Titoism and the Cominform

by Adam B. Ulam

Book by Ulam, Adam B.

243 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Adam Bruno Ulam was a Polish-American historian and political scientist at Harvard University. Ulam was one of the world's foremost authorities on Russia and the Soviet Union, and the author of twenty books and many articles.

Reviews

[Rob M · Rating 4 out of 5]

I imagine this is probably quite a rare book these days - this 1951 publication offers a very insightful contemporary account of not only the Soviet-Yugoslav split, but the general conditions of Eastern European communism during and immediately after WWII.

The book itself is the product of an outsider looking in, being an American research effort undertaken at the start of the Cold War, and has obvious limitations in this respect. However, the author has plainly done his homework to the best of his ability, contrasting a thorough reading of the communist press with what first hand accounts of the war and its aftermath he had at his disposal at the time.

[Andrew Baldwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 1952, when the great Adam Ulam was only 29 years old, “Titoism and the Cominform” was Ulam’s second book, but the first that related to Eastern European history, the field in which he would so distinguish himself. By itself this makes the book of considerable interest. It was also, sadly, the only book that Ulam wrote that dealt with Yugoslavia, but, as is obvious from the reference list, this brilliant man had at least a good reading knowledge of Serbo-Croatian, and so was able to do justice to his important subject: the break between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.
I would like to expand on this review, but for now I will just append a list of quotations from the book, many of which are commented on. This list itself will probably expand over time.
“The somewhat Pythian tone of the declaration was resented by the ‘right’ faction of Sima Markovich.” (13) [Pythian: (adj.) relating to or characteristic of Pythia, the priestess of Apollo at Delphi in ancient Greece. Pythia’s prophecies were often ambiguous. The most notorious case was when King Croesus of Lydia asked if he should attack Persia. The Pythia said if he did, he would destroy a "great empire." Believing it to be Persia, he attacked, but it was his own empire that fell.]
“The device of the People’s Front or of a nominal coalition of political parties veiling but thinly the reality of Communist dictatorship has been used in all the satellite countries, and the Yugoslavs, even before their break with Moscow, improved upon by [should be just “improved upon”] the formula by gradually liquidating the remaining political parties save one.” (127)
“Several forms of the kolkhoz were sketched, all of them permissible, ranging from a simple producer’s co-operative for rationalizing soil cultivation and for common use of machinery, bull fully preserving the principle of private property and individual reward (analogous to the Russian toz), to a more advanced co-operative where the peasants still would own individually their cattle as well as a modicum of land. The latter, called by Minc the most advanced type of cooperative, was still not as socialistic as the artel, the prevailing type of the Russian kolkhoz.”
“In January 1948 the project of the Balkan Communist Union was shelved. Dimitrov recanted his previous public espousal of it, and the cession of 200 Macedonia to Yugoslavia, to which the Bulgarian Communists had become reconciled, or had been forced to reconcile themselves, was now abandoned.” [Yugoslavia already controlled the republic of Macedonia, today the state of North Macedonia. Bulgarian Macedonia, also known as Pirin Macedonia, lies to the east of North Macedonia. It is considerably smaller, with an area of 6,798 km2, as opposed to 25,713 km2 for North Macedonia.]
“[Following the Soviet-Yugoslav split] The Bulgarian Communist Party now recovered its position as the favourite of Soviet Russia among the Communists in the Balkans, and it was Bulgaria that was now envisioned as the possessor of Greater Macedonia once Tito’s clique had been eliminated in Yugoslavia and once the Greek Communists were free to rule over and partition their own country.” (206) [The area of Greek Macedonia is 34,177 km2 but even in 1948, a solid majority of the population were native Greek speakers. There are still people there who speak Macedonian as their first language, but their numbers are much disputed, ranging from 10,000 to 100,000.]
“Gradually, and painfully, the Yugoslav Communists replaced one dream by another. Soviet Communist [surely “Communism” was intended?] was crumbling under the weight of tis own devices.” (220)
“By August the struggle [between North and South Korea] had become, for the Yugoslavs, one between two rival imperialisms both equally unconcerned with the interests of the Korean people. And when in November 1950 the Chinese Communists joined in the fight, another illusion o f the Yugoslav Communists was well-nigh destroyed. For two years they had been glorifying the Chinese leaders. . . Now, for the time being, the hope disappeared, and the fact of the collaboration between Peiping and Moscow once again forced the Yugoslav Communists to imbibe political realism.” (221) The word “Peking” means “Northern Capital” in Chinese. The Chinese Nationalist government changame fed the name to “Peiping” meaning “Northern Peace” from 1929 forward, when it moved the capital to Nanking. In 1949, when the Chinese Communists took power, the capital reverted to Peking, and the name reverted to Peking as well. Here, Ulam chooses to stay with the old Chinese Nationalist name for the city. He was not alone. The US government continued to use the Peiping designation until the beginning of the 1960’s. The government of Taiwan uses the Peiping designation to this day.]
“A written Macedonian language has been constructed and is in use in the Federal Republic of Macedonia, thus confounding the skeptics, who still see in Macedonia but a dialect of the Bulgarian language.” (226) [The view that Macedonian is just a Bulgarian dialect allowed Bulgaria to defend the annexation of Macedonia during the Second World War, when Yugoslavia dissolved for the first time.]