cominform

[cominform]

[cominform]

Marshal Tito, the Communist Who Defied the Kremlin, Reviews His War-ready Army

Yugoslavia’s Army, of 30-odd divisions, is considered Western Europe’s largest. Its arms came largely from Russian and Czech factories before Tito’s break with the Cominform in 1948. Today the West initiates its own aid in the form of food, to bolster drought-stricken Yugoslavia. In World War II Yugoslav Partisans under Tito cut to pieces some 30 Axis divisions in guerrilla warfare.

National Geographic, February 1951

[cominform]

Richard sat a little forward on the couch, putting his elbows on his knees. “Since the war, relations between our countries may not have been especially chummy, but they have been predictable. We launch the Marshall Plan, you launch the Molotov Plan. We form NATO; you form the Cominform. We develop an atom bomb, you develop an atom bomb. It’s been like a game of tennis—which is not only a good form of exercise, but awfully entertaining to watch. Vodka?”

— Amor Towles, A Gentleman In Moscow

[cominform]

1955 – Sign Warsaw Pact

Eight Communist bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, sign a mutual defense treaty called the Warsaw Pact.

*Signatories to the treaty – the USSR, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania – have agreed to unify their forces under one command although at this stage it is not known who will take this post. Yugoslavia, the only European Communist state not included in the pact, was expelled in 1948 from Cominform, the Communist information agency for refusing to acknowledge Soviet supremacy. The treaty, signed at the Warsaw Palace, comesin the wake of news that West Germany has been accepted by western nations into Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) following talks earlier this month in Paris.

* Courtesy BBC News