Comments by "" (@VersusARCH) on "Josip Broz ‘Tito’: Too Tough for Stalin" video.

  1. Neutral Yugoslavia was agreed upon in Yalta as a buffer between US and Soviet spheres of influence in order to reduce the risk of a new world war (same goes for Austria and Finland). Given that Tito was originally a communist and a Comintern agent, he and the west (eager for a propaganda coup) created the myth of him "rejecting" Stalin. In fact the USSR let him go and would not invade anyhow (especially since in 1948. the US had operational nuclear weapons and the USSR just conducted its first nuclear test). Any foiled Soviet assassination attempts were simply due to loyal Yugoslav internal security apparatus (which was purged by Tito of all suspected and potential Soviet spies in 1948.).
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  2. Cold war actually kept Yugoslavia together since a buffer was needed for increased stability on both sides of the Iron Curtain (though not 100%, cough Trieste, Greece, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Romania 1989... Once US was poised to take over much of the Eastern Europe after the Berlin War fell, Yugoslav region became next to useless politically for the west and was reduced to economic exploitation (and physical damage reduces purchase prices...)
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  3. Tito was great at personally taking credit for the general balance of power and policies of great powers agreed upon in their bilateral meetings on which Tito and Yugoslavia had no influence whatsoever but were just lucky benefactors. Yugoslavia was designated as a buffer state between Western (UK perhaps didn't see it as such at the time, but essentially US) sphere of influence and the Soviet sphere of influence. The agreement was reached because that is where the frontlines of both powerblocks met in WW2, neither the USSR nor US wanted another world war over a poor state like Yugoslavia when the Soviet armies outnumbered the Western armies 3:1 in Europe, but the Americans had operational nuclear weapons whereas the Soviets did not. Furthermore the USSR was only establishing their puppet regimes in Eastern Europe at the time (late 1940s) and could not count on support from them but rather a rebellion in case of a conflict with the west. Ultimately they decided to probe the West in the far more convenient Korea, ONLY after producing nuclear weapons of their own and in a divided country in which communism genuinely took roots and in which the Americans were struggling to establish a puppet regime. Even more crucially the USSR bordered Korea, but also had a strong and battle-hardened communist ally bursting with manpower birdering it too - China, which just needed supplies. So the USSR could officially remain out of the conflict and just be a supply base for the endless manpower the Chinese could field in support of North Korea if worse came to worst. And even that ended in a draw. Tito's Yugoslavia was a product of the general balance of power, it had little to do with Tito's supposed skills as a world leader. That was simply the cult of personality his domestic propaganda created and the great powers did not contest since they did not really want to tell the world how things really work but rather create a nice moderating illusion called the UN.
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