Informbiro period
The Informbiro period was an era of Yugoslavia's history following the Tito–Stalin split in mid-1948 that lasted until the country's partial rapprochement with the Soviet Union in 1955 with the signing of the Belgrade declaration. After World War II in Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia's new leadership under Josip Broz Tito pursued a foreign policy that did not align with the Eastern Bloc. Eventually, this led to public conflict, but the Yugoslav leadership decided not to acquiesce to Soviet demands, despite significant external and internal pressures. The period saw the persecution of the political opposition in Yugoslavia, resulting in thousands being imprisoned, exiled, or sent to forced labour. 100 Yugoslav citizens were seriously wounded or killed between 1948 and 1953 while some sources claim 400 victims during the existence of the Goli Otok prison camp. The purges included a significant number of members of Yugoslavia's security apparatus and its military.
This break with the Eastern Bloc caused significant economic difficulties for Yugoslavia as the country relied on trade with the USSR and Soviet allies. Economic pressures within the country led to reforms that would ultimately result in the introduction of socialist self-management and increased decentralisation of the country through constitutional amendments formalising the reforms.
The United States saw the rift between the Eastern Bloc and Yugoslavia as an opportunity during the Cold War to fragment the Eastern Bloc further and consequently provided economic and military aid, loans, and diplomatic support to the country. The new foreign policy circumstances led Tito to end Yugoslav support of Communist forces in the Greek Civil War and concluded the Balkan Pact, an agreement of cooperation and defence with Greece and Turkey.
The period had an impact on Yugoslavia's contemporary art and popular culture, as artists were encouraged to seek inspiration in the wartime struggle of the Yugoslav Partisans and the construction of new infrastructure. Decades later, many literary works and films covered the era's events.
The descriptor "Informbiro period" arose from the Communist Information Bureau, an organisation initiated by Stalin that had aimed to reduce divergence among communist governments.
Background
Relations between Joseph Stalin and Josip Broz Tito were often strained during World War II as the Soviet Union and the Yugoslav Partisans, a resistance movement established following Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, pursued divergent interests other than defeating the Axis powers and promoting Communist ideas. Nonetheless, Soviet advisers arrived in Yugoslavia in the autumn of 1944 and promised economic and military assistance—specifically arms and aid to the defence industry. By February 1947, little aid had arrived. In September 1947, when the Soviets formed the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties, also known as the Cominform, they insisted on headquartering it in the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade, expanding their agents' access to Yugoslavia.After the war, Stalin and Tito, and by extension the USSR and Yugoslavia, had increasingly divergent objectives and priorities in the areas of foreign relations, economic policies, and even in ideological approaches to the development of a Communist society. Despite these conflicting objectives, Stalin supported Yugoslav policy towards Albania, which treated it like a Yugoslav satellite state. The Soviet–Yugoslav relations took a significant turn to worse when Bulgaria and Yugoslavia signed a friendship and mutual assistance treaty in Bled in August 1947. The agreement, calling for greater integration between the two countries, was negotiated without consulting the USSR, leading Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov to denounce it. The conflict gradually grew until 1948 when it culminated in the Tito–Stalin split—pitting Yugoslavia against the USSR, supported by the rest of the Eastern Bloc through the Cominform, in the period of conflict or at least tense relations with all pro-Western Yugoslav neighbours, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Following the military conquests of Trieste and a part of Carinthia in the final days of World War II, Tito pressed territorial claims against Austria—specifically Carinthia and Burgenland hoping for a corridor to Czechoslovakia—and against Italy in the Julian March area, including Trieste. The immediate vicinity of the city was organised as the Free Territory of Trieste under divided military administration by Yugoslavs and Western Allies, while the latter controlled the city itself. Following the Tito–Stalin split, the Soviets withdrew their support for Yugoslavs in further resolution of the Trieste dispute, and switched from backing Yugoslavia in favour of Austria. Since 1947, Yugoslavia provided increasing aid to the Democratic Army of Greece in the Greek Civil War. Even after Stalin obtained assurances from Yugoslav leadership that the aid would cease, Tito informed Nikos Zachariadis of the Communist Party of Greece that the DSE could count on further help.
Cominformist purges
Persecution of internal enemies
In the immediate aftermath of the Tito–Stalin split, the leadership of the ruling Communist Party of Yugoslavia was faced with uncertainty over personal loyalty. Interior minister Aleksandar Ranković noted it was impossible to know who to trust and that one's closest comrades may now be the enemy. Even as Tito and Stalin exchanged letters which led to their open split in early 1948, Tito called for action against central committee member Sreten Žujović and former minister of industry Andrija Hebrang. Žujović was the only person openly supporting Stalin when the central committee discussed Stalin's direct accusations and who was his source of information. Tito alleged Hebrang was the main source for Soviet mistrust and tasked Ranković with charging him. Ranković fabricated charges that Hebrang became an Ustaše spy during his captivity in 1942 and that the Soviets subsequently blackmailed him using that information as leverage. Both Žujović and Hebrang were apprehended within a week. There were numerous victims of persecution beyond Žujović and Hebrang. Real or perceived supporters of Stalin were termed "Cominformists" or "ibeovci" as a pejorative initialism based on the first two words in the official name of the Cominform. Thousands were imprisoned, killed, or exiled.In response to the situation in the country, Ranković established a special anti-Cominform staff in the State Security Administration consisting of his deputy, and nominal head of the UDB, Svetislav Stefanović Ćeća, Veljko Mićunović, Jovo Kapičić, Vojislav Biljanović, Mile Milatović, and Jefto Šašić as the head of the Counterintelligence Service.
In 1948–51 alone, 55,663 KPJ members were registered as Cominformists, or 19.52% of the 1948 party membership. However, in the same period, the membership was augmented by the introduction of more than half a million new members. The number and proportion of Cominformists in the KPJ membership varied substantially by federal constituent republics and regions, and as by ethnicity. More than half the members were registered in Serbia proper, while the highest proportion relative to the total population was found in Montenegro.
Such high numbers of Cominformists in Serbia in absolute terms, and in Montenegro in relative terms compared to its population, are explained by the Russophilia traditionally observed there. The origins of this sentiment are linked to Imperial Russian aid in 1804–1815 during the Serbian Revolution coinciding with the 1806–1812 Russo-Turkish War, and subsequently, diplomatically as the Principality of Serbia gained diplomatic recognition in 1830. The sentiment was reinforced in Montenegro since the Russian Empire acted, or was perceived to have acted, to protect the Principality of Montenegro against the Ottoman Empire in the mid-18th century. By extension, this support was given to the USSR.
The exact number of those arrested remains uncertain, but in 1983, Radovan Radonjić stated that 16,288 were arrested and convicted, including 2,616 belonging to various levels of the KPJ leadership. According to Ranković, 51,000 people were killed, imprisoned or sent to forced labour. A majority of them were sentenced without a trial. Prisoners were held at numerous sites including actual prisons, as well as prison camps in Stara Gradiška and the repurposed Ustaše concentration camp in Jasenovac. A special-purpose prison camp was built for Cominformists on the uninhabited Adriatic islands of Goli Otok and Sveti Grgur in 1949.
Purge of the military and security apparatus
The secret police themselves were among organisations targeted by purges. Yugoslav sources indicate that 1,722 UDB servicemen and officers were convicted. Particularly wide-ranging purges were carried out against the UDB in Sarajevo after all of the UDB personnel of Sarajevo's second district declared their support for the Cominform. Their action was echoed by UDB chiefs in Mostar and Banja Luka. At least seventeen UDB officers holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or higher in high-profile positions in the federal bodies or in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro were arrested, and several UDB officers escaped to Romania.Support for the Soviets within the Yugoslav Army ranks is difficult to determine. Low-end estimates indicate that 10–15% of the army's personnel favoured the Soviet position. Yugoslav sources estimate the number of military members arrested is in a range from 4,153 officers and soldiers put forward by Radonjić, to 7,000 imprisoned officers estimated by Milovan Đilas. The purge included 22 officers in the presidential guard regiment reporting directly to Tito, including Momčilo Đurić, wartime commander of the Yugoslav Partisan Supreme Headquarters escort battalion.
Forty-nine Yugoslav Army graduates of the Voroshilov, the Frunze, and other Soviet military academies were deemed potential Soviet supporters. Many of those attending such academies in the USSR at the time of the Tito–Stalin split never returned to Yugoslavia.
The split particularly affected the Air Force. Almost all Air Force officers had Soviet training, and some of them fled the country in air force planes. The defectors included Major General Pero Popivoda, who was the head of the air force operational service. Batajnica, Zemun, and Pančevo airbases near Belgrade saw several attacks by groups of saboteurs, while the Zemun airbase commander and his deputy fled to Romania.