Tito's Early Expansion

chapter 1 Tito’s Early Expansion: A Strongman of the Balkans

Foreign policy was Josip Broz Tito’s favorite.1 Croatian scholar Tvrtko Jakovina ∵

When Yugoslav Josip Broz Tito secured power at the end of World War II, he did so through the use of force and that remained a primary vehicle for his retention of power in the earliest years. Thus, as a strongman inside Yugoslavia he likewise had envisioned for himself a new Yugoslavia that would serve as the center of power for the Balkan Peninsula, or as Gerhard Wittig has put it, he had “far-reaching ambitions in the Balkans.”2 During the war, he had main- tained the fight for the liberation of Yugoslavia against the Nazis and their collaborators but as they continued to lose control over time, Tito had in- creased his. First, he worked to ensure a Yugoslav presence in the Trieste region of Italy and southern Austria as a way to gain territory inhabited by Slovenes and Croats; meanwhile, his other foreign policy escapades sought to make Yugoslavia into a major European power. To that end, Yugoslav agents quickly worked to synchronize the Albanian socio-economic and political systems through their support of Albanian Partisans that only grew embold- ened over time. As allies who proved themselves in the fight against fascism, Yugoslav policymakers felt able to act with impunity throughout the early Cold War period. Yet, all of their work stopped short in the summer of 1948, when Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin branded Tito an outcast from the Cominform. While Yugoslav foreign policy abruptly and fundamentally changed because of Stalin’s condemnation, the significance of Yugoslav foreign relations in the early Cold War showed the hunger for power of Balkan Marxists. This chapter highlights how the early struggles to gain territory in Trieste, Carinthia, and

1 Tvrtko Jakovina, Treća strana Hladnog rata, (Zagreb: Fraktura, 2011), p. 639. 2 Gerhard Wettig, Stalin and the Cold War in Europe: The Emergence and Development of East- West Conflict, 1939–1953, (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2008), p. 80.

Albania were indicative of how Tito premised his legitimacy on foreign policy victories as part of his larger state-building program.3 There has been some debate in the literature regarding a so-called independent foreign policy by the Yugoslav regime prior to 1948. For instance, Svetozar Rajak has claimed in a recent article that “manifestations of Tito’s autonomous actions prior to the rift in 1948 must not be mistaken for an independent foreign policy,” and that “often quoted examples of Tito’s intransigence prior to 1948, such as the Trieste crisis in 1945 or Tito’s territorial demands over Carinthia and Trieste at the Paris Peace Conference in 1946, confirm that Tito in the end always dutifully accepted Stalin’s diktat.”4 This chapter first and foremost aims to make clear the larger significance of the shift in foreign policy by Tito’s regime that occured after 1948. To do that, it is important to see how he operated foreign policy until that time. Tito had in fact used force and sought territorial amendments prior to the split and these were not understood as incompatible with any ideological commitments to the Soviet Union. Moreover, Tito was in contact with and relied on the Soviets for diplomatic support, support that was not as forthcoming as Tito perhaps liked. But, Tito sought specific foreign policy projects that would be favorable to the construction of his own legitimacy and serve explicitly Yugoslav interests. That is, in this author’s opinion, the definition an independent foreign policy. Additionally, I understand the shift that eventually manifested itself as nonalignment came about precisely because Tito’s regime had no other foreign policy opportunities; Europe in its totality was closed off to Tito’s politicking but the Third World was a place whereby the regime could on the one hand operate freely, while on the other function as a so-called honest broker. The fact that Tito could not transform his European desires into realities was a factor of the power at his disposal, not necessarily the lack of independence within the Soviet bloc.

3 While the Balkan Union is an important aspect of Tito’s conception of power in the Balkans, there was little actual effort to enact it. Instead, this paper intends to focus on actions that the Yugoslav regime put forward and implemented among its neighbors. Presumably, had he seen success in these three areas, Tito might have fabricated a larger Balkan Union but likely on terms that further emphasized power emanating from Belgrade and not Sofia. Such a union had competing designs, as it a Yugoslav-Bulgarian-Albanian union (at Stalin’s sug- gestion) might have watered-down Tito’s influence rather than increase it. Ultimately, Tito’s continued aggressive stance in Albania, Austria, and Trieste took precedence in determining larger schemes for the Balkans. 4 See Svetozar Rajak, “No Bargaining Chips, No Spheres of Influence: The Yugoslav Origins of Cold War Nonalignment,” Journal of Cold War Studies, 16:1 (2014), pp. 148–149.