Communism
After World War II, Albania and Yugoslavia almost immediately fell to the communists, who owed their victory to their strength within the resistance movements and to the disengagement of the Western powers from the region. In Romania and Bulgaria the communists moved more cautiously and slowly than in Albania and Yugoslavia, but by the end of 1947 they had gradually eliminated all opponents from the army, the noncommunist trade unions, the civil service, and the other political parties.
Questions of federation
It seemed that, for the first time in many generations, the Balkans would be united, and once again it was an external force—this time Soviet communism—that was the dominant influence. The more optimistic of the communists hoped that this new, ideologically homogeneous Balkan region would also be one that was more clearly defined. In the north it would include Romania and the Roman Catholic areas of Yugoslavia but not Catholic Austria; in this way the old dividing lines between Catholic and Orthodox Europe, between the former Habsburg and Ottoman lands, would be discarded. There were still frontier disputes with Austria over Carinthia (Kärnten) and, more seriously, with Italy over Trieste, but the communist optimists—owing to the resoluteness of Tito—hoped to incorporate Trieste. They also hoped that communists would be successful in the Greek Civil War and thereby enable Greece to be integrated into the new Balkans.
These dreams were dashed, however, as were dreams that ideological conformity would produce political unity. Although a broad Balkan federation was more seriously discussed than at any previous time, it failed to materialize. The dominant internal force in the region was Tito’s Yugoslavia, which viewed Balkan federalization as a process in which new units would be added to the six republics that constituted the new, federal South Slav state. The Bulgarians refused to accept this, instead anticipating that such a federation would be the coming together of two equal partners, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria—or three partners, if Romania could be included. Most Albanians too had reservations about being absorbed into a Belgrade-dominated federation. Predictably, however, an external factor—Stalin—was decisive in the eventual outcome. By 1947 he had decided that Tito was becoming too powerful within the communist empire and that he should not be allowed too great an extension of his influence. Moscow vetoed Balkan federation, and in 1948 Yugoslavia was expelled from the Soviet communist camp.