Yugoslavian partisan leader Tito signs friendship treaty with Soviet Union
On this day in 1945 Yugoslav partisan leader Tito signs an agreement permitting temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory.Josip Broz alias Tito secretary general of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia led a partisan counteroffensive movement against the Axis occupying powers of Germany and Italy in 1941.Recognized by the Allies as the leader of the Yugoslav resistance he was in fact the leader of a power grab meant not only to expel the Axis forces but to wrest control of Yugoslavia in the postwar environment from both royalist and democratic movements.Once the Soviet army liberated Serbia the fate of Yugoslavia as a communist-dominated nation was sealed.
Titos task now lay in remaining independent of both the U.S.S.R.and the West.To this end he created a second Yugoslavia a socialist federation that became known for its nonalignment stance.As part of the agreement signed on April 5 1945 Tito secured a proviso that the Soviets would leave Yugoslavia once its operational task was completed.
Ensuring compliance with this clause proved problematic as Stalin tried to maintain a presence in postwar Yugoslavia attempting to co-opt the Yugoslav Communist Party and create another puppet state.He failed Tito played the West against the East in a Machiavellian scheme to keep his own Stalin-like grip on his country.Although he permitted cultural and scientific freedom unheard of in Soviet-bloc countries he was also guilty of purging centrist and democratic forces fighting for reform within Yugoslavia and centralizing all power in one party.
But upon Titos death in 1980 the center could not holdchaos was ultimately unleashed in the form of ethnic civil war.
