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Keeping Tito Afloat The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War. By Lorraine M. Lees. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. xviii, 246 pp. $40.00, ISBN 0-27101629-9.)
Yugoslavia, under the leadership of Tito (Josip Broz), played a key role in the history of the Cold War. As Lorraine M. Lees's study makes clear, the Truman and Eisenhower administrations sought, with mixed success, to exploit the opportunities that emerged when for the first time a Communist party-dominated regime severed its ties with the Soviet motherland.
After leading the Partisan resistance to the Nazis in World War II, Tito proclaimed the Federated People's Republic of Yugoslavia in December 1945. Initially Tito's adherence to Communist ideology and his support of the radical insurgency in postwar Greece rendered him anathema in Washington.
Perceptions changed rapidly, however, when Tito broke with the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, in...