Nonalignment at the crossroads: 'Castro is a brother, Nasser is a teacher but Tito is an example'

Between March 1964 and April 1965, Ben Bella, the leader of newly independent Algeria, met twice with Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslav President and co-founder of the nonaligned movement. The detailed account of the two meetings serves as an analytical platform to highlight the period when the future of the nascent Nonaligned Movement (NAM) hung in balance. In 1964 and 1965, the movement faced existential challenges, and the exchanges between the two leaders provide unique insights into the Third World’s dilemmas, hopes and aspirations. In March 1964, the time of the first meeting, there was still no certainty that there would be a follow-up to the First nonaligned conference, held in Belgrade in September 1961. Although successful, the Belgrade Conference ushered years of painful search for the identity of the new political movement. The second Tito – Ben Bella meeting, held in April 1965, underlined the extent to which the Second Nonaligned Conference, held in Cairo in October 1964, deepened divisions and revealed the absence of clear direction within the nascent movement. Examination of the Tito – Ben Bella meetings, based on inadequately researched Yugoslav transcripts, contributes to the historiography of the Nonaligned Movement and of the underdeveloped world in the Cold War

No bargaining chips, no spheres of interest: the Yugoslav origins of Cold War non-alignment

This article reevaluates the origins of Yugoslavia's instrumental role in the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and elucidates the roots and conceptualization of Tito's strategic reorientation toward nonalignment. Yugoslav foreign policy became truly independent only after Yugoslavia was expelled from the Soviet fold. The article shows that Belgrade began searching for a “third way” earlier than is acknowledged in the relevant historiography. The search began when, faced with the distinct threat of a Soviet invasion in the early 1950s, Yugoslavia became all but formally incorporated into the Western alliance. Based on previously unknown or inadequately researched documents from the Yugoslav archives, the article demonstrates that Josip Broz Tito's trip to India and Burma in December 1954, particularly his first encounter with India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, played a key role in shaping Tito's principles of active peaceful coexistence and noncommitment and in transforming them into a global initiative. The article highlights the well-defined political and philosophical rationale behind the principles that became embedded in the concept of non-engagement and, later, nonalignment

Yugoslav-Soviet relations, 1953-1957: normalization, comradeship, confrontation

The thesis chronologically presents the slow improvement of relations between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, starting with Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, through their full normalization in 1955 and 1956, to the renewed ideological confrontation at the end of 1956. The normalization of Yugoslav-Soviet relations brought to an end a conflict between Yugoslavia and the Eastern Bloc, in existence since 1948, which threatened the status quo in Europe. The thesis represents the first effort at comprehensively presenting the reconciliation between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, between 1953 and 1957. It will also explain the motives that guided the leaderships of the two countries, in particular the two main protagonists, Josip Broz Tito and Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, throughout this process. It will also provide insight into the reasons behind the collapse of this process in the beginning of 1957. The thesis will establish that the significance of the Yugoslav-Soviet reconciliation went far beyond the bilateral relations between the two countries. It had significant ramifications on relations in the Eastern Bloc and in the global Communist movement, and on the dynamics of the Cold War world at its crucial juncture. The reconciliation had brought forward the process of de-Stalinization in the USSR and in Peoples' Democracies; it had also encouraged the process of liberalization throughout Eastern Europe and had helped Khrushchev win the post-Stalin leadership contest. Finally, the reconciliation had enabled Yugoslavia to acquire equidistance from both Blocs and to successfully embark upon creating, together with India and Egypt the new entity in the bi-polar Cold War world - the Non-aligned movement. The unique contribution of this thesis is that it is based on the research of the Yugoslav and Russian archives; it brings into the Cold War scholarship a great number of previously unresearched documents

From regional role to global undertakings: Yugoslavia in the early Cold War

In 1945, Yugoslavia constituted itself as a socialist state. Its legitimacy derived from the most successful anti-Nazi resistance movement, under its charismatic leader, Josip Broz Tito, and the autochthonous social revolution carried out during the war of liberation. In the new reality of the world following a second global conflict, with the emerging ideological confrontation between two social systems, socialist and liberal capitalist, Yugoslavia firmly allied itself with its ideological paragon, Stalin’s Soviet Union. Within three years, however, Tito and the Yugoslav leadership had rebelled against Moscow’s tutelage, setting the stage for the first paradigm shift of the Cold War. The 1948 Soviet–Yugoslav break-up blurred, and eventually challenged, the fault lines of the Cold War. This chapter provides insight into how the policies of Yugoslavia and its leader, Tito, during the nascent Cold War contributed to paradigm shifts affecting the dynamics and structure of the Cold War system. It will focus on geostrategic implications, namely the 1948 Yugoslav–Soviet break-up, the Yugoslav military realignment that followed the split and the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which aspired to challenge the Cold War bipolarity. In exercising disproportionate activism in the international system, Yugoslavia was the only country of the region that harboured the ambition to play a global role. Its leadership saw it as the means to safeguard the country’s independence and security

Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in the early Cold War: reconciliation, comradeship, confrontation, 1953-57

The first comprehensive insight into one of the most spectacular episodes of the Cold War – the reconciliation between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union between 1953 and 1955. At the time, this process had shocked the World as much as the violent break-up of their relations did in 1948. This new book provides an explanation for the collapse of the process of normalization of Yugoslav-Soviet that occurred at the end of 1956 and the renewal of their ideological confrontation. It alsos explain the motives that guided the two main protagonists, Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and the Soviet leader Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. This book establishes several pioneering theses. Firstly, that the significance of the Yugoslav-Soviet reconciliation went beyond their bilateral relationship. It had ramifications for relations in the Eastern Bloc, the global Communist movement, and on the dynamics of the Cold War world at its crucial juncture. Secondly, that the Yugoslav-Soviet reconciliation brought forward the process of de-Stalinization in the USSR and in the Peoples’ Democracies. Thirdly, that it enabled Khrushchev to win the post-Stalin leadership contest. Lastly, the book argues that the process of Yugoslav-Soviet reconciliation permitted Tito to embark, together with Nehru of India and Nasser of Egypt upon creating the new entity in the bi-polar Cold War world – the Non-aligned movement. This book will be of much interest to Cold War historians and students of international relations and postwar European history