Why wasn't Yugoslavia a soviet satelite like the rest of eastern block?

“Our sacrifices are terrible. I can safely say that there is no other part of the world which has been devastated on a vaster scale than Yugoslavia … Nevertheless our optimism and faith have proved justified. The greatest gain of this conflict between democracy and fascism lies in the fact that it has drawn together everything that was good in humanity.” - Josep ‘Tito’ Broz, “Our Optimism and Faith” in Liberation Magazine, Belgrade, February 4, 1945.

tldr; Yugoslavia, and Tito, effectively found a 'third way' for Communism. Tito used the idea of self-liberation to unite the country behind Communism, while trying to modernise his economy to be able to trade both east and west, all while remaining 'Non-Aligned'.

On the 14th of May 1945, the Battle of Poljana saw the retreating Wehrmacht defeated at the hands of Yugoslav partisan forces, ending the four-year occupation of the kingdom. Not only had Yugoslavian forces liberated their own country with minimal support from the Red Army, but also had overcome ethnic diversity to be able to do so. For the next twenty years, Yugoslavia would enjoy the fastest growing Eastern European economy and a federal system of decentralised Marxism, all while remaining a leading member of the Non-Aligned Movement. This essay explores the narrative of self-liberation, Yugoslav economics between 1945 and 1965, the role of Tito and Titoism and offers comparisons and similarities to other Western and Eastern European countries. This essay also explores the various historiographical difficulties surrounding the former Yugoslavia; the region is often a victim of frequent revisionism by new government institutions, and there is an air of propaganda cast over Tito’s early rise to power.

Perhaps the most important reason Yugoslavia was subjected to a different fate than the rest of Eastern Europe was the effort to maintain a united communist partisan liberation force. The breaking of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by Germany on 22nd June 1941 saw a resurgence of the previously banned Yugoslav Communist party and the creation of the first partisan liberation force, the Sisak Brigade, on the same day. While these first liberation forces were established on ethnic lines, particularly surrounding mountainous regions of Yugoslavia, there was undoubtedly a sense of communist unity and brotherhood. Particularly in Tito’s post-war speeches an effort was made to underline brotherhood and overcoming ethnic challenges: “No country of people's democracy has so many nationalities as this country has. Only in Czechoslovakia do there exist two kindred nationalities … With them [single nationality countries] the road to socialism is less complicated than is the case here”.

Looking at the diversity percentages of the National Liberation Army certainly paints a similar picture; by 1944 the army consisted of 100,000 Bosniaks, 150,000 Croats, 20,000 Kosovars, 66,000 Macedonians, 30,000 Montenegrins, 204,000 Serbians, 38,000 Slovenians and 40,000 Vojvodinan Serbs and Hungarians. Tito’s aim was to use communism to unite the country against fascism, and membership of the NLA significantly increased following two amnesties toward collaborators of the puppet state, the “Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia”, between 1944 and 1945. Furthermore, unlike Charles de Gaulle of France, Wladyslaw Raczkiewizs of Poland or even the King of Yugoslavia himself, Tito was not in command of a government in exile but rather Commander in Chief over all Yugoslav partisans; this allowed Tito to paint a picture of independent communist Yugoslav self-liberation. Charles de Gaulle used similar propaganda imagery in 1944 as his Free French Army marched at the forefront during the Liberation of Paris despite the important role of the United States and British armies in Normandy. Of course the reality of the Yugoslav situation goes much deeper than easily achieved national unity. In 1979, Andrew Ludanyi questioned the so-called ‘Partisan Myth’, outlining that the role of partisan unity was exaggerated in order to legitimize the Yugoslav government without compromising the political, i.e. communist, position. Ludanyi pointed to ‘progressive forces’ of history and the role of eliminating fascism as the key development in unifying Yugoslavia. Ludanyi took this one step further by looking at the 1974 constitution; under ‘Basic Principles, section vi’, the constitution outlined armed struggle should “[protect] the freedom, independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and the socialist self-management order”. Together with the rise of the Ministry of Agitprop (Agitation and Propaganda), the Yugoslav Communist party made the shift from confronting fascism to general education of communist ideology in order to create model members of a socialist society. In this regard, the role of united ethnic groups in Yugoslavia was perhaps exaggerated; the real struggle in Yugoslavia was against Nazi collaborators and occupation, Communism merely offered a strong foundation to achieve these goals.

Secondly, Yugoslav communist policy under Tito increasingly deviated from Soviet style communist. The eventual split with the Soviet Union and the foundation of Titoism in 1955 was to the great advantage of western capitalists; Alan Axelrod points to the importance of Yugoslavia as a buffer to the Adriatic Sea, stating that Churchill and Stalin’s ‘Percentages Agreement’ was an early indicator for the desire to keep Yugoslavia western leaning. The first signs of deviation could be seen at Szklarska Poreba in September 1947 as communist party representatives of Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, France, Italy and the Soviet Union met in order to discuss the creation of Comintern. At this meeting, Yugoslav representatives berated French and Czech representatives for not being ‘revolutionary’ enough, citing that World War II had dramatically changed Soviet style communism from militant Bolshevism to merely an anti-fascist coalition. Historians such as Tony Judt point to Stalin’s rejection of a so-called Balkan Federation in February 1948 as the catalyst behind the Titoist deviation. Judt argues that Tito was seen a ‘real’ communist hero and that the idea of a powerful communist federation outside of Moscow was intimidating to Stalin. As such, the Soviet Union withdrew all military and civil assistance from Belgrade and enforced a trade embargo; reducing Yugoslav-Soviet Bloc trade from 48% to 14% by 1949. However, from the Soviet void, the Western powers stepped in; the desire to deny Stalin a warm-weather port and access to the Mediterranean opened up the use of Marshall Aid to keep Yugoslavia western leaning. Furthermore, the Stalin-Tito split allowed Yugoslavia to follow its own brand of communism, namely Titoism, which fundamentally allowed Yugoslavia to dictate its own future.

Having analysed the two main factors that guaranteed Yugoslav independence, this essay will now analyse the effects and consequences of Titoism and Yugoslav non-alignment. Yugoslavia had developed two key tools for guaranteeing independence and the ability to carve out a ‘third way’ for communism: Titoism and nationalism. Titoism allowed the creation of a federal western leaning state while Yugoslav nationalism ensured ethnic rivalry didn’t surface in Yugoslavia until a decade after Tito’s death. Writing in 1955, Joseph Frankel agreed that the initial Yugoslav partisan movement were not initially concerned with constitutional matters and post-occupation governance. Instead the focus was certainly towards anti-fascism, however following the break from Cominform, the Yugoslav leaders began to devise a federal system that would operate more efficiently and less oppressively that western federal systems without excessive centralization. It was devised that the Federation itself along with the devolved People’s Republics would act as a ‘superstructure’ to a federal system that advocated social self-governance; a return to actual Marxist views on the state in stark contrast to the USSR’s ‘state communist’ system. Frankel states that ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia was ‘solved’ by the 1950s because of this political equality and social self-governance. However he also argued that this could be due to the ‘traditional antagonisms’ were no longer being experienced and that writing in 1955 made it too early to predict harmony in the region. 22 years later however, Bogdan Denitch argued that the latest Yugoslav Constitution at the time (1974) had maintained this political homogeny. Denitch argued that parliamentary delegates elected by the republics, and not Tito, clearly expressed the growing importance of the People’s Republics and, as each Republic had equal delegates, outlined a competent successor in a post-Tito Yugoslavia. Denitch argued the growth of importance of the republics and the political monolithicism saw the shift from symbolic federalism to actualised federalism.