Europe 341
Union, when Yugoslavia refused to take any further dictates from the Soviets. Ten-
sions between Tito and Stalin rose quickly after the war, and this dispute starts with
an August 12, 1949, note from Moscow to Belgrade declaring Yugoslavia to be an
enemy.
On August 28, the Soviets detached three mechanized divisions into sympathetic
southern Hungary. Not only does this signal cooperation between Hungary and the
Soviet Union, but also that the Soviets were prepared to take direct measures to coerce
compliance out of Yugoslavia after several months of subversive measures have
failed. The action also follows a more direct threat to use force given to Yugoslavia
by the Soviets on August 21. The numbers in southern Hungary were estimated at
50,000 troops and 500 tanks on August 31. Soviets troops were stationed in Timiso-
ara, Romania as well.
The situation worsened the next month. Yugoslavia announced its split from the
Soviet voting bloc in the United Nations, and the Soviet Union denounced its friend-
ship treaty with Yugoslavia that was signed in 1945. The Soviet bloc countries quickly
followed suit in early October 1949. While the Soviet break with Yugoslavia did not
entail an immediate threat of Soviet action, the situation worsened between Yugosla-
via and the other Soviet bloc countries.
Hungarian troops allegedly fired on Yugoslavian troops at frontier post no. 19
near Dolni Miholjac for eight hours into the night on October 29. Yugoslavia suf-
fered no casualties, but the attack, and subsequent arrival of more Soviet troops in
Hungary, foreshadowed future problems that Yugoslavia knew it would be facing in
- To make matters worse, the international propaganda wing of the Soviet Union
announced to the world on November 29 that it would press more vigorously for the
overthrow of Tito’s regime in Yugoslavia.
There were a multitude of frontier incidents in 1950. The frontier incidents totaled
937 in 1950, ballooning to as much as 1,517 in 1951. The Soviets were not going
to directly attack Yugoslavia, it seemed, but did build bordering armies in Bulgaria,
Hungary, and Romania in order to frustrate Tito.
Bulgaria’s army, the strongest of the three, amassed on the Yugoslavia border in
1950, willing to snowball its frustrations with the Macedonian segment of Yugoslavia
into a bigger dispute with Belgrade. The coordinated nature of the frontier troubles for
Yugoslavia eventually drew sympathy from the West. The United States dispatched
its largest peace-time fleet into the Mediterranean to observe the affairs in light of
the provocations against Yugoslavia. Further, the UN secretary-general, Tryge Lie of
Norway, pledged to wholeheartedly support Yugoslavia’s claims through the United
Nations.
A frustrated Yugoslavia eventually resolved the dispute through the United
Nations. The idea for Yugoslavia was to put the maximum diplomatic pressure on the
Soviet Union as possible in order to deter this course of action. Yugoslavia presented
its case to the United Nations on November 26 and 27, 1951. It presented a “White
Book,” cataloging all provocations against Yugoslavia in the past few years. On
December 14, the General Assembly passed a resolution directing the Soviet Bloc to
cease its activities against Yugoslavia and behave within the confines of UN policy
on diplomatic relations.