Chvala, Andrej.
(2011).
Jugoslavensko-sovjetski državno-partijski odnosi 1955./1956..
Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of History.
[mentor Banac, Ivo].
Abstract
After the collapse of Yugoslav – Soviet relations in 1948, Yugoslavia was forced to change its foreign policy and cooperate with the West. Cooperation, and especially dependance on Western aid, was problematic for the Yugoslav leadership. For that reason, after Stalin's death, it wanted to normalise Yugoslavia's relations with the Soviet Union,. On the Soviet side, the new leadership headed by Khrushchev, wanted to show its commitment to the idea of peaceful co-existence with the West, but also to bring Yugoslavia back to the Soviet sphere of influence.
The visit of the Soviet state delegation to Belgrade in May 1955 marked the beginning of the period of normalisation and cooperation between the two countries. The trend continued with Tito's visit to the Soviet Union in June 1956. The Yugoslav – Soviet normalisation helped Khrushchev to initiate the process of de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union. Political and economic changes in the USSR have also affected the East European countries under the Soviet influence. With popular support, their new leaders started to implement economic and political reforms, the most important aspect of these reforms being ever greater independence from Moscow. For the East Europeans Yugoslavia was an example, since its course proved that socialism was possible without Soviet tutelage. Soviet leadership allowed reforms in the bloc countries as long as they did not pose a threat to the unity of the Soviet bloc. The events in Hungary marked the turnover in Soviet approach. Reforms made by prime minister Imre Nagy (re-introduction of multy-party system, forming of the coalition government) and his decision to take Hungary out of the Warsaw Pact, influenced the Soviet decision to intervene militarily.
Tito and the Yugoslav leadership agreed with the intervention, but they also gave political asylum to the Hungarian leadership. That decision, together with Tito's criticism of the Stalinist elements in the Soviet leadership, influenced the new deterioration in the mutual relations. That relations deteriorated after the Yugoslav refusal to accept the unity of the Communist movement headed by the USSR in 1957, and after the new party programme of the Yugoslav communists was published in 1958. By the late 1950's, because of the deteriorated relations with the East, but also with West, Yugoslavia oriented its foreign policy towards newly independent countries of the Third World, promoting the idea of non-alignment.
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