Italy's Free Territory of Trieste and the part of Austria's Carinthia populated by Carinthian Slovenes, Tito's efforts to play a leading role in the entire Balkans region, as well as over Stalin's reluctance to decisively support the Greek Communists in the Greek Civil War, who were actively supported by Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania. Drastic deterioration in relations occurred in early 1948. In June 1948, Tito did not attend the second conference of the Cominform, which was established on the initiative of the USSR in September 1947 as a coordinating body for Communist parties in the USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Italy, France, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. The conference, on the motion of the VKP(B), was mostly dedicated to the discussion of the situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. On 28 June 1948, the other member countries adopted a resolution that noted that ″recently the leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had pursued an incorrect line on the main questions of home and foreign policy, a line which represents a departure from Marxism-Leninism″; the resolution concluded by stating, ″the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia has placed itself and the Yugoslav Party outside the family of the fraternal Communist Parties, outside the united Communist front and consequently outside the ranks of the Information Bureau.″ The assumption in Moscow was that once it was known that he had lost Soviet approval, Tito would collapse. The expulsion effectively banished Yugoslavia from the international association of socialist states, while other socialist states of Eastern Europe subsequently underwent purges of alleged "Titoists". Stalin took the matter personally and attempted, unsuccessfully, to assassinate Tito on several occasions. The following year, the crisis nearly escalated into an armed conflict, as Hungarian and Soviet forces were massing on the northern Yugoslav frontier. In May 1949, the Ministry of foreign affairs of Yugoslavia formally protested against the support rendered by the USSR to a group of Yugoslav citizens who had formed a committee in Moscow in early April to promote ″unfriendly activity against the FPRY" (the ministry's note of 23 May 1949). The Soviet response dated 31 May 1949 asserted the USSR's right to offer asylum to "Yugoslav revolutionary emigrants″ and stated that Yugoslavia′s government ″had forfeited the right to expect a friendly attitude″ from the USSR, as it had established an ″anti-Communist and anti-democratic terrorist regime″ in Yugoslavia and was fighting against the Soviet Union.