Description
Stalin — Tito by Y.S. Girenko is a definitive study of the 1948 split that shocked the communist world. First published in Moscow in 1991 and now available in English, this groundbreaking monograph draws on newly opened Soviet archives to reconstruct the rupture between Stalin and Tito with hitherto unmatched precision and insight.
Written at the height of glasnost, Girenko’s work combines rigorous scholarship with a rare contemporary perspective. While reflecting its state-centred origin, it was the first to identify Albania — not Greece — as the immediate trigger of the conflict, tracing it through Ambassador Lavrentiev’s correspondence, Molotov and Stalin’s concerns and the internal debates of the Yugoslav leadership. In doing so, the book challenges Yugoslavia’s own historiography.
Beyond the political narrative, Stalin — Tito illuminates the personalities at the heart of the divide: Stalin, the architect of the monolithic “socialist camp,” and Tito, the self-assured ideologue charting his own path. Their clash exposes the deeper contradiction within ideology and geopolitics that defined Yugoslav-Soviet relations in the early Cold War.
Rich in archival evidence and balanced in interpretation, Stalin — Tito remains a cornerstone for understanding how two closely linked countries turned against each other — and how that fracture reshaped the face of Europe.