It is significant that the attacks on Tito and his followers coincided with the full flowering of the Stalinist personality cult and the purges and show trials of the coming years. For there is little doubt that Stalin truly did see in Tito a threat and a challenge, and feared his corrosive effect on the fealty and obedience of other Communist regimes and parties. The Cominform’s insistence, in its journals and publications, on the ‘aggravation of the class struggle in the transition from capitalism to socialism’ and on the ‘leading role’ of the Party risked reminding people that these had
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