...
At the end of 1941, the importance of Tito’s movement was already clear to
Dimitrov who, from September, had pushed Molotov to send military supplies to
Yugoslavia.12 The Comintern, which at that point had no connections with the
Greek communist party, was also ready to acknowledge the key role that Tito
might play in the entire region: the Albanian communist party was created in
November under Yugoslav patronage, and a dispute with the Bulgarian party
over the jurisdiction of Macedonia had already been resolved in favour of the
Yugoslavs in August 1941. Contacts with the Italian communist party were also
maintained through Yugoslavia.13 The situation was such, however, that any
public stand in the Tito-Mihailovic´ controversy was not considered advisable,
and Moscow refused to commit itself with the British.
On the one hand, the Soviets, who in September 1941 were contemplating
sending a joint mission to Mihailovic´ in collaboration with the British,14 were
unsure about what was happening in the country. At the end of November the
secretary of the Comintern, Dimitrov, asked Tito who was leading the Chetniks
and the relationship they had with the Partisans.15 When Tito replied that they
were just collaborating with the Germans, Moscow appeared unconvinced, suspecting
that it was Tito who was not doing enough to collaborate with other
antifascist forces. A few months later Dimitrov was still insisting to Tito that it
was hard to imagine that ‘London and the Yugoslav government support the
occupiers’, as he claimed, and that the issues with the Chetniks ‘must be a big
misunderstanding’.16
On the other hand, Moscow was clearly concerned that the leftist line adopted
by Tito could damage its relations with both the Yugoslav government-in-exile and
the British. Yet the possibility for the Soviets to appease the British by publicly
pushing Tito towards a conciliatory course was limited, paradoxically, by
Moscow’s claim that the European communist parties were not the ‘long arm’ of
Moscow.17 When, at the beginning of December 1941, the British incorrectly notified
them that the Chetniks had reached an agreement with the Partisans, the
Soviets could not dispute this information, as to do so would imply that
Moscow had a direct link with the Partisans or at least a link to independent
sources inside the country. Moscow simply replied that it did not consider it
advisable for the Soviet Government to intervene in Yugoslav internal affairs,18
leaving the British to deal with the mess by themselves.
At the beginning of 1942, it was difficult to see how the Soviets could square the
circle of three apparently incompatible goals: supporting Tito, avoiding the repercussions
of this policy for relations with the British when their help was more
needed than ever, and sustaining the pretence that they had no control over the
Yugoslav communist party. Tito, however, found a champion of his cause in
Moscow in Dimitrov.
Dimitrov’s first goal was to bring Tito in line with the Comintern’s official
position. On 5 March 1942 he accused Tito of giving grounds ‘for the supporters
of England and the Yugoslav government’ to suspect that the partisan movement
was ‘acquiring a communist character and [was] aiming at the Sovietisation of
Yugoslavia’. The secretary of the Comintern instructed him to ‘seriously review
[his] tactics and activities’, and reminded him that ‘the main task [was] to unite all
the anti-Hitler elements in order to defeat the occupiers’.19
Tito had good reasons to comply. The distance between him and the Soviet
leadership was, at its roots, strategic, arising out of the eternal debate inside the
international communist movement about the correct route to establish socialism.
But negotiating the turbulent politics of the 1930s in the Moscow of the Great
Purge had taught Tito the limits of his ability to manoeuvre, and especially that, to
operate freely in internal politics, he had to pay lip service to the Soviet line in the
international arena.20 He also realized that his ultra-radical line could alienate a
vast part of the population. In April, the leadership of the party increased its
campaign against ‘sectarianism’ and, under Soviet guidance, began a slow process
of ideological reorganization under the guidance of Dimitrov.21
At the same time, Dimitrov started lobbying Molotov and Stalin in favour of the
Yugoslav comrades, claiming that the British and the government-in-exile were
obstructing the anti-German effort of the resistance movement and urging the
Soviet leadership to send weapons to the Partisans.22 The Soviet government, however,
was uncertain as to how to proceed. As Andrey Vyshinskii, then Molotov’s
deputy, commented on 19 June 1942, it was difficult to keep the question of the
Partisans separated from its context, and especially from the problem of relations
with the government-in-exile. If Moscow were to address this issue, he wrote, ‘it will
be necessary to carry the matter through to the end’. ‘Truthfully’, he concluded, ‘I do
not see such a possibility’.
It took Dimitrov making an extra effort with Tito for Moscow to start considering
a new position. At the beginning of June, while Soviet representatives in
London were claiming that Moscow had no connections with Yugoslavia and
bore no responsibility for the actions of the Comintern,25 Dimitrov delivered a
lesson in popular-front tactics to Tito. The Partisans, he explained, were right to
expose the activities of the Chetniks, but this should not be presented as an attack
on the Yugoslav government, but rather as an appeal to it, ‘emphasizing that the
fighting Yugoslav patriots are entitled to expect that government’s support’. Part of
the Chetniks, he argued, should be won over, others neutralized and only ‘the most
malicious part of them’ destroyed ‘without mercy’. He believed that the campaign
against the class enemy should be conducted in the name of unity, without giving
the impression that it was party oriented. He therefore considered it expedient to
organize some form of appeal ‘by well-known Yugoslav public figures and politicians
against collaborators and in favour of the Part[isan] people’s liberation
army’, and possibly also to set up a ‘national committee for aid for the
Yugoslav people’s war of liberation’ with the participation of ‘well-known patriotic
Serb, Croat, Montenegrin, and Slovene public figures’.26 Tito took notice. On 16
June, he summoned a ‘Congress of Patriots from Montenegro, the Bay of Kotor
and Sandzˇak’ which issued a declaration that did not refer to the communist
organization, but praised the three big powers and made an appeal to the
Yugoslav government-in-exile instead of attacking it.27 A few days later, on 19
June, he made a speech that all but abandoned the leftist tone of his previous
statements and condemned the ‘sectarianism’ of the party.28
Beginning in August 1942, the new Soviet course towards Yugoslavia developed
in three directions. Firstly, on 3 August, a carefully worded memorandum that
accused the Chetniks of fighting the Partisans in collaboration with the occupiers
was presented to the ambassador of the Yugoslav government-in-exile in
London.31
Secondly, Moscow kept diplomatic contacts with the Yugoslav government on a
different track and, at the end of August, it expressed a desire to elevate relations to
the level of establishing an embassy. Tito protested vehemently.32 At the end of
November, much to the surprise of the Yugoslavs, Moscow also offered to send a
military mission to establish direct contact with Mihailovic´ .33
Thirdly, Dimitrov maintained a watchful eye over Tito to ensure that he stayed
on track. A few days after the memorandum against Mihailovic´ was handed to the
Yugoslavs, Dimitrov instructed Tito not to call his brigades ‘proletarian’ but rather
‘shock brigades’ and urged him to understand that this had ‘enormous political
significance, both for consolidating people’s forces against the occupiers and collaborators
within the country and for foreign countries’. Dimitrov also reminded
him that he was waging a people’s liberation war and not a ‘proletarian struggle’,
and that he should ‘quit playing right into the hands of the enemies of the people,
who will always make vicious use of any such lapses on your part’.34 The haggling
continued for the rest of 1942. When, in November, Tito informed Moscow that he
intended to form ‘something like a government’, Dimitrov urged him not to give to
this organization a partisan character, asking for the abolition of the monarchy
or attacking the Government-in-exile with which the Soviet Union had treaty
relations.35 Again, Tito complied. When, at the end of November, he created the
Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ), he gave
to it a very broad programme, with which almost everybody could identify.
...
The Foreign Office was
also worried about the repercussions of its policy for Moscow. But the immediate
support given to the Chetnik movement by the Yugoslav government limited the
options at British disposal, and the Foreign Office rallied behind it to defend
Mihailovic´ . As a consequence, when the Yugoslavs presented a counter memorandum
rebuffing the Soviet accusations, Moscow was unable to take the affair further
without creating a breach with the British. Moreover, it could not substantiate its
allegations and challenge the Yugoslav counter memorandum without using the
information provided by Tito and thus revealing its contact with the Partisans.
...
In the following months, while Soviet relations with Tito were punctuated by
occasional disagreements and complicated by Tito’s frustration with the lack of
Soviet military support,38 Moscow seemed to be unsure as to whether it was
better openly to support the Partisans, work for an agreement with the Chetniks,
or simply remain steadfast in their policy of denial. On 5 March 1943, for example,
the British government asked Moscow for support in getting in touch with the
Partisans.39 Molotov’s first reaction was, as usual, to deny the existence of any
connections with Yugoslavia,40 but then he pondered over whether it might be expedient
to present a more articulate reply. The several different drafts of his response,
which were prepared, are indicative of the doubts that were harboured in Moscow.
...
Moscow’s paralysis lifted at the end of 1943, in the context of the transition in
Soviet policy towards the entire communist movement. In May, Moscow had
announced the disbandment of the Comintern. Although this move is generally
interpreted as an attempt to improve relations with the Western Allies, privately
Stalin explained that it was also designed to enlarge the field of manoeuvre of the
communist parties which, due to their participation in the Comintern, were ‘falsely
accused of supposedly being agents of a foreign state’.43 In June it was decided to
create a Department of International Information, a sort of umbrella organization
secretly headed by Dimitrov which was in charge of ‘special institutes’ that inherited
the functions of the Comintern.44 What happened later, however, was a much
greater change. Although the institutes were created immediately, the Department
that was supposed to control them was not, and its functions were approved only in
September 1944. In the meantime, the institutes apparently operated without much
direction from the centre, and were severally handicapped by organizational problems
and by the fact that most foreign cadres were going back to their own countries.
Dimitrov, who in any case had to take frequent periods of leave due to illness,
was progressively side-lined, while Stalin and Molotov personally directed the
communist parties either through personal meetings with their leaders or through
the missions dispatched by Soviet military intelligence.
...
In the meantime, in Yugoslavia the pace of events began to accelerate. Tito had
good reason to think that, in the Western field, the wind was changing in his
favour. The British, he cabled to Dimitrov, were offering help ‘now that we have
almost liquidated Mihailovic´ and his Chetniks’ and it was necessary to accept their
offer of material aid ‘and win them over politically’.45 Tito’s impression that the
standing of the Partisans was improving was confirmed when one of the British
agents told him that in Cairo there were two factions, one pro-Mihailovic´ and one
pro-Tito, but that the military circles were unhappy with British support for the
former. Tito quickly passed this information to Dimitrov, adding that the British
‘want to know too much about our army’ but that he was giving them only ‘the
information that we think can be given’.46 During the same period, Tito pushed
neighbouring parties to take a more aggressive stand against their internal enemies.
In August, he forced the Albanian communist party to denounce an agreement
with the nationalists of the Balli Kombe¨ tar, thus escalating the confrontation with
non-communist groups. At the same time, he extracted from the Greek communist
party the right to organize a Slav National Liberation Front in Greek Macedonia,
which soon manifested separatist tendencies. In September, he sharply criticised the
Greek comrades for allowing their national liberation movement to fall under
British influence.47 Finally, on 2 October, Tito informed Dimitrov that he did
not recognise the authority of the government-in-exile or the King, that he did
not intend to allow their return to the country, and that the AVNOJ should be
considered the only legal authority in the country. Significantly he reported that he
had communicated his intentions to Fitzroy Maclean, Churchill’s personal envoy
to the Partisans, and that Maclean had let the Partisans know that the British
government would not strongly uphold the king and the government-in-exile.48
Although the telegram was widely circulated among the Soviet leadership, which
had strongly discouraged Tito to take the same step a year earlier, this time
Moscow did not react. Excluding the argument that the implications of this
news had not been fully understood, it can be argued that Moscow preferred to
remain on the fringe of the action, keeping a free hand to stop Tito if his gamble
backfired or to support him in case of success. Which, in the end, is exactly what
happened.
...
At the beginning of 1944, the Soviets continued to claim that they did not have
enough information about the situation in Yugoslavia to take any action, and
under this pretext they refused to issue a declaration advocating an agreement
between Tito and the king.64 Behind the scenes, they were overturning one of the
key features of the popular front strategy established in 1941, suggesting to Tito
that he reject any agreement with the Yugoslav government-in-exile. It was
Churchill who took the initiative, asking Tito, on 5 February, if the dismissal of
Mihailovic´ could open up the possibility of an agreement between the Partisans
and the king. Tito forwarded the letter to Dimitrov, pointing out that although he
had plenty of reasons to refuse the deal, the matter was serious enough to ask the
opinion of Stalin himself.65 Tito, who was used to being reprimanded by Moscow
over his direct confrontations with the Government-in-exile, this time received a
different response. Though Dimitrov, Stalin and Molotov let him know that he
should reply to ‘the Englishman’ that he too favoured the unity of the Yugoslavs
and that, for this reason, the government-in-exile, including Mihailovic´ , should be
eliminated, the AVNOJ recognized as the sole government of Yugoslavia and the
king submitted to its law. If the king was willing to accept these conditions, they
stated, the AVNOJ would not object to cooperating with him, but of course the
ultimate fate of the monarchy would only be decided after the end of the war Tito
was also instructed to refer to Stalin in the subsequent telegrams as to ‘the friend’.66
Tito wrote his reply to Churchill on 9 February, using the wording of the text he
had received from the Kremlin.
...
Completing the process of side-lining Dimitrov, which had started with the
disbandment of the Comintern, Tito was informed that from April he could communicate
directly with Molotov, and that Dimitrov would have nothing more to do
with Yugoslavia. Soviet correspondence with Tito shows that starting from 1944,
the Soviet leadership was not only concerned to reassure the Western Allies, but
also to reassure Tito, who was clearly emerging as the master of postwar
Yugoslavia. In the same letter, which confirmed the marginalization of Dimitrov,
Stalin and Molotov personally assured Tito that they considered Yugoslavia an
ally of the Soviet Union, and Bulgaria an enemy, and that even if the situation
changed in Bulgaria they wanted Yugoslavia to be their ‘principal support in
South-eastern Europe’. The two leaders added that they had no plans for the
‘sovietisation’ of either Yugoslavia or Bulgaria, which they characterised as democratic
countries allied with the Soviet Union, and that whatever Dimitrov was
thinking, any decision on the question of Macedonia would be taken with Tito’s
agreement73. From April 1944 onwards, the tone of Soviet correspondence with
Tito changed significantly. While Dimitrov had addressed Tito as a subordinate,
Molotov generally expressed himself in terms of giving advice rather than directives.
In June, Korneev was also reminded that he should make suggestions to Tito
only when he was asked to do so, and that he should not overwhelm him with
questions ‘especially when he shows no desire to express an opinion’.74
...
While doing their best to help the Partisans, Molotov and Stalin remained determined
that Tito’s increasing hold over the country did not appear to be orchestrated
by Moscow. KGB officers attached to the mission were instructed to keep a
low profile demonstrate ‘extreme caution and tact so as not to provoke complains
that we are interfering in the internal affairs of Yugoslavia or that we are not loyal
to the allies’.81 The same caution encouraged Moscow to reject the option to sever
relations with the Yugoslav government-in-exile, which had been contemplated
in the first months of the year. In April, meeting Djilas in Moscow, Molotov
guaranteed that the Soviet government intended to recognize the AVNOJ as
the legitimate government of Yugoslavia, but he also made it clear that this step
was premature and that it should be done with consideration for relations with
the Western Allies and the situation in other countries. Although Djilas
was pushing for a quick solution, both he and Molotov agreed that international
recognition depended on the capacity of Tito to strengthen his position in Serbia.
...
The Western Allies remained a continuous source of concern. Tito and the
Soviets became increasingly suspicious that, notwithstanding Churchill’s public
statements, the British were still surreptitiously supporting Mihailovic´ in the
hope of turning his forces against the Partisans.85 By the beginning of June, Stalin
was also convinced that the British were plotting to kill Tito.When he barely survived
a surprise attack by the Germans and was evacuated to Bari, Stalin summoned Djilas
and asked himto warn Tito to be ‘wary of our ‘‘foreign friends’’’ and keep the details
of his return trip strictly secret. ‘Do not forget that there are cases where planes break
down in the air’, he said, in an apparent reference to the rumours that the death in a
flying accident of the Polish general Sikorski had been orchestrated by London.86
...
The agreement between Tito and Subasic´ was signed on 16 June.
The AVNOJ was recognized as the only legitimate government in Yugoslavia and
Subasic´ agreed to form his new administration without those elements compromised
by the German occupation. The question of the monarchy was postponed
until the end of the war.
The signing of the pact did not ease Moscow’s concern. The KGB, which intercepted
a report by Churchill on this matter, informed Stalin that neither the Prime
Minister nor the British Foreign Office was fully satisfied, and that the conservative
circles in the British Foreign Office were working against Tito, claiming that he did
not have enough support in Serbia. In his report to Stalin, Korneev sounded a
similarly alarmed note, claiming that British support to the Partisans was more
fictitious than real, that the British had not really broken off relations with
Mihailovic´ and that they were secretly mobilizing all their reactionary forces to
oppose the Partisan army in the event of a German withdrawal.91 The British, who
had cultivated the illusion of having tied Tito to an agreement for the restoration of
the monarchy, were indeed disappointed, sensing that they were just giving Tito
what he wanted without any reasonable concessions on his side.92 But as Eden had
commented at the beginning of June, the British only had themselves to blame for
this situation, as ‘the Russians have merely sat back and watched us doing their
work for them’.93 At the same time, the Foreign Office vetoed an SOE plan to reestablish
connections with Mihailovic´ out of fear of losing Tito’s confidence, and
for the same reasons the British also forced the USA to withdraw the intelligence
mission they still maintained with the Chetniks.94
...
The Yugoslav case suggests that, in the context of the shifting balance of forces
among the Western Allies, Moscow was ready to put aside the popular front strategy
and to encourage local communists to challenge the political order supported
by the British and the Americans while the Second World War was still raging.
The modification of Soviet policy in 1944 also has the potential to shed light on the
earlier period, highlighting that the disagreement with the Yugoslavs over
the nature of the war in 1941–3 never really brought into question the Soviets’
recognition of the preeminent role played by Tito among the neighbour parties.
The example of Yugoslavia, however, also shows that this apparently clear strategy
covered deep uncertainties on the Soviet side as to the real intentions of the British,
the real space of manoeuvre enjoyed by Moscow and the way in which relations
with a new communist state in the making should be established. It also shows that,
trapped in the Marxist world-view which postulated the incompatibility of
the socialist and capitalist worlds, Moscow was often unable to understand its
opponents, looking for conspiracies where they did not exist.
In the short term, Soviet policy appeared successful. By directing Tito to abandon
his radical stance and adopt the slogan of national liberation, Moscow helped
him to gain the confidence of the British, establishing the impression that a collaboration
between the Partisans and the King was indeed possible. Then the Soviets
were able to support the communist take-over of the country without it affecting
their relations with the Western Allies. Tito’s flight to Moscow was a brutal
awakening for Churchill, who only then realized that in Tito the British had
‘nursed a viper’.100 The Soviets were also able convincingly to deny until the end
the extent of their involvement with the Yugoslav communist movement, thus
avoiding the risk that, if anything went wrong, the situation could be ascribed to
them. In all this, they provided at the crucial moment the military, financial and
diplomatic support that the Partisans needed to defeat their internal enemies and to
gain credibility in the international area. Tito played his cards well, paying lip
service to the Soviets when needed and continuing to advance his cause step by
step while maintaining their support.
The seeds for further conflicts, however, had been planted. Paradoxically, by
pushing Tito to widen his popular base in Yugoslavia after 1942, the Soviets had
established him as the leader of a communist state that was now challenging
Moscow’s supremacy. Created by Stalin and nursed by Churchill, ‘the viper’
Tito was now ready to bite eastward. Exacerbated by Tito’s attempt to impose
his leadership on the other ‘popular democracies’ in the Balkans after the war, the
conflict between the two leaders of the communist movements eventually became
unmanageable, and in 1948 led to the most serious split in the communist world.
http://sci-hub.bz/http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022009417737602
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by boomer crook Fri Jul 14, 2017 10:39 am
disident
Po borbenoj efikasnosti i ubojitosti su mogle da im pariraju samo još krajiške brigade, kojima je pak bila prednost što su protiv ustaša imale +10 na attack power, +20% attack speed, +15% frenzy kao i 4x critical damage na svaki open wounds ustaša.
Sad, da li beše 1000+600 ili 1600+1000, mislim da se ova druga brojka odnosu na opsednutu Foču kada su Nemci došli da deblokiraju grad u kome je bilo 1600 Italijana i 1000 četnika u bratskoj odbrani i tom operacijom je otpočela bitka na Sutjesci, ali jbg, stari se...
