In February 1979, Joe Biden – the future American president – attended the funeral of Edvard Kardelj in Yugoslavia. Kardelj, although scarcely remembered outside the former Yugoslavia, was a figure of enormous importance in his time. An early adopter of communism (at age 16 in 1926), he spent time in a Kingdom of Jugoslavia jail …
It was pretty much a requirement that politicians of a certain age in Yugoslavia have served as Partizans during World War II, and Džemal Bijedić was no exception to that rule. Raised by Muslim parents in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, by 1939 Bijedić had joined the League of Communists. He was arrested at least four …
On 10 January 1946 the man who would become the most powerful communist dictator in Europe solidified his power and the People’s Republic of Albania was proclaimed and Enver Hoxha was proclaimed its Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Defense Minister, and the army’s Commander in Chief. Although the Albanian Royal Family had been banned from Albania …
The separate yet intertwined conflicts of 1956, in Hungary and Egypt, changed the presentation and path of the Cold War. Most stunning among the changes and yet one of the least mentioned outside scholarly works is that Great Britain began the month of October 1956 as one of the great powers at the center of …
There was an Amazonian Guard, an American airstrike, Pan-Arabism, Pan-Africanism, a terrorist bombing in a disco, a terrorist bombing of a Pan-Am airplane, the founding of the African Union, and a final violent gasp that resulted in his overthrow. There was always a story about Muammar Qaddafi. Various dates have been given for Qadaffi’s birth …
When Enver Hoxha proclaimed The People’s Republic of Albania on 11 January 1946, no one was quite sure how the man had gotten himself into such a position. Hoxha was a communist, and he had fought as a Partisan during World War II. By March 1943, the former French teacher had been formally elected First …
One of the most famous Russian-language songs to come out of the Russian Civil War, and also subsequently sung in World War 2 was called “Tachanka.” To this day, school children from across the former Soviet Union, the entire former Soviet Bloc, and even former Yugoslavia are taught to sing the song, which is about …
“We couldn’t, on one hand, complain about the Soviets intervening in Hungary, and, on the other hand, approve of the British and French picking that particular time to intervene against Nasser,” Richard Nixon. October/November 1956 was a crazy time. No less than two earth-shaking events were taking place, both intimately involving the Soviet Union and …
In the end, the man who spent nine years denouncing colleagues in the Soviet Union, leading to hundreds of interrogations and at least 15 executions, was executed himself. It creates an interesting juxtaposition – the Imre Nagy of before the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the Imre Nagy to led the short-lived government of the …
“We are fully in accord with your reply to our ambassador that Nagy and the others hidden in the Yugoslav Embassy should in no way be transferred to Yugoslavia, since they were the organizers of the counter-revolutionary demonstration, and you cannot allow two Hungarian governments to exist – one in Hungary and the other in …
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