Djilas was appalled at the crudity, making it sound like Yugoslavia was imperialistic. He said that they did not want to “swallow” Albania and instead sought to work out friendly relations. Molotov retorted: “But that is swallowing.” What staggered Djilas was that Stalin, as he spoke, put his fingers to his lips to mimic eating a morsel of food. And then he repeated: “Yes, yes, swallowing. But we agree you ought to swallow Albania—the sooner the better.” And then he gestured again with his fingers as if eating the tiny country.18 He was playing at imperial games, and what bothered him most was that Yugoslavia and Albania might form a federation without consulting him.
When the Yugoslavs sought economic aid from Moscow, they found they were not going to get anything for free—not even the return of property that had been stolen from their country during the war and that had ended up in the USSR. Anastas Mikoyan, one of the main Soviet negotiators, told a Yugoslav delegation bluntly: “Trade is trade; I am not engaged in making gifts but in carrying out trade.”19 Thus, when the Soviets formed joint-stock companies with their allies, at least so the Yugoslavs said, they invariably drove a hard bargain, tried to get monopolies, and hived off the profits. Subsequent negotiations on the trade front revealed that Moscow wanted to import raw materials from Yugoslavia, sell that nation manufactured goods in return, and transform it into a dependent colony, just as later the Kremlin would attempt to do with Communist China.20
In early 1948, Tito proposed sending a division of his troops into Albania, supposedly to protect it from an attack by Greece. Stalin was angry and grew apoplectic when Bulgarian leader and onetime close comrade Dimitrov, on his own initiative, proposed creating a Balkan federation that might eventually include Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, and perhaps even Greece. At the time Dimitrov was in Bucharest on a friendly visit and became speculative when answering a reporter’s question. He had not only acted without getting the Kremlin’s blessing, but the broad federation he suggested made no mention of the USSR.
In Moscow, Pravda immediately published the official objections, and Stalin commanded Yugoslav and Bulgarian leaders to the seat of power. He met with them on February 10, 1948. Once again it was expected that Tito make an appearance, but rightly fearing for his life, he sent his comrades instead.21 Molotov began the discussions calmly by saying that it was unacceptable for Dimitrov to put forward and sign a treaty of unification between Bulgaria and Yugoslavia and others, such as Greece, without informing the Soviet Union. Then Stalin, who could sit still no longer, began the attack. He was not going to tolerate the “people’s democracies” developing relations among themselves as they pleased. The aging and ill Dimitrov tried to defend himself by saying that Bulgaria was in economic difficulty and had to learn to collaborate more closely with its neighbors. Although he had once been head of the Comintern, now he was the leader of his own country and had responsibilities.
Stalin put the worst possible spin on Dimitrov’s motives: “You wanted to shine with originality. It is completely wrong, for such a federation is inconceivable. What historic ties are there between Bulgaria and Romania? None!” And he pressed on with his attack, as Dimitrov humbly submitted, “We are learning our way in foreign politics.” The Boss scoffed at how the Bulgarian leader “bandied words like a woman of the streets!” “Learning,” he roared. “You have been in politics for fifty years, and you talk about learning!” The issue was not about correcting this or that error. There was only one right way, one correct conception of what was to be done, and that was Stalin’s. Anyone who differed was wrong.
The brutal side of the Master was showing, the majesty gone. There stood the imperial ruler threatening his vassals. He said that the proposed union was stupid, mistaken, and worst of all, even “anti-Marxist.” He browbeat Dimitrov as if he were an errant schoolboy, telling him “you rushed headlong” trying “to astound the world, as if you were still secretary of the Comintern. You and the Yugoslavs don’t let anyone know what you are doing and we have to find out about it in the street!”22
Then and there he proposed several other federations, insisting that one could be cemented the next day between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria and perhaps both with Albania. That was at least the third time he had changed his mind on this topic. The Yugoslavs were convinced he wanted to weaken them by linking their country to Bulgaria. They said nothing and stayed over in Moscow for several days, until Edvard Kardelj was awakened at three o’clock one morning and driven to the Kremlin. Molotov thrust a document in front of him and said nothing more than “Sign this!” It was one of the friendship treaties Moscow had worked out with its satellites like Poland and Czechoslovakia.23
What upset Stalin was that these disciples were not following what he deemed the “normal procedures” of consulting him. However, his emotional outburst showed that he sensed the fragility of the Red Empire in which he had invested such energies to build. Indeed, it was crumbling before the cement dried.24
A month did not pass before Tito and his comrades rejected the federation with Bulgaria because they considered that the Kremlin wanted to use it to undermine Yugoslavia’s route to socialism. They then committed more sins, by pressing Albania to accept a merger and to allow in troops. Tito also provided aid to the Communists in Greece, when the USSR was inclined to more caution there.
Thereupon Stalin began a paper war against Tito in Belgrade. He launched the first missile on March 18 as a letter from the Soviet Central Committee—hand-delivered to Tito by an NKVD officer, to intimidate him. It contained a long catalog of Yugoslavia’s alleged unfriendliness to the USSR. To make the point, Moscow withdrew all Soviet civilian and military advisers. The Yugoslav Central Committee asked for an open explanation of what was wrong, and on March 27 they got a blockbuster response. The Soviet party (Stalin) doubted the legality of Tito’s regime, branded its Marxism as opportunism and revisionism, and ended by comparing Tito to the discredited Nikolai Bukharin and even Leon Trotsky. For good measure, he accused the Yugoslavs of regarding the USSR as an imperialist power, as if it were the United States.25
Stalin then raised the stakes, though not by threatening boycotts or invasion. Rather he decided to do battle in the arena of Communist ideology and to capitalize on his position at the commanding heights of the Marxist movement.
THE SPLIT WITH YUGOSLAVIA AND ITS AFTEREFFECTS
To deliver a judgment on Tito, the Kremlin mobilized the parties in the Cominform for another session in 1948 and tried to entice the Yugoslavs into attending. Their two top spokesmen, Milovan Djilas and Edvard Kardelj, had been stars at the last such gathering, but in the year since then Stalin’s attitude toward them had changed. Now they politely declined his invitation. On May 22 a Stalin-Molotov note ordered their appearance. The missive stated categorically that “every Party is obliged to give an account of itself” to the Cominform. Refusal to do so would be considered “breaking away from the united socialist front of the people’s democracies with the Soviet Union” and “treason to the cause of international solidarity of the working people.”26
The second Cominform conference, from June 19 to 23, 1948, dealt with this charge of “treason.” Andrei Zhdanov, again the keynote speaker, went through all the allegations, great and small, theoretical and practical. The Yugoslav Communist leaders, so went one of the most serious charges, identified the foreign policy of the Soviet Union with that of the imperialist powers “and behave toward the USSR in the same way that they behave toward bourgeois states.” Zhdanov accused them of leaving the Marxist-Leninist road and turning into some kind of “nationalist-kulak party,” based on the view that peasants provided “the soundest foundation of the Yugoslav state.” Of course, Lenin had said that only the working class could play such a leading role. In addition, Zhdanov ridiculed the Yugoslavs for denying that the class struggle became more acute in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, as Stalin had been saying since the 1920s. Instead of following that doctrine, he said, Tito and his comrades were claiming that capitalism could grow peacefully into socialism.