In 1948, the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia (FNRJ) could have been attacked by the powerful Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the entire communist East, but the invasion did not occur thanks to the wise policy of Josip Broz Tito and the international circumstances that prevailed in the years after the most devastating conflict. in the history of mankind - the Second World War.
This is what Croatian and Serbian historians Tvrtko Jakovina and Srđan Cvetković assessed for "Vijesti", when they were asked to draw parallels between the events after Tito's rejection of the Resolution of the Information Bureau of Communist Parties (Informbiro) in 1948 and today's Russian aggression against Ukraine.
"The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CK KPJ) does not consider that by refusing to discuss mistakes for which it is not guilty, it has in any way hurt the unity of the communist front. The unity of that front is not based on the recognition of fabricated and constructed errors and slanders, but on the fact whether the policy of one party is really internationalist or not".
It is part of the response of the KPJ Central Committee to the Informburo Resolution on the situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1948, which shook the relations between the then powerful and unified USSR and FNRJ and their leaders and former ideological comrades Josif Visarionovich Stalin and Tito.
Jakovina believes that the lifelong president of Yugoslavia performed a geostrategic miracle in 1948, something that was also important on a global scale.
"He survived, resisted, defeated Stalin, after defeating Hitler (Adolf). It was the first 'socialist decolonization', and in the Cold War constellation, it placed the state in the heart of Europe, on the world map, from the margins to the center. That's why it was happier than other countries in Eastern Europe," said Jakovina to "Vijesta".
According to him, if Tito had been overthrown by accident, if the pro-Stalinist faction had been stronger, if he had just gotten scared and surrendered, Yugoslavia would have been like Ukraine or, at best, Bulgaria.
"As we were very underdeveloped, we would have been even more provincial (but today), cramped and divided. We would not travel, we would live worse. But even that would be to some people's liking, because a large number of Yugoslavs wanted Russians, considered them ideologically close, religiously close, thought it would be wise to be 'on good terms' with the country that controls all the Slavic states".
Cvetković says that Yugoslavia could have ended up like Ukraine today if some international circumstances had not prevented it.
"What is indisputable is that this is an attack on a sovereign country, as it was Serbia in 1999, Iraq, as it could have been Yugoslavia. At that time, one of the main factors was the war in Korea, which somewhat scared Stalin that there could be an escalation of the conflict, and then there was more of that propaganda war, until Stalin's death," Cvetković told "Vijesta".
After World War II, Korea was divided into Soviet and American occupation zones. The civil war began on June 25, 1950, when the communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea attacked the capitalist Republic of Korea. The civil war was expanded when the United States of America (USA), and later China, entered the war due to Cold War tensions. The war ended with an armistice in July 1953, and the two Koreas are still two worlds today...
Comrade Stalin, stop sending your agents to Yugoslavia with orders to kill me. We've already caught seven of your men who were going to do that. If this is not stopped, I will be forced to send a man to Moscow and, if I do, it will not be necessary to send another, Tito is said to have told Stalin
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine on February 24 of this year and warned other countries that "any attempt to interfere with Russian action will lead to consequences that have never been seen before in history"...
On February 24, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared a state of war throughout the country. The international community condemned the attack and most countries, mostly Western and NATO members, imposed harsh sanctions on Russia....
TITA WAS COMPARED WITH GERING
The Informburo resolution, by which Yugoslavia was excluded from this organization, was passed on June 28, 1948, at the second session of this organization in Bucharest. The Yugoslav delegation did not appear. Informbiro was an advisory body of all communist parties, founded in 1947 and headquartered in Belgrade, until the conflict between Tito and Stalin.
The resolution consisted of several points in which, among other things, the deviation of the KPJ from "Marxist-Leninist policy", "implementation of a hostile policy towards the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party (SKP), "abandoning the position of the working class" and diminishing the role of the Communist Party in to the detriment of the "People's Front" which includes different layers of society.
It was criticized for the sudden adoption of "reckless" laws, as well as the fact that there is no "internal democracy" in the party, nor "criticism, nor self-criticism". The replacement of the party leadership was also demanded.
"The Information Bureau has no doubt that there are enough healthy elements in the KPJ wing, faithful to Marxism-Leninism, faithful to the internationalist traditions of the KPJ, faithful to the united socialist front. The task of these sane members of the KPJ is to force their present-day leaders to openly and honestly admit their mistakes and to correct them, to abandon nationalism, to return to internationalism and to strengthen with all their might a united socialist front against imperialism, or, if the present-day leaders of the KPJ show themselves incapable of that, to remove them and appoint a new internationalist leadership of the KPJ", the Resolution states.
The 1946 Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Assistance with Albania and the 1947 Bled Agreements of Tito and Bulgarian Communist leader Georgi Dimitrov on economic and political cooperation are some of the events that were problematic for Stalin. It bothered him that Moscow was being bypassed in these important agreements.
Although many expected that Tito would give in to the pressure and leave the party and the state, this did not happen, despite the "rattling of weapons" on the borders of Yugoslavia, surrounded by countries under the full control of Stalin - Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania.
Cvetković said that Yugoslavia in 1948 did not in any way provoke the USSR and that the leadership was sincerely pro-Stalinist, and in some way led in Stalinist reforms.
"Stalin's accusations were not realistic and it was not Tito who told Stalin 'no', it was the other way around, Stalin told Tito 'no' and tried to somehow lead a campaign against Yugoslavia that it was fascist. And then accusations of fascism against the Yugoslav leadership were made lightly, Tito was called Goering, because of his physical resemblance to the Nazi Herman Goering, and a propaganda battle was waged," says Cvetković.
THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR
Yugoslavia, on the other hand, as he says, initiated Stalinist reforms, started with the law on land collectivization, insisted on proving in the first year that it is really on that path, that it is not what it is accused of.
"Only after the support from the West, when it became clear that things could not go back, at the end of 1949, she embarked on a different policy, a policy of non-alignment. Of course, with passive reliance on NATO and Western countries that provided economic, political and other assistance. Just as now Western countries are providing assistance to Ukraine, in terms of its defense", says Cvetković.
Like today, he reminds, there was a threat of nuclear escalation, which in a way stopped the conflict at the level of propaganda.
According to him, the question is whether the threats of NATO and nuclear escalation would have stopped Stalin, and the subsequent experiences of Hungary and Czechoslovakia show that they would not.
In 1956, the Hungarians rose up against the communist regime of the then Hungary and its Soviet patrons, and overthrew it. However, that event, known as the Hungarian Uprising, led to Soviet military intervention and the installation of a new pro-Soviet government.
In the then socialist Czechoslovakia, with the arrival of Aleksandar Dubček at the head of the communist party and state in January 1968, reforms and an attempt to introduce "socialism with a human face" began, which was the introduction to the period known as the "Prague Spring". The leadership of the USSR was against the reforms and the "Prague Spring" was suppressed in the night between August 20 and 21, 1968, with the entry of Warsaw Pact troops into Prague...
Cvetković explains that the "red line" between East and West was Yugoslavia, which was always on the border, even in the famous Fifty-Fifty (half-half) agreement, however declarative it was and was never made official.
The agreement on percentages was an agreement between Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on the division of spheres of interest in the Balkans. Churchill proposed that the USSR have 90 percent influence in Romania and 75 percent in Bulgaria, that the United Kingdom (with an agreement with the USA) has 90 percent in Greece, while in Yugoslavia and Hungary they would have 50 percent each...
Cvetković says that the reason for the attack on Yugoslavia was the personal frustration of Stalin, who in the last phase of his rule looked for an enemy in every powerful and respectable man in Russia, and Tito was the leader of one of the strongest resistance movements in Europe and had some reputation himself, so they called him the Balkan Stalin.
"Stalin was bothered by the fact that the Yugoslav leadership had a reputation and some kind of independence and some ideas about a Balkan federation, etc. The main reason is Stalin's personal ambition and desire to fully control those countries. The leadership of Yugoslavia did not threaten to be part of the NATO pact, those economic arrangements with the West followed only from the 50s. At the time of the attack, it was a big surprise for everyone. Stalin had a large number of supporters, especially in Serbia and Montenegro, so in the event of a war it would be a really difficult position...", states Cvetković.
It should not be forgotten that the Red Army participated in the final operations for the liberation of Yugoslavia from Nazi Germany, including the battle for the liberation of the capital - Belgrade, in October 1944...
The rift between Tito and Stalin was preceded by several months of correspondence (from March to May 1948) in which their confidants took part - Edvard Kardelj from the Yugoslav side and Vyacheslav Molotov from the Soviet side. In the letters, Moscow pointed to "dubious Marxists" (Milovan Đilas, Svetozar Vukmanović Tempo, Boris Kidrič, Aleksandar Ranković), which the KPJ denied.
"IBEOVCI" AND GOLI OTOK
Given that Stalin had a lot of supporters in Yugoslavia even after the Resolution, the KPJ is starting to deal with dissidents.
Then Tito "creates" the famous Goli Otok (a camp for political prisoners on an island in the Adriatic Sea), where he imprisons the so-called "Ibe people", i.e. those who were in favor of the Informburo Resolution (and those who were not). In the next few years, mass arrests of political officials, as well as ordinary workers and peasants who were suspected of collaborating or about to collaborate with the Russians, will be carried out throughout the country.
In a feuilleton published in the newspaper "Dan" in March 2008, parts of which were broadcast by the BBC, Danijela D. Popović writes that out of 468.175 members and 51.612 candidates for party membership in Yugoslavia, only about 55.000 communists declared themselves in favor of the Informburo Resolution.
Of that number, 2.616 were in the governing bodies, and 4.183 were members of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA).
All "ibe people" were excluded from the party. The first to express disagreement with these moves by the KPJ, much earlier, during the exchange of letters between the two leaders, were the then ministers Sreten Žujović and Andrija Hebrang.
Both were first expelled from the party, and then arrested. Hebrang allegedly hanged himself in Belgrade's Glavnjača prison, while Žujović changed his views after several years in prison and was later re-admitted to the party.
According to the author of the feuilleton, about 5.000 communists became political emigrants, defecting to the USSR and other Eastern Bloc countries, while 16.312 communists ended up on Goli otok.
Jakovina: If Stalin had lived, Yugoslavia would probably have been more liberal
When asked if there would have been a war if Stalin had lived longer, Cvetković replied that everything would depend on global circumstances, just like today. Stalin died in 1953, five years after the Informburo Resolution.
"Back then war was fought by other means, it is the economy, as it is now, propaganda, and these are some similarities in the sense that a nuclear war does not pay off for anyone, it is actually impossible for anyone to be the winner. Then a red line is established, war is waged through third parties, now Ukrainians or later through propaganda, through various organizations, money, through incitement of revolutions, opposition movements in opposing camps, etc.
Jakovina believes that if Stalin had lived, Yugoslavia would probably be more liberal and free than it was.
"Stalin died for us - too soon, because the real danger of intervention for Yugoslavia was greater at the very beginning, especially at the beginning of 1948, although the danger was permanent. It also increased somewhat when Stalin's paranoia grew, when some things did not go his way, when he was ready to make less deliberate moves in the country, but after the FNRJ ceased to be alone, after help began to arrive from the West, after internally, the regime strengthened, secured itself, then the chances for Ukraine in the Balkans were less and less".
Cvetković: Be careful in the clash of great powers, without backing down
Cvetković says that he does not believe that the conflicts will spill over into the Balkans, but he expects pressure.
He believes that now Russia is preoccupied with Ukraine and cleaning up the terrain in front of its backyard, on its borders.
"There will be pressure for the countries of the region to somehow support the sanctions against Russia and condemn the intervention, which we did, because it is difficult not to condemn the intervention that has no basis in international law, but there will also be pressure to introduce sanctions and to make this area more firmly incorporated into the Western sphere of influence. I expect that there will be pressure on all organizations that will be labeled as pro-Russian and that we will pay the price as a people labeled as 'little Russians'".
He says that you should be careful even in this clash of great powers, not to hide your back and look after your own interests.
"There is absolutely no need to rush because we are entering a great instability at the global level, and there small countries have nothing to ask for and do not have many choices, but that choice should not be too big a risk because here just one wrong move will cost the fate of thousands and thousands of people in for the next, perhaps decades. So, all people will suffer if some of the politicians withdraw a radical tax that is risky".
Bonus video:
