Jeronim Perovic

The Tito-Stalin Split: A Reassessment in Light of New Evidence

This article reassesses the Tito-Stalin split of 1948 based on findings from former East-bloc archives. In particular, it shows that the version propagated in the official Yugoslav historiography, suggesting that the break with Moscow arose because of Yugoslavias distinct path toward socialism, is incorrect. Instead, Josip Broz Titos unwillingness to give up on his territorial and political ambitions in the Balkans, especially Albania, despite Moscows objections is the main factor that ultimately sparked the conflict in 1948. Yugoslavia fell afoul of Moscows policy of enforced Sovietization of the socialist camp, though not because of a long-term Soviet plan or because of particular animosity toward the Yugoslav leadership. Rather, Titos independent foreign policy provided a welcome pretext to clamp down on Yugoslavia and thereby tighten Soviet control over the other East European states.

Highland Rebels: The North Caucasus During the Stalinist Collectivization Campaign

This article investigates one of the most tragic episodes of Soviet history: the collectivization campaign of 1929–30, when the Soviet state’s brutal assault on the peasantry plunged the whole country into chaos and provoked large scale rebellions. Resistance was especially fierce in the Muslim dominated parts of the North Caucasus, a notoriously troubled region where Soviet structures were still very weak, and the social cohesion of mountain communities strong. Ultimately, the Red Army and the armed forces of the secret police crushed these rebellions ruthlessly. Yet in Chechnya, Ingushetia, Karachai and parts of Dagestan, they were at least sufficiently violent for the Soviet leadership to decide to suspend their collectivization attempt altogether until the mid-1930s. This is the first study to analyse collectivization in the non-Russian areas of the North Caucasus based on material from Russian archives as well as published document collections containing Soviet secret police reports.

Josip Broz Tito

Yugoslavia was different from the other Eastern European socialist states. From being the Soviet Union’s staunchest ally after the Second World War, it turned into its most direct challenger in 1948 when the Yugoslav Communist leadership under Josip Broz Tito clashed with the Soviet leadership under Josif V. Stalin. As a result, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) was branded as a heretic party and expelled from the Cominform, the organization of Eastern European socialist states. In the aftermath of the conflict, Yugoslavia did not give up communist ideology, but due to Soviet economic sanctions and faced with the possibility of a military attack from the East, Tito sought assistance from the West, short of committing to any formal alliance. When Stalin died in 1953, however, Yugoslavia, instead of realigning with the Soviet Union, set out to define its own path of national communism, thus becoming the first socialist country in Europe not formally tied to Moscow.

Regionalisation trends in Russia: Between the Soviet Legacy and the Forces of Globalisation

Regionalisation in Russia is to be understood as part of the overall transformation process. It is argued that while the form of regionalisation during the Yeltsin era after 1991 presented an image of democratic legitimacy, it was still largely based on the same structures and characteristics as the ‘regionalism’ that took shape during the Soviet era. In this context, the real significance of Putins federal reforms is to be seen in the fact that a number of the faults in this essentially Soviet system have been laid bare and challenged. Thus, Putins reforms are not to be dismissed as a purely administrative measure to strengthen central state power and control. Instead, they constitute an attempt to eliminate this form of regionalism in order to build a more favourable basis for Russias integration into global economic contexts and structures. The fact that Russia is moving in this direction is not, however, solely attributable to Putins federal reforms. There is a wide and diverse range of other factors propitious to this course.

Manifestations of Nationalism: The Caucasus from Late Soviet Times to the Early 1990s

WHEN MIKHAIL GORBACHEV INTRODUCED HIS POLICY OF REFORMS, he was not prepared for the rise of nationalism and ethnic conflict that would grip the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s. As a native of the ethnically mixed Stavropol Krai in the North Caucasus, Gorbachev, according to his own account, was well aware of the multinational character of the Soviet Union and the sensitivities of some of its ethnic minority groups (Nahaylo & Swoboda 1990, p. 231). However, in line with Marxist thinking, which anticipated the decline of nationalism, he was brought up believing that the ‘friendship among peoples’ was strong and that in socialism nations would ultimately grow ever closer together until their complete fusion (sliyanie) into a supranational ‘Soviet people’. As a result, when Gorbachev became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, nationalities policy was not on his economic or political agenda. The 27th Congress of the CPSU in March 1986 even contained a declaration that ‘the nationalities question inherited from the past has been successfully solved in the Soviet Union’ (Denber 2018, p. 279). Gorbachev, as he would later confess, initially underestimated the importance of this issue completely (Lapidus 1989, p. 210).1 He was not able to foresee, therefore, that by introducing far-reaching changes to the Soviet polity through political liberalisation and economic reform, he would reopen the ‘national question’ and ultimately unleash powerful forces that would become increasingly difficult for the central state to control. Gorbachev experienced a first taste of the seriousness of the ‘national question’ in December 1986, when the long-standing first party secretary of the Kazakh Soviet Republic, Dinmukhamed Kunaev, was replaced with an ethnic Russian, Gennadii Kolbin. This imprudent move on the part of the Soviet leadership was a break with the traditional practice of reserving the post of party first secretary in a non-Russian ethnically defined republic for a member of its ‘titular nationality’. Large demonstrations subsequently gripped the Kazakh capital of Almaty (Alma-Ata), which were severely repressed, leaving several people dead. In the years that followed, manifestations of nationalism—including Russian nationalism—became more

The Soviet Union’s Rise as an International Energy Power: A Short History

This chapter provides an overview on the state of research on the topic of energy and politics during the Cold War, and the role of Soviet oil and gas. It offers an analysis of the Soviet Union’s energy sector as it developed from early Soviet times until the breakup of the USSR, and looks into the changes and shifts of the Soviet Union’s foreign energy policy, taking into account specifically relations with the countries of Western Europe, the socialist states of Eastern Europe, and the US. The chapter argues that Soviet decision-making in the sphere of energy politics was influenced and conditioned by a complex interplay of domestic, regional, and global factors: The Soviet Union needed to produce energy in ever-larger quantities to fuel industrialization and modernization, but also to sustain its ambitions as a great power. The various Soviet oil and gas campaigns from Stalin to Brezhnev were designed to support the needs of the country’s military and its energy-intensive economy. During the Cold War, energy also served as an important tool in Moscow’s project to integrate the socialist states of Eastern Europe into a single “energy space” through the construction of an extensive pipeline system. With regard to the capitalist states of the West, the primary function of Soviet energy exports was to gain access to Western technology and hard currency.