THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL WORLD LEADERS OF ALL TIME

7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

domestic exponents, the Serbian Chetniks. In time,
Communist pressure drove the Chetniks into tactical
alliances with the Axis, thereby precipitating their isola-
tion and defeat.
In 1943, the Western Allies recognized Tito as the
leader of the Yugoslav resistance and obliged the London
government-in-exile to come to terms with him. The
Soviet army, aided by Tito’s Partisans, liberated Serbia in
October 1944, thereby sealing the fate of the Yugoslav
dynasty. In the process of mop-up operations, the Yugoslav
frontiers were extended to take in Istria and portions of
the Julian Alps, where reprisals against fleeing Croat and
Slovene collaborationists were especially brutal.

The Conflict with Stalin

Tito consolidated his power in the summer and fall of 1945
by purging his government of noncommunists and by
holding fraudulent elections that legitimated the jettison-
ing of the monarchy. The Federal People’s Republic of
Yugoslavia was proclaimed under a new constitution in
November 1945. Tito’s excesses in imitation of Soviet
methods eventually became as irritating to Moscow as
did his independent manner—especially in foreign pol-
icy. After a series of Stalin-initiated moves to purge the
Yugoslav leadership failed, the CPY was expelled from
the Cominform, the international organization of mainly
ruling Communist parties. Yugoslavia, cut off from the
Soviet bloc, steadily drew closer to the West.

The Policy of Nonalignment

By 1953 Western military aid to Yugoslavia had evolved
into an informal association with NATO via a tripartite