Toward Nonalignment: The Improbable and Fateful Intersection of Yugoslavia and China in the Early Cold War, 1948–1951

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article focuses on placing Yugoslav history in the context of how that country’s leaders understood the place of Mao Zedong’s China. Such an examination can help us navigate one of the least expected developments of the Cold War, namely Tito’s emergence as a world figure in the mid to late 1950s. Our goal is to show that there is a logic and coherence to how Yugoslavia responded to, competed with, and engaged China. Grasping this logic in its origins not only sheds lights on complicated international dynamics during the early Cold War era, but also opens venues for the renewed study of the historical currents that pull the Balkans and China.