In 1943, Tito transformed the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) into an all-Yugoslav deliberative and legislative body, denounced the government-in-exile, and forbade King Peter's return to the country. These decisions ran against explicit Soviet advice instructing Tito not to antagonise the exiled monarch and his government. Stalin was at the Tehran Conference at the time and viewed the move as a betrayal of the Soviet Union. In 1944–1945, Stalin's renewed instructions to Communist leaders in Europe to establish coalitions with bourgeois politicians were met with incredulity in Yugoslavia. This shock was reinforced by Stalin's revelation of the Percentages Agreement to the surprised Edvard Kardelj, vice president of the Yugoslav provisional government. The agreement, concluded by Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the 1944 Moscow Conference divided Eastern European countries into British and Soviet spheres of influence—splitting Yugoslavia evenly between the two.
