To Moscow's wary, cautious eye, Bulgaria's ambitious Premier and ex-Comintern Boss Georgi Dimitrov and Yugoslavia's restless, bellicose Marshal Tito were pedaling too far and too fast.
Both, with the silent assent of Rumania's hard-driving Communist Matriarch Ana Pauker, had been talking up a federation composed of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Poland (TIME, Jan. 26). Quilted into a single state, it would comprise 447,000 square miles with 81 million people. It had growing armies, resources of coal, oil, and some highly developed industry. In the absence of a strong Germany, it would be Europe's most formidable power outside Russia....
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