"The Balkan Front" of the Cold War. USSR and Yugoslav-Albanian Relations. 1945-1968

In the period from 1945 to 1968, Yugoslavsko-Albanian relations passed several stages, marked by various forms of cooperation and ideological confrontation. Both sides perceived each other in different ways and the prospects of bilateral relations, on the one hand, and the role of the great powers, on the other.
Thanks to the cooperation of the Yugoslav and Albanian Communists during the Second World War, after its end, relations between Yugoslavia and Albania acquired a special character. The first post-war years were characterized by the proximity of interstate relations, as well as a comprehensive help that Yugoslavia provided Albania in the political, military and cultural and educational spheres. The establishment of direct contacts between the Soviet and Albanian party leadership in the summer of 1947 was marked by the strengthening of Soviet influence on Albania and the proportional weakening of the Yugoslav presence. The issue of Yugoslav-Albanian relations also made an imprint on a set of problems that caused the conflict between Yugoslavia and the USSR, which erupted in the summer of 1948
The years of the conflict of Yugoslavia with countries that rally around the Soviet Union are marked by constant tension on the border, political clashes, mutual accusations, the Yugoslav rapprochement with the West, the breakdown of regular diplomatic ties and new attempts to raise the issue of the situation of the Albanian minority in Yugoslavia. The level of Yugoslav-Albanian relations did not change due to the Yugoslav-Soviet normalization that came after 1955. The gradual removal of Yugoslavia from both superpowers and the blocks led by them, as well as a leisurely rapprochement with the countries of the third world, on the one hand, and the stubborn commitment of the Albanian leadership of the ostentary ideological dogmas , on the other hand, predetermined further mutual alienation, the emergence of new ideological, political, interethnic contradictions and, in particular, the next exacerbation of the Albanian issue in Yugoslavia. The establishment of close ties between China and Albania marked the beginning of the new stage of Yugoslav-Albanian relations, which was marked by an exacerbation of the interstate and inter-party confrontation, as well as a short attempt to overcome contradictions against the background of the introduction of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968