ABSTRACT
On foreign policy, Tito demonstrably aimed to make Belgrade the centre of a communized Balkan peninsula and there is ample reason for believing this led to his split with Stalin. But the three gruesome years of Yugoslavia's postwar history have long been forgotten and those who pleaded for Tito during the war justify themselves for having argued that, if treated well, he could be prised from Moscow. In diplomatic jargon there is never any "interference in Yugoslav internal affairs", which means in practice only that by refinancing and rescheduling loans the West continues with its interference but shrinks from confronting the political consequences. In 1984, when real wages fell for the third year in succession no one took to the streets but about half the citizens of Belgrade and Zagreb were reported to have stopped paying their electricity bills and their rents: a number far too great to penalize.
