favorable political climate had once
again strengthened economic
relations. A $ 540 million long-term
commodity loan was signed with the
Soviet Union to finance the
construction and reconstruction of
38 commercial facilities in
Yugoslavia.239 Yugoslav diplomacy
continued to be engaged in
advocating its own independent
foreign policy orientation, relying
on the support of the Soviet Union
in crisis-related international
situations. Tito’s new visit to the
Soviet Union, on November 12 to 15,
1973, in Kiev, took place at the
moment when the detente experienced
its first serious challenges due to
the new war in the Middle East (Yom
Kippur war) between Israel and the
Arab states. During 1973, Yugoslav
diplomacy favorably assessed the
agreements between Nixon and
Brezhnev, which, according to
Belgrade, “formally ended the Cold
War” and stabilized the cooperation
between the West and the East.240 In
the middle of the year, the Yugoslav
Embassy in the Soviet Union
correctly perceived the newly
established “partnership” between
Moscow and Washington as a guarantee
that both forces would endeavor to
keep the development of the
situation under control, and would
do everything to prevent local
conflicts from escalating to the
extent that could jeopardize their
mutual relations. The war in the
Middle East (ME) partially confirmed
this. With the beginning of the war,
Yugoslav diplomacy assumed the same
position as Moscow, backing the
rights of the Arab peoples against
Israel, and assessing the crisis as
an event that “unmasked the
imperialist intentions of the United
States”.241 The meeting between Tito
and Brezhnev in Kiev, in which both
leaders offered identical
explanations of the ME crisis,
passed along these lines. Brezhnev
considered that every struggle was a
class struggle, and that,
accordingly, the strategic action
had to contain
“revolutionary-Marxist principles”,
which also entailed the struggle
against imperialism “that fights
fiercely to surround socialism from
all sides”.242 Tito agreed with
Brezhnev about the situation on the
ME, informing the Soviet leader
about the measures taken by the
Yugoslav government - “raising
combat readiness to level one,
denying western airplanes the right
to fly over the airspace of
Yugoslavia, restricting the freedom
of movement of the US military
attaché in Yugoslavia”.243 The presence
of the USSR on ME was important,
Tito pointed out. Joint forces were
needed in the struggle against
imperialism, colonialism and
neo-colonialism. The disappointment
with Sadat's policy was mutual,
although it was most pronounced with
Brezhnev, as the Soviet influence in
Egypt had practically ended.
However, the forceful
“anti-imperialism” of the two
leaders could not obscure the
significance of the detente and the
European Conference on Security and
Cooperation. The criticism of
American imperialism during the
talks did not entail criticism of
the Nixon administration. Brezhnev
was convinced that he had to
preserve what had been accomplished
with the United States, because “he
would get another one, worse than
Nixon”, which Tito agreed with. (“So
far there was not a single president
in the United States who would treat
the Soviet Union the way Nixon did,
and who would sign the obligations
Nixon signed.”)244 The support to the
CSCE was of primary importance, and
Brezhnev requested Tito's support
for its realization. In explaining
the request for support, the Soviet
leader stressed that the common
interest of socialist countries had
to be demonstrated in order to force
the bourgeoisie to put its signature
“on the principle of peaceful
coexistence”.245
Unlike previous
meetings, talks in Kiev were the
least dramatic. They had already
shown the continuity of
understanding of the two parties
about models of mutual relations and
joint activities. For the LCY top
leadership, the visit to the USSR
was significant because it confirmed
the justification of the 1971 and
1972 agreements, and for the Soviet
Union, because it could focus its
attention more on open problems, as
early signs of a crisis of detente
had already appeared. It turned out
that Yugoslav-Soviet relations were
inseparable from European
circumstances, and that the ascent
of detente had created a favorable
environment for their further
development.
3. The crisis of detente and
Yugoslav-Soviet disputes.
In the mid-1970s,
relations between Yugoslavia and the
Soviet Union exceeded the
expectations of the 1971-1973
agreements. In March 1975, the
Yugoslav Embassy in Moscow was
convinced that there were no
“essential changes” in Soviet
politics that would disrupt
continued good relations and call
into question previous agreements.
The Soviet leadership was still
interested in maintaining stable
relations with Yugoslavia, which was
interpreted by their positive
attitude to internal changes in
 Yugoslavia. The 10th Congress of the
LCY was assessed in Moscow as an
important step towards the “process
of consolidation of the LCY”, as
well as an important stage in the
“rapprochement between the LCY and
the CPSU”. Books of Tito’s speeches
and excerpts from addresses at the
10th Congress of the LCY were
published in Moscow, all of which
was interpreted by Yugoslav
diplomats as a “positive evolution”
in the approach of the Soviet
leadership to “our revolution, its
authenticity and continuity, and
even its specific features”.246 There
was optimism in that direction, and
the Kremlin expected less
misunderstanding and difference in
the internal and foreign policies of
Yugoslavia and the USSR. In April
1975, the president of the FEC,
Džemal Bjedić, had a warm reception
in the Kremlin, where Brezhnev’s
messages about the great
Yugoslav-Soviet friendship were
supported by the preparation of the
largest volume of trade between the
SFRY and the USSR in the period
1976-1980.247 In the talks held between
Yugoslav Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs M. Minić and A.
Gromyko in December 1975, the
proximity of standpoints of the two
countries on all international
issues was confirmed, with the wish
that regular mutual consultations be
continued. After the visit, Minić
assessed that detente was still the
long-term course of Soviet foreign
policy.248 Belgrade was pleased that a
different picture of Yugoslavia had
been created in the Soviet public by
more diverse and plentiful
information in the press and opinion
journalism, which, according to the
reports of the Yugoslav Embassy,
refrained from open criticism and
public display of reserves towards
the Yugoslav system. The Embassy in
Moscow concluded with optimism that
there was no indication that a
different foreign and internal
policy could be adopted by the
Soviet leadership.249
For the Soviet
Union, stable relations with
Yugoslavia were only part of a
successful foreign policy strategy,
as in 1975, USSR turned with
self-satisfaction towards
self-confident global
interventionism. From Moscow’s
perspective, the defeat of the
United States in Vietnam, the
collapse of Portuguese colonialism
in Africa, and the first signs of
the chronic crisis of Western
capitalism due to the oil crisis,
testified to the changes that
contributed to the desired
“revolutionary” transformations in
the world, and shifted the balance
of power with the West in favor of
the Soviet Union. The policy of the
USSR in Europe reached its peak with
the Helsinki Act in August 1975. The
Kremlin was in a triumphal mood,
perceiving Helsinki as a formal
confirmation of the Soviet sphere of
influence in post-war Europe, and
aiming at turning the focus of
Soviet foreign policy towards the
Third World countries. The
successful Soviet intervention in
the Horn of Africa had convinced the
party's top leadership in Moscow
that the Soviet Union had grown into
a global force, which could
willingly influence the development
in many parts of the world, as a
global alternative to the United
States.250 Due to that, the detente was
undergoing a serious crisis, with
growing anti-Soviet sentiments in
American politics, and a
considerable rise of
neo-conservatives, who became
increasingly louder in opposing the
policy of compromise with Kremlin.
Ford's administration continued
negotiations with Moscow, but with
an obvious lack of legitimacy, after
the political collapse of the Nixon
administration.
Yugoslav politics
did not show great resistance to
Soviet global politics, as the
interests of Belgrade and Moscow
were largely identical, as was their
understanding of the balance of
power in international politics.
During his meeting with L. Brezhnev,
Tito stressed on several occasions
the important role of the Soviet
Union in solving international
crises, always starting from
identical ideological views on the
causes of world conflicts. At the
time of the outbreak of the Cyprus
crisis in 1974, Tito sent a message
to the Soviet leader in which he
emphasized the importance of the
support of the Soviet Union to the
independence and non-alignment of
the Republic of Cyprus, and of a
constructive approach of Soviet
policy in order to overcome the
crisis.251 Soviet interventions in
Africa were perceived in Belgrade as
a positive contribution to the
development of “progressive” regimes
in African countries and their
resistance to US imperialist
politics. Similar impressions were
also reflected in the perception of
the crisis in the Middle East, in
which Soviet influence began to fade
after the Yom Kippur war, while the
common censure of Belgrade and
Moscow of Sadat’s policy in Egypt
persisted, as well as their support
for the regimes in Syria, Iraq and
Libya. However, Yugoslav support was
not unconditional, nor did
Yugoslavia strive towards the
expectations of Soviet politics that
it would become a part of
synchronized lager policy. The
bipolar detente, which was perceived
in the Kremlin as a great victory of
the Soviet state, had both positive
and critical interpretations in
Belgrade. On the one hand, it was
considered as welcome that the great
powers had tried to resolve many
cold-war conflicts in a calm tone,
which had a direct impact on the
rejection of belligerent and
militant political strategies. On
the other hand, there was evident
dissatisfaction with the fact that
detente agreements neglected the
interests of smaller countries, and
that the confirmed status quo was in
fact a confirmation of the bloc
policy. Although the CSCE was the
common goal of Soviet and Yugoslav
politics, as a legacy of the
1971-1973 agreements, the
participation of Yugoslav
representatives at the conferences
from 1973 to 1975 was aimed at
representing the interests of
non-aligned and neutral states,
which opposed the bloc interests of
Moscow and Washington.252 Despite
stable inter-state relations,
Yugoslavia's relations with the
Soviet Union failed to solve three
important problems - Moscow's
intention to maintain a leadership
position among socialist states, the
efforts of Soviet policy to shift
the character of the Non-aligned
movement to a firmer anti-Western
position, and the negative
consequences of Soviet global
politics.253 The interconnection among
these problems began to reveal
itself to Yugoslav foreign policy in
full light in the second half of the
1970s.
At the end of
1975, the LCY top leadership was
upset by the appearance and
functioning of the Cominform
emigration in Yugoslavia. The
operation of an illegal
organization, the so-called New
communist party of Yugoslavia, which
was supposed to be constituted at
the “Bar Congress” in April 1974,
was associated with neo-Cominform
action inspired by the Soviet Union.254
At the 14th session of the CC LCY
Presidency, on October 15, 1975, in
 Karađorđevo, the party's top
leadership discussed the activities
of the “internal enemy”, with a
special reference to the
consequences of the “Bar case”. At
the session, Tito warned the party's
top leadership that a “liberal” view
should not be taken about the
existence of the enemies of the
Yugoslav self-government society,
believing that the Cominformers
“sneaked through” while the party
was fighting the “anti-socialist
elements” of 1972. Not mentioning in
any way the possible implication of
Soviet policy in promoting the
hostile emigration, whose seat was
at one time in Kiev, Tito primarily
referred to the identification of
enemies from all sides (“we are in
the whirlwind, various agencies are
colliding here”).255 Dominance of the
working class in the party, and an
overall mobilization of membership
and party organizations in the fight
against “liberalism” and “Stalinism”
were, in Tito's view, the basic
preconditions for a successful
defense of Yugoslavia and its
achievements.256 After a discussion at
the session, the CC LCY Presidency
concluded that the mentioned hostile
activity of Cominformers was
“targeted against independence,
integrity and free self-management
of the socialist development of the
SFRY”. In the session conclusions,
necessary measures were proposed to
activate LCY membership in the
struggle against neo-Cominform
activities, by political action
against antisocialist groups. The
conclusion also addressed the
Council for the protection of
constitutional order in particular,
proposing that it should consider
the problems of the activation of
the enemy, and “instruct state
authorities to take all necessary
measures in order to strengthen the
security and self-protection of our
society”.257 The appearance of the
neo-Cominformers in Yugoslavia, much
as they were equated with other
“enemies of socialism”, could not
but remind the Yugoslav communists
of the established mechanisms of
Soviet pressure on the internal
development of Yugoslavia.
The detente did
not live up to the expectations of
the Soviet Union that the
stabilization of relations with
western capitalist states would lead
to the consolidation of the unity of
the international communist movement
under Moscow's leadership. One of
the challenges to such plans was
largely China, especially as it
became an acceptable partner for
western countries in the early
1970s, and consequently caused a
decline of the importance of the
Soviet Union as the only respectable
communist power. On the other hand,
a challenge to the ideological
hegemony of the CPSU in Europe came
from the western communist parties,
who shyly took over the banner of
the reforms from the failed “Prague
Spring” in 1968. In the party
membership of the communist parties
of Italy, France and Spain, the
idealistic image of the Soviet Union
as the leader of the socialist world
and the inspiration for “orthodox”
socialist development began to fade.
The leader of the CP of Italy (CPI),
Enrico Berlinguer, diverged from
former Togliatti's strategy, and in
the early 1970s proposed a “historic
compromise” with the Catholics,
accepted European integration, and
began to create a new profile of
western communism, which freed
itself from the firm ties with the
socialist bloc.258 The only party with
which the CPI could be identified by
its strategy was the League of
Communists of Yugoslavia, which made
Berlinguer visit Belgrade on several
occasions to consult with Tito.
Preparations for
the Berlin conference of communist
parties in June 1976, through a
consultative meeting in Warsaw and a
preparatory meeting in Budapest,
with the participation of ten
communist parties, revealed major
disagreements over the content of
the draft of the final document of
the conference. LCY representatives
took part in the work of
consultative working groups,
representing the first major
engagement of Yugoslav communists in
the preparation of a joint
conference of communist parties
after 20 years. At the meetings,
they presented standpoints
advocating free exchange of views,
opposed the reduction of the
political objectives of the
Conference to one binding document
for all parties, and supported a
final document that would contain
only content-rich information about
the Conference, while the basic
ideas and possible solutions would
be highlighted through the addresses
of participating party chiefs. In
this way, Yugoslav representatives
believed, the acceptance of a single
political line would be avoided, and
communist parties in Europe would be
given more breadth in participating
in the political life of their
countries.259 However, representatives
of the CPSU, and other parties
subordinated to Moscow, opposed
these proposals, which were
advocated not only by the Yugoslav,
but also by a significant part of
the representatives of the Western
European communist parties, offering
a different course of the conference
and content of the final document.
The draft documents submitted on
their behalf, produced by the
Unified Socialist Party of Germany,
deepened the differences between
Moscow on one side, and part of the
Western European communist parties
and Yugoslavia, on the other. In the
opinion of Alexander Grličkov, the
secretary of the EC CC LCY, the
draft document of the East German
communists offered a “sectarian
crowding of communist parties around
one center, one policy”, preventing
the opening and strengthening of the
communist parties in the West and
deepening the confrontation between
the communist parties in Europe.
Grličkov went further with his
critical remarks, assessing that
such a draft document was against
the policy of detente. He wondered
with concern whether the CPSU could
objectively keep the detente on two
basic political lines - one for
communicating with the United States
and the other Western countries, and
the other for communicating with the
communist parties, by “collective
and disciplined pressures in the
service of Soviet foreign policy”.260
The Soviet Union
quickly realized, as Silvio Pons
noticed, that the new strategy of
the West European communists would
not only impair the status quo of
bipolar relations guaranteed by the
detente, but rather the Soviet
leadership of European communism
itself.261 The Conference of communist
parties in Berlin, from June 28 to
30, 1976, attended by the LCY
delegation led by Tito, demonstrated
the deceptive “unity” and readiness
of the communist parties to define a
common political platform of
European communism in the era of the
detente. Ultimately, the joint
Conference document was acceptable
to all parties, but nevertheless,
the addresses of individual heads of
delegations left more the impression
of plurality rather than
monolithicity. For the first time,
Berlinguer used the term
“Eurocommunism” from the Conference
rostrum, in front of the heads of
all the communist parties, thus
emphasizing the detachment from the
center of ideological vigilance in
Moscow. Tito's speech at the
Conference offered more conciliatory
tones, but he did not miss the
opportunity to point out Yugoslav
commitment to respecting the
principle of non-alignment and
different paths of socialism. After
Berlin, Yugoslav Communists were
convinced that “the Soviet concept
of the gathering of communist
parties, the monolithic ideological
and action unity of the movement”
could no longer be achieved.262 An
attempt to resolve the
misunderstandings that had arisen
between Belgrade and Moscow in this
respect, and which were further
complicated by the activities of the
Cominformers and polemics before the
Berlin conference, was made by
another summit, the visit of Leonid
Brezhnev to Yugoslavia, from
November 14 to 17, 1976. The content
of the talks pointed to different
intentions of the two party
leaderships regarding mutual
relations. On the one hand, the
intentions that Brezhnev presented
were that Yugoslavia would work even
more closely with the Soviet Union
and the lager states, coordinate its
foreign policy with the Soviet one
where it was possible, modify the
character of the non-aligned
movement, and start mutual
cooperation in the field of
ideology. All of these proposals
were addressed to the Yugoslav
delegation, followed by a large list
of complaints, from negative writing
of the Yugoslav authors about the
Soviet Union, to the allegations of
relations between Moscow and
Cominformers.263 On the other hand, in
his address to the Soviet
delegation, Tito rejected all
proposals for closer cooperation
between Yugoslavia and the lager
policy, as well as the critical
remarks concerning the image of the
Soviet Union and its system in the
Yugoslav media. First of all, Tito
proceeded from the principles
outlined at the Berlin conference of
communist parties, the consistent
implementation of which, in Tito's
opinion, could only enhance
cooperation between communist
parties. Regarding this matter, Tito
pointed out, Yugoslav communists
were worried by “the attempts by
some, even within your ranks, to
move parties back to pre-Berlin
positions”.264 In the reports following
the visit of the Soviet delegation
headed by Leonid Brezhnev, the
Yugoslav side noted that Soviet
positions confirmed that the policy
of the Soviet Union towards
Yugoslavia, both in international
relations and in the relations
within the communist movement, “were
denoted by foundations and content
of the bloc approach”.265 However, the
assessment of the Yugoslav party's
top leadership started from the
belief that Yugoslavia successfully
resisted Soviet pressure, and thus
strengthened its international
position. This was the main topic of
the 25th session of the CC LCY
Presidency on December 9, 1976,
which had the assessment of Leonid
Brezhnev's visit on its agenda. The
entire session passed in the
intention to confirm some
invariabilities in the relations
with the Soviet Union. Although the
platform of the Soviet Union was
assessed as an attempt to interfere
with the internal affairs of
Yugoslavia, and as the old concept
of bloc approach to Yugoslavia, the
party leadership remained willing to
continue developing good relations
with Moscow, respecting the
well-known principles from the
Belgrade and Moscow declarations. In
the first place, the party's top
leadership emphasized Tito's address
at the meeting with Brezhnev as a
successful defense of Yugoslav
interests, as well as the
communication which harmonized the
two platforms. The foreign policy of
the Soviet Union was not globally
criticized or discussed at the
session. In the opinion of the
party's top leadership, there was no
need to “dramatize” the obvious
pressure exerted by Leonid Brezhnev,
which was why not everything that
Brezhnev said during the talks was
made public. On the other hand, the
session showed that the success of
Yugoslav foreign policy was an
indispensable element for
strengthening the internal unity.
Ranging from the pressures from the
outside to the absolute unity of the
inside. The great international
prestige of Yugoslavia, Tito's
statesmanship, and the struggle of
the LCY to keep its dominance under
the assault from all factions
(liberal and neo-Stalinist) were
overemphasized, which again
represented an obvious need to
tackle numerous problems that arose
in Yugoslav society in the 1970's.
In a special “Information for LCY
membership on the visit of the
Secretary General of the CC CPSU L.
I. Brezhnev to Yugoslavia”, the
visit was assessed as successful and
useful for the international
position and reputation of
Yugoslavia on the whole. The message
to the membership was clear - good
relations with the Soviet Union were
needed in the interests of socialism
and peace in the world.266
The return visit
of Josip Broz Tito to the Soviet
Union, from August 16 to 26, 1977,
was burdened by the problems in
relations between the two countries
from the previous year. Yugoslav
diplomacy sketched a portrait of
Soviet foreign policy in 1977 as
“bloc oriented”, and did not want
(and could not) change this
portrait. It criticized Soviet Union
for leading a hegemonic policy,
interpreting the Helsinki final
document restrictively, spurring
division among non-aligned
countries, interfering in the
internal affairs of many countries
with its interventionist policy in
Africa, failing to help developing
countries, and belittling and
challenging the Berlin conference.
Meetings at the top mostly avoided
too much debate on these issues,
insisting on their conclusion with
the idea of mutual respect and
partnership on the international
scene, wherever possible. Therefore,
Yugoslav platform prior to Tito's
visit concluded that there were no
open problems with the Soviet Union.267
The main goal was set by insisting
on the preservation of stable
relations with the Soviet Union, and
affirmation of non-alignment and
self-government socialism. However,
during the meeting in Moscow, more
attention was paid to the events in
Africa - the conflict between
Ethiopia and Somalia, and between
Libya and Egypt. During the two-day
talks, both leaders made identical
assessments of the newly emerged
conflicts. Brezhnev believed that
the situation in Africa was under
the assault by a coordinated action
of imperialist forces, which were
opposing the aspirations of African
countries to become socialist, in
order to preserve their own
domination “the idea of Washington
was to overthrow progressive regimes
and install puppet governments in
Addis Ababa and Mogadishu”.268 Tito
fully agreed with Brezhnev’s
assessments. The United States, Tito
considered, wanted to “surround
Africa” and suppress the Ethiopian
revolution and its “progressive”
path. Yugoslavia, Tito boasted,
provided military aid to Ethiopia
with the delivery of 70 tanks. The
conflict between Egypt and Libya was
also not perceived as an isolated
event, but as Brezhnev estimated, it
rather represented “one link in the
general chain of imperialist
activities in Africa and the Middle
East”.269 Tito criticized Sadat's
policy as too “pro-American”, and as
eradicating everything that was
“Naser-like” in Egypt. On the whole,
Tito's return visit was positively
evaluated in Belgrade. It was
obvious that, as opposed to the
previous visit of Brezhnev, in
November 1976, former criticisms and
open Soviet pressure were absent.
Yugoslav diplomacy explained this
Soviet attitude by many reasons,
from a change in the balance of
power in the Soviet leadership (the
removal of Katushev and Podgorny),
to the firm stance of Yugoslavia
expressed at the November meeting,
which made Soviets learn some
“lessons”.270 However, changes in
international relations were
important for the conduct of Soviet
foreign policy, and Yugoslav
diplomacy was well aware of them -
serious difficulties in the policy
of detente and in the relations with
the United States, new worsening of
relations with China, a weakening of
positions in Africa and the Middle
East, an increasingly unfavorable
position of the CPSU in the ICM, and
the emergence of Eurocommunism.
Yugoslavia's attitude towards these
issues, arising from its independent
and non-aligned foreign policy,
would not always be met with
understanding in Moscow.
The
Yugoslav-Chinese relations of the
1970s were a major subject of
interest for Soviet politics. China
was a great competitor and
challenger to the global policy of
the Soviet Union, especially in
Southeast Asia. Beijing mobilized
significant forces against Soviet
interventionism in Africa, while
support for the Khmer Rouge in
Cambodia represented a
counterbalance to the Soviet
influence in Vietnam. The death of
 Mao Zedong in 1976 did not lead to a
change in the anti-Soviet strategy
in international relations, but it
did contribute to internal reforms,
which, among other things, altered
some of the established rigid
ideological perceptions of the
outside world. The fall of the
so-called “Gang of Four” in China in
late 1976 enabled further changes in
the country, as well as the
improvement of cooperation with
Yugoslavia. The signs of expanding
bilateral relations between Belgrade
and Beijing, which began with the
visit of Džemal Bjedić in 1975, were
met with suspicion in Moscow. This
could have been felt in particular
during the talks between Tito and
Brezhnev in Moscow in 1977, which
preceded Tito's first official visit
to China. Brezhnev tried to persuade
Tito that there was no change in
Chinese politics after Mao's death,
that Chinese politics was based on
anti-Sovietism and militarization of
the country, and that China was
establishing relations with “the
most reactionary forces of
imperialism”.271 Chinese politics was a
threat to the entire global
socialism, Brezhnev warned. Tito did
not want to debate too much on the
character of Chinese politics, but
he “defended” his decision to visit
China by the desire to obtain
first-hand information about
Beijing's policy, and to draw
attention of the Chinese leadership
during the talks to the fact that
the conflict with Moscow could only
work to the benefit of the
imperialists. He promised Brezhnev
that it would be a “purely state
visit”, without party talks, and
with certain criticism of their
policy.272 The visit of Josip Broz Tito
to PR of China, on August 30, 1977,
ended with important results in the
rapprochement of the views between
Beijing and Belgrade. The talks with
the Chinese party leadership had
convinced the Yugoslav president
that there was no justifiable danger
from the Chinese policy, as Brezhnev
had claimed during the talks in
Moscow. In fact, the Yugoslav
delegation realized that there were
many issues on which they shared
identical views with the Chinese
communists, whether it was the issue
of international relations or the
respect for the right of each
communist party to develop its own
path of socialism. There was no
criticism of the Soviet Union by the
Chinese hosts, mostly out of respect
for the position of Yugoslavia. Tito
extended an invitation to the
Chinese President Hua Guofeng to
visit Yugoslavia, which he accepted.273
The arrival of
Chinese President Hua Guofeng to
Yugoslavia for an official visit,
from August 21 to 28, 1978, was part
of the new Chinese strategy of
“opening up to the world”. The visit
took place at a time when the policy
of the detente was undergoing a
serious crisis in US-Soviet
relations. The Carter
administration, under the impression
of Soviet interventionism on the
Horn of Africa, began to reevaluate
the basic premises of detente in the
US foreign policy strategy. Closer
contacts between Beijing and
Washington, aimed at curbing the
Soviet influence, had put Yugoslav
politics into the inconvenient
position of meandering within the
“triangle” of powers. In a letter to
“fraternal parties” sent by the CPSU
to the LCY, on July 5, 1978,
concerns were expressed about the
attempts to “unite NATO and
Beijing's efforts in the struggle
against the detente, and
simultaneously, against socialist
countries and liberation movements”.274
Competition between China and the
Soviet Union, reflected through the
conflict between Vietnam and
Kampuchea, further tightened the
political climate in Moscow and its
attitude towards Yugoslavia. After a
long time, critical articles against
Yugoslav foreign policy appeared in
the Soviet press, which provoked an
official reaction and a demarche by
Yugoslav diplomacy in early August
1978. A particularly controversial
piece of news that was transmitted
by the Soviet media, quoting a
letter of the Albanian leadership to
Beijing, was that China allegedly
proposed a military alliance to
Yugoslavia, Albania and Romania.
Soviet Ambassador N. Rodionov, in a
conversation with Budimir Lončar,
immediately after Hua Guofeng's
visit to Belgrade, openly stated
that the USSR could not calmly watch
the arrival of the Chinese president
to a “friendly country”, which
Yugoslavia was for them.275 Rodionov
forwarded a similar opinion to Miloš
Minić, assessing the Chinese
activity in Africa, Asia and Europe
as directly targeted against the
Soviet Union.276 Pressure on Belgrade
became increasingly stronger and
caused trouble for Yugoslav
diplomacy. The official position of
Yugoslavia was that the opening of
China towards other countries was a
positive process to the benefit of
the detente. Yugoslav officials
believed that the attitude of the
Soviet Union toward China was based
on its own “narrow interests”,
preventing China from entering the
international scene, as well as from
its modernization.277 However, the
beginning of the military conflict
between Vietnam and Kampuchea in
late 1978, which ended with the
ousting of the Pol Pot regime,
followed by China's military
intervention in the north of
Vietnam, in February 1979,
additionally confronted the views of
Soviet and Yugoslav foreign policy.
Although Yugoslavia condemned both
military interventions, Moscow
considered that the Yugoslav
attitude towards China's aggression
in Vietnam was significantly milder,
and that the two interventions could
not be equated.
The military
intervention in Kampuchea began to
bear consequences, mostly on the
non-alignment movement. The issue of
the representation of Kampuchea in
the UN and the NAM had reaffirmed
the existence of different currents
among the non-aligned countries. At
the end of the 1970s, efforts were
being made to polarize the movement
- to more radical members, which
supported a common “antiimperialist”
front with the Soviet Union and the
lager, and the more moderate ones,
which adhered to the basic
principles of the movement from 1961
on a leading strict non-bloc policy.
The NAM conferences, which were
numerous in the 1970s (Lusaka in
1970, Algeria in 1973, Colombo in
1976), more effectively
institutionalized the activities of
the Movement, established a
continuity of regular meetings and
consultations among senior officials
of non-aligned countries, and were
fully in line with the current
policy of the detente. However, the
conferences could not hide the
tendencies towards different
opinions on some issues, especially
when they were in favor of the
interests of the bloc powers. Cuba,
as one of the active members of the
movement, whose prestige in the
Third World had rapidly grown after
its participation in the
interventions in Angola and
Ethiopia, had become the promoter of
a different role of the NAM, on a
platform of more decisive
anti-imperialism and cooperation
with the Soviet Union. On the other
hand, the Cuban strategy in the NAM
started to be strongly opposed by
Yugoslavia, as one of the founders
of the Movement, which strongly
adhered to the opinion that the
founding principles were the main
strength of the activities of the
non-aligned countries within the
bipolar world order. Yugoslavia
considered that a “lager ambition”
stood behind the Cuban policy, which
sought to change the character of
the Movement, and bring it closer to
Soviet interests. The activities of
Soviet politics supported these
assumptions. By increased engagement
in the Third World in the 1970s, the
Soviet Union attempted to influence
the NAM directly, in providing
support for its own expansionist
policy. All meetings between Soviet
and Yugoslav officials ended with an
emphasis on the fact that the NAM
was of great importance in
international relations only if it
kept a sharp “antiimperialist”
stance, that is, if it confronted
the policy of the West. During his
visit to Belgrade in November 1976,
Leonid Brezhnev told Tito that the
struggle for the vital interests of
the non-aligned movement would be
more effective “if their relations
and cooperation with the socialist
world were more close and organic”.278
The Soviet leader criticized the
views of some non-aligned countries
(among which was certainly
Yugoslavia) for devoting too much
attention to the criticism of the
blocs and the rivalry of the
superpowers, stating that it
weakened the “unity of the
antiimperialist front”, and the
non-aligned movement proper.
The decision at
the Colombia conference to hold the
6th Summit of the NAM in Havana in
1979, caused a great deal of concern
in Yugoslavia. Preparatory meetings
preceding the Havana conference
persuaded Yugoslav diplomacy that
Cuba intended to modify the
principles of the Movement, and that
it had the support of the Soviet
Union for that. Belgrade associated
the Cuban strategy among the
non-aligned countries to poor
Yugoslav-Soviet relations. At a
session of the Federal Council for
International Relations, on February
21, 1979, senior Yugoslav officials
warned that the greatest danger to
NAM were “actions from the lager
positions”, which sought to turn the
movement “into a proxy of global
policy of the USSR and the lager”.279
The last visit of Josip Broz Tito to
the Soviet Union, from May 16 to 21,
1979, was aimed at reducing the
pressure of Moscow on the eve of the
Havana conference, and at preventing
further support for the Cuban
standpoints. However, the talks only
confirmed the differences. In
addition to diametrically opposite
views expressed on China, Brezhnev
voiced concerns about the
development of events in the NAM,
where attempts were made to
“denigrate Cuba”, and to expel
Vietnam from the movement. Tito was
asked to prevent such intrigues.
Brezhnev believed that differences
in the NAM were not invented by the
Soviet Union, but “had been imposed
by life itself”.280 The visit did not
solve the disputes between Belgrade
and Moscow, although it assured Tito
that the relations would “be more
peaceful for some time”.281 The main
Yugoslav assessment of the visit was
that the Soviet Union had witnessed
Yugoslavia's determination to defend
the principles of its foreign policy
orientation. Positive reactions in
the world after the visit, along
these lines, were considered as
further strengthening of the
international position of
Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, the views
of the Soviet leadership were
assessed as a result of the
interests of a great power, which
was why Soviet and Yugoslav politics
would always be in conflict.
The NAM conference
in Havana, from September 3 to 9,
1979, did not result in changes that
the Cuban and Soviet politics hoped
for. The summit documents reiterated
the basic principles of the
movement, and did not change the
substance of the principles on which
the Movement had been based since
the early 1960's. The initial
“revolutionary” approach of the more
radical countries gathered around
Cuba ended by the prevalence of more
moderate currents gathered around
Yugoslavia.282 Tito was satisfied with
the results of the Conference, and
under the impression that “the
formulated principles and basic
orientation of the policy of the
non-aligned movement had never been
so decisively defended”, since the
Belgrade conference.283 Moscow was
disappointed. In the weeks before
the conference, the Soviet press
wrote about the “turning point” in
the fundamental orientation of the
movement that would take place at
the summit, which would confirm its
anti-imperialist orientation, and
stronger reliance on the socialist
community. Yugoslavia was accused of
anti-Sovietism and passive
neutralism.284 Similar assessments of
Yugoslav politics were expressed by
the Soviet party leadership,
insisting that Yugoslavia ultimately
had to decide whether it wanted to
lead a common policy with the Soviet
Union and socialist countries or
wanted to stand out against it.
Putting such a dilemma before
Yugoslavia three decades after the
breach with the Soviet concept of
“bloc” policy in Eastern Europe,
testified not only to the
persistence of Soviet interests, but
also to the lack of realism among
the “creators” of the Soviet
ideology and politics.
In the early
1980s, Yugoslavia and the Soviet
Union could not reconcile some of
the extremes which they persistently
used to build their foreign policy
conceptions. The decade of the
detente in international relations
created a more favorable environment
in which the “era of stagnation” of
communist societies could be
overcome without immediate
consequences. During the 1970's,
Yugoslav-Soviet relations were
perhaps the most solid ever since
the first post-war years. A
conservative ideological direction,
for which the notion of reform had
definitely become a first-rate
“taboo”, was added to the common
foreign policy priorities.
Yugoslavia “defended” its
difficulties and problems by an
active global policy, which garnered
“successes”, and the Soviet Union,
by a global policy that went beyond
Soviet borders and needs. Belgrade
perceived the Soviet Union as a
“bloc power” and as an irreplaceable
actor of support for “progressive
regimes” at the same time. Moscow
recognized Yugoslavia as “an equal
partner” and criticized it as a
“pro-Chinese” spokesperson. The
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in
late 1979 would raise, once again,
the issue of the merit of major
global policy, but rather too late.
The death of Josip Broz Tito in
Yugoslavia, in May 1980, would raise
the issue of future Yugoslav
international position, but given
the numerous internal problems, that
was rather unnecessary.
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