1. Yugoslavia: History & Disintegration Dr Dejan Djokić
The establishment of communist government in Yugoslavia and the Tito-Stalin split
Yugoslavia: History & Disintegration
Dr Dejan Djokić

2. Introduction Key questions: Why did Yugoslavia re-emerge in 1945?
Why did Yugoslavia become communist?

3. Partition of Yugoslavia in WWII

4. 1 million (out of 16m) Yugoslavs died in WWII, probably majority killed by other Yugoslavs
1,709,000 – official figure in socialist Yugoslavia
1,014,000 Bogoljub Kočović, Žrtve Drugog svetskog rata u Jugoslaviji (1985)
1,027,000 Vladimir Žerjavić, Gubici stanovništva Jugoslavije u Drugom svjetskom ratu (1989)
Breakdown according to ethnicity (Kočović, p. 111):
Serbs (including Montenegrins): 537,000 (7.2% of all Serbs)
Serbs (excluding Montenegrins): 487,000 (6.9%)
Montenegrins: 50,000 (10.4%)
Croats: 207,000 (5.4% of all Croats)
Muslims: 86,000 (6.8% of all Muslim Slavs in Bosnia-Herzegovina & Sandžak)
Jews: 60,000 (77.9%)
Slovenes: 32,000 (2.5%)
Roma: 27,000 (31.4%)
Yugoslav Germans: 26,000 (4.8%)
Yugoslav Albanians: 6,000 (1.0%)
Macedonians: 6,000 (0.9%)
Yugoslav Hungarians: 5,000 (1.0%)

5. Partisans Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980) Communist Party of Yugoslavia
Pan-Yugoslav support (although by 1943 predominantly Serb as well)
‘Brotherhood and unity’
Successful resistance (the largest in occupied Europe), clear ideology and strategy
Turning point: secured Western support, and captured Italian weapons in 1943
AVNOJ: 29 November 1943, Jajce
Postwar vision: a communist-led Yugoslavia, a federation of 6 republics and equality among the Yugoslav peoples (interwar Yugoslavia its main ‘Other’)

6. Why did the Partisans win?
Leadership
Military strategy
Ideology
External (British) support
Lack of a viable alternative – no one else could have liberated and re-united Yugoslavia
Why Yugoslavia again in 1945?

7. Communist takeover Hugh Seton-Watson’s 3-stage model:
Genuine coalition
Sham coalition
Takeover
In Yugoslavia no stage one; stage two short-lived. Democrats, Agrarians and other parties not discredited by collaboration briefly participate in the renewed political life, but soon marginalised and de facto banned

8. Communist takeover Tito and the Partisans enjoyed popular support
Victors and liberators
Communism seen as an attractive alternative (Fascism defeated, and interwar experiment with democracy and dictatorship having failed)
Yugoslavia seen as a viable alternative at the end of WWII

9. Communist takeover Elimination of political opponents
(e.g. Mihailović executed in July 1946; Archbishop Stepinac imprisoned in Nov 1946, political parties suppressed, gradually disappear)
Dictatorship of the proletariat
Terror/Secret police
Cooling of relations with the West
Cominform headquarters in Belgrade 1947
Tito: a ‘little Stalin’

10. The 1946 Constitution Modelled on the Soviet 1936 Constitution
Yugoslavia: a federal republic
6 republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia)
5 nations (Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Montenegrins, Macedonians) [Muslims ‘recognised’ as a separate nation in 1968]
Serbia quasi federal, with 1 autonomous province (Vojvodina) and 1 autonomous region (Kosovo-Metohija)
Main minorities (nationalities): Albanians, Hungarians, Italians. Ca 0.5 million ethnic Germans expelled, as well as many Italians.

11. A postwar parade in Belgrade, ca 1945-47

12. Federal Yugoslavia

13. Tito-Stalin split Conflict essentially political, not ideological
Tensions over economic policies
Tensions over Yugoslavia’s foreign policy (Greek civil war, ‘Balkan federation’, the Trieste crisis)
27 March 1948: Stalin warns Tito
28 June 1948: Yugoslavia expelled from the Cominform
Tito survives. The KPJ membership nearly doubles in 1948 (from 285,000 to 483,000) – a sign of growing communism or Yugoslav nationalism?
Goli otok – the Yugoslav Gulag

14. From the Soviet satirical magazine Krokodil (Crocodile)

15. A cartoon by David Low, showing Tito as Stalin’s ‘problem child’, Evening Standard, 25 August 1948