The events that had rocked the Communist world, like the setbacks in France and Italy, as well as the evidence of centrifugal nationalist forces that might tear the movement asunder, made the need for a “unifying ideological message” all the more urgent.7 In late spring 1947, Stalin pressed the idea of an international body on Poland’s independent-minded Władysław Gomułka by saying that the goals of this Communist Information Bureau (or Cominform) would be to publish an informational journal and that Polish and other comrades would edit it. At the end of July, he helped Gomułka draw up a list of invitees for a conference that included the Communist parties of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, France, and Italy. Stalin was determined to establish a center to coordinate the activities of the Communist parties. Those invited were given no agenda, though he left them with the impression that they would exchange information and set up some kind of journal. Officially the Poles were the hosts of a top-secret gathering in the isolated winter resort town of Szklarska Poręba.8
The event opened on September 22. The speeches of Soviet representatives Georgi Malenkov and Andrei Zhdanov showed that from Moscow’s perspective, the Cold War had arrived. Malenkov repeated Stalin’s theory that the “general crisis” of capitalism had led to the last war and that, with the elimination of its competitors, the United States had gone over to an expansionism that “aimed at establishing its domination of the world.”
According to Malenkov, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had set themselves the task of “undermining imperialism” and “securing a democratic peace.” The period of rivalry with the United States would be long, and the Soviet Union would always be ready to support “its really loyal allies.” Since the end of the Comintern in 1943, however, the links between the Soviet Communist Party and the others had not been “adequate or satisfactory.” In words coming straight from Stalin, Malenkov stated that at a time when the United States was using aid as a disguise to enslave Europe, “we must take definite steps” to cooperate more closely.9
Andrei Zhdanov, the front man in Stalin’s ideological battle against all deviations from the party line at home, gave the keynote address on the second day. His militant message was that the imperialist United States, Britain, and France had “hoped” that Germany and Japan would weaken or even defeat the Soviet Union in the last war. That did not happen, he said, and in the aftermath there arose “two camps”; one was “the imperialist and anti-democratic camp”—namely, the Americans and their allies—and the other the Communist or “anti-imperialist and democratic camp.” The latter’s mainstay was the “USSR and the countries of new democracy.” Zhdanov claimed that whereas the Truman Doctrine had tried to terrorize the Communists into submission, the Marshall Plan set out “to seduce” and blind with promises of aid. The Soviet Union had refused to participate because if it had gone along, it would have given the program a veneer of legitimacy and thereby made it easier for the United States to entice the Eastern Europeans into the trap called the “economic restoration of Europe with American aid.”
Zhdanov admitted that the days of the old Comintern were over. It had been correct to dissolve it in 1943, though wrong for some comrades to conclude that all links among the parties had been liquidated. Now more than ever there was “need for consultation and voluntary coordination of action between different parties.” The absence of connections could lead to more “serious mistakes.”10
The Soviets then inveigled the Yugoslavs present to attack the errors of the French and Italian parties, both of which had been eased out of government only months before. Milovan Djilas and Edvard Kardelj assaulted them in turn. Their main point was that “parliamentary illusions” had led both parties into believing they could attain power via the ballot box.11 Actually that was what Stalin had instructed them to do, but he and the Yugoslavs now thought otherwise. The French and Italians were virtually ordered to engage in more revolutionary tactics. Indeed, both tried that on their return home, to no avail, because the great majority had already turned their backs on Communism.
The meeting also addressed the related issue of national variations on the “road to socialism.” It turned out that nearly everyone outside the Soviet Union believed that their nation was special and could go its own way. For Stalin, that thinking was no longer acceptable, but he picked a curious host for this event in Władysław Gomułka, whose opening remarks shockingly pointed with pride to “the Polish peaceful road to social changes and the Polish revolution.”12 Glossing over the terror and intimidation the Communists had used in Poland, he claimed that the revolution there had been legal and bloodless. Apart from being inaccurate, he was now wildly out of step with the Kremlin. The theory of the national roads to socialism had been superseded.
Gomułka’s days were numbered because he was against the “excessive standardization” imposed by the Soviet Union. The assault on the opposition Polish Labor Party (PSL) was under way even as he was speaking at the founding meeting of the Cominform in September 1947. Only a month later the elimination of the opposition in Poland began in earnest when the deputy prime minister and PSL leader Stanisław Mikołajczyk was warned of imminent arrest and fled the country. Whereas formerly Stalin had tolerated national variations and coalition governments, he soon supported radical followers in Poland who would oust Gomułka in mid-1948 for being on the wrong side of the party line. By the end of the year, the last opposition party was gone, and the Communists had a complete monopoly.13 The same was more or less true all over Eastern Europe.
STALIN’S FAILURE WITH YUGOSLAVIA
Yugoslavia was becoming a problem in the perception of Soviet leaders, and it was partly because of that country that Stalin pushed for the Cominform. Although Yugoslavia backed the new organization, Tito did not attend the big founding event. Instead he sent along Milovan Djilas and Edvard Kardelj as representatives. Behind Tito’s hail-fellow-well-met personality and his tolerance, even his fostering of ostentatious wealth, at least for party leaders, he represented Communist and revolutionary aims. He also had territorial ambitions to create a larger federation than the one over which he ruled. In January 1945, Yugoslavs visiting Moscow mentioned their nation’s interests in Albania, parts of Greece, Hungary, Austria, Romania, and Bulgaria. Although at the time the West tended to blame the Soviet Union for Tito’s ambitions, Stalin was strongly inclined to rein in the Yugoslavs. He regarded their visions of linking up with their Balkan neighbors as absurd, and worried that coming out with such widespread territorial demands might jeopardize his delicate postwar relationship with the West.14
Tito visited Moscow in May 1946 in search of assistance. His Yugoslav party was radical, and within six months it had nationalized 90 percent of the country’s industry. However, the country was poor and the economy underdeveloped.15 He felt that U.S. aid, if he could get it, would come with a demand for “political concessions”—presumably gestures to liberal democracy. Tito mentioned forming a Yugoslav federation with Albania, something, he said, its leader, Enver Hoxha, also favored. Stalin did not respond directly, though he wondered why Hoxha kept asking to visit Moscow for discussions, if there were no issues.16
When another group of Yugoslav dignitaries led by Milovan Djilas visited in December 1947, the subject of Albania came up again, and Stalin said that some comrades there were apparently opposed to unification with Yugoslavia. Djilas wanted to clarify a point, when Stalin broke in: “We have no special interest in Albania. We agree that Yugoslavia swallow Albania.”17