Hi, everyone. I'm new to AH.com, though I've been lurking around for a while, and what follows is my first attempt at the beginning of a fairly detailed timeline. The premise is that Stalin sends Molotov to Belgrade in 1947, in order to broker a settlement with Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito. This avoids the schism that marked our timeline's Soviet-Yugoslav relations from 1948 onward, and allows Tito to go ahead with his plans for a 'Balkan Federation' comprising Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria...
"Many roads to Socialism"
In early September 1947, Stalin dispatched his foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, to Belgrade in an attempt to resolve his emerging disputes with Tito to Soviet advantage. Outwardly, relations between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia seemed amicable – indeed, at the founding conference of the Cominform that month the Soviet representatives had singled out Tito's exemplary 'leftism' for praise, contrasting it favorably with the relatively moderate policies being pursued by the French and Italian Parties in particular.
But in Stalin's mind, Tito was increasingly becoming a diplomatic embarrassment, due to his insistence on Yugoslav control of the Trieste region disputed with Italy as well as his support (moral and material) for the Greek Communist insurgency, which the Soviet dictator considered a provocation to the West. There was another consideration as well: Tito was a potential rival, the charismatic face of an autonomous 'national road to socialism' that threatened Moscow's dominance over the international movement.
In retrospect, however, these disputes between the two men seem of little import, as Molotov's success in Belgrade confirms: overcoming initial difficulties, he secured Tito's pledge to gradually reduce his support for the Greek insurgency, and to abandon his belligerent rhetoric with regard to Trieste (at least until after the Italian general election planned for the following April). In return, Tito was promised – among other benefits – increased Soviet economic aid and, more abstractly, a degree of Soviet respect for his purely local prerogatives [1]. The most crucial result of the conference, which ended with Molotov's return to Moscow on 2nd December, was the latter's promise of Soviet support for Tito's most ambitious project: the unification of the Balkans.
The idea of a Balkan Federation had been floated by Tito as early as 1945, and it had initially won Stalin's support. The chill that descended briefly upon Yugoslav-Soviet relations during late 1947 had caused him to question the project's motives, but meanwhile its first steps were already being implemented: the Bled agreement, signed by Tito and Bulgaria's Georgi Dimitrov on 1st August 1947, committed the two states to a customs union and envisioned political unification in the near future [2]. In any case, the Belgrade talks convinced Stalin to put aside his concerns and commit the Soviet Union to the project.
On 9th January, 1948, Stalin's now-famous 'case for Balkan unification' [3] appeared in Pravda, envisioning a process of integration that would begin with Albania's absorption into Yugoslavia. Privately, he hoped that accelerating the unification process would allow him to reduce Tito's independence and initiative by coupling him with the impeccably Stalinist leadership of the Bulgarian Party. Tito, for his part, most likely recognized Stalin's intentions and hoped to turn them against the Soviet Union by quietly subordinating the Bulgarian and Albanian Parties to his own leadership.
The Albanian Politburo, heavily dependent on Soviet and Yugoslav economic aid for its survival, had no choice but to comply. Indeed, there were many in the government who had supported unification with Yugoslavia even prior to Stalin's declaration in favor of it. The pro-integration faction led by interior minister Koci Xoxe gradually edged out the 'nationalists' around prime minister Enver Hoxha, and on 20th April the Albanian government officially appealed to Belgrade for admission as a seventh Yugoslav republic [4]. Although Hoxha, ever the opportunist, subsequently made a last-ditch attempt to switch sides and ally himself with Xoxe, he had already been discredited and in May was forced to resign as prime minister and Party leader.
On 18th July, the month after the second Cominform conference (held in Belgrade), Tito and Albanian prime minister Xoxe formally signed the state treaty absorbing Albania into Yugoslavia. The larger Balkan Federation, it seemed, would not be far off.
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[1] This is obviously a conditional promise. But in essence, Molotov's negotiations with Tito have the effect of convincing Stalin that he (like Khrushchev before his meeting with Poland's Władysław Gomułka in 1956) has misjudged the man.
[2] The Bled agreement occurred in OTL; the political unification that it envisioned was sabotaged by Stalin's condemnation of Tito.
[3] His intention, characteristically, being not only to affirm his support for the Balkan project, but to make it seem as though it were his idea from the beginning.
[4] Similar plans were proposed by Xoxe and considered by the Politburo in OTL, but were dropped after Yugoslavia's expulsion from the Cominform in June 1948.