You're listening to season 11 of Mobile Suit Breakdown, a weekly podcast covering the entirety of sci-fi mega-franchise Mobile Suit Gundam from 1979 to today.
Welcome back to Mobile Suit Breakdown's Yugoslav History Interlude, Part 6: The Adriatic Question. When the breach between Tito and Stalin became public in late June 1948, the world reacted with shock. The more so because Tito's survival, both literally in his physical person and politically as leader of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, presaged enormous geopolitical consequences at a time when all the attention of the Great Powers was focused squarely on Eastern Europe and the incipient conflict between the Western Allies, principally the United States and Britain, versus the Soviet Union. The split coincided with the Soviet blockade of Berlin. In fact, the first English-language reporting on it was published the same day the Berlin Airlift began. For the capitalist democracies, the Tito-Stalin rift suggested the possibility that other communist countries could be peeled off from the Soviet bloc, if only they knew how. So a tremendous amount of time and energy was expended, both at the time and ever since, in seeking to understand the divide between these 2 communist leaders, its nature, and its causes. There is therefore a huge body of scholarship on the topic and countless theories, ranging from the intensely personal— Stalin was jealous of Tito's popularity— to the Machiavellian: Stalin had been planning to purge Tito for years, but wanted to wait until the war was won and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia firmly established before making his move. The one explanation which nobody seems to take seriously is the official one presented by the Soviet Union in the letter which touched off the whole crisis. They accused the Yugoslav communist leadership of ideological errors, calling them dubious Marxists. perhaps even secret capitalists. But it seems likely that in this case, the communism was just a red herring. Well, at least the communist theory. Communist politics— that's a different matter entirely. One theory notes the coincidental timing of the Tito-Stalin split. In 1948, the Chinese Civil War had entered its final phase, and a communist victory there was looking increasingly certain. Up to this point, the Soviet Union and the Central Committee of its Communist Party had been the gravitational center around which the entire communist world orbited. But a Red China, with its own charismatic leader and its own East Asian satellites, could not help but disrupt that balance. Perhaps Stalin felt the need to shore up Soviet control of the European communist parties before the Chinese star rose. Tito, being the highest-profile and most independent leader within the Soviet orbit, might have been targeted simply as a warning to the others. Or perhaps Stalin feared that in a multipolar communist world, Tito, with his international prestige, his theory of a multiethnic socialist federation, and his Balkan allies, would become a rival in his own right, diluting Russian influence over the communist parties of Europe. In a way, Tito's ability to survive this attempted purge and hold Yugoslavia together outside the Soviet system proves that Stalin was right to fear his influence. Each of these theories sounds plausible. There's probably a hint of truth in all of them. But they're also too generic, too unsatisfying, too easy. Oh, Tito was just collateral damage in a game of 5D chess between Stalin and Mao. Or, oh, Stalin never liked or trusted Tito. He was jealous of the younger man's popularity and tried to purge him just like he always does. Classic behavior from crazy old Uncle Joe. But another line of scholarship sees the breakdown in relations between the two as the result of a series of specific foreign policy decisions made by Tito, prioritizing Yugoslavia's needs or Tito's ambitions over Soviet geopolitical strategy.
So serving Yugoslavia before serving the USSR.
Exactly. In 1948, The Soviets were still more than a year away from testing their first nuclear weapon, and Stalin was, to put it mildly, anxious to avoid war with the Western Allies, especially the nuclear-armed United States. He was ready to make major concessions and play for time, but Tito kept dragging him into confrontation after confrontation. If you follow this line of thinking, then at some point Stalin decided that, for all of his merits, Tito and his lieutenants were just more trouble than they were worth. This dynamic— Stalin trying to play things cool and Tito storming ahead— goes back at least as far as 1941 and the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Yugoslavia. At the time, the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany was still in effect, and Moscow ordered the local communists not to resist the Axis invasion of their country. They even went as far as making plans to break up the Communist Party of Yugoslavia into smaller parties which would correspond to the new partition of the country, essentially recognizing the Axis takeover and dissolution of the country as permanent. The German invasion of Russia a few months later changed Stalin's tune and gave Tito the green light he needed to launch his insurrection. But even then, Moscow pushed the partisans to keep quiet about all that socialism stuff and follow the British plan for the Balkans, which is to say: sit tight, keep your powder dry. You can do a little light sabotage if you really want to, you know, disrupt things, but save the general revolt until after the Allied landings begin. Now most obnoxious of all, the partisans were also meant to submit themselves to the authority of the Chetniks, being the representatives of the internationally recognized royal government. And that would mean fighting openly to restore the despised Karađorđević dynasty. I assume that when the Partisans heard these orders, they said something like, what was that? Sorry, you're breaking up. I'm in a forest. I'm going through a tunnel. A forest tunnel. We've got, like, no bars. Listen, I'll call you back when the war is over and we can talk about Whatever it was you just said. Oh, and could you send more supplies? Thanks. Love you. Bye. Speaking of which, supplies created another point of tension. The only thing the Partisans had in abundance was manpower, and they depended on irregular supply drops from the Allies for everything from bullets to bandages. The Partisan offensives in 1944 and 1945 that turned the tide of the war in Yugoslavia were only possible because of the massive increase in supplies coming across the Adriatic from airfields in newly friendly Italy. Throughout most of the war, though, the Western Allies had followed the British lead, directing whatever support they could spare to the Chetniks. But that's fine, right? The Communist Partisans had their own international patron. They would get their supplies from the Soviet Union. And yet— Throughout the war, the Partisans were continuously baffled by the meager trickle of support coming in from the east. This suggested, perhaps, that the Russians were not entirely committed to supporting the Yugoslav project. But those are the vagaries of war, easily forgotten in the heady glow of victory. And yet, the problems did not go away when the war ended. Despite their landslide victory in the first postwar election, Tito and company understood that their regime stood on fairly shaky ground. King Peter was still agitating to restore the monarchy, and though we know that he would fail miserably, they didn't at the time. The British had made no secret of their desire to see him back on the throne, and British intelligence had helped orchestrate Simović's coup back in '41. There was no reason to think they wouldn't attempt to repeat the trick. Then there were the Ustasha. Many had escaped abroad at the end of the war, and the diehards among them were already reorganizing themselves for a guerrilla war against the new regime. They called themselves the Crusaders. And if that wasn't bad enough, everyone knew that the Americans would be overjoyed to see any communist government fall in favor of a more business-friendly administration. Surrounded by enemies, greatest asset the Communists had was their popularity with the people. But how long would that last if they failed to deliver results? The best thing to shore up the new regime's legitimacy would be a quick win or two. Better still, what if they managed to resolve a few of the really old grievances, the ones that had eluded the kings and their governments ever since the country's founding? What if they could answer the Adriatic Question, In Yugoslavia's favor. One curious feature of Balkan demographics is that for centuries prior to the formation of Yugoslavia, the ethnic composition of the cities, especially the ones along the Adriatic littoral, looking westward across the sea at Italy, differed dramatically from that of the agricultural hinterlands. Back when the Slavs first arrived in the Balkans, during the slow-motion collapse of the Roman Empire, The new arrivals lacked the means to besiege and capture walled cities. And so while the Slavs spread out to fill the countryside, mingling with the pre-existing population and developing into the various subgroups that would eventually become the Croatian, Slovenian, Montenegrin, and Serbian nations, cities like Ragusa, modern Dubrovnik, Split, and Zara, modern Zadar, remained within the polyglot maritime culture of the late Roman, Byzantine Mediterranean. Roman power continued to decline, as you know, but even as the Slavic kingdoms grew strong enough to contest control of the cities, another maritime power emerged to take over as their suzerain: the Most Serene Republic of Venice. By around 1000 AD, Venice had grown wealthy and powerful off the back of maritime trade and, located as they were in a lagoon at the extreme north of the Adriatic, They wanted to ensure both that their home waters remained free of rivals, and that their trading fleets had plenty of friendly harbors open to them on the way to the Mediterranean. The Venetians thus seized a series of coastal cities, mostly former Byzantine possessions, along the Adriatic coast and into Greece, as well as islands, including Crete and eventually even Cyprus. Together, this formed a network of overseas colonies known as the Stato da Mar, the State of the Sea. To add a further complicating wrinkle, the Eastern Franks— subsequently the Holy Roman Empire, and eventually the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Empire— had designs on the Balkan cities as well, and many of the northernmost, like Trieste, were contested bitterly by the 2 powers. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Venice spent roughly the next 250 years getting rolled up by the Ottomans, gradually losing all of their overseas possessions except those on the Adriatic coast, which they would hold on to until the end of the Republic during the early Napoleonic period. There are 3 regions of the Balkan Adriatic coastline that are especially important for this next part, and I'll do my best to describe the territory in question for you, but you may want to look at a map or fire up your favorite grand strategy computer game to see it with your own eyes. Picture the shape of Italy for a moment. The boot, the toe, the stiletto heel of Apulia. Now picture the north end, the part that looks like the crown of a tree or the top of a weird mushroom. Genoa on the west coast, Venice on the east. Leave Venice and head east, following the northern coast of the Adriatic until you reach the Isonzo River. Now stop. That's the Slovenian border ahead. Look to your right. If you have a map in front of you, zoom way in and you will see a narrow band of Italian territory that hugs the coastline as it turns south. It's about 15 miles long but only 3 miles wide, and leads to the beautiful seaside city of Trieste, surrounded on the other 3 sides by Slovenia. In fact, it looks a little bit like a fist at the end of an arm, as though Italy had punched Slovenia right in the gut, And the latter country had doubled over in pain. Just beyond Trieste is a large arrowhead peninsula, Istria, pointing straight down into the Adriatic. And then a little further southeast, the land bulges outward like a phone with an overheated battery, dozens of long narrow islands hugging the coastline. This is the region of Dalmatia. In let's say around 1750. Trieste was solidly under Austrian control, Dalmatia was under Venetian domination, and the Istrian Peninsula was split between them. But in 1797, Napoleon Bonaparte forcibly dissolved the Republic of Venice during his Italian campaign, then swapped the city and its Adriatic territories to the Habsburgs in exchange for control of the Austrian Netherlands. But the peace between the 2 powers didn't last long, and Napoleon quickly reclaimed the lot. He combined Trieste, Istria, and Dalmatia with parts of Croatia and a few other local microstates to form the Illyrian Provinces, taking the term Illyrian from the old Roman name for the region, because the man loved his classical references. The Illyrian Provinces were meant to be an autonomous region within the French Empire, but only lasted around 5 years, from the end of the War of the Fifth Coalition in 1809 to the collapse of Napoleon's regime in 1814, at which point Austria claimed Venice and the former Venetian territories, all the way down into Dalmatia. Yet the people of the region did not soon forget the brief moment in which they were treated as a singular nation, with the right to at least some amount of self-government. Napoleon had told them that they were a people, a nation, And they believed him. A new national movement, Illyrianism, sprung up in the latter half of the 19th century. Soon, though, they came to see themselves not just as part of an Illyrian nation, but a larger one, one that united the Illyrian Slavs of Dalmatia with their neighbors in Croatia and Slovenia, and perhaps with all South Slavs. Inspired by the stirrings of this new Yugoslav nationalism, Leaders in the region began agitating for greater autonomy within the Austro-Hungarian Empire and for the formal integration of Dalmatia into the Kingdom of Croatia. But on the other side of the Adriatic, another nationalism was flourishing. The Italians had only just finished unifying the peninsula and throwing off foreign rule in the 1870s. Yet many felt that the reunification was not yet finished. Italian-speaking populations still remained outside the borders of the Kingdom of Italy, including the descendants of those who had settled in the Venetian Stato di Mare. Now I say Italian-speaking populations rather than Italian-speaking regions because in most of the regions at issue, the Italian speakers made up only a minority of the population. There was a majority in Trieste, but in Dalmatia, for example, the Italian-speaking population came to less than 3% of the total. In Istria, it was more complicated. Overall, around 38% of the population spoke Italian, but they were unevenly distributed, with significant Italian majorities along the west coast and Slavic majorities everywhere else. The Italian ambition to either seize or reclaim these territories, depending on your perspective, is known as Italian irredentism. and it brought Italy into the First World War. In April 1915, Italy, Britain, and France agreed to a secret pact, promising to give Italy all the Italian-speaking imperial lands if only it would join the war on the side of the Entente, which it dutifully did the following month. You know what happens next. World War I is horrific, and the Italian front is particularly bad, but the Entente perseveres and triumphs. The Austro-Hungarian Empire is dissolved, and it looks like Italy is on track to get everything that they wanted. Only— hang on. There's some weird new guy no one's ever seen before sitting at the bargaining table. His name is Yugoslavia, and he's saying stuff like, actually, I live there, and, uh, I was thinking maybe I could try governing myself if that's okay with everyone? And okay, that sounds good, but First of all, those are your lands. And second of all, doesn't he kinda look like that Serbia guy you used to know? Wait, is Serbia trying to muscle in on your territories? Oh, we are going to have a problem. As soon as the war ended, both Italy and Serbia rushed troops into the region, and tensions quickly became so bad that an American naval force had to be deployed to occupy Dalmatia for 2 years to keep the peace, until the Allies could negotiate a compromise for the areas in dispute. They batted around a couple of formulations, but ultimately, a big chunk of territory, including Trieste, the Istrian Peninsula, the city of Zara in Dalmatia, and 5 large islands were handed over to Italy, while the bulk of Dalmatia was granted to the new Yugoslavia. Like most compromises, this made everyone unhappy. After all, hadn't Woodrow Wilson made a big noise about national self-determination? And who was actually living in the lands being handed over to Italy? Croats and Slovenes, around half a million of them. Hadn't they said clearly that they wanted to rule themselves? Were these supposedly enlightened 20th century European diplomats really gonna go around just swapping this land for that at the bargaining table, like a gang of backward, benighted 19th century European diplomats? On the other hand, Italy had been promised the territory as payment for their entry into the war. Italian soldiers had fought for it, bled for it, and now it was just going to be handed away to the former subjects of a defeated enemy? This was a betrayal. They were being stabbed in the back, and by their supposed allies, too. Italy needed to get stronger. So strong that no one would ever dare to humiliate them like this again. And they would need to find a leader, A strongman, someone with a vision to revive their glorious imperial past. To make matters worse— I feel like that's kind of the vibe of this whole narrative. To make matters worse, after Mussolini's rise to power in the 1920s, the fascist government embarked on a program of forced Italianization in its new territories. They banned Slavic language in schools, shut down Slavic newspapers, cultural organizations, and businesses. driving a mass exodus of Slavic speakers out of the annexed lands, and triggering what may well have been the first armed anti-fascist insurgency: the Slovene nationalist group Tiger. Then in '41, during the post-conquest partition of Yugoslavia, Italy revenged itself by acquiring the remaining bits of Dalmatia which had been denied them 2 decades prior.
Whew.
Okay, got all of that? Great. Now that you know all the background, it's time for a pop quiz. The year is 1945. Italy and Yugoslavia are once again meeting at the bargaining table at the end of a world war. Once again, the Adriatic Question is on the agenda. So, knowing what you know, what country deserves to rule Trieste, the Istrian Peninsula, and the Dalmatian Coast? Write your answers on the back of your paper and hand them up, and on the next interlude, we'll see how Comrade Tito tried to answer that question, and why it might have made Stalin want to throw him out a window. Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, recorded, and produced by us, Tom and Nina. In scenic New York City, within the ancestral and unceded land of the Lenape people, and made possible by listeners like you. The opening track is Wasp by Mischa Dioksen. The closing music is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio. You can find links to the sources for our research, the music used in the episode, additional information about the Lenape people, and more in the show notes on our website, Gundampodcast.com. You can get in touch with us by email at hosts@gundampodcast.com. If you'd like to support the show, please tell your friends about us, leave us a nice review wherever you listen to podcasts, or if you'd like to support us financially, you can do so at gundampodcast.com/patreon, or look for other ways to support the show at gundampodcast.com/support. Most of all, thank you for listening.
Thank you.
Sorry, my Steam window popped up in the middle of my speech and blocked my script. Should we open the door?
I'll open the door.
Yeah, maybe just seeing us will make her feel better.
Rosie! Hi! Here we are.
Were you worried about us?