TY - JOUR
AU - Tiemeyer,, Phil
AB - This article examines the civil aviation sector to demonstrate Yugoslavia's growing economic ties to the Global South thanks to nonalignment. It also considers U.S. reactions to Yugoslavia's growth as an aviation hub, in an effort to reassess the “wedge” strategy that dominated U.S. policy toward Yugoslavia during the Cold War. No history of Yugoslavia in the Cold War, not even one focused on civil aviation, can ignore the country’s unceremonious expulsion from the Cominform on June 28, 1948. As a consequence, the state, which had just been painstakingly reassembled by the Partisans during World War II, was stripped of its trade partners in the Soviet bloc and became a public enemy of Joseph Stalin. Yugoslav officials close to the country’s leader, Josip Broz Tito, worried that Soviet efforts to overthrow him were imminent and could arise either from within the country, in the form of Stalinist members of the Communist Party seeking his overthrow, or from without, in the form of a Red Army invasion. Just as menacing was the state’s possible dissolution via economic collapse; stripped of its main sources of oil and coal and deprived of its trade outlets, Yugoslavia was vulnerable to severe recession and the social upheaval that would follow. Stalin’s choice to condemn Yugoslavia arose in part from Tito’s autonomous foreign policy moves, which increased tensions with the West and created undesired distractions for the Soviets. Despite his training in Moscow and his unrelenting commitment to Bolshevism in economic and political matters, Tito pursued what might be deemed a nationalist agenda regarding Trieste, asserting a maximalist claim to the region’s Slavic-populated areas. He also played a similarly aggressive role in the Greek Civil War, rallying the Slavic population of Greece’s northern provinces behind the communist rebels, even when this uprising no longer served Soviet purposes. From Tito’s perspective, Stalin was challenging a key element of his strategy for ruling Yugoslavia developed and nurtured in World War II, when the lands of Yugoslavia experienced a ghastly upheaval of nationalism. Tito reasoned that communism’s success in saving the people from such excesses and creating a thriving federation required certain accommodations to nationalism. Thus, communist Yugoslavia—to a greater and lesser extent through the years—respected certain expressions of national heritage and offered some autonomy to its constituent republics, all the while fostering loyalty to the federal state. While this strategy ultimately failed to hold Yugoslavia together, it did enable Tito to forge a consistent foreign policy after World War II: he asserted Slovene and Croatian national interests vis-à-vis Italy and Serbian and Macedonian priorities with regard to Greece, even if these moves jeopardized relations with the Soviet Union. As Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov summed up, Tito “is a nationalist, and that is his main defect as a communist … he is infected with the bourgeois spirit.”1 Cast adrift from the Soviets, Tito was forced to improvise a survival strategy for a country with little internal coherence and a vulnerable geographic position. The Red Army could move with impunity against Yugoslavia’s northern and eastern borders, while its southern border was closed due to Tito’s role in the Greek Civil War, and its westward connections via land and sea to Italy were also closed due to the standoff in Trieste. This article examines Yugoslav foreign policy as a consequence of this isolation, when Tito’s regime sought to improve its geopolitical position in tandem with its efforts to rework its relations with both East and West. Just as significantly, the Yugoslav government also embraced a new form of global solidarity, forging deep relationships with newly independent nations across Africa and Asia. These partnerships with countries in what I call the Global South, even as I comprehend the inadequacies of this term, formed the basis of a new strand of Yugoslav self-perception: Tito’s Yugoslavia would be a leading force in an assemblage of nations that sought substantial autonomy from both the Soviets and Americans.2 Out of these relationships—foremost with Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser and India under Jawaharlal Nehru—arose the Non-Aligned Movement, officially declared in a summit in Belgrade in September 1961. Tito’s outreach to these far-flung nations began in earnest in 1954 with his first visit to the South; the subsequent partnerships were both a political effort to overcome lingering manifestations of colonialism and an economic attempt to foster development across the postcolonial realm.3 Yugoslavia was unique among the architects of nonalignment. It was, after all, a European nation, and its legacy of colonialism ended at various moments between the 1870s and 1918 (depending on the region), well in advance of the groundswell of decolonization in Asia and Africa beginning in 1945. Thus, despite certain commonalities in terms of a shared colonial history and a quasi-racialized sense of “othering” and alleged inferiority experienced by the Slavic populations of the Balkans, Yugoslavia’s approaches to the Global South were more an expression of Cold War exigencies—the need for partnerships beyond the Western and Eastern blocs after its expulsion from the Cominform—rather than shared legacy.4 Also missing from these new partnerships was geographic proximity. Thus, for Yugoslavia to play a pioneering role in the Global South and ultimately in the Non-Aligned Movement, a newfound commitment to aviation was required. For a country whose links to the outside world were tied to seafaring on the Danube River or the Adriatic Sea and to rail links with Budapest and Istanbul, this embrace of aviation forced a dramatic reallocation of resources. Air travel was extremely limited in pre-1948 Yugoslavia, with primarily domestic routes and a few flights per week to the Eastern European capitals. As such, Yugoslavia’s embrace of the Global South represented a political, economic, and technological reorientation of the country, and its national air carrier—JAT Yugoslav Airways (Jugoslovenski Aerotransport)—grew relatively quickly from its modest origins in 1947 into a global airline. The successes of JAT and its Slovenian competitor Adria Airways (Adria Aviopromet), founded in 1961, are overlooked achievements of nonalignment as a geopolitical and economic strategy. That a country of only twenty million people developed an aviation sector with an outsized influence was both unexpected as of 1945 and impressive as an example of modernization. JAT in particular succeeded in uniting its home market, which was on the periphery of both Western and Eastern Europe, with destinations across five continents. A 1987 JAT publication justly bragged, “There is hardly any other branch of the Yugoslav economy which occupies such a high place in international terms,” noting that JAT had become the tenth largest European airline and thirty-first largest in the world, with routes emanating from Belgrade toward the East, West, and South—from Los Angeles to Moscow, and from Scandinavia to Calcutta, Singapore, Beijing, and Sydney.5 Equally noteworthy were the extensive routes through the Middle East and North Africa, two of the main centers of the Non-Aligned Movement. Libya, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, to name a few, were ultimately linked by non-stop flights to Belgrade. This impressive growth allowed Yugoslavia to overcome its geographic isolation and reconceive itself as a “crossroads” between East, West, and South, with Belgrade in particular serving as a vital hub—a version of an open city in the midst of the Cold War. As Yugoslavia by 1967 became the first communist country to allow citizens of any country to travel visa-free within its borders, Belgrade’s Surčin Airport—built to the top international standards and opened in 1962—served as a connecting point that linked these three nodes of the otherwise too often segregated world.6 While just over one million foreign nationals entered Yugoslavia in 1960, that number ballooned to more than 30 million by 1969, with aviation comprising a growing share of these border crossings.7 By analyzing aviation’s vital supporting role in Yugoslav foreign policy, this article builds upon recent work in diplomatic history and aviation history, especially Jenifer Van Vleck’s scholarship, Jeffrey Engel’s book on Cold War aviation, and the more recent article by Giles Scott-Smith and David Snyder that appeared in this journal.8 Most importantly, examining the development of Yugoslav aviation within the country’s commitment to the Global South reveals a limitation in previous diplomatic histories covering Cold War Yugoslavia. This corpus of work typically begins with insights from John Lewis Gaddis and continues through scholarship from John Lampe, H. W. Brands, William Zimmerman, and Lorraine Lees, among others.9 These scholars have rightly contextualized Tito’s approach to Nehru, Nasser, and other postcolonial leaders as a consequence of his break with Stalin. Their work follows the thinking of U.S. diplomats, including Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and John F. Kennedy’s Ambassador to Yugoslavia George Kennan, both of whom supported the United States’ unorthodox support of communist Yugoslavia in the hope that it could—like a carpenter’s tool—serve as a “wedge” to pry loose the Eastern European satellites from the Soviet orbit.10 The wedge analogy emphasizes Yugoslavia’s geographic “in-betweenness”—lodged between Europe’s West and East—and is particularly helpful in explaining the country’s ability to take aid from both sides, with American support starting in earnest soon after the Cominform expulsion and Soviet aid trickling in fitfully after Nikita Khrushchev’s conciliatory rapprochement in 1955.11 The wedge model also rightly emphasizes Tito’s own ideological and diplomatic dexterity, as a trusted partner for seeming polar opposites in the Cold War. Khrushchev worked cordially with Tito despite the unsteady relationship between Yugoslavia and the U.S.S.R. He met with Tito three times in a brief period between 1955 and 1956, including a successful emergency flight to Tito’s retreat on Brioni Island to secure public support for the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Meanwhile, the staunchly anti-communist John Foster Dulles also had a solid rapport with Tito and personally vouched for America’s unorthodox policy of propping up the communist dictator. Dulles’s meeting with Tito in late 1955 on Brioni sealed continuing American aid for Tito’s regime, even as Yugoslavia simultaneously nurtured closer relations with the U.S.S.R. Yet, the wedge analogy has an inherent limitation in explaining Tito’s commitment to the Global South, especially because it sees this embrace exclusively in terms of the East-West dynamic. Tito’s espousal of the principles of decolonization, economic modernization, de-escalation of the arms race, and independence from entangling alliances with both the Americans and Soviets (nonalignment) were more than just, as John Lampe summarizes, an attempt to make Yugoslavia’s “relations with the Soviet Union easier than they would otherwise have been.”12 Overlooked in such an analysis is that Yugoslav officials saw a larger role for the country beyond simply exploiting its precarious position to curry favor with both the Americans and Soviets. For politicians and aviation planners, Tito’s foreign policy instead offered Yugoslavia a unique chance to become a crossroads rather than a wedge, a cosmopolitan transit point that could link not only East and West, but the Global South as well, accruing significant political and economic benefits for Belgrade in the process. By considering Yugoslavia’s advocacy for the Global South alongside its dealings with the Americans and Soviets, this article embraces Odd Arne Westad’s challenge for historians to discuss North-South and East-West issues together when covering the Cold War. As Westad summarizes, “Strangely enough … these two literatures have so far been mostly unconnected in an intellectual sense; they seem to speak past each other rather than engage across intellectual boundaries.”13 As such, my work stands alongside recent scholarship emanating primarily from the former Yugoslavia. I rely especially on contributions from Svetozar Rajak and Jovan Čavoški, who have crafted authoritative narratives about how and why nonalignment became a priority for Tito. Their work is the first to delve into the papers of Tito and those of the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry, both of which offer far richer accounts of Tito’s diplomacy than were available in previous decades. They detail how Tito masterminded Yugoslavia's transition from a relatively inconsequential Bolshevik satellite into a country with outsized global influence, especially in the Global South, where Tito became an indispensable “mediator in local disputes, interpreter of global political developments, articulator of Third World aspirations, and a champion of independence and anti-colonialism.”14 While my work relies on these contributions, it also differs in key ways. First, Tito is less prominent as the main actor in this article, as I instead focus on the actions of officials at lower rungs of the power structure: the administrators of JAT and the leadership of the Ministry of Transportation. American diplomats also receive ample attention, especially those charged with chronicling developments in Yugoslav civil aviation. This choice is not designed to diminish the overall role that Tito played. As Rajak correctly summarizes, “The Yugoslav leader was the sole arbiter of Yugoslavia’s foreign policy strategies. He maintained absolute control and held the firmest grip over Belgrade’s relations with Moscow.”15 The same is true for Tito’s role in relations with the United States, India, Egypt, and others in the Global South. What I add instead is an additional focal point in the early history of nonalignment: how Tito’s directives came to life in the concrete of runways and airport terminals, in the aluminum of aircraft fuselages, and in the penciled vectors of air routes drawn to link Belgrade with the world. To chronicle how Tito’s directives took shape in civil aviation, I consulted archives that others have yet to engage: primarily the papers of the Ministry of Transportation housed in the Archives of Yugoslavia in Belgrade. These papers elucidate how JAT began to furnish the connective sinew that linked large parts of the Global South together with Belgrade—and then connected the South onward to the Eastern and Western blocs. Following the insights of Benedict Anderson, Yugoslavia’s dual commitments to aviation and the Global South offered the potential for an “imagined community” to develop among these nonaligned nations.16 Rather than focusing directly on JAT’s and Yugoslavia’s golden age of aviation, the late 1960s to the 1980s, I instead focus on the preceding years, when decision-makers made the crucial choices and laid the vital foundations that forged a global aviation hub in Yugoslavia. Flight from the Soviet Orbit to the Western Periphery, 1947–1954 By the time Belgrade was liberated from the German military in late 1944, the country’s limited aviation infrastructure was in shambles. The Yugoslav Army operated the only air routes after the war, linking Belgrade to the republican capitals on a non-scheduled basis. Only in 1947 had rebuilding progressed enough to normalize civil aviation. In tandem with the country’s first Five-Year Plan of 1947, Belgrade’s Zemun Airport and other landing strips were returned to the Ministry of Transportation and its newly formed subdivision, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (known by its Serbian acronym GUCVS). Meanwhile, in a manner consistent with his deep commitment to the Soviet model of modernization, Tito’s leadership team forged a decidedly pro-Soviet path for civil aviation, albeit with a modicum of independence and a surprising degree of freethinking emanating from the GUCVS. In February 1947 the Yugoslav government entered a joint venture with the Soviet Union for civil aviation, ceding significant autonomy in exchange for immediate aid. The Soviets offered satellite states the opportunity to import aircraft, personnel, and funding to start up airlines, and several of them signed up.17 Yugoslavia’s partnership with the Soviets was typical of these joint ventures: the new airline—called JUSTA, an acronym for “Yugoslav-Soviet Joint-Stock Company for Civil Aviation”—relied on the Soviets for half of its administrative personnel and pilots, including the General Director and chief pilot. In addition, the Soviets injected five million dinars (about U.S. $50,000) into the company, with more funds promised to cover losses. The Soviets also supplied all eleven of JUSTA’s planes, Lisunov Li-2 aircraft, a version of the American-designed DC-3 produced under license during World War II.18 Establishing JUSTA fostered a decidedly eastward bent in Yugoslav aviation. In the highest-level pronouncement on air routes—a brief series of directives that Tito shared with Foreign Minister Leo Mates in April 1947—the dominant motifs were a focus on Eastern Europe and an antagonism toward the West, stances consistent with Tito’s acceptance of satellite status within the communist bloc. “We will certainly establish routes to Moscow, Albania, Poland, Bulgaria, and the ČSR [Czechoslovakia],” Tito instructed Mates, clearly prioritizing links with other communist countries. Routes to the West, in Tito’s view, were more conditional: “maybe [there will be routes to] Italy and Austria and westwards, to Paris. But all of this is a question for the Leadership.” Yet, if Yugoslav aviation were to move westwards, Tito insisted on avoiding subjugation to the already-dominant airlines based there. In this sense, his remarks betray not just anti-capitalist orthodoxy, but also an anti-colonial consciousness well suited for the future Non-Aligned Movement. Thus, in concluding bilateral air agreements with the West, Tito admonished, “Our Leadership agrees to establish international routes between Yugoslavia and other countries in which reciprocity is possible, taking into account our technical abilities, [but] we must be assured that reciprocity not be on paper, but in the air—that is, our aircraft [must] fly and not just foreigners’.”19 Despite cooperating with the Soviets, Yugoslavia in 1947 also exhibited more independence in its aviation politics than its neighbors. Along with JUSTA’s founding, Yugoslavia established a second airline, JAT Airways, which ran entirely without Soviet aid. Whereas JUSTA flew Soviet aircraft and employed a mix of Soviets and Yugoslavs, JAT flew DC-3s acquired via the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and employed exclusively Yugoslavs. Similar to Tito’s pursuit of Trieste and his involvement in Greece (though not on the same level as these perceived transgressions), the founding of JAT was another example of Yugoslavia’s independent, nationalist-inspired policies that annoyed Stalin and ultimately led to his break with Tito. In their brief months of co-existence, JAT and JUSTA coordinated routes, with JAT linking the republican capitals of Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, and Ljubljana and forging its first international link to Prague and onward to Warsaw. JUSTA, on the other hand, connected Belgrade with Titograd and Skopje, with more circuitous routings to Sarajevo and Zagreb as well. Its international routes led to Budapest, Bucharest, and Tirana, thereby linking Belgrade with almost all of Eastern Europe’s capitals. JUSTA significantly under-performed in its eighteen months in operation. Yugoslavs’ disappointment began immediately, when the promised Li-2 aircraft arrived a few months late, delaying the airline’s launch. By August 1947, when both JAT and JUSTA were expected to be fully operational, only JAT was meeting expectations. There were eight domestic routes during the busy late summer season; of these, JUSTA could operate just one daily flight between Belgrade and Titograd.20 All the while, JUSTA was incurring heavy losses, and both the Soviet and Yugoslav governments were making quarterly payments to cover them.21 It is also unclear how devoted the leadership of Yugoslavia’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation truly was to Tito’s desire to develop an eastward-oriented aviation sector. Immediately after its founding, a westernizing camp was active in GUCVS, led by its Director of Development, a certain Comrade Pudarić. The records of the Ministry of Transportation provide little additional information on Pudarić, not even his full name. They do mention that he was a member of the Communist Party and attribute his westward orientation to contacts established during his education in France and his service in the Royal Yugoslav Army during World War II while based in the United Kingdom. He later joined the Partisans’ guerrilla campaign against the Germans, Ustaše, and Četniks within Yugoslavia.22 In a meeting with Ministry of Tourism officials in December 1947, Pudarić laid out a plan to open Croatia's Adriatic coast to Western Europeans and make “tourist aviation the basis of our civil aviation transportation.” These tourists would serve as a catalyst for raising the number of air passengers from 30,000 in 1947 to 60,000 by 1949. Such growth would require expanding JAT's fleet of DC-3s to 20 and purchasing four aircraft with eight to ten seats for smaller coastal destinations (JUSTA either did not fit into these plans, or its Li-2 aircraft were deemed inadequate for Western tourists). As the most ambitious part of the plan, Pudarić added, “In 1949 we may procure amphibian aircraft as well, which could travel in-season,” making water landings in island harbors and other remote outposts.23 In the country’s East, Pudarić envisioned an even larger node of air traffic and prophetically provided the first vision for making Belgrade a crossroads between Western Europe and the Global South. Belgrade's aviation future was tied to “expanding connections with foreign countries: first with the West, then establishing routes to the Near East.”24 A state-of-the-art airport would be required for Belgrade, and Pudarić openly speculated that it would see as many as 120 takeoffs and landings in a given hour.25 Yet, because neither JAT nor JUSTA could sustain such traffic, allowing Western airlines into Belgrade was central to Pudarić’s strategy, a fact that placed his vision at odds with Tito’s directives. Nonetheless, by 1949 the GUCVS agreed to develop the new airport, though they did not draw up specific plans or select a site. It is unclear how much support these plans received beyond the GUCVS, especially whether Tito or officials in his inner circle signed off on them. Adding an additional layer of complexity, Pudarić was arrested in 1949 as an “enemy agent,” in part for his pro-Western attitudes. Nonetheless, developing civil aviation along western and southern lines remained the stated policy of the GUCVS throughout the ensuing decade.26 The tumult created in Yugoslavia by the Tito-Stalin split forced a significant rethinking of current realities and future plans. Overnight, the country’s closest ally and business partner in JUSTA had declared Tito an enemy. JUSTA continued to operate haphazardly for a few months, even as its leaders were called back to Moscow for long periods, part of a larger effort to eliminate Soviet economic activity in Yugoslavia. JUSTA’s subsidies also ended, leaving the airline insolvent by the end of 1948. In August 1949, the Yugoslavs and Soviets quietly negotiated an agreement to liquidate the company, with Yugoslavia’s new foreign minister, Edvard Kardelj, subsequently charging various ministries to implement the deal, even as the agreement itself went unpublished in the official organ of the government (Službeni List), presumably due to its sensitive and potentially embarrassing nature.27 The final deal was a calamitous ending for the first effort to jumpstart Yugoslav aviation. It allowed the Soviets to repatriate all of JUSTA’s property imported into Yugoslavia, leaving the GUCVS short of aircraft, manpower, and essential equipment at the country’s main airports. It also compelled the Yugoslavs to reimburse all of the Soviets’ original investment in JUSTA as well as the subsidies paid to cover the company’s losses.28 Thus, further demands were placed on the treasury, even as the industry’s expansion ground to a halt; only thirty-one percent of the Plan’s target for development of civil aviation in 1948 was achieved.29 The JUSTA debacle also mothballed the western- and southern-oriented vision articulated by Pudarić. Plans to build a new Belgrade airport were not officially abandoned, but they stalled until 1956. For the time being, Yugoslavia was placed in an uncomfortable middle ground between Europe’s East and West, with hostile neighbors surrounding it at nearly all points. By 1949, when Tito first received American aid, the country’s already limited aviation capacity and route networks had shrunk significantly. Gone were JUSTA’s aircraft and all of the country’s international air routes. The United States’ choice to support Tito in his moment of desperation was gradual. Of course, just a year before his split with Stalin, Tito joined all other East bloc leaders in declining aid from the Marshall Plan. However, just two days after the Cominform split, American diplomats envisioned a more active role in the country. In what ultimately became NSC paper 18, George Kennan wrote that the United States “would welcome a genuine emergence of Yugoslavia as a political personality in its own right,” even contemplating that the country could retain its commitment to communism without impeding the “normal development of economic relations” with the West.30 As the Cominform blockade tightened through 1949, the United States granted Yugoslavia a license to a steel blooming mill—a technology transfer that would not have been permitted earlier—and soon followed up with its first $20 million loan to Yugoslavia via the Export-Import Bank. Tito met these initial tentative steps with reciprocal cooperation, including support in the United Nations Security Council to protect South Korea from the North’s invasion. More outlays to bolster Yugoslavia soon followed, and would ultimately total almost $2.2 billion from 1949 through 1964.31 Much of this support involved military hardware: with Soviet troops massing on Yugoslavia’s frontiers, the United States opted to provide the country with advanced weaponry. Yugoslavia soon became a major beneficiary of the Mutual Security Act of 1951, the Marshall Plan’s successor designed exclusively to provide military aid to allies. With this move closer to, yet still at arms length from, the American orbit, Yugoslavia’s aviation development was impacted in key ways. American diplomats expressed grave concern for Yugoslavia’s loss of trading markets and advocated the opening of air routes to Western Europe, where its new economic partners would be. The Berlin Airlift, begun in April 1948, simultaneously heralded aviation’s potential to circumvent economic isolation, and both American and Yugoslav officials were eager to mimic certain features of this success, even if Yugoslavia lacked the same technological and financial resources. The Yugoslav government’s first overtures along these lines were addressed to neutral Switzerland in early 1949. By sealing a bilateral agreement based on reciprocity—JAT flew the route to Zurich on certain days and Swissair on others—Yugoslavia set a precedent for future dealings that would protect JAT as an equal partner, just as Tito desired. Yugoslavia’s next air agreement was even more vital: a bilateral treaty with the United States, signed in December 1949, that was among the first forms of cooperation between the two governments. The terms were even more favorable than the Swiss deal, reflecting American eagerness to promote Yugoslavia’s integration with the West. The treaty’s provisions allowed JAT access to three airports in the American occupation zones of Germany and Austria: Frankfurt, Munich, and Linz. Interline agreements with Pan Am on routes beyond Frankfurt also provided Yugoslavs connections further westward, to London, Paris, and New York.32 In exchange, one U.S. airline, Pan Am, received rights to fly to Belgrade, though Pan Am saw no potential profit and was scared away by the airport’s poor navigational equipment. The airline ultimately chose not to fly to Belgrade until 1963, but it did immediately capitalize on a far more lucrative concession: its exclusive right to overfly Yugoslav airspace on routes between Europe and the Middle East. As part of Pan Am’s famed round-the-world flights, the leg between Frankfurt and Istanbul previously meandered circuitously down the boot of Italy and across the Aegean. Under the new arrangement, the airline saved hours in the air and hundreds of gallons of fuel, thereby sealing a decisive competitive advantage over European airlines servicing these routes. As such, the treaty marked a modest first step in making Yugoslavia a crossroads between the West and Global South, though it benefitted a U.S. carrier and did not yet add any routes into Belgrade. Starting in the mid-1950s, however, Yugoslavia expanded this precedent by trading more overflight rights in exchange for new routes for JAT. European and Middle Eastern airlines thereby won more direct access between the two continents, while JAT expanded service to France, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and Lebanon without having to compete with more advanced airlines on these routes. In certain ways, the bilateral treaties with the Swiss and Americans were the easiest component of Yugoslavia’s progression toward a Westernized aviation sector. The DC-3s that JAT inherited back in 1947 had the range to fly to Zurich and Frankfurt with relative ease, and the closure of JAT’s Eastern European routes freed up the needed aircraft and personnel. Yet, on the ground, JAT and the GUCVS faced constant adversity in the first years after the Tito-Stalin split, since the country’s airports and navigational systems lagged far behind Western European standards. Through 1956 Belgrade’s Zemun Airport remained the lone civilian airstrip in the entire country with a paved runway—all others were just turf fields—and even it lacked navigational equipment for night landings. These conditions led American diplomat Melvin Turner, who oversaw Yugoslav civil aviation, to bemoan the industry’s state. Writing in 1952 to Ambassador George Allen in Belgrade, Turner noted, “We are all aware, I believe, that Jugoslav civil aviation … has been of considerable importance to Jugoslavia since its break with the East.” Despite this importance, Turner noted with frustration, “At the time this break appeared, Jugoslav civil aviation was in reality in the stone-age.”33 Turner and Allen held the losing side in a struggle within the diplomatic corps regarding aid for Yugoslav aviation. While the benefits of a more advanced industry seemed obvious to them, they failed to deliver any of the $300 million that the United States provided in the 1950s and 1960s to airlines in the developing world.34 Civil aviation in Yugoslavia also saw no funding from the Mutual Security Act (MSA). U.S. Military attachés in Belgrade even rejected Turner’s proposal to install state-of-the-art navigational equipment, an omni-directional radar system, near the Belgrade airport with MSA funds. The plans were no different from similar projects in Germany and Italy, benefitting both military and civilian aircraft. While the radar system alone would not cure Yugoslavia’s problems, Turner did expect that, “the installation of modern aviation facilities and navigational aids … will be of substantial benefit to a country that has been so completely void of modern aviation facilities as we know them.”35 In Yugoslavia’s case, however, Air Force officials balked, because no U.S. air bases existed in Yugoslavia and no military flights used Yugoslav air space. Turner and the Air Force were at an impasse. Both acted according to official U.S. policy supporting Tito’s regime, but their funding priorities were quite different. The military attachés saw Yugoslavia as part of the militarized Cold War and sought to create a deterrent to Soviet aggression. Meanwhile, Turner emphasized the country’s need to modernize in order to become a viable partner with the West and a convincing model to lure other satellites out of the Soviet orbit. As it was, MSA funding created a starkly bifurcated aviation infrastructure in Yugoslavia.36 By June 1953, the Yugoslav Air Force took delivery of the most advanced aircraft technology then available to U.S. allies: F-84G Thunderjet fighter planes, the same jets that fought Soviet MIGs to a standstill over Korea. Thus, Yugoslavia’s first jets were military hardware supplied by the United States at a fairly early date. These jets were housed at the Batajnica military base near Belgrade, just 15 kilometers from the civilian Zemun airport that was Turner’s source of concern. At Zemun night landings were still impossible, and propeller-driven DC-3s—which first debuted in 1935 and seated only 20 passengers—were the largest and most modern aircraft in service. The considerable priority that the United States placed on Yugoslavia’s military readiness versus its civilian aviation meant that one realm of aviation had entered the jet age while the other languished in the so-called stone age.37 Yugoslavia’s New Western Technology and Southern Ambitions, 1954–1962 Between 1954 and 1956 Yugoslavia engaged more intently with the Global South and moved closer towards nonalignment. Such developments were a sudden reversal from the country’s flirtation with a Western military alliance, sealed in February 1953, when it joined Turkey and Greece in the Balkan Pact. The Pact allied Yugoslavia with two NATO members, thereby effectively binding it militarily to NATO. Tito's alliance with Greece also illustrated the lengths he had travelled from his attempts to foment civil war there, to the displeasure of the Americans (and the Soviets). Yet, the Balkan Pact was short-lived. In August 1954 Tito withdrew, ostensibly due to increasing Greek-Turkish tensions in Cyprus, but also as a response to Stalin’s death a year earlier and overtures from the Khrushchev regime to improve relations. Thus, Tito’s final move toward neutrality—nonalignment in military terms with either of the Cold War blocs—came via withdrawal from a Western-oriented alliance and de facto entanglement with NATO. Destalinization in the Soviet Union was an essential precondition for this move, as it enabled Yugoslavia to coexist peacefully outside of either bloc, despite its precarious position in-between East and West. Soon thereafter, Tito sealed two additional agreements to further eliminate Yugoslavia’s geographical isolation: normalization of relations with Italy through resolution of the Trieste conflict (October 1954) and an official rapprochement with the Soviet Union (June 1955) that helped restore economic and political relations with its Eastern bloc neighbors. Italy was soon on its way to becoming Yugoslavia’s largest trading partner and a source of foreign currency and high-quality imports.38 Meanwhile, on Khrushchev’s state visit to Belgrade in 1955, Tito prevailed on him to admit Soviet fault for the 1948 break, recant the view that “Titoism” was heretical to communism, and accept Yugoslavia’s right to build socialism in its own way and to exercise autonomy in foreign affairs.39 Soon after the Belgrade Declaration, trade with the Eastern bloc was officially reopened. Thus, in economic and geopolitical terms, Tito achieved an impressive balance between East and West; trade with the East re-expanded to 30 percent of Yugoslavia’s totals, while trade with the West comprised another 60 percent or so.40 All the while, the United States remained poised to support Tito and to continue underwriting economic initiatives that bound Yugoslavia more tightly with the West. Given this improvement in its East-West relations, Tito was able to open another foreign policy front: a partnership with leaders from the Global South. While Yugoslav diplomats at the United Nations found common ground with nations such as India, Egypt, and Burma after being expelled from the Soviet bloc, these ties were tightened in 1954 thanks to Tito’s first tour of Asia and Africa. Meetings with Nehru, Nasser, and U Nu (of Burma) reinforced these states’ shared interests, each seeking increased freedom to resist great power influence while prioritizing economic modernization. Together, these leaders reasoned that they could curtail American and Soviet excesses, including the arms race and proxy wars in the developing world. Nonalignment—eschewing entangling alliances with either superpower—was crucial, as Tito explained to Nasser: “This policy of maintaining good relations with both sides is the only viable policy to safeguard independence. It is very dangerous for small countries just to lean to one side.”41 Thus, soon after Tito secured maneuvering room from Khrushchev and Dulles in face-to-face meetings in 1955, his summit at Brioni with Nehru and Nasser in July 1956 formalized Yugoslavia’s southern partnership. In explaining the basis of European Yugoslavia’s unlikely role in this new movement, a United States National Intelligence Estimate from 1961 summed up Yugoslavia’s appeal as “a small country which is vigorously modernizing itself [and] provides a model for economic development.” The report added that Yugoslavia’s success in pursuing neutrality while securing economic aid from both the Soviets and Americans further appealed to countries in the Global South, while “economic and technical aid from Yugoslavia allows them to minimize entanglement with the major blocs.”42 Yugoslavia’s growing partnerships with the postcolonial world thereby secured economic partnerships, which allowed the country’s economy to mature even further from a provider of raw materials and agricultural goods, to a manufacturer of finished goods, to a source of increasingly sophisticated products and technological expertise in fields like engineering. Ultimately, these economic ties would pay off handsomely for Yugoslavia; while under ten percent of its trade in 1957 was with the developing world, that figure increased to 15 percent by 1964 and well over 20 percent by the mid-1970s.43 With the flurry of diplomatic progress tying Yugoslavia simultaneously closer to the East, West, and South, new urgency arose in the country’s aviation sphere. It was left to GUCVS officials to convert Tito’s ambitious foreign policy vision into a viable aviation industry, replete with new airports and aircraft. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, they realized this vision with concrete, steel, new aircraft purchases, and diplomatic hardware, especially bilateral air agreements with various countries across the globe. These outlays required more of the treasury’s already overcommitted funds—an especially difficult request, since aviation consumed government subsidies from 20% to over 33% of JAT’s entire earnings each year in the 1950s (the subsidies totaled at least $1 million per year).44 The GUCVS’s planned investments in new airports, which were finally approved starting in 1956, required another 14 billion dinars (about $20 million at the 1960 exchange rate), even before factoring in the significant cost overruns.45 Meanwhile, GUCVS officials enjoyed speedier success updating JAT’s fleet of DC-3s. Starting in 1954 and continuing through 1962, the government assembled enough funds to purchase three generations of state-of-the-art Western aircraft: the American-built CV-340 and DC-6B in 1954 and 1958, respectively, and the French-built Caravelle jet in 1962. Each purchase enabled Yugoslavia to further its goal of becoming an aviation crossroads, while simultaneously emulating the quality of its Western competitors. The first of these purchases was a state-of-the-art two-engine plane designed for medium-length routes, the Convair 340 (CV-340). American diplomats monitoring JAT’s purchase of three CV-340s were perplexed by Yugoslavia’s willingness to spend so heavily and suggested an impolitic alternative. One State Department memo expressed skepticism about the economic prudence of the transaction, “The Embassy … does not believe the commercial value of JAT’s present foreign business warrants the indicated foreign exchange outlay at this time.” It then ended with a controversial assessment, “From a strictly economic viewpoint it would probably be more practical to have Pan American work out an arrangement with the Yugoslavs for the former to stop at Belgrade,” thereby effectively ceding all of Yugoslavia’s international routes to Pan Am.46 This “strictly economic viewpoint” would have consigned Yugoslavia to dependency on the United States and Pan Am. At a time when the country was progressing toward its commitment to nonalignment and the accompanying desire to see smaller countries remain free from subservience to the superpowers, it would have been hard to imagine Tito accepting such an arrangement. After all, having no international airline of its own would have provided Yugoslavia even less independence than during the JUSTA years. Nonetheless, the concern expressed for Yugoslavia’s financial outlay, which totaled over $2.4 million, was prescient. By late 1954, when the CV-340s were ready for delivery and the Yugoslavs owed 75% of the purchase amount for the final two planes, JAT informed the supplier that it would be unable to pay. The penalty was forfeiture of the full deposit. At that point, Secretary of State Dulles interjected, proposing that the Export-Import Bank could loan Yugoslavia the needed funds. His intentions were just as self-serving as altruistic. In terms consistent with Jeffrey Engel’s findings, Dulles primarily articulated concern for U.S. manufacturer Convair’s market share vis-à-vis its British competitor: “The Department is particularly desirous of taking all steps appropriate in an effort to enable the Convair aircraft to maintain its competitive position in foreign markets. This competitive position is being seriously threatened lately by the competition offered by the Vickers Company in England with its sale of the Viscount.”47 In the end, however, the Export-Import Bank was not needed. The Yugoslavs pulled together the funds and paid the remaining balance from its own Central Foreign Exchange Fund, taking delivery of its new fleet in August 1954. The first two years of JAT’s attempt at parity with Western airlines brought some successes in turning Belgrade into a global aerial crossroads. The Convairs enabled quicker access to Germany and other areas further westward, as JAT used the planes to open its first-ever routes to London and Paris. In addition, the CV-340s served as a pretext to establish bilateral agreements with Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, and Egypt, and to initiate the following routes: Belgrade-Istanbul-Beirut and Belgrade-Athens-Cairo, establishing JAT’s first routes to what would become the nonaligned heartlands of Asia and Africa. Particularly valuable for Tito’s foreign policy was the country’s first air connection with Nasser’s Egypt. Even before the two leaders became close partners, Yugoslavia had eyed Egypt as an important potential trading partner. It sealed its first agreements with the country in 1949 and again in 1950, soon after the break with Stalin. Much of this trade was premised on the fact that the two countries were at similar stages of modernization and produced complimentary raw materials (Egypt desired Yugoslav timber, while Yugoslavia needed Egyptian cotton for its textile industry). Yet, the 1950 agreement marked a new era for Yugoslav industry. The head Yugoslav negotiator enthusiastically reported that the Egypt treaty “is our first agreement which envisions the possibility to export products of our heavy industry.”48 The agreement later became the basis for negotiations with various countries in the Global South, many of which expressed interest in industrial products and, later on, technical expertise. Yugoslav-Egyptian trade continued growing during Nasser’s rule, as did political cooperation and educational and cultural exchanges. In terms of load factors (seats filled on routes) and profitability, the Belgrade-Cairo became JAT’s most successful route soon after its inauguration in 1955 and remained so through the rest of the decade.49 These successes were, however, tempered by JAT’s failures to service its new planes and adequately train its pilots. Just one year into service, two of the three CV-340s were disabled due to accidents. One plane was completely destroyed in an October 1955 crash in Austria that killed three people, while a second was damaged while landing at Belgrade just two weeks later. JAT stumbled into 1956 with one CV-340. As Yugoslavia’s Ministry for Transportation reported that May, “According to the established plan, repairs [on the damaged plane] were to be completed by February [1956], but due to slow delivery of parts, the repair work is extended to June.” Meanwhile, instead of expanding its international routes to include Rome, Moscow, and other Eastern European cities, as originally planned, “The absence of the third CV 340, which was destroyed in 1955, forced JAT to eliminate the route to Beirut.”50 Rather than JAT capitalizing on the Khrushchev-Tito rapprochement by re-inaugurating flights to the Eastern bloc, the new CV-340s instead served as a cautionary tale: that modernization in aviation required increased financial outlays and professional expertise. In meetings with U.S. officials, an advisor to the GUCVS, Branko Bakić, noted that, “had JAT not been so eager to fly the new Convairs and heeded the Directorate’s urgings to move slowly in the training of pilots and ground crew, these aircraft might perhaps be in the sky today.”51 While it might be anticipated that Yugoslavia’s growing foreign policy drift eastward and southward would discourage the State Department from further assistance, this was not so. Instead, American diplomats sprang into action to help restore JAT’s full fleet, even though their support was not ultimately needed. These officials fixated particularly on JAT’s attempts to open flights to Moscow. Convair was preparing to deliver a newer version of its 340 aircraft, the CV-440, to the U.S. Air Force in June 1956, right when JAT’s other damaged aircraft would also return to service. If the Air Force ceded its plane to JAT, the airline could maintain its existing routes and proceed with its expansion eastward. In a memo to the U.S. Department of Defense, a U.S. diplomat described this arrangement as advantageous for both Convair and the U.S. government. First, he noted, “a generous gesture to the Yugoslavs at this time would pay sizable political dividends in improved United States-Yugoslav political relations,” while also helping Yugoslavia maintain foreign exchange earnings. In addition, the move would, “be of some propaganda value to us to have these modern American-built aircraft fly into Soviet bloc cities, especially Moscow.” The official concluded with the assessment that helping JAT in this case is “very much in our national interest.”52 In the end, delivery of JAT’s replacement Convair was delayed until February 1957, and as such did not inconvenience the Air Force. Meanwhile, the hot-and-cold nature of Yugoslavia’s relations with the Soviets forced JAT to delay inauguration of its Moscow route. The thaw formalized by Khrushchev’s Belgrade visit and then Tito’s return visit to Moscow in June 1956 did not last long after the Red Army’s intervention in Hungary in October 1956. While Tito publicly supported Khrushchev’s moves against the Nagy government, especially after an impromptu meeting between Khrushchev and Tito during the heart of the crisis, the blatant intervention in a sovereign country’s affairs was increasingly inconsistent with Tito’s commitment to nonalignment and starkly reminiscent of Soviet threats leveraged against him back in 1948. Tensions between the two countries resurfaced publicly in November 1957, when the Soviets sought to celebrate the Revolution’s fortieth anniversary with a joint declaration from all communist parties, including Yugoslavia’s, that the Soviet Party was the avant-garde of world communism. Tito saw this demand as a violation of Khrushchev’s agreement to respect Yugoslavia’s pursuit of its own path, so he distanced himself from the Soviets.53 Ultimately, JAT did not fly to Moscow until 1965, though it did reopen certain routes to Eastern Europe. Instead, JAT’s routes westward and southward—to London, Paris, Cairo, and Beirut—returned to their regular frequency. That Yugoslavia restored its southern routes while U.S. diplomats trumpeted JAT’s potential Moscow route shows the two countries’ diverging focus by the late 1950s. Yugoslavia’s next aircraft purchase rendered an even more ambivalent response from U.S. diplomats. Already in 1956, despite its cash-starved position, the Yugoslav government held negotiations with the Douglas Corporation for the purchase of what would be JAT’s first four-engine planes, the DC-6B. These aircraft were massive for their time, boasting up to 89 seats (rather than the CV-340’s 40 seats) and a range of over 5,000 kilometers. Conceivably, purchasing DC-6Bs could have allowed JAT to open routes to the United States, a prospect that did not excite U.S. diplomats or Pan Am. Just as Pan Am opted not to exercise its landing rights in Belgrade back in 1949, it still was unwilling to do so in the mid-1950s. Fearing that JAT’s move to open flights to New York would force its hand, Pan Am requested that U.S. diplomats, “delay concrete negotiations with the Yugoslavs until after the Surčin Airport [in Belgrade] has been completed,” which would not occur until 1962. Pan Am, fearing losses on this low-demand route, added that it, “will delay establishing a stop in Belgrade until such time as the United States Government is prepared to subsidize the stop.”54 Knowing the prospects for a route to the United States were remote, U.S. diplomats wondered why Yugoslavia would purchase two of these aircraft, with a combined price tag of $2.4 million. The possibility that they would serve tourists was diminished by the fact that only Yugoslavia’s military airports near Belgrade and Zagreb could handle the DC-6B, since Belgrade’s Zemun Airport and all other domestic airfields did not have adequate runways (though Zemun’s runway was reinforced in 1958).55 These limitations led to speculation that the planes were actually, “not desired for JAT use but for some other government use,” especially when the Douglas Corporation reported that the Yugoslavs were paying cash for the planes and still another confidential source reported (accurately, as it turns out) that the Yugoslav Army paid for the planes.56 When the Army took delivery, one plane was provided to JAT for its longest existing route westward and southward, Paris-Belgrade-Cairo, while the other was fitted with luxury finishes and reserved for Tito’s travels. The purchase seemed premature given that the new Surčin Airport still was not complete; however, Tito’s next planned state visit to the Far East, which lasted from December 1958 until February 1959, was the true basis for such haste. Indeed, ownership of the DC-6Bs ultimately served two key functions in Yugoslav aviation’s move toward the South: permitting Tito to coordinate preparations for the 1961 Belgrade Conference, while also enabling the foundation of new air routes to Africa and the Middle East. American diplomats dismissed the purchase, especially after its connection with Tito’s travels came to light. In a cable to Secretary of State Dulles in November 1958, an official at the Embassy in Belgrade belittled Tito’s travels on behalf of the nascent Non-Aligned Movement: the “Yugoslavs place great store by [the] prestige value [of] such visits, seemingly out of proportion [to] their substantive worth.” While admitting these expeditions’ potential to “enhance [the] regime[’s] position at home and increase [its] influence on [the] world scene,” these efforts were nonetheless dismissed as examples of the excessive “importance they attach to [the] prestige factor.” The purchase of the DC-6Bs was therefore a lamentable example of Yugoslavia’s financial indiscipline, demonstrating the government’s choice to “spend [a] significant portion [of] their meager foreign exchange reserves for aircraft having virtually no commercial justification.” From such a reaction, a few factors in U.S. thinking on Yugoslavia are clear: a lack of sympathy for Tito’s foreign policy goals in the postcolonial world, a frustration with Yugoslavia’s spendthrift practices, and a strong prioritization of “commercial justification” for aircraft purchases over attempts to secure the “regime’s position at home and increase its influence on the world scene.”57 GUCVS officials echoed at least one aspect of the Embassy’s concerns: they saw only limited commercial potential for the DC-6Bs. The Director of the GUCVS addressed the Supreme Executive Council (the federal government’s highest authority) in 1956 about the proposed purchase and provided conditions under which JAT could profitably operate these aircraft. He was very clear that such conditions did not yet exist: four aircraft—not one—were needed to assure adequate backups for overseas routes, bilateral treaties with overseas countries still needed to be negotiated, and Belgrade’s new airport needed to open by the time of delivery. His conclusion was unequivocal: “These investment requirements are premature for our abilities. It is particularly necessary to study the economic feasibility for transoceanic flights, given the competition with strong companies,” that would be inevitable on such routes.58 Given the fluctuating state of aviation, however, it was difficult to distinguish between a “prestige” project and a potentially profitable undertaking. Certainly, unlike its major Eastern European competitors, Aeroflot and ČSA (Czechoslovak Airlines), Yugoslav officials wanted their international routes to be profitable. Thus, when a U.S. diplomat queried a GUCVS official about whether JAT would use its DC-6Bs to fly to new destinations in the Near East, Africa, or Asia, the answer was no: “He went on to say that that wasn’t where the business was,” an answer that was true when uttered, but would change as Yugoslav involvement in these regions increased.59 Indeed, U.S. officials in Belgrade eventually recanted their incrimination of the DC-6B purchase. Two years later, Yugoslav authorities were in the market for more DC-6Bs and its first civilian jet aircraft, at which point an Embassy official acknowledged, “The success of the DC6 on the Paris and Cairo runs, which was originally viewed as a prestige move, may be stimulating Yugoslav interest in acquiring jets for more extensive route coverage.”60 In fact, the DC-6B played an essential role in Yugoslav aviation’s penetration of the Global South. JAT and its new domestic competitor, Adria Airlines, founded in August 1961 by the Slovenian government and various Slovene investors, used a growing cadre of DC-6Bs to link Belgrade with these countries. Both airlines found such routes to be increasingly viable, justifying the sizable payloads of 80-plus passengers (or a mix of passengers and cargo).61 Because it operated mainly as a charter airline, Adria was particularly adept at exploiting new routes, since charters had greater freedom to amend destinations, restrict or increase frequencies, and transport cargo over passengers. After purchasing four used DC-6Bs in 1961, Adria initiated flights to Tunis, Conakry, and Leopoldville. In its correspondence with the U.S. Embassy, Adria executives detailed plans to acquire more DC-6Bs, so that it could add additional routes to West Africa, Ethiopia, the Middle East, and East Asia, as well as to Western Europe.62 JAT also occasionally operated charters to Africa in its Army-owned DC-6B, though it did not inaugurate any additional scheduled routes to countries beyond Egypt until a few years later. When it took delivery of its next-generation planes in 1962—its first three jet aircraft manufactured in France by Caravelle—it followed the same plan for its earlier DC-6Bs, placing its state-of-the-art planes on its lucrative route to Cairo, as well as its routes to Beirut, London, and Paris. Thus, the Caravelle did not open new routes to the South, so much as enhance JAT’s competitiveness on its pre-existing high-revenue lines. Importantly, the Caravelle would also ultimately open JAT’s new route to Moscow in 1965, thereby linking the premiere capital of the East with its route network. U.S. diplomats’ reactions to Yugoslav airlines’ new southern routes were mostly acquiescent. They took note of them in their cables, but typically provided little additional commentary on the consequences of this expansion. Only in one case did JAT’s and Adria’s flights raise alarm, after JAT flew into the Congo following Patrice Lumumba’s assassination. The plane landed at Stanleyville, where the Lumumbist leader Antoine Gizenga had established a secessionist republic and proclaimed his pro-Soviet leanings, much to the consternation of the United States and its Belgian allies. Ostensibly focused on providing humanitarian relief—bringing medical aid to the city under U.N. supervision and airlifting schoolchildren back to Yugoslavia—JAT’s flight led U.S. diplomats to suspect otherwise. The diplomats chided U.N. officials for failing to inspect the crates of pharmaceutical supplies, convinced that weaponry or communications equipment was being smuggled to the rebels. As some bemoaned that the U.N. officials “had not been zealous … in their control of Yugoslav importation,” others worked on discrediting the humanitarian nature of the airlift of children. The U.S. Embassy in Leopoldville reported that the “scholarships apparently [were] based on political influence of families rather than on either need or scholastic aptitude.” Even after the Stanleyville uprising was foiled, American officials remained suspicious of Yugoslav charters in the region. Adria’s cargo flights to Tunis and onward to Leopoldville were also suspected of running small arms to the region.63 Perhaps the most telling example of Yugoslav aviation’s southward strategy during the early 1960s involved Adria’s application for a new route to the Maghreb in June 1962. Originally envisioned as a single route from Belgrade to Tunis and onward to Algiers and Casablanca, the ultimate result was a bit different: Tunis became part of its occasional charter route to Leopoldville in 1962, while Algiers became a separate destination in 1964 and Morocco was ultimately omitted altogether. Timed with Algeria’s imminent declaration of independence, Adria’s report demonstrates the close relationship between Yugoslavia’s foreign policy, the opening of Belgrade’s Surčin Airport, and Yugoslav airlines’ expansion into nonaligned countries. The proposal added new flourish in describing Belgrade’s lucrative geographic position, now referring to the city as the “predestined starting point” and “natural crossroad” for routes between East Central Europe and new destinations in the South.64 The source of such optimism was the opening of the new airport just two months earlier, in April 1962. Surčin was built to the highest international standards and with jet travel in mind, so that it could compete successfully against—and siphon off business from—its main competitors, Rome and Athens, for European routes to Africa and Asia. Coupled with extensive projects to improve runways and terminals across the country—in Dubrovnik, Zagreb, and Ljubljana—the completion of Surčin marked a significant turning point in Yugoslav aviation’s transition from the so-called “stone age” (in the words of U.S. diplomat Turner) to the jet age.65 Writing almost a decade after Turner’s gloomy assessment, U.S. diplomats in 1961 concluded, “On the whole the future of civil aviation in Yugoslavia looks reasonably bright,” requiring only regular expansion, “in order to make civil aviation in Yugoslavia of a first-class type.”66 These advances came without significant direct financial assistance from the United States, though the Export-Import Bank stood ready at various moments to be a lender of last resort. One immediate result of Surčin’s opening was a boom in the number of transcontinental flights landing in Belgrade, mainly from non-Yugoslav carriers. Indeed, Yugoslav officials placed a new demand on the numerous airlines flying in its airspace: one-third of all overflights now had to stop in Belgrade, where customers could, if they chose, embark or disembark. This stipulation led Pan Am, British Airways, KLM, Sabena, and certain Middle Eastern carriers to open service to Belgrade on their routes between Western Europe and the Middle East. It also led Aeroflot to land its state-of-the-art Tupelov-114 jet—the most advanced passenger jet in the world—on its route between Moscow, Accra, and Havana in late 1962.67 Adria’s executives found an additional motive for their expansion in North Africa besides the new airport: “The nonalignment of [Yugoslavia] in international relations is an additional contributing factor that strengthens Belgrade Airport’s already optimal location as the crossroads … between Central Europe and the Maghreb.” Because Tito’s government had long supported Algerian independence, even supplying arms and forging a trade agreement with the Transitional Algerian Authority, Yugoslavia was now primed to become a key economic partner for the new nation. As Adria’s executives saw it, “Since the countries of the Maghreb will be economically strongly tied to and dependent on France for several more years, there arises the political and economic necessity that they establish good political and trade relations with the countries of Eastern Europe. Thus, the natural [geographical] bridge aligns with the political, and leads to [Yugoslavia], more precisely to Belgrade Airport.”68 In determining the route’s frequency, Adria stressed that these countries’ “economic structure and level of development contributes, to a certain extent, an economic complementarity, such that the material conditions exist to increase the traffic in foreign trade.”69 It was therefore credible for Adria to envision either once-weekly or twice-weekly flights filled with “mainly business people—merchants—and then diplomatic officials and couriers, engineers [providing] technical assistance, and cultural-artistic groups.”70 The executives forecast the route to turn a profit by its second year, as long as other Eastern European carriers—especially Aeroflot or ČSA—stayed out of these markets.71 After a two-year delay, Adria initiated once-weekly service between Belgrade and Algiers. In its first two months the airline flew its DC-6Bs at capacity, carrying over 2,000 passengers.72 Adria’s success on this new route, which JAT eventually took over as part of its scheduled service, demonstrates how Surčin’s opening, coupled with the continued development of a southern-focused foreign policy, opened the door for further expansion into North Africa and the Middle East. Flights from Belgrade to Tripoli, Baghdad, Kuwait, and Damascus would follow in the 1970s, making JAT a significant presence wherever Yugoslavia’s political affinities coincided with trade prospects and lucrative engineering contracts. Conclusion: Yugoslavia as Wedge vs. Yugoslavia as Crossroads Stopping the historical clock in 1962 exposes a significant rift between Yugoslavia’s own perception of its geopolitical position and that of U.S. diplomats. The Americans saw Yugoslavia as a wedge between East and West. Ideally for the United States, this wedge would, on the one hand, play an important passive role. Simply being stuck (wedged) between the two blocs had real advantages for the United States’ containment strategy, as Yugoslavia could be treated as a military partner rather than an adversary. On the other hand, policymakers hoped that Yugoslavia would also serve U.S. purposes in an active capacity. In this sense, Yugoslavia would be a wedge that could pry loose other items that were stuck, in this case other Soviet satellites yearning for independence from the U.S.S.R. U.S. diplomats thereby treated Yugoslavia as one of its most effective potential tools in containing communism and breaking up the Eastern bloc. Diplomatic historians who have written on Yugoslavia have rightly adopted this same view, seeing the country as wedged in-between West and East. From this perspective, U.S. relations with Yugoslavia are noteworthy mainly for the radical departures from ideological orthodoxy that both partners exhibited to make the wedge strategy work. Communist Yugoslavia embraced elements of market capitalism, opened its borders, and became a de facto client state (militarily and economically) of the United States. Meanwhile, the United States refrained from condemning Tito’s authoritarian communism and remained quiet during his efforts to rebuild relations with the Soviets, all the while propping up his regime with significant aid. Historian H. W. Brands cites this flexibility toward Tito as an American endorsement of Yugoslav nonalignment. The key for Brands was that nonalignment was an anti-Soviet foreign policy that therefore served American priorities in the Cold War.73 For Yugoslavia in 1962, however, nonalignment was not just directed against the Soviets, nor was it a pro-Soviet strategy developed by Tito to improve his relations with Moscow, as Lampe and others suggest. Instead, the policy placed Yugoslavia in a geopolitical position that was far more meaningful than a wedge between East and West. Nonalignment allowed Yugoslavia to forge deep political ties and economic relations with similarly situated countries in the Global South, who were struggling to maintain their newfound political independence against Soviet and American infringement and striving for rapid economic development. Thus, Yugoslavia’s nonalignment was far more involved than Switzerland’s, Sweden’s, Austria’s, or Finland’s European-style neutrality, which existed solely in relation to the East-West axis that split Europe in two. Yugoslavia’s nonalignment instead offered an opportunity to radically reorient the country’s geographical position from being consigned to Europe’s margins to sitting at the world’s crossroads between East, West, and South. While nonalignment certainly afforded Yugoslavia the European-style neutrality that allowed it to maintain political and economic ties with both East and West, it always entailed far deeper commitments in the context of its partnerships with the Global South. Here, it was a political, economic, and cultural common project to sustain independence and foster prosperity in a world dominated by two entities that did not necessarily share these aspirations. One of the most hopeful moments for this vision came in September 1961, at the Belgrade Conference, the first global summit of nonaligned leaders and nations. Twenty-one leaders from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Southern Africa, North Africa, and South America descended on Belgrade’s Surčin Airport to be greeted by their host, Tito. Despite construction overruns that prevented a grand opening before the conference, the new airport’s runways were operational, and its nearly-complete terminal building—surrounded by state-of-the-art aircraft, especially Yugoslavia’s own DC-6Bs—served as an impressive backdrop attesting to the country’s continuing accession into the realm of modernized nations. Within the year, Adria and JAT would employ their DC-6Bs and JAT’s new Caravelle jets on commercial ventures to Cairo, Beirut, Tunis, and Leopoldville, with more destinations in Africa and the Middle East soon to come. Thus, Yugoslavia’s airlines—especially its flag-carrier JAT—were important players in establishing Yugoslavia as a global crossroads. Their routes and planes were the modern day vehicles that allowed transnational networks to form, linking Belgrade with the East, West, and South. Compared to the works published on American reactions to Yugoslavia’s East-West nonalignment (its status as a wedge), surprisingly little is recorded about Yugoslavia’s nonalignment status as a crossroads. Hopefully, this examination of JAT—Yugoslavia’s “nonaligned airline” that lurched eastward, then westward, and finally southward in the first postwar decades—will open new paths for diplomatic historians to consider this alternative rendering of Cold War geopolitics. 1. " As quoted in Albert Reiss, ed., Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics (Chicago, IL, 1993), 83. 2. " On nonalignment generally, see Rinna Kullaa, Non-Alignment and its Origins in Cold War Europe: Yugoslavia, Finland and the Soviet Challenge (New York, 2012) and Nataša Mišković, Harald Fisher-Tiné, and Nada Boškovska, The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War: Delhi-Bandung-Belgrade (New York, 2014). The term “Global South” is far from perfect, especially because certain economically more advanced countries (Australia, New Zealand, Singapore) are located further south than other highly developed realms in Europe, Japan, and North America. Here, I use the term to refer to postcolonial countries struggling with inadequate economic development from the 1950s onward, especially those concentrated in Africa and Asia. Many of these same countries participated in the 1955 Bandung Conference and its latter iterations, including the distinct, but nonetheless related Non-Aligned Movement that sought a modicum of independence for these nations vis-à-vis the Eastern and Western blocs. These efforts to forge solidarity across the developing world were at times joined by countries in the Americas. 3. " Christopher Lee, ed., Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives (Athens, OH, 2010), 18. 4. " On Europe’s racialized perception of Slavic inferiority, see Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York, 2009). 5. " JAT Airways, The Story of Yugoslav Airlines: 40 Years of Yugoslav Airlines, 60 Years of Civil Aviation in Yugoslavia (Belgrade, 1987), 9. 6. " On the abolition of visa requirements, see “Beyond Dictatorship,” Time, January 20, 1967, 40. 7. " William Zimmerman, Open Borders, Nonalignment, and the Political Evolution of Yugoslavia (Princeton, NJ, 1987), 80. 8. " Jenifer Van Vleck, Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy (Cambridge, MA, 2013); Jeffrey Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet: The Anglo-American Fight for Aviation Supremacy (Cambridge, MA, 2007); Giles Scott-Smith and David Snyder, “‘A Test of Sentiments’: Civil Aviation, Alliance Politics, and the KLM Challenge in Dutch-American Relations,” Diplomatic History 37, no. 5 (November 2013): 917–45. 9. " John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York, 1987); Zimmerman, Open Borders; H. W. Brands, Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1947–1960 (New York, 1989); Lorraine Lees, Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War (University Park, PA, 1997); John Lampe, Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country (New York, 2000). 10. " The original discussion of the “wedge” strategy is found in Gaddis, The Long Peace, 152–94. 11. " Svetozar Rajak provides the most authoritative account of Yugoslavia’s relations with the Soviets in the 1950s, including how Tito’s embrace of nonalignment fit into the context of these relations. Rajak, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in the Early Cold War: Reconciliation, Comradeship, Confrontation, 1953–1957 (New York, 2010). 12. " Lampe, Yugoslavia as History, 272. Lampe follows the earlier work of Alvin Rubinstein on this point, Rubinstein, Yugoslavia and the Nonaligned World (Princeton, NJ, 1970), 155–83, 214. The claim is based on the Soviets’ interests in forging closer ties with countries like Egypt or Algeria in the aftermath of their partnerships with Yugoslavia. As such, Yugoslav nonalignment potentially benefitted the Soviets by easing their entry into certain regions. 13. " Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York, 2005), 7. 14. " See especially Jovan Čavoški, “Between Great Powers and Third World Neutralists: Yugoslavia and the Belgrade Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement, 1961,” in The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War; and Rajak, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The quote is from Rajak, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 205. 15. " Rajak, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 2. 16. " Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983). 17. " In addition to JUSTA other airlines founded under this model were: TARS of Romania, TABSO of Bulgaria, and Maszovlet of Hungary. 18. " The 5 million dinars figure is found in Protocol, “Protokol o likvidaciji Jugoslovensko-Sovjetskog dunavskog parobrodarskog akcionarskog društva ‘JUSPAD’ i Jugoslovenskog-Sovjetskog akcionarskog društva za civilno vazduhoplovstvo ‘JUSTA,’” August 31, 1949, 1, Fond Number 290, Fond Name: Društvo za civilno vazduhoplovstvo—JUSTA, Subset 4, Archives of Yugoslavia (Arhiv Jugoslavije), Belgrade, Serbia (hereafter AJ). 19. " The directives from Tito to Mates are not found in the Ministry of Transportation’s holdings. Instead, they are quoted post facto in Report from Komisija državne kontrole vlade FNRJ, “Izveštaj o pregledu Glavne uprave civilnog vazdušnog saobraćaja i njezinih preduzeća,” January 1949, 4, Fond Number 190, Fond Name: Komisija državne kontrole vlade FNRJ, 1946-1951, Subset 160-1611, AJ. All translations from the Serbian are my own. 20. " Chart from Ministarstvo saobraćaja, “Red Letenja na unutrašnim linijama sa važnošću počev od 18.8.1947,” undated, Fond Number 50, Fond Name: Istorijska beleška fonda vlade FNRJ—Predsedništva Vlade 1944–1953, Subset 85-181, AJ. 21. " Financial projections for the second quarter of 1947 envisioned a total operating budget of 26.5 million dinars for JUSTA, of which the Soviets were to provide 4 million dinars as a subsidy. Report from Ministarstvo saobraćaja, “Zbirni Finansiski Plan ‘JUSTA-e’ za II tromesečje 1947 g.,” April 30, 1947, Fond Number 290, Subset 3, AJ. 22. " These biographical details are found in Report from Komisija državne kontrole vlade FNRJ, “Kadrovi u Glavnoj upravi za vazdušni saobraćaj,” February 28, 1949, Fond Number 190, Subset 160-1611, AJ. 23. " Report from Glavna uprava za turizam, “Zapisnik po pitanjima civilnog vazdušnog saobraćaja, održane na poziv Glavne uprave za turizam u Beogradu,” December 15, 1947, 5, Fond Number 290, Subset 2, AJ. 24. " Report from Glavna uprava za turizam, December 15, 1947, 12, Fond Number 290, Subset 2, AJ. 25. " This figure comes from Report from Filimena Mihajlovna, “Kratak izveštaj o pregledu Glavne uprave civilnog vazdušnog saobraćaja,” December 29, 1948, 2, Fond Number 190, Subset 160-1611, AJ. 26. " On accusations against Pudarić, see Report, “Kadrovi u Glavnoj upravi za vazdušni saobraćaj,” February 28, 1949. 27. " The agreement itself is found in Protocol, “Protokol o likvidaciji Jugoslovensko-Sovjetskog dunavskog parobrodarskog akcionarskog društva ‘JUSPAD’ i Jugoslovenskog-Sovjetskog akcionarskog društva za civilno vazduhoplovstvo ‘JUSTA,’” August 31, 1949, Fond Number 290, Subset 4, AJ. Kardelj’s orders to various ministries and the choice not to publish the agreement are found in Letter from Edvard Kardelj to “Drugu Ministru Saobraćaja FNRJ,” September 2, 1949, Fond Number 290, Subset 4, AJ. 28. " The Yugoslavs owed the Soviets a total of 28.5 million dinars. Protocol, “Protokol o likvidaciji,” August 31, 1949. 29. " Report from Komisija državne kontrole vlade FNRJ, “Izveštaj o pregledu Glavne uprave civilnog vazdušnog saobraćaja i njezinih preduzeća,” January 1949, Fond Number 190, Subset 160-1611, AJ. 30. " Quoted by Lees, Keeping Tito Afloat, 53. 31. " Lampe, Yugoslavia as History, 273. 32. " Agreement, “Rešenje o potvrdi Sporazuma o vazdušnom saobraćaju između Federativne Narodne Republike Jugoslavije i Sjedinjenih Američkih Država,” December 24, 1949, Fond Number 50, Subset 65-146, Folder: S.A.D., AJ. 33. " Memorandum, Milton M. Turner to George V. Allen, July 29, 1952, file 968.52/7-2952, 1950–54 Central Decimal File, Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State (hereafter RG 59), National Archives (hereafter NARA). 34. " For an analysis of how Yugoslavia was able to benefit from U.S. military aid more easily than civilian-oriented aid, see Brands, Specter of Neutralism, 167. On U.S. foreign aid to airlines, see Jenifer Van Vleck, “An Airline at the Crossroads of the World: Ariana Afghan Airlines, Modernization, and the Global Cold War,” History and Technology, 25, no. 1 (March 2009): 3. 35. " Turner to Allen, July 29, 1952, 968.52/7-2952, 1950–54 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 36. " Lampe notes that MSA support for Yugoslavia from 1951–54 averaged $173 million per year and dropped to an average of $26 million from 1955–58 before ending entirely. Lampe, Yugoslavia as History, 274. 37. " Turner to Allen, July 29, 1952, 968.52/7-2952, 1950–54 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 38. " Lampe, Yugoslavia as History, 277. 39. " Rajak, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 121. 40. " Lampe, Yugoslavia as History, 269, 278. 41. " Tito’s comments to Nasser from December 29, 1955, as quoted by Jovan Čavoški, “Between Great Powers,” 188. 42. " “Outlook for Yugoslavia—NIE 15-61,” May 23, 1961, as quoted in Čavoški, “Between Great Powers,” 187. 43. " Zimmerman, Open Borders, 33. 44. " Report from Milan Simović, Direktor Preduzeća JAT-a, to Saveznom izvršnom veću, Sekretarijat za saobraćaj i veze, “Rešenje o načinu upotrebe dotacije JAT-u,” April 11, 1956, 3, Fond Number 599, Fond Name: Savezni secretariat za saobraćaj i veze, Subset F-194, AJ. In 1962 JAT’s total income was 5.214 billion dinars, of which 1.05 billion (20%) was a state subsidy, see Report from Jugoslovenski Aerotransport, “JAT: Predloženi plan za 1962 godinu,” undated, Fond Number 599, Subset F-193, AJ. 45. " Memorandum from Uprava civilnog vazduhoplovstva to Sekretarijatu SIV-a za saobraćaj i veze, “Predmet: Predlog za obrazovanje Direkcije aerodrome u izgradnji kao investitora za sve civilne aerodrome u Jugoslaviji,” February 16, 1960, 1, Fond Number 599, Subset F-193, AJ. 46. " U.S. Embassy Yugoslavia to Department of State, Despatch 336, November 4, 1952, file 968.526/11-452, 1950–54 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 47. " Department of State to U.S. Embassy Yugoslavia, Instruction A-2, July 1, 1954, file 968.526/7-154, 1950–54 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. Engel examines similar examples of competition between U.S. and U.K. manufacturers. See especially Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 1–16. 48. " Report from P. Tomić, Šef trgovinske delegacije FNRJ, “Izveštaj o trgovinskim pregovorima sa Egiptom (17 juni–7 avgust 1950),” undated, 12, Fund Number 50, Subset 65-146, Folder: Egipat. AJ. 49. " On load factor see Report from Savezni zavod za statistiku, “Saobraćaj i veze 1958,” undated, 120, Fund Number 599, Subset F-129, AJ. On profitability see Report from Uprava civilnog vazduhoplovstva, “Razmatranje o planu vazdušnog saobraćaja za 1960 godinu,” undated, 29, Fund Number 599, Subset F-193, AJ. 50. " Report from Sekretarijat za saobraćaj i veze, “Analiza kretanja vazdušnog saobraćaja u I kvartalu 1956 godine,” May 19, 1956, 2, Fund Number 599, Subset F-193, AJ. 51. " U.S. Embassy Yugoslavia to Department of State, Despatch 247, December 10, 1958, file 968.72/12-1058, 1955–59 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 52. " Letter, Jacob Beam, Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, to Gordon Gray, Assistant Secretary of Defense, February 1, 1956, file 968.726/2-156, 1955–59 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 53. " Lampe, Yugoslavia as History, 269. 54. " The expectation of subsidies was not unusual for Pan Am on routes where they envisioned economic losses. U.S. Embassy Yugoslavia to Department of State, Despatch 142, September 8, 1961, file 968.72/9-861, 1960–63 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 55. " See U.S. Embassy Yugoslavia to Secretary of State, Airgram B00956, December 10, 1958, file 968.7200/12-1058, 1955–59 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 56. " Department of State to U.S. Embassy Yugoslavia, Telegram 04737, July 10, 1957, file 968.726/7-1057, 1955–59 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. On the cash payment, see Department of State to U.S. Embassy Yugoslavia, Telegram 15984, July 31, 1957, file 968.726/7-3157, 1955–59 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. On the Yugoslav Army paying for the planes, see Department of State to U.S. Embassy Yugoslavia, Telegram 18227, July 30, 1957, file 968.726/7-3057, 1955–59 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 57. " Department of State to U.S. Embassy Yugoslavia, Airgram B0044, November 3, 1958, file 968.72/11-358, 1955–59 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 58. " Report from Sekretarijat za saobraćaj i veze, “Informacija o problematici civilnog vazduhoplovstva,” undated, 4, Fond Number 599, Subset F-193, AJ. 59. " U.S. Embassy Yugoslavia to Department of State, Despatch 247, December 10, 1958, file 968.72/12-1058, 1955–59 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 60. " U.S. Embassy Yugoslavia to Secretary of State, Airgram B01312, June 17, 1960, file 968.726/6-1760, 1960–63 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 61. " On Yugoslavia’s increasing economic growth and consumption from the 1950s through the 1960s, see Patrick Hyder Patterson, Bought and Sold: Living and Losing the Good Life in Socialist Yugoslavia (Ithaca, NY, 2011). 62. " Adria’s initial routes are discussed in Report from Mirko Zlatnar, “Informacija o dosadašnjoj poslovnoj saradnji sa JAT-om,” July 13, 1962, 4, Fond Number 599, Subset F-195, AJ. Adria’s additional planned routes are covered in U.S. Embassy Yugoslavia to Department of State, Despatch 727, May 25, 1962, file 968.72/5-2562, 1960–63 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 63. " On the UN’s perceived failures see U.S. Embassy Congo (Leopoldville) to Secretary of State, Telegram 6201, June 8, 1961, file 968.7270G/6-861, 1960–63 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. On the children’s airlift see U.S. Mission to United Nations (New York) to Secretary of State, Telegram 8612, June 12, 1961, file 968.7270G/6-1261, 1960–63 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. On potential gun-running see U.S. Embassy Yugoslavia to Department of State, Despatch 727, May 25, 1962, file 968.72/5-2562, 1960–63 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 64. " Report from Adria Aviopromet, June 1962, 6, Fond Number 599, Subset F-195, AJ. 65. " Turner to Allen, July 29, 1952, 968.52/7-2952, 1950–54 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 66. " U.S. Embassy Yugoslavia to Department of State, Despatch 142, September 8, 1961, file 968.72/9-861, 1960–63 Central Decimal File, RG 59, NARA. 67. " Report from Uprava civilnog vazduhoplovstva, “Informacija o liberalizaciji međunarodnog vazdušnog saobraćaja u Jugoslaviji,” October 9, 1962, 1-2, Fond Number 599, Subset F-195, AJ. 68. " Report from Adria Aviopromet, June 1962, 7, Fond Number 599, Subset F-195, AJ. 69. " Report from Adria Aviopromet, June 1962, 2, Fond Number 599, Subset F-195, AJ. 70. " Report from Adria Aviopromet, June 1962, 11, Fond Number 599, Subset F-195, AJ. 71. " Report from Savezni sekretarijat za saobraćaj i veze, “Informacija u vezi pisma preduzeća za aerodromske usluge aerodrom ‘Beograd’ u odnosu na liberalizaciju u vazdušnom saobraćaju,” January 13, 1965, 4-5, Fund Number 599, Subset F-259 343, Folder 84, AJ. 72. " Report from Savezni sekretarijat za saobraćaj i veze, January 13, 1965, 5, Fund Number 599, Subset F-259 343, Folder 84, AJ. 73. " See especially Brands, Specter of Neutralism, 313ff. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
TI - Launching a Nonaligned Airline: JAT Yugoslav Airways between East, West, and South, 1947–1962
JF - Diplomatic History
DO - 10.1093/dh/dhv061
DA - 2017-01-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/launching-a-nonaligned-airline-jat-yugoslav-airways-between-east-west-YSvfsVxPnW
SP - 78
VL - 41
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -