The formation of the Communist party of Yougoslavia

Июль 30, 2022

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The formation of the Communist party of Yougoslavia

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2. The Comintern: Institutions and people Dr Nikolaos Papadatos, University of Geneva Global Studies Institute Email: nikolaos.papadatos@unige.ch
3. INDEX 1 The formation of the Communist party of Yougoslavia (CPY) 2 Tito and Gorkic 3
4. The formation of the Communist party of Yougoslavia (CPY) The Bolshevik Revolution of November, 1917, found
5. In the elections for the Constituent Assembly on November 28, 1920, the CPY scored a notable
6. Sima Markovič, a teacher from Belgrade— the leading Serbian Communist—was known even by Stalin as “Comrade
7. Markovič finally capitulated at the Fourth Congress of the CPY held at Dresden, Germany, in November,
8. Tito and Gorkic The remaining leadership of the CPY fled the country and for years operated
9. It accepted, at Stalin’s orders, the Popular Front policy of collaborating with non-Communist and anti-Fascist parties.
10. At the end of 1937, Tito was given in Moscow the position of the General Secretary,
11. In the 1920s and 1930s the CPY was a byword for factional intrigue. Behind those clashes,
12. The May election was for many a moral victory for the opposition, despite the government's comfortable
13. The Comintern's decision to quash these resolutions of April 1936, and summon the leadership to Moscow
14. An agreement of some sort had to be achieved, whether officially or unofficially and no matter
15. At his first meeting with the Central Committee on returning from Moscow he called on all
16. Gorkic stuck to his guns and took a detailed statement on party reorganization when summoned to
17. Understandably, this enquiry gave new heart to those who had opposed Gorkic in 1935 and 1936
21. Labud Kusovac, the party’s representative on the committee for aid to republican Spain, stated that the
22. Apparently as a result of this visit the French Communist Party supported Maric in his job
23. The end of Gorkić’s era gave new possibilities to his opposition and Tito, as Gorkić’s man,
24. On his personal initiative this informal group constituted itself as the temporary leadership of the CPY,
25. When he left Moscow, he was once again supplied with imperative orders. He was supposed to
26. Once again Tito had to go through the same process of verification in Moscow. He wrote
27. This was the strategy known as “The Popular Front created from below”, that is to say
28. The CPY was told that it should in the first place explain to its members and
29. d. Finally, the conclusion was that the general crisis of capitalism would certainly became even more
30. These instructions, on each of the three occasions, were created during a process of consultation among
31. He gladly explained to Bozidar Adžija the concept of “Popular front from above”, that is to
32. For Tito, the succession of defeats of Norway, Holland and Belgium was a clear confirmation of
33. The radicalization of his strategy reached its peak after the defeat of France, when he declared
34. Moscow did not approve of this radical strategy of the CPY. On September 28th Tito was
35. The Conference was opened by Tito’s extensive report in his capacity of the acting head of
36. In October he arrived in Moscow, he was able to make an oral presentation on the
37. The Executive Committee addressed the issue of creating a people’s government: “In the present situation, the
38. Yet, the Party should not put forward the slogan on the defence of the frontiers of
39. After the defeat of France, and Hitler’s victory in Western Europe, the Nazi peril became real
40. In the meantime, the communication was ensured via radio operated by Tito’s friend Josip Kopinič, a
41. The only way to effectively defend its independence and keep the country out of the imperialist
42. In Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina the Nazi’s established a puppet genocidal regime under the guidance of
43. “The struggle against reactionary governments which refused to grant the people their democratic rights and liberties
44. He made no reference to this possibility in his telegrams to Moscow. Kopinič transmitted only his
45. During this stage of combat the CPY should fight for the liberation from foreign occupation and
46. Tito’s actions from the moment he became the acting head of CPY in 1937 until June
47. Hitler’s attack and a series of defeats of the Red Army forced the Soviet government and
48. When eventually they entered small provincial towns in Serbia, the local partisan commanders started destroying all
49. The tasks of people’s councils were to provide food and material aid to partisans units, to
50. The theory of two phases called for an urgent alliance with all resistance groups and in
51. Mihailović could rely on the prestige of his rank and could benefit from the network of
52. Only by fighting the Germans, but primarily the entire local administration that was incorporated in the
53. Tito in fact mentioned Mihailović’s units only after he had met Colonel Mihailović and reached an
54. Dimitrov’s demand for clarification arrived in December 1941 at the time when the German offensive in
55. Tito failed to inform Moscow of his new strategy but the Yugoslav government in exile notified
56. Tito, however, continued his own agenda of denouncing Mihailović to Moscow and fighting his units in
57. Dimitrov’s response underlined the existing disagreements. He agreed with the creation of NKOJ, but he didn’t
58. Dimitrov’s evocation of the “present phase” was an explicit reference to the theory of “two phases”,
59. The fate of Yugoslavia was sealed when Stalin and Roosevelt agreed that there would be no
60. The second session of the AVNO J, held in the town of Jajce on the night
61. Churchill wrote a personal letter to Tito in January 1944. In his letter the British Prime
62. The only solution possible was, as Anthony Eden, British Minister of Foreign Affairs explained to Tito
63. Therefore, in the beginning of 1944 in direct contacts with Western Allies Tito imposed his solution
64. The Tehran decisions thus were realized and the decisive Partisan victory in Serbia in the fall
65. Tito’s Yugoslavia almost singlehandedly defied the West on the issue of Trieste and Venezia-Guilia. The USSR
66. The Yugoslav-Soviet crisis was presented as a political top-level conflict within the Cominform. In fact, the
67. “This controversy was a matter of great importance for the internal development of our country because
68. The Yugoslav-Soviet conflict was not provoked by ideological differences. It was purely a matter of state
69. The German attack on Yugoslavia did not incite Tito to act, but Hitler’s attack on the
70. Tito’s peronnal file: Archives
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The Comintern: Institutions and people
Dr Nikolaos Papadatos, University of Geneva
Global Studies

Institute
Email: nikolaos.papadatos@unige.ch

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INDEX
1 The formation of the Communist party of Yougoslavia (CPY)
2

Tito and Gorkic
3 Tito and the Comintern
4 Tito Kusovac and Maric
5 Tito and his leadership within the CPY
6 Tito as Secretary-General
7 Tito and his partisans
8 Titos’s road to power
9 Conclusion: The Stalin-Tito split
10 Tito’s peronnal file: Archives

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The formation of the Communist party of Yougoslavia (CPY)
The Bolshevik Revolution

of November, 1917, found many followers among the workers. Hundreds of Croatian and Slovenian P.W.’s—former soldiers of Austria-Hungary — participated in the Revolution and in the Civil War. One of them was Josip Broz, later to be known as Tito. Returning soldiers brought revolutionary ideas to their native towns and villages. The Revolution of a half a century ago, however, had a special impact on Montenegro and Serbia that had long historical relations with Russia based on ethnic and religious sentiments.
The national and religious animosities contributed to the temporary rise of Communism. The Socialist Workers’ Party of Yugoslavia (Communists) was founded in Belgrade in late April, 1919. Its initiators were from all provinces. The Second Party Congress was held in Vukovar, Croatia, during June 20-24, 1920. The Party now accepted the “ Conditions of Admission” to the Comintern and joined it. Its membership was about 65,000, and its new name the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. A revolutionary program along the Leninist lines was adopted, following the directives of the Soviet-sponsored Balkan Communist Federation.

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In the elections for the Constituent Assembly on November 28, 1920,

the CPY scored a notable success : 198,756 votes and 58 mandates for the Skupština (Parliament) in Belgrade. This was the only time in royal Yugoslavia that the Communist Party enjoyed perfect legality and in a more or less democratic manner the Party could obtain votes from Communists and non-Communists alike. It should be noted that many of those who voted Communist knew nothing about Communism. lt was obvious that -for instance - “ Montenegrins and Macedonians expressed their dissatisfaction over the Serbian regime by voting for the most radical party that was available.”
A month later the Government outlawed the CPY. Responding to the subsequent Communist terrorism by a special Law for the Defense of the State, the Government in Belgrade inaugurated a real reign of terror against the Communist movement. Worse than persecutions that seriously depleted the ranks of the CPY was the internal strife within the Party.

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Sima Markovič, a teacher from Belgrade— the leading Serbian Communist—was known

even by Stalin as “Comrade Semich”. Markovič refused 'to follow Lenin’s instructions to exploit the unsolved nationality questions for Communist revolutionary strategy. Opposed by the Croatian Communists, who insisted on Leninist line of national self-determination, the Markovič group consistently rejected the right of secession to non-Serbian peoples - a majority in the South Slav state thus overlooking the revolutionary potentiality of the nationality question.
Comintern itself intervened. The refusal of Markovič to discard his views almost completely destroyed the CPY. By January, 1924, the CPY had only about a thousand members. The Fifth Congress of the Comintern (June 17 -July 8, 1924) rebuked Markovič and its resolution explicitly stated that Croatia, Slovenia and “Macedonia” had the right to secede from Yugoslavia. Stalin himself, who was the foremost Soviet authority on the national question, delivered a speech during a session of the Yugoslav Commission of the Comintern on March 30, 1925. He confirmed the right of nations in Yugoslavia to “self-determination, including the right to secession.”

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Markovič finally capitulated at the Fourth Congress of the CPY held

at Dresden, Germany, in November, 1928. Removed from Party leadership, he was admonished to Moscow where he eventually disappeared during Stalin’s purges. The Party’s secretaries after him were—in chronological order : Djuro Djaković (Croatian), Jovan Martinović (Montenegrin), and Milan Gorkič (Serbian). The membership of the Party was now estimated at about 2,000.
Following the assassination of the Croatian deputies and the death of Stjepan Radić, the President of the Croatian Peasant Party, in the summer of 1928, King Alexander introduced a dictatorship in January, 1929. A wave of persecutions of all opponents of the regime set in. Among numerous Communists who were sent to prison was also Josip Broz, a prominent leader in the Communist-led labor unions and a well-known member of the local Party organization in Zagreb.

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Tito and Gorkic
The remaining leadership of the CPY fled the country

and for years operated from abroad. When in the first half of 1932, Comintern appointed Gorkič as the Political Secretary of the Party, the number of its members dwindled down to some four hundred members. The actual center of the underground CPY in the country was in Zagreb whose local organization was from 1927 until 1937 the only larger Party organization in the whole country.
Following the assassination of King Alexander in October, 1934, in Marseilles, France, and the downfall of the dictatorship, the Communists started to emerge as a new active political force. In December, 1934, Josip Broz became the member of the Central Committee of the CPY. After fourteen years at home, Broz went to Moscow in early 1935. Here he worked in the Balkan Secretariat of the Comintern under Georgi Dimitrov, the famous Bulgarian Communist. While Broz was in Moscow, the Seventh Congress of the Comintern took place from July 25 to August 21, 1935.

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It accepted, at Stalin’s orders, the Popular Front policy of collaborating

with non-Communist and anti-Fascist parties. Stalin also ordered a complete change of policy in regard to Yugoslavia : the right of secession was to be discarded and the integrity of the state had to be preserved. From this time on the official policy of the CPY has been : the solution of the national question can be achieved by federalization rather than destruction of Yugoslavia. This, however, was at least a partial return to the ideas of Sima Markovič.
Absolutely loyal to Stalin and Comintern, Tito, as he was by now known among the Communists, gradually emerged as the new leader of Yugoslav Communism. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) Tito spent a great deal of time in Paris where the Central Committee of the CPY was then located. He and Gorkič were dispatching hundreds of Yugoslav Communists to the International Brigade in Spain. In the summer of 1937, Gorkič was called to Moscow, removed as the General Secretary, and subsequently liquidated.

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At the end of 1937, Tito was given in Moscow the

position of the General Secretary, the highest position in the Party which he has held ever since. He returned to the homeland in early 1938. He reorganized, purged and completely overhauled the Party. It numbered only about 1,500 members. The top men were: Moša Pijade (in prison), Milovan Djilas, Aleksandar Ranković, and Edvard Kardelj.
Tito was a determined revolutionary and succeeded in building a unified, fighting revolutionary organization. Although confused by the Nazi-Soviet Agreement of late August, 1939, the Communists were the only political organization in Yugoslavia well prepared for the events after the outbreak of World War II. At the time of the Fifth Land Conference of the CPY that met in Zagreb in October, 1940, the movement could boast of approximately 12,000 disciplined party members and some 30,000 Communists youth.

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In the 1920s and 1930s the CPY was a byword for

factional intrigue. Behind those clashes, lay genuine ideological issues and in the mid 1930s, which reflected the struggle within the Cominten and the USSR, when Tito rose to a position of influence within the party, the issue was Liquidationism.
Liquidationism was the ideology espoused by Milan Gorkic, who preceded Tito as party leader. Under his leadership, in the shadow of developments in France, the party sought a popular front style agreement with the socialist party. Of course, at first sight there were few similarities between the situation in France, where both the communist and socialist parties were legal, and Yugoslavia, where both were illegal. However, the Comintern line required all parties to follow broadly the same policy, and ever since the assassination of King Alexander on 9 October 1934 there had been signs that the dictatorial regime established in 1929 was beginning to weaken. The censorship was relaxed, prominent political prisoners were released, and in February 1935 elections were promised for the following May.

Tito and the Comintern

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The May election was for many a moral victory for the

opposition, despite the government's comfortable majority in terms of parliamentary seats. Gorkic, therefore, was to repeat the proposal for a single opposition list throughout his period as party leader, even though the rest of the leadership did not support him. In June 1935 the Central Committee rejected his "single opposition" stance, but continued to press for an alliance with the socialists.
When prospects for an alliance improved in the autumn, after the socialists had adopted a new radical program, Gorkic was sent to Yugoslavia in October 1935 to try to finalize these negotiations: again he had no success. Mass arrests during the winter of 1935-1936 showed the clear limits to Stojadinovic's liberalism and revived opposition to Gorkic's tactics. He was forced to summon a meeting of the CPY Central Committee in April 1936, without the prior agreement of the Comintern, and agree to the adoption of a series of resolutions critical of all the attempts at negotiating an alliance with the socialists.

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The Comintern's decision to quash these resolutions of April 1936, and

summon the leadership to Moscow in August of that year, appeared to suggest total endorsement for the Gorkic line. However, questions had clearly been raised in the Comintern by Gorkic's apparent inability to keep his own house in order, for he was criticized for not having sought Comintern intervention earlier. When Gorkic returned from Moscow to Vienna, where the CPY Central Committee was based, he told to a Central Committee meeting on 8 December that henceforth he had the right to veto all party decisions: he alone would in future have the right to correspond with the Comintern.
Again negotiations began with the socialists, and again Gorkic stressed the single opposition tactic. Discussions started in Zagreb in autumn 1936 about an agreement for the December 1936 local elections. A joint platform was drafted and sent to the Central Committee for comments and the party's November report to the Comintern was upbeat and optimistic, as was a Gorkic letter to Tito. Once again Gorkic was convinced of the need for agreement at any cost.

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An agreement of some sort had to be achieved, whether officially

or unofficially and no matter what name was given to that list, he told Tito. Tito had been confirmed in the post of Organizational Secretary, responsible for links with Yugoslavia, at the August 1936 meeting in Moscow. He knew as early as November 1936 that the Comintern had serious doubts about Gorkic's abilities, and differences between them became apparent at once. While not critical of the negotiations with the socialists per se, Tito was clearly worried by the logic of agreement at any price. The socialists insisted that the illegality of the CPY was a major stumbling block to an agreement, and Tito told Gorkic in November 1936 that much of the current talk about relations with the socialist party could only be described as Liquidationist.
That Gorkic was a Liquidationist there can be no doubt. Not only did he call for a united opposition, but he wanted to facilitate this by legalizing the communist party and thus overcoming the socialists' fear of association with an illegal organization. To this end, he drew up lengthy proposals aimed at completely transforming the party's organizational structure.

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At his first meeting with the Central Committee on returning from

Moscow he called on all those in emigration who were in contact with Yugoslavia to study the question of the relationship between legal and illegal work. All Gorkic’s correspondence with the Comintern in the spring of 1937 made clear that radical changes were at the front of his mind. The issue of reform appeared regularly on the agenda of Central Committee meetings as the “organizational question”.
The starting point for Gorkic's analysis of the failings of the party were the constant arrests. He therefore proposed legalizing as many party leaders as possible by involving them in the legal and semi-legal trade union work so essential for working class unity. This would inevitably mean the demise of "deep underground commanding committees", which showed little activity and were increasingly irrelevant. "We must be brave enough to recognize this", he wrote in January 1937, "and draw the logical conclusions, which are not", he insisted, "Liquidationist". The old technical apparatus should be abolished, the party rebuilt from below, and the party leadership legalized in Yugoslavia.

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Gorkic stuck to his guns and took a detailed statement on

party reorganization when summoned to Moscow in July 1937. This repeated the call for the legalization of the party and the abolition of the technical apparatus; it described the underground cells as irrelevant. The Comintern was equally unhappy about his repeated calls for the party to follow the tactic of a single opposition and criticized his letter of July 1937 calling for all anti-fascist elements to be part of the same list in local elections.
Gorkic never returned from that visit to Moscow, one of the many victims of Stalin's purges, and at a meeting on 17 August 1937 Tito took over as interim party secretary. His position as interim party leader was automatically endorsed by Moscow. Gorkic had been arrested by the NKVD, not for the ideological sin of Liquidationism, but as a British spy. As a result, the Comintern began a lengthy investigation into the CPY to establish whether Gorkicites existed among the remaining leadership.

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Understandably, this enquiry gave new heart to those who had opposed

Gorkic in 1935 and 1936 and who interpreted his removal as a vindication of their position, but it left Tito uncertain as to whether he should openly criticize Gorkic's links with the socialists, at a time when the popular front policy was apparently so successful in France and Spain. It would be eight months before Tito could even begin to combat Liquidationism and ‘Bolshevize’ the party, and over two years before his position as party leader was truly secure. During that time he experienced at first hand the role of the NKVD within the Comintern at the height of Stalin's purges. This experience forced him to clarify his thoughts on the relationship between Leninism and the Stalinist state.
From the start of Tito's period as de facto party leader he began to explore the nature of his dependency on Moscow: a sort of sparring began through which he sought to establish the limitations on independent action. He was determined to act, rather than simply await instructions. To justify such initiatives he was concerned to keep the Comintern informed in detail of what was happening; however, much of what he told the Comintern was highly selective, often glossing over controversial issues.

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Labud Kusovac, the party’s representative on the committee for aid to

republican Spain, stated that the whole leadership, and not just Gorkic, were traitors. These Paris-based critics had contacted Petko Miletic as a potential new party leader as soon as Gorkic was summoned to Moscow: Miletic, another former Politburo member had had a battalion of Spanish volunteers named after him for his supposed heroism under torture. On 8 December 1937 Maric informed Tito that after four months in the job it was clear he had continued with the old practices and taken no measures against Gorkic's closest associates. Henceforth, he said, he would boycott Central Committee meetings attended by Colakovic and Zujovic.
Kusovac, a former member of the Profintern apparatus and the man responsible for handling Yugoslav volunteers bound for the Spanish civil war, where opposition to Gorkic was widespread, had good contacts with the Comintern and the NKVD. He was visited in Paris by the Comintern emissary Golubovic early in 1938 although no contact was made with Tito who was in the French capital at the same time.

Tito Kusovac and Maric

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Apparently as a result of this visit the French Communist Party

supported Maric in his job as organizer of the Yugoslav emigration in France even after Tito had removed him from that post. The Maric and Tito groups were fighting bitterly for control of the party with Maric insisting no personnel initiatives should be made until the Comintern enquiry was over.
In this dispute, Tito was appealing always for the Comintern to conclude its enquiry rapidly and prevent the party disintegrating. However, far from waiting patiently for a decision, Tito took a series of initiatives to reinforce his position and by-pass the restrictions coming from Moscow. The Comintern enquiry meant that all financial support from Moscow ended and the party journal Proleter had to cease publication. Tito looked to other means of support and first sought to divert money being used to send volunteers to Spain for the more mundane task of keeping the party press operating. Frustrated in this by the opposition of Kusovac, whom he tried to sack as Spanish agent in March 1938, Tito had to appeal for funds to Yugoslavs living abroad.

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The end of Gorkić’s era gave new possibilities to his opposition

and Tito, as Gorkić’s man, became an object of contestation, since new candidates for the leadership of CPY had come forward. That’s when Tito decided to go back to Yugoslavia, where he had, in 1936 and 1937, created the nucleus of his future Central Committee. He left Paris without Moscow’s permission, convinced that the fate of the CPY would be decided in the country. There he could count on the support of Edvard Kardelj in Slovenia, Milovan Djilas and Aleksandar Ranković in Serbia, and Ivo Lola Ribar as the leader of Communist youth. He did not choose them; they were presented to him as the leaders of regional party organizations. Nevertheless, he accepted them and they acknowledged his overall leadership because for them he embodied the unquestionable authority of the Comintern.

Tito and his leadership within the CPY

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On his personal initiative this informal group constituted itself as the

temporary leadership of the CPY, which was supposed to replace Gorkić’s Central Committee, and give much needed credibility to Tito as its new leader. But this new leadership had no real legitimacy without the Comintern’s approval. Tito wrote several times to Georgi Dimitrov, the head of the Comintern, trying to get permission to go to Moscow and explain his actions. Finally, the coveted invitation came and in August 1938 he arrived in Moscow.
Upon his arrival, he first had to justify his actions, and those of the CPY. In the meantime, a whole generation of previous leaders of the CPY had perished in Stalinist purges. Gorkić and his adversaries were eliminated in the same way. They perished in a process of security-inspired folly, supposed to rid the Soviet Union of all unwelcome foreigners, and everything that presented any kind of risk to the survival of the homeland of communism. During his stay in Moscow, from August 1938 to January 1939, Tito managed to obtain approval for his new leadership, and more importantly, for his actions in Gorkić’s era and afterwards.

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When he left Moscow, he was once again supplied with imperative

orders. He was supposed to organize a sort of conference of the CPY which would approve of the elimination of the previous generation of leaders of the CPY and would post factum exclude them from the party. That’s exactly what Tito did as soon as he returned to Yugoslavia. He reunited his temporary leadership on the lake of Bohinj from 15 to 19 March 1939. There they promoted themselves into the Central Committee of the CPY. In this capacity, they excluded all those that had perished in the Stalinist purges from the CPY. Thus Tito and his newly formed Central Committee gave their full approval to the purges that had taken place in Moscow. Tito on the occasion expulsed from the CPY all his rivals that have came forward after the disappearance of Gorkić. After he had faithfully fulfilled given instructions, Tito awaited summons to Moscow to give his report. Eventually he arrived in Moscow in September 1939.

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Once again Tito had to go through the same process of

verification in Moscow. He wrote his report on the actions of the CPY and presented it to the Executive Committee of the Comintern. While he was in Moscow, waiting for the situation of the CPY to be put on the agenda of the Executive Committee, he participated in the discussion on the situation in Europe after the outbreak of the War. The main issue was how to reconcile the antifascist policy advocated by Moscow with the conclusion of the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939. Manouilski was impressed by Tito’s solution: he proposed simply ignoring it as if it did not exist. But even though the VKPb and Comintern did their best not to publicize the Pact, it became the cornerstone of their policy. The Alliance with Hitler’s Germany made the strategy of the Popular Front obsolete since the peril of Nazi attack had theoretically disappeared. If there was no need for a common front with bourgeois parties, the VKPb and Comintern could revert to their previous strategy of fighting the left-wing parties such as Social Democrats for dominance amongst the working class. (Discuss the aspect of political time).

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This was the strategy known as “The Popular Front created from

below”, that is to say by the exclusive communist influence amongst the peasants and workers. The Popular Front was to be created by surpassing and ultimately destroying all other political influence among workers and peasants. The period of political alliances was over and the CPY could go back to the policy it was most comfortable with - the uncompromising fight against all democratic political options.
The new strategy was presented to the CPY in the Instruction of the Executive Committee of Comintern, dated 29 October 1939, which Tito took with him when he left Moscow on 26 November 1939. The Instruction was partly based on the information he brought from Yugoslavia. He was present at the sitting of the Committee. The Instruction was in fact a precise agenda for the CPY that gave answers to very important issues, such as how to address the situation created by the outbreak of the War.

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The CPY was told that it should in the first place

explain to its members and sympathizers that the War had an imperialist character and that all three major participants – England, France and Germany were capitalistic powers with imperialist objectives. Therefore there were no differences between them, no aggressors and no victims; consequently, the USSR had the right to conclude the Pact in order to safeguard its interests.
Furthermore, the USSR was the only power that followed a peaceful policy of aiding the nations that were fighting for their independence.
England and France were spreading false propaganda by saying that they were fighting for peace and freedom of nations, or they were trying the spread the War by dragging other countries into it.
Therefore, the CPY must oppose any attempt of the ruling bourgeoisie to draw Yugoslavia in the War. Instead, the CPY must fight for the conclusion of a treaty on friendship and mutual aid with the USSR, which is the best guarantee of the freedom and independence of Yugoslav nations.

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d. Finally, the conclusion was that the general crisis of capitalism

would certainly became even more acute during the war, thus creating favourable conditions for the elimination of capitalism altogether during the imperialist war.
These were the final instructions that Tito brought with him when he left Moscow for the third and last time in November 1939. On three occasions, during his stays in Moscow, Tito received written instructions which represented the essence of his domestic and foreign policy. The main points were:
The Yugoslav federation, the Popular Front as the essence of the political strategy from either above or below,
the Treaty on friendship with the USSR, keeping Yugoslavia out of the War, and last but not the least,
the prospect of the downfall of capitalism during the imperialist War.

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These instructions, on each of the three occasions, were created during

a process of consultation among the members of the Executive Committee. Tito was consulted by the Executive Committee as the principal source of information on the situation in Yugoslavia. He had an insight into the decision-making process, so therefore the conclusions were to him more than written directives. They were the essence of a policy that he had witnessed being made and that is the reason it remained a clear-cut guideline for him throughout the years he spent away from Moscow. It was not until the summer of 1944 that he again managed to establish direct personal contact with Moscow, when he flew from the island of Vis first to Romania and then to Moscow.
For a party leader with a limited educational background such as Tito, these rather simple concepts, contained in the series of instructions he got in Moscow, represented the sum total of his political ideas. He learned his Moscow lessons well and was never troubled by any kind of intellectual doubt. His political skill and acumen consisted of finding ways to put in practice the strategy that Moscow decided upon in any given moment.

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He gladly explained to Bozidar Adžija the concept of “Popular front

from above”, that is to say the need to cooperate with the bourgeois parties in order to create a large antifascist political movement, in accordance with the strategy established during the VIIth Congress of the Comintern. With the same vigour and conviction he subscribed to the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact that rendered the Popular Front as he had described it to Adžija useless. The communist discipline was never troubled by any moral dilemmas, since the best interests of the Soviet Union were always an imperative for him. Following his Soviet role model, he saw no issue with the change of strategy, which after the conclusion of the Pact called for virulent attacks on the bourgeois parties, Social Democrats especially, the allies of yesterday. Therefore, after a long journey from Moscow to Yugoslavia that took several months because he had been held up in Istanbul while awaiting his visa, he arrived in Zagreb on the 15th of March 1940 and started a virulent campaign in the Party journal, Proleter, against imperialist powers such as Great Britain and France, and at the same time heartily saluted the victory of the USSR over Finland.

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For Tito, the succession of defeats of Norway, Holland and Belgium

was a clear confirmation of his political logic. Small states that were driven into the War by the imperialist powers were subsequently abandoned and succumbed to Nazi invasion. The only way out was the one he had advocated: to stay out of the War and establish the closest possible economic and political ties with the USSR. That was the solution he advocated for Yugoslavia in Proleter.
In the same time he started purging the Party from all who were still in favour of a “Popular front from above”, that is to say for collaborating with other left-wing parties. The title of Tito’s article announced his strategy and his intentions: For the purity and the bolshevisation of the Party”. As for his attitude towards the Social Democrats, the titles of his articles speak for themselves: Against the revolutionary leaders of the Social Democrats as warmongers and leaders of the anti-Soviet campaign, written in June 1940; and The Unity of Bosses, Police, and Social democrat traitors in the struggle against the workers, written in July 1940.

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The radicalization of his strategy reached its peak after the defeat

of France, when he declared himself in favour of replacing the coalition government of Dragiša Cvetković and Vlatko Maček by a government composed of workers and peasants under the guidance of the CPY. He wrote in July 1940:
“The united working class in alliance with the peasantry and with the rest of the working population of Yugoslavia should prepare itself, under the guidance of the CPY, to carry out a struggle against the merciless exploitation of the workers by the capitalists and to lead a decisive battle to preserve the independence of Yugoslavia. The necessary condition for achieving these goals is to overthrow the existing regime and to create a real people’s government; a government of workers and peasants which will rule in the interest of working class, give the people their rights, and ensure the independence of the country by cooperation with the USSR, the country of workers and peasants, a state of gigantic progress and wellbeing, the protector of small nations and the most consistent partisan of peace”. (Tito, Sabrana djela, vol. V, 119-120, “Radnom Narodu Jugoslavije”, Proleter, 3-4, 1940).

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Moscow did not approve of this radical strategy of the CPY.

On September 28th Tito was told that the call for the creation of a people’s republic in Yugoslavia was premature. The kind of political action the CPY should engage in was propaganda, writing of statements, resolutions, etc.
The culmination of Tito’s radical rhetoric was reached during his introductory speech on the 5th Conference of the CPY, which was secretly organized in October 1940 in Zagreb. He was still just the acting head of him as such, since only the Congress of the CPY could appoint a new Secretary-General. Therefore he wanted to organize a Party congress in Zagreb in the fall of 1940. Moscow did not approve of organizing the Congress because there was a risk that the confidentiality of the Congress could be breached and the Party leadership might end up in Yugoslav prisons. Thus Tito was forced to rename the meeting of 108 delegates from all regional organizations of the CPY as the 5th Conference of the CPY.

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The Conference was opened by Tito’s extensive report in his capacity

of the acting head of CPY. He explicitly said that the CPY opposed the mobilization of the Yugoslav Army in the summer of 1940. The CPY thus prevented Yugoslavia from being drawn into the war by the Royal government. He clearly defined the line the CPY should follow during the war which was raging in Europe:
“All activity and efforts of the Party should have an exclusively class basis. We have to put an end to all projects and agreements with the leaderships of various bourgeois, so-called “democratic” parties, which have become more reactionary, genuine agencies of the secret services of French and British instigators of the War. Our Party and all sections of the Comintern must undertake the following tasks: the struggle to win over the working class for the creation of a Popular front from below, by organizing and leading everyday struggle for satisfying everyday needs of the working class, such as the struggle against the costs of everyday existence, the struggle against the war, struggle for the freedom and democratic and national rights of the nationally oppressed working class of Yugoslavia”.

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In October he arrived in Moscow, he was able to make

an oral presentation on the situation in Yugoslavia and in the CPY before the Executive Committee of Comintern. After a discussion the Executive Committee reached a conclusion, the essence of which was communicated to Tito by telegram signed by Pieck and dated 25 October 1940.
Pieck advised caution, repeating that the creation of a people’s government was impossible in the actual situation in the Balkans. Instead he pressed Tito to create a large movement capable of defending the independence of Yugoslavia and the right to self-determination of Yugoslav nations. On the other hand, the CPY should not advocate the defense of the present borders of Yugoslavia. Pieck suggested that Tito try to reach an agreement with bourgeois groups such as the Agrarian Party led by Dragoljub Jovanović.
He encouraged Tito to think about creating a large political movement against the war, for the defense of the independence of Yugoslavia and for good relations with theUSSR

Tito as Secretary-General

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The Executive Committee addressed the issue of creating a people’s government:
“In

the present situation, the demand to overthrow the government and install a genuine workers’ and peasants’ government would as an action slogan, in the present situation, amount to the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat. The situation in Yugoslavia is not ripe for this kind of action.... The party should decisively deny any speculation that the Red Army could support such a venture”
As for the strategy regarding the war in Europe, the position of the Comintern was shaped as follows :
“Under the action slogan of independence for the peoples of Yugoslavia, their right of self-determination and their mutual aid against any violence, the Party should develop propaganda in the masses and among citizens against the readiness of the bourgeoisie and the government to capitulate before the projects of German and Italian imperialism to dismantle Yugoslavia.

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Yet, the Party should not put forward the slogan on the

defence of the frontiers of the actual Yugoslav state, nor should it as an isolated political force, advocate armed resistance in the case of attack of the imperialist powers. Nevertheless, the Party should sustain and aid all tendencies among citizens and in the Army to organize armed resistance in order to strengthen the opposition to capitulation and increase the potential for defending the country”.
The Comintern position on the issue of the Popular Front strategy was rather more precise:
“The Party must make use of all occasions for cooperation with the elements of opposition and groups of opposition in the small bourgeoisie parties and with the forces inside the Social Democratic parties in order to widen, temporarily at least, the unified front against the reaction and for respecting the demands of the masses, as well as for the defence of the independence of Yugoslavia”.

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After the defeat of France, and Hitler’s victory in Western Europe,

the Nazi peril became real once again. Therefore the “Popular front from above”, conceived as an antifascist alliance with bourgeois and especially left-wing parties, was again needed to protect the USSR. With the same conviction and zeal as before, the new Secretary-General of the CPY, immediately started working on a large coalition capable of strengthening the defences of the country. Already on 25 December 1940, he informed Moscow that he had followed Pieck’s suggestion and had reached an agreement with the Agrarian Party of Dragoljub Jovanović on the basis of a common programme that consisted of: the signing of a treaty of alliance with the USSR, democratization, and efforts to ensure the independence of the country.
Petrović was the last member of the CPY who went to Moscow to present the situation in Yugoslavia and subsequently bring back from Moscow instructions for the CPY. In the spring of 1944, Milovan Djilas was at last given the opportunity to travel to Moscow and establish direct contact with the Soviet leadership.

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In the meantime, the communication was ensured via radio operated by

Tito’s friend Josip Kopinič, a Slovene communist and a hero of the Spanish Civil War. He was sent from Moscow to ensure contact with the CPY and with another eight Balkan and Central European parties. The radio centre was operational from July 1940.26 While Tito was in Zagreb, that is to say until May 1941, it was relatively easy for him to establish contact with Moscow. Nevertheless, the nature of radio contact did not permit anything more than the exchange of rather succinct telegrams. There was no way for Tito to receive comprehensive instructions on the strategy he was supposed to follow. Therefore he was left on his own to decide the course of action for the CPY. Until the outbreak of the war, Tito followed the instructions brought by Petrović. In early 1941, Tito defined the strategy of the CPY as follows:
“The preservation of peace, the defense of national liberty and independence of Yugoslav peoples against the entrance of the said peoples in the war on the side of any belligerent imperialist party, because any link with any of the imperialist groups meant abandoning Yugoslavia’s independence.

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The only way to effectively defend its independence and keep the

country out of the imperialist war is to rely on the USSR and to conclude with it an alliance on mutual aid”.
Therefore the CPY was just a spectator when an officers’ coup overthrew the Cvetković-Maček government after it had joined the Tripartite Pact (agreement between Germany, Italy and Japan signed in Berlin on 27 September 1940) . The great demonstrations of March 27th in support of the coup were organized without any knowledge of the CPY. When late in the day its members joined the movement, the only slogan they put forth called for an alliance with the USSR. Not even the mass demonstrations provoked any changes in Tito’s strategy.
On the following day he wrote to the Comintern that the CPY would organize the people to resist German and Italian armed attack but would also fight against any British action that could induce Yugoslavia to join the war on its side. The CPY wanted the new government led by General Dušan Simović to quit the Pact and to conclude an alliance with the USSR.

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In Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina the Nazi’s established a puppet genocidal

regime under the guidance of Ante Pavelić and his Ustaša followers, called the Independent state of Croatia. These were the issues which the Politbureau of the CPY addressed during its May meeting in Zagreb. After the meeting Tito moved to Belgrade, where he transmitted the conclusion to a Soviet diplomat. The Soviet legation was opened in Belgrade after the establishment of diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia in June 1940, and the last Soviet diplomats left the country as late as June 1941. The conclusions Tito transmitted were supposed to represent the CPY strategy for its actions under the foreign occupation. First of all, the conclusions stated that even though the country was divided into several occupation zones that were incorporated into the neighboring countries, the CPY had remained united and had continued its action on the territory of pre-war Yugoslavia.
Before the outbreak of the war, the Party had 8000 members and 30 000 members in the Communist Youth. One of the major elements of the CPY strategy in the preceding months was presented as follows:

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“The struggle against reactionary governments which refused to grant the people

their democratic rights and liberties and for the creation of a peoples’ government that would give democratic rights and liberties to citizens of Yugoslavia and would reestablish national rights to the oppressed nations”.
In his article written in June 1941, Tito said that at the May meeting it was concluded that in the country existed a “revolutionary energy of the masses”; that was provoked by:
“Brutal occupation regime and the spoliation of the people; even more brutal oppression of certain nations and the hatred it provoked against its perpetrators; the treason of the ex-governing circles recruited from the bourgeoisie; the evidence of the criminal national and social policy of the defunct regime…”
The evocation of the need for a people’s government and of the existence of revolutionary energy showed that Tito began to think that the occupation may present an opportunity to use the imperialist war for starting a revolutionary movement that could bring about a people’s government.

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He made no reference to this possibility in his telegrams to

Moscow. Kopinič transmitted only his assurance that the CPY was preparing for the war in the case of German attack on the USSR. That was also the content of the messages Tito transmitted to the Soviet diplomat when he met him in May in Belgrade. The fact that his homeland was under foreign occupation could not incite him to engage on his own in any warlike activity. His instructions were clear and confirmed by Dimitrov’s telegram in March. The CPY should limit its activity on explaining its strategy and gaining as much influence as possible among the working class of Yugoslavia. Everything changed after 22 June 1941 and Hitler’s attack on the USSR.
The message that came from Moscow on the same day was urgent and perfectly clear. The CPY as well as other communist parties should create a single national Popular front and a common international Front to fight against German and Italian invaders since the attack on the USSR was not only a blow to the first Socialist country, but also an attack on the liberty and independence of all nations. The priorities ware also clearly defined.

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During this stage of combat the CPY should fight for the

liberation from foreign occupation and not try to realize a socialist revolution. Soviet party authorities transmitted via the Comintern the essence of the so-called theory of “two phases” to the CPY. First, the creation of the “Popular front from above”, and only afterwards, when the situation was more favourable, should the CPY engage in a social revolution. The theory was dictated by the interests of the USSR which needed a large alliance with the United Kingdom, and afterwards with the United States too, to win the war against Hitler. Social revolutions during the war would have surely made such an alliance impossible. Therefore, the CPY as well as all other communist parties and sections of the Comintern were told to concentrate on the creation of a large Popular front capable of resisting and fighting Hitler’s Germany. Moscow had to repeat its message to Tito and the CPY once again on 1st of July, asking them explicitly to start creating partisan units in order to fight the Germans.

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Tito’s actions from the moment he became the acting head of

CPY in 1937 until June 1941 demonstrated that he was a conscientious representative of the Comintern in Yugoslavia. Under his guidance, the CPY fulfilled all instructions Moscow sent without even once questioning them. Tito did not decide to start an armed uprising when Yugoslavia was attacked and occupied but when he was told to do so by Moscow, after the USSR was attacked by Hitler.
The CPY was a section of the Comintern and acted as such as long as contact with Moscow existed. Tito and the CPY demonstrated a tendency to take initiative was the creation of a people’s government, that is to say an armed uprising against the Constitutional government of Yugoslavia. The will to take the power by arms was omnipresent in Tito’s thoughts even though he abandoned his plans each time Moscow told him to do so.

Tito and his partisans

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Hitler’s attack and a series of defeats of the Red Army

forced the Soviet government and the Comintern to pay less attention to the situation in Yugoslavia. Tito and the CPY were more or less left on their own from July 1941. It was only natural that they should revert to their strategy of seizing the power in Yugoslavia.
Tito and the rank and file of the CPY were both convinced that the issue of the war would be solved by a victorious advance of the Red Army, which would triumphantly march into Yugoslavia. Therefore the real task of the CPY was to solve the issue of power and social revolution before its arrival. The war against Germany could not be won without the help of the Red Army, but the CPY had to win the fight for power in Yugoslavia on its own. Therefore, when in July the first partisan squads started operating in Serbia, their goal was to fight the occupying German troops and the local Serbian gendarmerie, but most of all to demonstrate that the Kingdom of Yugoslavia had disappeared once for all.

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When eventually they entered small provincial towns in Serbia, the local

partisan commanders started destroying all institutions of royal Yugoslavia. The mayors were imprisoned if not shot, the cadastres, the court and police archives, and the lists of conscripts were burnt, all pictures and emblems of the royal government removed. A new era commenced for Yugoslavia, and the CPY wanted this fact to be seen and understood by the ordinary citizens. Tito informed the Comintern of this campaign in the second half of August saying that: “Partisans are replacing the municipal authorities; they are burning the list of conscripts, the tax lists and other types of archives, and creating people’s committees as new forms of local government”.
The purpose of this campaign was in fact to create people’s councils on the local level. Edward Kardelj, a Slovene communist and Tito’s second, explained in October 1941 that the Partisans had to replace the existing local administration because it served as loyal transmission of the occupation authorities. New forms of local administration were needed to mobilize the population for the fight against the Germans.

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The tasks of people’s councils were to provide food and material

aid to partisans units, to maintain order, and to organize the food supply of the population.
The new forms of local administration were not united in any sort of Partisans’ pyramid of power in 1941. Long after the end of the War, Tito explained that he had abstained from organizing local people’s councils into any sort of representative body on national level to avoid making problems for the USSR. In September 1941, he was informed that Moscow had re-established diplomatic relations with the Yugoslav government which had been exiled to London. Thus he abstained from forming a representative body, a sort of people’s government in Yugoslavia. Tito was aware that Moscow had in mind another policy when the Comintern invited the CPY to organize an armed uprising in Yugoslavia.

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The theory of two phases called for an urgent alliance with

all resistance groups and in the case of Serbia it meant cooperation with the Tchetnik units of Colonel Dragoljub Draža Mihailović. The situation in Serbia was peculiar, because it was under direct German occupation. Or, soon after the end of hostilities the larger part of German troops left for the Eastern front, leaving only two incomplete divisions in Serbia. The scarce presence of German troops in the interior of Serbia permitted Colonel Mihailović to organize a resistance movement already in May 1941. The ranks of his movement consisted of Serbian officers and soldiers driven by the shame of the defeat and the willingness to fight for the independence and liberty of Serbia. Therefore, when in July Tito’s partisans started their actions, they had to compete with the existing units under Mihailović’s command. The two resistance movements had opposing political strategies. The Colonel Mihailović was firmly in favour of restoring prewar Yugoslavia with all its institutions. As we have seen, the Partisans started replacing by force all its local institutions.

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Mihailović could rely on the prestige of his rank and could

benefit from the network of his fellow officers that had remained in Serbia. Naturally he represented an authority for the whole remaining local administration as the only alternative to a Collaborationist authority which was put in place by the Germans from May 1941 onwards and strengthened by the creation of the government of General Milan Nedić in August. His strategy was mostly a defensive one. Mihailović relied on the overall victory of the Allies to liberate the country. He saw the role of his movement as a sort of organization that should mobilize its followers to help the Allies when they eventually disembark in the Balkans. He did not have to fight for the legitimacy of his movement; he got it as soon as the Royal Government in exile give him its support.
On the other hand, Tito’s partisans had virtually no political legitimacy because the presence of the CPY in the political life of Yugoslavia had been more than limited before the war. The only way Tito’s Partisans could gain credibility and political legitimacy was to be at the forefront of the battle with Germans.

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Only by fighting the Germans, but primarily the entire local administration

that was incorporated in the occupation regime, the CPY could put in place its campaign for destroying the remnants of prewar Yugoslav institutions. The political gap between the two movements was immense; nevertheless, Moscow demanded the creation of a single national Popular front to fight against the German and Italian invaders. Tito had to cooperate with Mihailović, his political opponent.
Before they met for the first time in September 1941, Tito intentionally ignored all activity of Mihailović’s units in his reports to Moscow. He related only the operations of his troops, and stigmatized the collaboration of the volunteer units of Kosta Pećanac, who signed an agreement with local occupation authority. The first time Tito informed Moscow that Mihailović’s units were fighting the Germans was on 28 September, but he called them military Tchetniks without naming Mihailović.

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Tito in fact mentioned Mihailović’s units only after he had met

Colonel Mihailović and reached an agreement with him on 19 September 1941. The first time Tito mentioned Mihailović by name was on 25 November after the two movements had already started fighting against each other. From then on, he denounced Mihailović in his telegrams to Moscow for collaborating with the Germans as often as he could. Tito did his best to present the Partisans as the only resistance in Yugoslavia from July 1941. But the Royal Government in exile started promoting Mihailović as the head of resistance in Yugoslavia. Therefore Tito’s accusations incited Dimitrov to ask him what he meant when he spoke about military Tchetniks, and afterwards to explain the nature of his relations Mihailović. Finally Dimitrov wanted to know what was Tito doing to set up a united command of resistance in Yugoslavia.

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Dimitrov’s demand for clarification arrived in December 1941 at the time

when the German offensive in Serbia had wiped out both Partisan and Tchetnik units in Serbia. Tito had to withdraw to Sandžak with less than a thousand men. Mihailović ordered his units to disperse and he withdrew to Montenegro. Their collaboration was not possible any more, since they had started fighting each other in early November, and their forces were practically annihilated. Moscow’s idea of a grand coalition was therefore impossible to realize in Serbia, as well as in Yugoslavia. Moreover, Tito’s pressing demand for help in armaments, equipment, and ammunition was not answered. Not only was Moscow unable to liberate Yugoslavia, as Yugoslav communists had imagined in the summer of 1941, but the USSR was also unable to send them any help. They were left on their own, and in these difficult circumstances, Tito decided to follow his own strategy, as he had already done after the disappearance of Gorkić in early 1938.

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Tito failed to inform Moscow of his new strategy but the

Yugoslav government in exile notified the Soviet government that the CPY was pursuing its own agenda in Yugoslavia. The proletarian brigades wore a distinctive sign on their berets – a red star which without any doubt defined them as communists. Therefore Moscow wanted to know whether the formation of these units had been necessary and whether the partisans units had a communist character. He was reminded that his primary objective should be the establishing of a large antifascist front that should include Mihailović. Instead Tito’s messages spoke about the latter’s treason.
The fundamental disagreement between Tito and his superiors in Moscow thus came to light. Tito refused to follow the strategy of “two phases”, since he broke off with Mihailović and started building his own political system. But the situation had changed because Moscow had no means of putting pressure to Tito. Their correspondence was filled with Moscow’s instructions to make peace with Mihailović so that the situation in Yugoslavia would not become an issue within the alliance with the US and UK.

Titos’s road to power

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Tito, however, continued his own agenda of denouncing Mihailović to Moscow

and fighting his units in what would become a fully fledged civil war. Nevertheless, the communication with Moscow went on uninterrupted and the interests and exploits of partisans were publicized and broadcasted by the Soviet media. Gradually Tito succeeded in obtaining Moscow’s tacit support for his vision of war in Yugoslavia. Soviet diplomatic envoys commenced echoing Tito’s accusation against complaints in their contacts with the Yugoslav government in exile.
However, Tito’s refusal to follow the strategy of “two phases” remained an unresolved issue in Tito’s relations with Moscow. On 12 November 1942, Tito sent the following message to Moscow:
“We are now creating something like a government, and it will be called the National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia (NKOJ). All Yugoslav nationalities and various ex-parties will take part in the Committee”.

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Dimitrov’s response underlined the existing disagreements. He agreed with the creation

of NKOJ, but he didn’t see it as a government but as a political body of the Partisan movement. He added:
“Do not confront it (NKOJ) with the Yugoslav government in London. At the present phase, you should not talk about abolishing the Monarchy. You should not put forward the slogan of creating a Republic. The issue of the political system in Yugoslavia, as you yourself understand, will be solved after the defeat of the Italo-German coalition and after the liberation of the country from occupation.... You should keep in mind that the USSR has established relations with the Yugoslav King and Government. Thus open confrontation with them would create difficulties for the common war effort of the USSR on one side and of the UK and US on the other side. You should consider the issue of your fight not only from the standpoint of your own national interest, but also in regard to the international Anglo-Soviet and American coalition”.

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Dimitrov’s evocation of the “present phase” was an explicit reference to

the theory of “two phases”, which Tito had thus far deliberately refused to follow. Nevertheless, when Dimitrov instructed him to do so, he obliged.
The scope of differences between Tito and the Soviet government was demonstrated by Moscow’s decision to dissolve the Comintern. In order to preserve the Alliance with Western powers, the Soviet government had put an end to the institution that governed the international communist movement. Nevertheless, Tito’s agenda remained the same, he still accorded overall priority to the communist conquest of power in Yugoslavia by fighting against Mihailović’s units. However, he managed to find another way of setting up a large antifascist front by establishing direct contact with the British Army. The first British liaison officers were parachuted to his Headquarters in May 1943. Tito regularly informed Dimitrov about his contacts with the British and later with American liaison officers too. Their reports heavily influenced the change of Allied strategy towards the Partisan movement.

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The fate of Yugoslavia was sealed when Stalin and Roosevelt agreed

that there would be no Allied landing in Yugoslavia. Their agreement was based on the assumption that Yugoslavia would become a part of the Soviet zone of influence. Roosevelt was prepared to accept the creation of Soviet zone of influence, if that was the price to pay for a general agreement with the Soviet Union. Consequently it was natural that only the Soviet proteges were considered as Allies in Yugoslavia. All further decisions about Yugoslavia would first have to take into consideration Soviet interests. The final decisions of the Tehran Conference confirmed the Partisans as the only resistance movement in Yugoslavia which would receive Allied help.
Therefore Tito resolved the issue of anti-fascist front due to an US-Soviet agreement, and officially became the Allied Commander in Yugoslavia. Even before the decisions of the Tehran Conference reached Yugoslavia, he was confident enough to realize his project of creating of a people’s government.

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The second session of the AVNO J, held in the town

of Jajce on the night of 29/30 November 1943, proclaimed the NKOJ as the government, annulled all rights of the Royal Government in exile to represent Yugoslavia, prohibited the King from returning to Yugoslavia, declared that Yugoslavia will be organized as a federation, and promoted Tito to the rank of Marshal of Yugoslavia.
Tito’s victory in the civil war in Yugoslavia had to be confirmed by replacement of the Royal Government in exile with NKOJ. That was the imperative condition for gaining international recognition for NKOJ and other institutions within the Partisan pyramid of power. During this process, the Soviet aid and counsel were of outmost importance. Moscow could not extend openly its political and diplomatic support to Partisans without provoking dissentions inside the Allied coalition. Nevertheless, the official Soviet propaganda and the Communist press in UK and US were openly militating in favour of Partisans. The issue of the political solution for the civil war in Yugoslavia had to be solved in direct contact between Tito and the UK and US governments.

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Churchill wrote a personal letter to Tito in January 1944. In

his letter the British Prime Minister said that his government would end its support to Mihailović, hoping that in return Tito would understand the moral obligation it had towards the young King of Yugoslavia. The implicit proposal of a sort of barter, that should have been underlined by the fact that it came from the British Prime Minister in person, did not make any effect on Tito. Churchill persevered and in his second letter in February directly asked whether the King could be received in Tito’s headquarters if he removes Mihailović from his government.
Tito was not impressed by the contact on the highest level and repeated that the decisions of the Second meeting of Avnoj: the King cannot return in the country, the government in exile should be dissolved since NKOJ was the only legitimate government of Yugoslavia. His letter to Churchill was written on the same day he got instructions from Dimitrov saying that the Royal Government should be got rid of along with its Minister of War Mihailović. This kind of political solution of the Yugoslavia civil war was inacceptable for British government.

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The only solution possible was, as Anthony Eden, British Minister of

Foreign Affairs explained to Tito a sort of transition government, before the issue could be definitely settled by the free elections to be held in Yugoslavia after the War.
The stalemate was broken by the American proposal brought by Farish to Tito. The American intelligence service, OSS (Office of Secret Services) proposed the arrival of the Viceroy of Croatia, Ivan Šubašić, in Yugoslavia. He was supposed to facilitate the transfer of the majority of the members of the biggest Croatian pre-war party, Croatian Peasant party, to the Partisan side. This was the plan that Šubašić in the summer of 1943 proposed to OSS. It was now officially proposed to Tito, who made use of it in order to find a way out in his talks with British government. Tito already had information that Šubašić had approved off, on several occasion, the struggle of Partisans. This was the information that he got via Moscow from United States where Šubašić was living after the fall of Yugoslavia. Therefore Tito the creation of a transition government composed from Partisans representatives and some pre-war Yugoslav politicians, amongst which he proposed in the first place Šubašić.

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Therefore, in the beginning of 1944 in direct contacts with Western

Allies Tito imposed his solution for the political solution of the civil war in Yugoslavia. The Tito – Šubašić agreement was the base for the gradual transfer of power from Royal government to the Partisans’ one, that commenced by the arrival of Šubašić in Tito’s headquarters on island of Vis in June 1944. The Western Allies supported the process even though they hoped that it would not end in a complete communist domination of Yugoslavia. However, they abstained from intervening directly since the country from Tehran onwards was in Soviet zone of influence. The Partisans’s takeover went on without visible Soviet help, since the Soviet government officially stated that had no inside knowledge and no influence on the situation in Yugoslavia. However, Tito was diligently informing Moscow of every move he took. The situation changed after his voyage to Romania and USSR, in September and October of 1944, and the consequent arrival of the Red Army in Yugoslavia.

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The Tehran decisions thus were realized and the decisive Partisan victory

in Serbia in the fall of 1944 was achieved due to the presence of the Red Army. Therefore Tito could impose on the population of Serbia, composed of peasants and small entrepreneurs that throughout the war remained faithful to the Monarchy and free market economy, a communist alternative. Soviet military aid was crucial in transforming the guerrilla movement, into a modern army capable of defeating the retreating German troops in Yugoslavia. Soviet political caution was indispensable for organizing the elections for AVNO J in November 1945 that legitimized the Partisan takeover in Yugoslavia. Amongst all people’s democracies, Yugoslavia was the first to create an exclusively communist government. Tito stood at the fore front of the conflicts which heralded in the Cold War.

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Tito’s Yugoslavia almost singlehandedly defied the West on the issue of

Trieste and Venezia-Guilia. The USSR did not support Yugoslav claims concerning the north-eastern province of Italy. In 1946, the Yugoslav Air Force shot down American planes over Slovenia. The communist movement in Greece relied principally on Yugoslav aid during the Civil War. On every possible occasion and in every possible way Tito’s Yugoslavia tried its best to demonstrate that it was the spearhead of the international communist movement. Yet the 1948 Tito-Stalin split put an end to this vigorous campaign, and the CPY was accused of ideological deviations and outright treason of the communist ideal.

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The Yugoslav-Soviet crisis was presented as a political top-level conflict within

the Cominform. In fact, the profound causes of the split between Moscow and Belgrade were of an economic nature. The first differences emerged evidently in 1946 when Tito refused to set up joint companies that would "be more profitable for both parties", Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. By the end of 1947 Tito had rejected the Soviet economic reconstruction’s program, as it was settled for various popular democracies by the Kremlin. Also, in December 1947, trade negotiations between London and Belgrade showed clearly Tito's tendencies of autonomy. Unlike Romania, the leadership of Yugoslavia refused to place its export surpluses on cereals under soviet control. Information from Soviet Ambassador Lavrentiev from Belgrade noticed the autonomous policy followed by Tito Undermining soviet advisors. As Tito stated, several years later, on May 12, 1972, regarding the impact of the controversy with the Cominform:

Conclusion: The Stalin-Tito split

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“This controversy was a matter of great importance for the internal

development of our country because of the unity of our people who perfectly self-appropriated the policy we had inaugurated at the time. Obviously, there are still survivors of this era. There are still people who cannot properly appreciate our attitude. Faced with internal difficulties, some still think it would be better if we had another attitude. They would like to have an easy life. They believe that with the help of a large country we would more easily overcome our difficulties, etc. But a country like ours, made up of many nations, cannot implement such a simplistic policy. We must ensure that our relations with the Soviet Union are equal relations, as required by any genuine socialist development. This finding has added value for the whole world, for all without exception, and not just for our relations with the USSR. We should never accept to be the satellite of anyone, whoever he is, to follow anyone, whoever he is. That does not mean that we do not cherish the Soviet Union, the Soviet people. This simply means that we want to be equal, regardless of the fact that the USSR is a big country”.

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The Yugoslav-Soviet conflict was not provoked by ideological differences. It was

purely a matter of state interests. As was the case during the war, Tito followed his own agenda and Yugoslav interests as he saw them. Regional cooperation, Balkan federation, Yugoslav military presence in Albania – all this demonstrated that he considered himself to be in a position to develop his own foreign policy and to articulate the interests of communism in the Balkans as he saw fit. This kind of independent conduct was the real cause of his conflict with Stalin.
The explanations of the origins of Tito-Stalin split are to be found in the evolution of the CPY from 1937 onwards, and are intrinsically linked with the actions of Josip Broz Tito. He became a member of the Central Committee in 1934 and as such went to Moscow, only to inherit the actual leadership of the Party during the purges. He proved to be a true Stalinist leader since he never questioned any instructions he got from Moscow. If anything, he showed himself to be overzealous. On several occasions, Georgi Dimitrov had to explain to him that there was no chance a social revolution could successfully be carried out in Yugoslavia before the War.

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The German attack on Yugoslavia did not incite Tito to act,

but Hitler’s attack on the USSR did.
Once they joined the war, Tito and the CPY started pursuing their own agenda – social revolution as a consequence of the victory in the Civil War they had waged against the Yugoslav King, the Royal Government, and their Minister of War in Yugoslavia – general Dragoljub, Draža, Mihailović. For Dimitrov and the Soviet authorities, Tito’s actions risked to provoke problems within the Allied coalition. Therefore he was reprimanded on several occasions, until the Partisan units under his command were recognized also by the Western Allies. The Partisan Army, and the state institutions that were created during the war gave his movement enough potential to be at the forefront of the conflicts in Trieste and in Greece which heralded in the Cold War. The conflict with Stalin was provoked by the same tendency of Tito’s to advance his own interests without consulting Moscow. The causes of the conflict were not ideological since Yugoslavia was the most faithful disciple of the USSR. They were in fact economic and geostrategic.

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