Modern Europe's Powderkeg

...At the same time, U.S.-aided economic reconstruction in Greece and Turkey has cast a searching light on Soviet economic work in the three satellites and on Tito's less successful administration of U.S...

...With "anti-Stalinism" now official Soviet doctrine, Titoist Communism is intrinsically more useful to the Kremlin than to Western diplomacy...

...The author, Robert Lee Wolff, is Professor of Medieval and Modern Eastern European and Balkan History at Harvard...

...He portrays the 19th-century awakening of national consciousness in the Balkans, and the development of the new national formations after World War I. Then, in considerably greater political, economic and cultural detail, he tells the story of the interwar decades, World War II, and the Communist conquest...

...The absence of Greece and Turkey, however, does not diminish the permanent scholarly value of this book, its capable depiction of the general Balkan scene, its major contributions to the history of Balkan Communism, and its fine detail on Tito's role in that story...

...This is a scholarly, deep and utterly readable book, a vital contribution to the knowledge and understanding of Balkan peoples and problems...

...intervention in the Balkans, in the form of the Truman Doctrine, was a decisive event in the postwar history of the region, contributing significantly to the split between Tito and Stalin...

...readers no longer need depend on European studies...

...One may agree with the author's exclusion of Hungary, a "middle zone" Danubian country, from the Balkan area, but it is difficult to accept the omission of Greece and Turkey...

...This is the first major achievement of the new generation of American scholars who have been studying the Balkans since the war...

...Professor Wolff opens by portraying, in unusual depth, the geography, resources and character of the Balkan area, and the impact of various foreign influences on the Balkan peoples...

...He unfolds the sad legacies of the dead empires, Byzantine, Ottoman and Hapsburg, explaining their consequences for the modern history of the area...

...Discussion of Greece and Turkey would have placed the history of the other four nations, three of them now satellites and the other independent Communist, in clearer perspective...

...If Greece is excluded as a Mediterranean country, Yugoslavia is similarly Mediterranean and Central European as well—the only purely Balkan country is Bulgaria, in the midst of the Balkan Mountains...

...Reviewed by Bogdan Raditsa Projessor oj Modern European History, Fcdrleigh Dickinson University The Balkans in Our Time...

...It is, to the great satisfaction of all those who have been awaiting such a work, the first successful attempt to present a comprehensive history of the Balkans from early medieval beginnings to the present time...

...Both the prewar and postwar Balkan Alliances show the dependence of Yugoslavia on Greece and Turkey in order to maintain a balance of power in the area...

...Furthermore, the U.S...

...during World War II, he was chief of research and analysis in the Balkan section of OSS...

...The scope of Professor Wolff's book is limited to Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria and Albania—four countries with 40 million people, whose tragic development in the last decade has been linked with Communism...

...In his concluding pages, Professor Wolff appropriately indicates that the decline of the Balkan Alliance is due not only to the Greek-Turkish hostility over Cyprus but also to Tito's readjustment to the post-Stalin regime in Moscow...

...This survey is part of the Harvard American Foreign Policy Library and Russian Research Center Studies series...

...In refusing to foresee the subtle threat of a Titoist, "polycentric" structure for world Communism, the West has helped strengthen the Soviet camp, as recent events clearly show...