The overview page covers more areas of Eastern Bloc History: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/collections/coll_overview.htm
PHP News, 24 February 2005
Dear Madam, dear Sir,
1) NEW PHP DOCUMENT COLLECTION: WAR ON TITO'S YUGOSLAVIA? THE HUNGARIAN ARMY IN EARLY COLD WAR SOVIET STRATEGIES
www.isn.ethz.ch/php/collections/coll_Tito.htm
The PHP is pleased to alert you to the thoroughly documented study by László Ritter from the Institute of History at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which provides the latest word about Stalin's intentions in his confrontation with Tito's Yugoslavia and the danger of a military conflict in the Balkans in the early nineteen-fifties. Ritter demonstrates how much can be learned about Soviet military plans, which are still inaccessible in Moscow, by using Hungarian records. Moreover, Ritter has been able to obtain constructive cooperation by the person whose widely accepted thesis he discards- the former prominent Hungarian general and later American academic, Béla Király.
The demolished thesis maintains that Stalin was only prevented from attacking Yugoslavia by the forceful US reaction to the communist aggression in Korea. The documentation published here presents convincing evidence that contingency plans the Hungarian army prepared under Soviet auspices in the event of a military confrontation with Yugoslavia were defensive rather than offensive. This conclusion supports evidence found by PHP researchers in other countries of the former Soviet bloc that shows Stalin's strategy in the early years of the Cold War as being defensive rather than offensive.
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>From the project description:
The PHP provides new scholarly perspectives on contemporary international history by collecting, analyzing, and interpreting formerly secret governmental documents. In response to the declassification of NATO records and the steadily growing availability of documents from archives in Eastern and Central Europe, PHP as a cooperative undertaking of more than twenty partner institutes brings together leading Cold War historians, archivists, and government officials. The findings are presented to the specialist academic community at conferences and published both in print and on the PHP website.
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