IN SOCIALIST YUGOSLAVIA 1945-1990
IN SOCIALIST YUGOSLAVIA 1945-1990

Author(s): Zdenko Radelić
Subject(s): Cultural history, History of Church(es), National Economy, Economic history, Political history, Labor relations, Economic policy, Government/Political systems, Political behavior, Politics and religion, Politics and society, History of Education, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989), History of Communism, Socio-Economic Research, Politics of History/Memory
Published by: Hrvatski institut za povijest
Keywords: Socialist Yugoslavia; 1945-1990; Communist regime; social revolution; agrarian policy; Unitarism; social conditions; education;
Summary/Abstract: The KPJ publicly advocated democracy, private property, a just solution to the social and national issues, and freedom and equality for all nations in Yugoslavia. Its leaders claimed that the goal of the partisan movement was liberation and popular democracy. However, contrary to the declared nationwide breadth of the People’s Liberation Movement, the KPJ held the army, the security apparatus, and the propaganda. The agreement between Josip Broz Tito and Ivan Šubašić that the citizens of Yugoslavia would be the ones to decide on the state system after the war was an important precondition for the international recognition of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia (Demokratska Federalna Jugoslavija, DFJ) by the Allied powers. But the monopoly over the partisan movement enabled the Communists to create the preconditions for imposing their dictatorship. Thus, the KPJ used the struggle for the liberation of Yugoslavia – in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina also for the overthrow of the NDH – and for resolving the national question to seize power and carry out the Communist revolution. It also meant abolishing all other parties and introducing a dictatorship. Part of the HSS leadership and its president Vladko Maček fled the country just before the partisans arrived in Zagreb in 1945. The HSS operated abroad under Maček’s leadership until his death in 1964 in the United States, when he was replaced by the party’s vice president, Juraj Krnjević. August Košutić, the party’s secretary, remained in the country, where after trying to cooperate with the Communists and join the partisans he was interned and completely marginalized by the new government. In addition to the HSS, there were individuals, parties, and organizations from the Ustasha movement who were politically active in exile, including Ante Pavelić, who died in 1959 in Spain of wounds obtained in an assassination attempt.

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