Title: Background: Tito’s Yugoslavia | CES at UNC
Headings: 
BACKGROUND: TITO’S YUGOSLAVIA
Yugoslavia and the Old International System
The External Threat and Yugoslavia's Stability
Foreign Borrowing
Yugoslavia and the Debt Crisis
Yugoslavia and the International System in Flux

Content: Yugoslavia was not under Moscow’s direct control, and its foreign policies actually contradicted Moscow’s interests. Tito realized the importance of his country and was able to maintain a balanced, although at times fluctuating, position between the two blocks. Officially independent and neutral, Tito’s Yugoslavia had the political space to maneuver and play both competing sides. More importantly, Yugoslavia’s identity was constructed against the background of this fierce competition and Tito was able quell domestic ferment by referring to the external threat coming mostly from the Soviets. The External Threat and Yugoslavia's Stability
It is certainly true that an independent Yugoslavia located in the strategic Balkans Peninsula was important for the regional balance of power. However, these geopolitical realities played an even more important role in this country’s domestic politics. The fierce competition between the U.S. and the USSR, with Tito keeping a distance from both, allowed the leader of Yugoslavia to draw from virtually unlimited “amounts” of external threat, and use it to put a check on ethnic struggles. Yugoslavia’s geographic location served as a physical and political buffer between the East and the West during the Cold War. The early strategy that Tito employed in assuaging the ethnic struggles was to mythologize the fact that every ethnic group had contributed to the liberation war against the fascists during the World War II, while hiding other historical facts that pointed to the involvement of certain groups, especially the Croats with the Axis’ side. Nonetheless, the new enthusiasm that followed the end of World War II faded as time passed, and Tito’s myth of a unified Yugoslavia became less appealing.