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least – in the spirit of brotherhood and unity. This was a delicate balancing act. Unlike France or Germany, Yugoslavia was not a nation–state. It was a state of six nations. The existence of, for example, the Serbian Communist Party, in the Serbian republic, allowed nationalist–minded comrades to assert some control over the destiny of their homeland. But at the same time, the fact that nation–based political structures existed at all gave nationalists a framework in which to operate.
    Alone among eastern European Communist leaders Tito had broken with Stalin and survived. After the war Stalin had determined to Sovietise the country and install a pro–Moscow regime. Alex Bebler, later Yugoslav ambassador at the United Nations, recalled: ‘Russian [army] officers started behaving as if they were the masters and wanted to command our unit. Our officers did not like it and began to protest. Our officers were all partisans who fought in the war, and naturally objected to being deprived of their commands.’ 9
    Stalin soon discovered that when he pushed in Belgrade, unlike in Warsaw or Budapest, the local Communists pushed back. Angry at resistance to his plans, he expelled Yugoslavia from the Cominform (the international Communist organisation) in March 1948. At first, many Yugoslav Communists simply could not comprehend what had happened. There was fear, confusion, even suicides. Others proved more ideologically nimble. Draza Markovic observed: ‘We had looked to Moscow absolutely. Without any question, Moscow was the centre. But the Russians told so many lies about us, that we were revisionists, traitors, agents of the West and liars, so eventually it was not so hard to take that step.’ Fearful of Soviet armed intervention – for which preparations were indeed made – Tito launched a terror campaign. An Orwellian shift in propaganda announced the new party line, that yesterday’s black was now today’s white, and Moscow was no longer the benevolent uncle but a deadly enemy. Those Yugoslavs who were already suspect, or who switched allegiance from Moscow to Belgradetoo slowly, were sent to a concentration camp on Goli Otok, an island in the Adriatic.
    Aca Singer, later head of Yugoslavia’s Jewish community, and a prominent Belgrade banker in the 1970s and 1980s, was a prisoner at Goli Otok, sent there in 1951. Singer was no Stalinist, but his criticism of the government and his Jewish origins made him suspect. On Goli Otok the camp bosses demanded ever more fervent pledges of allegiance to Tito. This was a macabre new twist for Singer, a survivor of several Nazi camps including Auschwitz. ‘On Goli Otok you had to prove that you were pro–Tito, not pro–Soviet. The Germans did not ask me in Auschwitz to say Heil Hitler, but there I had to praise Tito, and shout “Long live Tito”.’ 10
    In the West, Tito’s break with Stalin was greeted with euphoria. A Communist country that had leapt free of Moscow was a dream come true for Cold War policymakers. Material, military, and most of all, lavish economic aid poured into the renegade Marxist state. Washington supported the start of the series of loans from the IMF and World Bank that would prop up the Yugoslav economy for the next three decades. Yugoslavia’s geographical position in the heart of Europe, between Vienna and Istanbul, and its long Adriatic coastline gave it vital strategic importance for the United States and western Europe. Western tax–payers’ dollars for many years paid Yugoslav wages, viewed by European and American policymakers as a price well worth paying.
    The break with Stalin signalled not only a massive influx of western aid, but also the start of a liberalisation unmatched in the rest of the Communist world. As Tito positioned himself as a buffer between the capitalist and Communist blocs, and billions of dollars poured in, the repression eased. Pozarevac