Enlarging Yugoslavia: Tito's Quest for Expansion, 1945–1948

Abstract

When Yugoslav strongman Josip Broz Tito secured power at the end of the Second World War, he had envisioned for himself a new Yugoslavia that would serve as the center of power for the Balkan Peninsula. First, he worked to ensure a Yugoslav presence in the Trieste region of Italy and southern Austria as a way to gain territory inhabited by Slovenes and Croats; meanwhile, his other foreign policy escapades sought to make Yugoslavia into a major European power. To that end, Yugoslav agents quickly worked to synchronize the Albanian socio-economic and political systems through their support of Albanian Partisans and only grew emboldened over time. As allies who proved themselves in the fight against fascism, Yugoslav policymakers felt able to act with impunity throughout the early post-Cold War period. The goal of this article is to highlight this early foreign policy by focusing on three case studies – Trieste, Carinthia, and Albania – as part of an effort to reinforce the established argument over Tito's quest for power in the early Cold War period.