Cold War: Balkan Front. The USSR and Yugoslav–Albanian relations 1945–1968

Abstract

During the period between 1945 and 1968, Yugoslav–Albanian relations went through several phases, which were characterized by different views on mutual cooperation, conflicting opinions and perceptions, and differing viewpoints on their obligations in international relations. Thanks to the relations established between Yugoslav and Albanian communist forces during World War Two, the relations between Yugoslavia and Albania had specific characteristics after the end of the war. The early post-war years were characterized by closeness of relations between the two states and Yugoslav assistance to Albania in the political, military, economic, and cultural-educational spheres. Direct contact between Soviet and Albanian leadership in the summer of 1947 led to the strengthening of Soviet influence in Albania along with a corresponding reduction in Yugoslav presence. The issue of relations between Yugoslavia and Albania was one of the causes of the confrontation between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in the summer of 1948. The years of confrontation between Yugoslavia and the Soviet sphere were marked with daily tensions on state borders, political confrontations, the open Yugoslav approach to the Western world, the breaking of diplomatic relations, and the Albanian minority in Yugoslavia becoming a problem. The normalization of Yugoslav–Soviet relations after 1955 did not fully reflect the level of their relations. Yugoslav distance from the bloc, its orientation towards third world countries, and the political dogmatism of Albanian leadership produced further alien-ation and the opening of new ideological, political, and interethnic confrontations with the emergence of the Albanian question. Closer relations between China and Albania opened a new phase in relations which was characterized by another confrontation between the states and the parties, and there was a short-lived attempt to overcome the conflict in the context of the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968.