I heard this story from the Balkan trots and titoids many times; it continues with Tito sending a message to Stalin: If I attempt to assassinate you, it won’t have a second time. They tell it more to disparage Stalin than to praise Tito, as I understand.
Now, I know Tito and Stalin have a clash of interest after WW2, but I don’t think Stalin was the kind of man that would chase petty revenges.
In addition, I understand that this may be slightly off-topic, but could you also explain the reason that SFRY withdrew from the Eastern Bloc? According to ProleWiki, Tito was too ambitious about its control area in the Balkans and wanted to get closer to the USA, which obviously was not accepted well by Stalin. Is this the full story, or are there more to it?
Very important to emphasize this. If there hadn’t been a Yugo-Soviet split, there never would’ve been a Sino-Soviet split and the socialist bloc probably never would’ve collapsed. We’d still have half the world population under socialism. If only…
The past is full of mistakes, it is our duty to learn from them and improve.
I kinda don’t agree with this, the Sino-Soviet split happened because of Khruschyov-era revisionism, but it got deepest and irreversible after Mao’s death and China’s market reforms. It was bound to happen anyway.
The Sino-Soviet split for sure costed the USSR a lot and is one of the core reasons behind its eventual dismantling, however China placing itself against the USSR is what encouraged western politicians to allow the offshoring of capital from the NATO block to China, which has eventually resulted in the deindustrialization of the west in favour of China. I’ll be able to call it the correct move when China starts to adopt a more socialist internationalist policy and promotes socialist regime change outside its borders and directs the global narrative towards socialism, which I believe they’ll eventually do over the course of the remaining of this century (or maybe that’s hopium)