Bíró, László: SPHERE-OF-INFLUENCE POLITICS ON THE BALKANS IN THE MID-20TH CENTURY IN THE MIRROR OF THE SOVIET–YUGOSLAV RELATIONS (original) (raw)

The study investigates the penetration of the Powers into the Balkan Peninsula-through highlighting the relationship between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The article analyses the Soviet Balkan policy, the response of the Soviet Union to the German aspirations in the 1930s. After the German attack and Yugoslavia's capitulation, the Soviet Union lost the rivalry for the Balkans to Germany, and, since Romania and Bulgaria had joined the Tripartite Pact earlier, the Soviet Union had been cut off of the Balkan Peninsula. After these events the article focuses on the British-Soviet rivalry over the Peninsula. Churchill and Stalin made a secret agreement on dividing Europe into British and Soviet spheres of influence. The British policy of compromises aimed to ensure via negotiations that the people they supported were included in the Yugoslav government. The Soviet-English rivalry was in Yugoslavia, to a large extent, influenced by the war events. The Communist takeover, however, was impossible to prevent. Finally the paper analyses the geopolitical background of the Tito-Stalin split. Regarding its Balkan policy, the Soviet Union observed the terms of the 1944 Moscow agreement and it respected the stipulations thereof. The Soviet Union in its own sphere of influence, however, insisted on its unquestionable leadership (even though not always successfully, as demonstrated by the Yugoslav and Albanian examples) and it sought to prevent the formation of any alliance that could potentially counterweight its efforts..