yugoslavias implosion

and its leader, Josip Broz Tito, with increasing interest. In 1952, the
Yugoslav Communist Party was renamed the League of Communists
of Yugoslavia (lcy), adopting a policy of worker self-management
that was sometimes called “Titoism.” The unifying role of the party,
its ideology, and Tito helped diminish resistance to modernization.
The split with ussr had its impact on the Serbian elite. A number
of those who took the side of Stalin in this conflict (mostly Serbs and
Montenegrins) were sent to Goli Otok concentration camp in the
Adriatic. Some historians refer to 1948 as the beginning of the dissolution
of Yugoslavia. 20
A tide of change began to sweep over the entire Soviet bloc after
Nikita Khrushchev delivered his “secret speech” denouncing Stalin
at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union (cpsu) in 1956. Amid political relaxation, people began to
talk about the repressive measures carried out under Stalin and the
responsibility of individual Communists for the silencing of all dissent
and the construction of a vast network of gulags. Even though
Khrushchev was forced to blunt de-Stalinization in the face of
resistance from Soviet bureaucrats, he succeeded in reducing the role
and importance of the Communist leader. 21 There was to be no going
back. The dismantling of the Stalin legacy was under way and the
Party would no longer exercise total control over the ideological and
spiritual life of Soviet society.
Following the ideological break with the ussr, Soviet internationalism
was replaced by “Yugoslav socialism.” State power, concentrated
in the hands of the federal leadership, gradually assumed
democratic forms through communes, which enabled citizens to
manage their daily affairs. The relationship between the federation
and the commune, and between the republic and the province,
20 For instance, Milorad Ekmečić in an interview with Nedeljni telegraf in 1998, 20 May 1998
said that 1948 was the beginning of the dissolution of Yugoslavia .
21 Aleksandar Jakovljev, U vrtlogu sećanja (In a whirlwind of
remembrances), (Belgrade: Forum pisaca, 2000)
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