DRAFT COPY: NOT FOR QUOTATION OR CITATION WITHOUT THE
AUTHOR’S PERMISSION
Building Tito-Land:
America’s Cold War Fantasy
By Louie Milojevic
Reducing adversaries and complex international challenges to simplified
proportions has been a hallmark of U.S. foreign policy; so observed the insightful Gabriel
Almond in his classic study, The American People and Foreign Policy.1 Nowhere was
this American tendency more apparent and misguiding than in the period Almond was
writing, the early Cold War. President Harry Truman and Winston Churchill had by this
time notified the American public that an “iron curtain” had divided the continent of
Europe into two ways of life: one “based upon the will of the majority,” and another
“based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority.”2 Truman and
Churchill, however, had not been informed that the world they spoke of was in fact
divided into three parts – East, West, and Yugoslavia.3
Communist Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Communist Information Bureau on
June 28th 1948 signified the emergence of an early Cold War middle ground that defied
conventional understanding and management.4 Never before, reported the State
Department, had the international community encountered a communist state that rested
on the basis of Soviet ideology and organizational principles, and yet remained
1
Gabriel Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,
1950), 56-57. While this tendency is more characteristic of the uninformed general run of the population, it
affects policymakers as well. Thus, during World War II, the Roosevelt shift from “Dr. New Deal” to “Dr.
Win the War” reflected the need at the highest level to reduce issues to simplified proportions.
2
Special Message to Congress on Greece and Turkey: The Truman Doctrine, 12 March 1947.
3
Alexander Werth, “Yugoslavia: Neither East Nor West,” The Nation, 27 November, 1948.
4
For a recent explanation of the causes of the Soviet-Yugoslav split see Jeronim Perovic, “The Tito-Stalin
Split: A Reassessment in Light of New Evidence,” Journal of Cold War Studies 9 (Spring 2007): 32-62.
Perovic contests the established school of thought that Moscow’s concerns about Yugoslavia were
primarily ideological. He argues that recently declassified documents indicate Stalin was mainly concerned
about Tito’s “unsanctioned” pursuit of an expansionist foreign policy agenda toward such neighbors as
Albania
2
independent of Moscow.5 Time magazine’s editorial was apt as well, reporting that the
diplomatic rupture between Moscow and Belgrade was the “weirdest political show on
earth, a Cold War between two communist police states,” but also a “tremendous
opportunity” and “serious problem” for U.S. policymakers.6 How Cold War America
reacted to, understood, and ultimately formulated a policy response to this development is
the focus of this study. The following analysis departs from the orthodox interpretation
of early Cold War U.S.-Yugoslav relations; it views the initiation and extension of aid to
Tito’s Yugoslavia not merely as an exercise of strategic convenience, but also as a public
and cultural encounter which confused, fascinated, and divided mainstream America.
Specifically, this study contends that U.S. policymakers, journalists, and citizens
struggled to uniformly come to terms with the third option that Cold War Yugoslavia
claimed to represent. In shaping and sustaining an aid program, this study contends as
well that advocates and opponents of U.S. assistance publicly reinvented Tito’s
Yugoslavia in terms that were familiar to Americans.
Eager to make sense of the ‘Yugoslav option” they were about to invest in, Cold
War Americans focused their attention on Yugoslavia’s enigmatic communist dictator,
Josip Broz Tito; he was at once a repulsive and appealing figure, a potential ally against
the Soviet Union, and an adversary of democracy. Washington’s growing anticommunist track-record, however, suggested this was insufficient progress to warrant the
pursuit of deeper U.S.-Yugoslav relations. As Lorraine Lees notes, White House officials
became household names by predicting the eventual triumph of America’s belief system
PPS/35, “The Attitude of this Government Toward Events in Yugoslavia,” 30 June 1948, FRUS, 1948,
vol.4, 1093.
6
Editorial, “The Great Schism,” Time, 18 April, 1949.
5
3
over that of the Soviet communist adversary.7 Ties with Tito’s regime, a regime that in
every measure resembled Josef Stalin’s, could amount to sanctioning the international
proliferation of miniature independent Moscow-type regimes; although damaging to the
structure of the Soviet satellite system, this would be difficult to ask of American tax
payers, and even more difficult to sustain as an actual policy.
At the same time, American observers could not help but be captivated and
impressed by Yugoslavia’s exceptional circumstances. The unfolding story of
Yugoslavia’s independence and survival outside of the Soviet-bloc in a short time
developed several quintessential American qualities. Yugoslavia was not simply expelled
from the Soviet-bloc to implode from within and return a Moscow satellite; the
Yugoslavs were also ganged-up on, isolated, and being intimidated into submission, by
the full weight of Soviet economic sanctions and aggressive border posturing. It was not
uncommon for American newsmen to report that:
The difficulties facing Tito are as daunting as can be, so daunting that only the
toughest of peoples, cocksure to the point of arrogance, could face with any
confidence. But the Yugoslavs are the toughest peoples, cocksure beyond the
point of arrogance. They have a faith in their essential superiority which has no
evident justification but which is perhaps redeemed by their unsurpassed courage.
It was this faith which got them into their present extraordinary position, a
position theoretically untenable, which they yet continue to sustain.8
This outnumbered-surrounded and against all odds perspective was the theme of choice
for many newspapers, as they sought to convey the Yugoslav plight in terms that were
familiar to Cold War Americans. Yet this tendency also demonstrated the print media’s
capacity to engage in the public re-invention of a regime whose brutality was identical to
that of the Soviet Union. Coming to terms with Tito’s Yugoslavia would therefore prove
7
Lorraine M. Lees, Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War (University
Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), xv.
8
Edward Crankshaw, “Tito’s Dilemma: His Link With the West,” New York Times, 15 January, 1950.
4
to be as critical an inward-looking moment for U.S. foreign policy as any in the struggle
against Soviet communism.
The liberation of Soviet controlled Eastern Europe was one phase of this struggle
where American policymakers were hopeful but realistic, setting low short-term
expectations. Military considerations and the risk of a wider war were the primary
impediments to an effective rollback of communism; but Washington insiders also knew
that not all of the “ancient states” behind the “iron curtain” had a desire to join the
western democracies.9 Yugoslavia, for instance, was widely recognized as an indigenous
communist regime, subservient to nobody, but nevertheless loyal to Moscow.10 In the
early Cold War, the regime in Belgrade distinguished itself as the most assertive in
Eastern Europe; it enforced its airspace with lethal force, interfered in Albanian politics,
supplied communist insurgents in Greece, and directly threatened Western defenses in
Italy.11 However, that Tito was by Soviet standards overplaying his role in international
affairs never crossed the minds of officials in Washington.12 Nor did they ever expect
Tito’s communist regime to produce the crack in the Soviet-Bloc they so eagerly sought.
Moscow’s decision to sever ties with Belgrade the same week it barricaded Berlin
compelled Washington insiders to contemplate Yugoslavia’s new independence in
strictly short-range geo-strategic terms. Yugoslavia’s geographic significance, military
strength, and wartime reputation for combat effectiveness were emphasized frequently in
In Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech Yugoslavia is included in the list of “ancient states” that were
forced behind the iron curtain. Yet, it was the Prime Minister’s wartime recommendation to shift allied
support from the Monarchists to Tito’s Partisans that most contributed to the success of Yugoslavia’s
communists.
10
Policymakers and scholars alike remembered that the Yugoslavian Communist Party was not like those
which the Soviet Union put in power in neighboring Hungary or Bulgaria. The communists in Belgrade
came to power through a wartime resistance movement and revolution which had roots in Yugoslav soil.
11
Yugoslavia contested Italy’s rights to the city of Trieste until 1954.
12
Perovic, 34.
9
5
official communications. Policymakers concurred that a genuine break between Moscow
and Belgrade would have little downside in the event of a future European conflict. At
the very least, an independent Yugoslavia would relieve pressure off of the Greek and
Italian borders by removing its army of thirty-three divisions, the largest in Eastern
Europe, from the Soviet arsenal and remaining neutral. In ideal circumstances, those
same thirty-three divisions would engage Soviet forces before they gained enough
momentum to overwhelm Western defenses in Greece and Italy.13
As compelling as these geo-strategic grounds for aiding an independent
communist state in the underbelly of Europe were, they were only as compelling as the
deep ideological line that public officials had drawn between communism and
democracy. It was hardly debatable on which side of this line Yugoslavia belonged.
Even after the break with Moscow, Tito regularly reminded international observers of
Belgrade’s continued commitment to communism.14 Given the contradictions involved
in a democratic state assisting a communist one in order to achieve an eventual end to
communism, the decision to aid Tito would therefore not be made without considerable
public scrutiny. Nor would such a policy be sustained in a singular or unifying national
voice.
By 1948, Americans in and out of government had become fixated with the
ideological stakes in the emerging global Cold War. They accepted and expected that the
choice facing them and every nation was between two opposing and irreconcilable ways
of life. Communism was widely perceived as being distasteful and threatening; so much
John C. Campbell, Tito’s Separate Road: America and Yugoslavia in World Politics (New York: Harper
& Row, 1967), 19. See also Beatrice Heuser, Western Containment Policies in the Cold War: The
Yugoslav Case, 1948-1953 (New York: Routledge, 1989), 112-125. Yugoslavia had 325,000 men under
arms.
14
Andre Laguerre, “A Search for Laughter,” Time, 30 January, 1950.
13
6
so, that anti-communism helped Americans make sense of a complex and unfamiliar
world – and of the rapid changes underway in their own country as well.15 The
appearance of Yugoslavia as an independent but still communist state on the international
stage, however, raised the possibility that not all communists were as menacing as the
Soviets. Additionally, it suggested that America could perhaps co-exist with, support,
and promote strategically an independent brand of national communism.
Cold War scholars have for quite some time recognized this Yugoslav communist
exception as a critical component of America’s containment strategy. In The Long
Peace, John Lewis Gaddis finds that the survival of Tito’s Yugoslavia offered U.S.
strategists more than immediate geo-strategic benefits in a volatile Europe. Gaddis
considers Yugoslavia the centerpiece of a Truman and Eisenhower administration
“wedge” strategy, which had as its main objective the long-term disintegration of the
Soviet-Bloc.16 Based on the belief that Western economic aid could influence relations
within and among communist states, the strategy sought to “keep Tito strong” and
fiscally “afloat” long enough to legitimize a Yugoslav national communist alternative in
Eastern Europe and also Asia.17
Despite these calculations, Cold War scholars have neglected to consider the full
array of complexities involved in developing a long-term U.S.-Yugoslav relationship.
The studies that have focused on this area have been few and far between, and generally
Fredrik Logevall, “A Critique of Containment,” Stuart L. Bernath Memorial Lecture, 27 March 2004.
John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987), 152-194.
17
Dean Acheson to Cavendish Cannon, 25 February, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 5: 873-875. See also Marc
Selverstone, Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism,
1945-1950 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 116-145; David Allan Mayers, Cracking the
Monolith: U.S. Policy against the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1949-1955 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1986).
15
16
7
consistent in method and conclusion.18 Preferring a top-down and behind the scenes
approach, U.S.-Yugoslav specialists have with the aid of steady declassification
developed a comprehensive decision-maker’s record of the implementation of the wedge
strategy. In the most recent contribution to this record, Lorraine M. Lees details the
development of a decade-long U.S.-Yugoslav aid relationship that is staggering in scope
and scale. The $1.5 billion in mostly unconditional economic and military aid Tito
received between 1948 and 1958 was indicative of the gravity of Yugoslavia’s isolation
and the seriousness with which U.S. officials pursued the wedge strategy. 19 However,
absent from this approach has been the critical recognition that Cold War America was
not only deciding whether or not to do business with Tito’s Yugoslavia, it was also
engaging on a personal level this unique communist state which at once rejected Soviet
domination and Western democracy.
Aiding Tito was never a clear-cut executive decision. Nor was it a series of
informal measures. Rather, it was a public phenomenon, which was imagined, contested,
shaped, and re-shaped in the American Congress, print media, and town halls where
opinionated Cold War Americans were certain to express their views. The policy of
supporting a communist state in the service of an anti-communist foreign policy
undermined too many articles of faith in the Cold War to remain solely a White House
project. As Gabriel Almond has argued, “when foreign policy questions assume the
aspect of an immediate threat to the normal conduct of affairs, they break into the focus
18
See Lorraine M. Lees, Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War (University
Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997); David L. Larson, United States Foreign
Policy Toward Yugoslavia, 1943-1963 (Washington D.C.: University Press of America, 1979); John C.
Campbell, Tito’s Separate Road: America and Yugoslavia in World Politics (New York: Harper & Row,
1967).
19
Lees, 227. This aid figure is found in NSC 5805 – the Eisenhower administration’s last full review of its
Yugoslav policy.
8
of attention and share the public consciousness with private concerns.”20 Indeed,
economic and military aid to Tito was officially billed a national security measure.
However, it was the potential threat to America’s Cold War conscience this aid program
presented that provoked what Almond has called the “public mood” and placed Tito’s
Yugoslavia at the center of a probing and intense national debate.21 Amid the political
confusion and bewildering variety of moods that characterized the initial debate to aid
Tito, and the debates to continue aiding him beyond Stalin’s death to 1958, resides the
intriguing but never fully certain American vision of Tito’s Yugoslavia.
Allies and Enemies: The Two Faces of Yugoslavia, 1943-1948
The early Cold War policy of aiding Tito was not entirely unfamiliar ground for
the United States. President Roosevelt’s wartime administration struggled with a Tito
policy as well. In 1943, British officials persuaded the administration to expand U.S.
assistance among the rival resistance groups in Nazi occupied Yugoslavia. Specifically,
this meant extending U.S. support to Tito’s Communist-Partisans and elevating them to
the status of allies.22 These measures, however, revealed as much about America’s
ideological discomfort with Tito as they did the nation’s wartime aims.
Roosevelt’s agreement to assist Tito’s Partisans was significant because it divided
resources that would otherwise have gone to the United States’ original Yugoslav ally,
General Draza Mihajlovic’s Royalist Chetniks. Redistributing aid to Tito signified an
20
Almond, 70-71.
According to Almond, the reaction of the general population to foreign policy issues is one of “mood.”
A mood, he argues, is essentially an unstable phenomenon. But this instability is not arbitrary and
unpredictable. It is affected by two variables: (1) changes in the domestic and foreign political-economic
situation involving the presence or absence of threat in varying degrees, and (2) the characterological
predispositions of the population.
22
Lees, 2. See also Walter R. Roberts, Tito, Mihajlovic, and the Allies, 1941-1945 (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1973). British officials had received unconfirmed reports that the Royalists were
collaborating with the Nazis. By aiding Tito they hoped to gain influence with whatever government
emerged in postwar Yugoslavia.
21
9
American commitment to hastening the defeating of the Nazis, but it did not represent a
natural or formal alliance. That honor was extended to the Royal Yugoslav GovernmentIn-Exile in 1942, and maintained by Roosevelt even as he allowed Tito’s Partisans into
the allied fold.23 Roosevelt was not pursuing any firm Balkan policy that was in place in
Washington; rather, his relationship with the Royal Government was based on mutual
respect, common principles, and a shared wartime experience.
The Royal Government followed America’s lead and distinguished itself as an
early signatory to the Atlantic Charter and Declaration of the United Nations. However, it
was the performance of its resistance movement on the ground in Yugoslavia that won it
the admiration of the American people, in a way Tito’s wartime resistance movement
never did. According to a May 1942 Time magazine cover story, the Roosevelt
administration had invested wisely in its aid to the Royalist Chetniks. The article reported
that General Mihajlovic’s Chetniks had launched the “greatest guerilla operation in
history,” causing such destruction that the Nazis had to declare a new state of war in their
conquered territory. Comparing the General to an eagle watching “from the mountain
walls and falling like a thunderbolt” on Nazi occupiers, the article credited him with the
uniquely American feat of “preserving an island of freedom” and inspiring “the unknown
thousands of supposedly conquered Europeans who still resist oppression.”24
This positive media coverage coincided with an official visit to Washington by
King Peter and several members of his Government-In-Exile. The King was invited to
speak before a joint session of Congress, but the high point of the visit came in a White
House statement that demonstrated the fellowship between the two governments:
23
24
Roberts, 152, 167, 170, 172.
Editorial, “The Eagle of Yugoslavia,” Time, 23 May, 1942.
10
We are in complete accord on the fundamental principle that all the resources of
the two nations should be devoted to the vigorous persecution of the war. Just as
the fine achievements of General Mihajlovic and his daring men furnish an
example of spontaneous and unselfish will to victory, our common effort shall
seek every means to defeat the enemies of all free nations.25
That same summer, Twentieth Century Fox began producing what would become
Chetniks – The Fighting Guerillas, a major Hollywood motion picture portraying the
General and his resistance movement as committed allies of the United States.26 By the
time the movie was released in early 1943, however, the British Secret Service had
managed to persuade the Roosevelt administration, on the basis of what Michael Lees has
discovered to be faulty information that Mihajlovic was collaborating with Nazi forces.27
Although these allegations led to the critical redistribution of aid to Tito’s
Partisans, Roosevelt continued to recognize King Peter as Yugoslavia’s ruler, and
wartime Americans continued to publicly support the embattled General Mihajlovic.
Support for the General would in fact outlive the monarchist Yugoslavia he built his
reputation defending. As Lorraine Lees notes, upon learning that Mihajlovic had been
captured and was to be tried for treason by the governing Partisans in March 1946,
prominent Americans such as George Creel, Ray Brock, Sumner Wells, John Dewey,
Norman Thomas, Clare Booth Luce, and Senators Robert Lafollette and Robert Taft
formed a “Committee for a Fair and Free Trial for Draza Mihajlovic.”28
25
U.S. Department of State, Bulletin, Vol. 7, No. 158 (July 25, 1942), 647.
The movie was reviewed by the New York Times on March 19 1943. Reviewer Thomas M. Pryor
observed the movie was “splendidly acted” and that it had “the right spirit.”
27
See Michael Lees, The Rape of Serbia: The British Role in Tito’s Grab for Power, 1943-1944 (San
Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990) In what is a revisionist account of the civil war in Yugoslavia at
the end of World War II, Lees discovers that Tito deceived the British Secret Service into believing
Mihajlovic was collaborating with the Nazis. His research casts serious doubt on such works as Walter
Roberts’s Tito, Mihajlovic, and the Allies.
28
Lorraine Lees, 11.
26
11
Combating the same Nazi occupiers as Mihajlovic, Tito’s Communist Partisans
failed to win the same level of public support among wartime Americans. This, however,
was not due simply to ideological considerations. Wartime Americans were just as
concerned by the Partisan leader’s mysterious identity. Throughout the war, and well
into the immediate postwar, rarely did one hear a consistent description of the Partisan
leader. In many accounts, Tito suddenly “emerged from the Yugoslav fog” to lead the
resistance against the Nazis. Others speculated that he was a Russian General playing the
part after the original Tito had been liquidated in a Russian purge. Additionally, there was
the possibility that he was a Ukrainian Jew, and even a U.S. citizen of Croat extraction
who had once been a district organizer of the U.S. Communist Party. The name “Tito”
was also said to have derived from the initials of Tajna Internacionalna Terroristicka
Organizacija (Secret International Terrorist Organization), suggesting a wider communist
conspiracy behind the Yugoslav’s rise to power29
These uncertainties were more than enough for Washington and mainstream
Americans to overlook the efforts and legitimacy of Tito’s resistance movement. Still, it
was not until after the war that Tito’s newly communist Yugoslavia came to be perceived
as an actual enemy of the United States. Scholars have generally considered the
immediate postwar as a period in which Yugoslavia distinguished itself as a “staunch
ally” of the Soviet Union and by association an enemy of the United States. What is
interesting, however, is that there was more behind Tito’s villainous postwar reputation in
the United States than his ideological disposition and loyalty to Moscow.
29
Editorial, “Proletarian Proconsul,” Time, 16 September, 1946.
12
To be sure, U.S. observers were concerned that in postwar Yugoslavia “all roads
(were leading) to Moscow”30 Tito had reneged on his wartime agreement to hold free
elections and installed only communists in office. He committed to scrupulously
following Stalin’s model of socialism and replicated Moscow’s economic planning
organs, judicial system, state bureaucracy, health care, and cultural and educational
spheres.31 On their own, however, these measures merely reflected the conduct of an
ordinary Soviet satellite state, without agency or individuality. What elevated Tito above
the standard satellite mold of enemy by association and made his regime a direct enemy
of the United States was in many ways the same thing that led to his dispute with the
Kremlin; that is, Tito refused to accept a subservient role for Yugoslavia and sought
aggressively to demonstrate his freedom of action in what supposed to be a bipolar world.
Americans witnessed firsthand this blatant disregard for order, authority, and all
things American when in 1946 Tito ordered the downing of two unarmed American
transport planes passing through Yugoslav airspace. Unprovoked, the incident and
subsequent lack of cooperation by Yugoslav authorities alarmed American as well as
Soviet observers.32 It was American citizens, however, who demanded swift justice, even
if it meant military action.33 Tito’s public agreement to pay a $150,000 indemnity to the
families of the killed airmen officially introduced the Yugoslav leader to mainstream
America as a Soviet, and now, American problem.
30
As cited by Lorraine Lees, 17. Patterson to Pierre Cartier, 4 October 1946, Patterson Papers, File:
Belgrade Correspondence C. This was how U.S. Ambassador Richard Patterson described the postwar
situation in Belgrade to his friend and famous New York jeweler Pierre Cartier.
31
Perovic, 37.
32
Joseph and Stewart Alsop, “Kremlin is Even Leery of Tito,” Washington Post, 20 October, 1946.
33
Anthony Leviero, “Peace Threat Seen: Further Yugoslav Acts Will Not Be Tolerated, Washington
Asserts,” New York Times, 22 August, 1946. Washington gave Belgrade 48 hours to release the survivors.
The ultimatum was backed by a U.S. military march along the Morgan Line, which divided the contested
Trieste area among British, American, and Yugoslav occupation forces.
13
Engaging and Embracing the Enemy 1948-1958
When the time came to decide on how to respond to Yugoslavia’s growing
isolation and deteriorating humanitarian conditions at the hands of Soviet sanctions, U.S.
officials cleverly allowed the Yugoslavs to raise the issue of extending aid, so as not to
play the role of western opportunists. The nature of the initial Yugoslav aid request was
two-fold: immediate food shipments due to a devastating drought, and weapons to stare
down the increasingly aggressive Eastern Bloc nations with which they shared a border.
From the outset, U.S. officials made little effort to conceal the fact that
Washington, at the height of McCarthyism, would meet Yugoslavia’s needs. However, it
was the tone of this aid commitment, a tone that the Eisenhower administration would
adopt as well, which would mark the beginning of a new U.S. perspective on Yugoslavia.
This tone was of a guarded and yet politically marketable long-term optimism. In
rejecting Soviet domination, Tito’s Yugoslavia, although still communist, had taken an
extraordinary first step and was on the road to “more freedom.”34 Bringing “more
freedom” to Yugoslavia often amounted to Washington preaching patience, conceding
that, for the time being, Tito was our son of a bitch. Yet the official government line also
suggested that Yugoslavia was demonstrating the ability to evolve, adapt, and reason.
These progressive capacities became points of emphasis which Washington insiders
conveniently allowed to run free in main stream America. In some quarters, it would fall
on deaf anti-communist ears. In other quarters, it would instill a –real or imagined – hope
that U.S. aid could in the long-run make Tito’s regime more democratic - a Tito-Land.
34
35
Maurice J. Goldbloom, “Has Tito’s Regime Gone Democratic?” Commentary, 16 October 1954.
The term “Tito-Land” was first used in a 1952 Time Magazine article.
35
14
Nowhere was this hope for a long-term Yugoslav transformation more noticeable
than in the American print media. Prior to the extension of American aid, journalists and
foreign correspondents rarely had anything interesting or positive to report on postwar
Yugoslavia. One Saturday Evening Post writer, Ernest O. Hauser, referred to Tito as
“Stalin’s model stooge” and a “Yugoslav Hitler” in a 1948 article.36 However, that same
writer, in 1955 described Tito as a “civilized and distinguished world leader” with a
“twinkle in his eyes that Americans could trust.” Much like the people he led, reported
Hauser, “the evidence of Tito’s determination to move mountains figuratively and
actually is almost everywhere.”37 This journalistic reversal was widespread and most
apparent during Nikita Khrushchev’s much publicized visit to Belgrade in 1955. As the
first Soviet official to step on Yugoslav soil since the Tito-Stalin split, foreign
correspondents made sure to highlight the differences between the two leaders and the
civilizing influence of U.S. aid. While Tito had become an international “success story,”
Khrushchev and his Russian delegation were more often than not portrayed as “clumsy,
pitiful, and bloodthirsty dwarfs.” 38
There was hardly a mainstream publication in America that shied away from these
types of characterizations. The media in fact went beyond the government’s guarded
emphasis on Yugoslav progressivism, misleadingly claiming that Tito had “defected” –
when he was actually evicted – from the Soviet bloc.39 By 1955 many reporters were
concluding that American aid had already created a functioning Tito-Land democracy,
Ernest O. Hauser, “Stalin’s Model Stooge,” Saturday Evening Post, 1 February 1947.
Ernest O. Hauser, “Tito: Cold War Middle Man,” Saturday Evening Post, 30 September 1955. For other
journalistic transformations see, Fred Warner Neal, “Our Communist Ally,” Saturday Evening Post, 3
March 1951, and Demaree Bess, “Should We Do Business With Tito?” Saturday Evening Post, 10
September 1949.
36
37
38
39
The New York Times, Washington Post, Saturday Evening Post, U.S. News and World Report, and Time,
at one time or another emphasized this point.
15
and that Yugoslavia was not merely, as Ambassador George V. Allen said “a work in
progress.”40 Foreign correspondents, moreover, added a degree of legitimacy to TitoLand’s march toward democracy with an increasing number of optimistic and flattering
eyewitness reports of progress from the streets of Belgrade.41 Among everyday
Americans, though, there was little common ground. In government sponsored town hall
meetings and letters to the editor, opinionated citizens debated the merits and drawbacks
of unconditional aid to Yugoslavia. More often than not, however, Cold War Americans
focused on the moral and religious implications of supporting a communist regime. The
military advantages the aid program presented were not overlooked, but they did
consistently place second on average taxpayer’s list of priorities; taxpayers, in other
words, required much convincing before accepting and trusting wholeheartedly a
communist ally.
Interestingly, it was only after the decade of unconditional aid that the idea of a
progressive and viable Tito-Land began taking root among the public at large. Historian
John Lampe has described this development as the gradual creation of a “Yugonostalgia” – a sense that Yugoslavia had become a unique destination where the best
Western ideas could co-exist and flourish alongside the best of what the East had to offer.
This outlook first gained momentum during the era of American aid when the political
establishment, mainstream media, and opinionated citizens weighed in on the future of
Yugoslavia, and in effect, helped shape that country’s fascinating Cold War identity.
40
41
U.S. Department of State, Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 380 (March 10, 1952), 381
Sherwin D. Smith, “Belgrade Through American Eyes,” Newsweek, 26 June 1950.