SAVEZ KOMUNISTA JUGOSLAVIJE I XII KONGRES KOMUNISTIČKE PARTIJE ITALIJE 1969. GODINE – POČECI TREĆEG PUTA SOCIJALIZMA U EVROPI
THE LEAGUE OF COMMUNISTS OF YUGOSLAVIA AND THE XII CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF ITALY 1969 – THE BEGINNINGS OF THE THIRD PATH OF SOCIALISM IN EUROPE

Summary/Abstract: After the USSR had lost the global “battle for the souls” against the Western world in the global aftermath of the great social and cultural revolution of the sixties, its potential for international integration of the progressive, socialist and leftist ideologies of the world rapidly declined, which opened up an era of Soviet isolationism. Yet at the same time, new major, “players” arose on the stage of international socialism. Communist parties of Western Europe, primarily those of France, Italy, and Spain, completed under the welfare state era their two decades long process of ideological evolution toward what was to become known as Euro-communism, and later as democratic socialism. In the aftermath of the great social and cultural revolution of the Western World during the sixties, and in the after-math of its falling out with the USSR following the Soviet aggression against Czechoslovakia after the events of the Prague Spring, the Italian Communist Party called upon its deputies and delegations of the foreign communist parties to attend the XII Congress of P.I.C., which was supposed to determine the future positions of the party concerning international affairs and conduct the long-awaited reconstruction of the party’s ideology, creating along the way the specific ideological line that was known among its contemporaries as the Italian path of socialism. Yugoslavia had been one of the strongest supporters of the Italian pathand of Italian criticism of the USSR. The Yugoslav delegation in Bologna conducted a series of talks with the Italian communist leaders and concluded a number of bilateral treaties with the Italian Communist Party. Also, the Yugoslav representatives used the occasion of their visit to strengthen relations with the representatives of the Italian Government. Sources show that Yugoslavia had started to take increasingly greater interest in the formation of the new European socialist ideologies, and the interest was apparently mutual, since the Yugoslav historical experience of breaking away from the Cominform two decades earlier and Yugoslav socialist ideas of selfgovernment of the working class had been one of main topics in the discussions that held at the XII Congress regarding the ideas for the reconstruction of the Italian Communist Party, its foreign policies, and its ideology.

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