A brief

history of
Titos
Yugoslavia
Lecture Outline
This module discusses

Yugoslavias geopolitical position in the Cold War and its

role in allowing Yugoslavia to maintain its internal
cohesion and suppress nationalistic attempts by the
constituting nationalities

Titos leadership and his ability to borrow extensively

from the West, which allowed him to keep Yugoslavias
economic problems under check for decades

The role of the economic crises and international

changes in the early 90s in accelerating the nationalistic
forces in the country and bringing the end of the Yugoslav
state
Yugoslavia was
A Socialist country that existed between 1943 and 1991
Made up of six Republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia) and two
autonomous provinces (Kosovo and Vojvodina)
Was ruled by Josip Broz Tito from 1953 until his death in 1980
Yugoslavias Role in the Cold War
The U.S. and the USSR formed competing blocs
NATO and the Warsaw pact to balance each other and
exert control over their half of Europe

Yugoslavias geographic position enabled it to serve as a

buffer between the two blocs

Yugoslavia was a socialist state, but was neutral and did

not side with either superpower

It maintained its role as an independent socialist state

 Titos leadership

Yugoslavia was able to maintain its independence from

the Soviet influence and reap the benefits of the fierce
competition between the two blocks due to the political
acumen and popularity of Marshall Bros Tito, Yugoslavias
leader

Titos rhetoric about the creation of a supranational

Yugoslav identity through Brotherhood and Unity was
accepted by the West that saw socialist Yugoslavia as a
prosperous state and as an antidote to the evil Soviet
empire
 Tito-Stalin Split

Tito with Stalin and Molotov

Having defied Stalin in 1948, Tito became the first communist

leader to openly stand against the dictator and the fearful empire
he had created. Tito rejected Stalins desire of controlling
Yugoslavia and made it clear that he wanted to create a neutral
and independent country, which, despite its ideological
closeness to the Soviets, would retain its sovereignty
Titos Credibility in the eyes of the
Westerners
Titos courageous defiance
of Stalin and the creation of
the consequent Yugoslav
type of socialism
Nikita Khrushchev came to
visit Yugoslavia in 1955 and
approached the Yugoslav
leadership with conciliatory
rhetoric

Titos meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary

of the Soviet Communist Party, 1955
Geographic Location

Yugoslavia served as a
buffer zone between the
Western bloc and the
USSR

Tito realized the

geopolitical importance
of Yugoslavia in
preventing the USSR
from reaching the
Mediterranean
Yugoslavias ethnic diversity

Yugoslavias location and its geopolitical realities played an even

more important role in the countrys domestic politics. The fierce
competition between the U.S. and the USSR, with Tito keeping a
distance from both, allowed the leader of Yugoslavia to draw from
virtually unlimited amounts of external threat, and use it to put a
check on ethnic struggles.
Ethnic struggles in Yugoslavia

Titos strategy to assuage the ethnic struggles was

to mythologize the fact that every ethnic group had
contributed to the liberation war against the fascists
during the World War II
The new enthusiasm that followed the end of World
War II faded and Titos myth of a unified Yugoslavia
became less appealing
The new generation together with the disillusioned
communists became increasingly more demanding
of reforms, most often advocated along ethnic lines
 Croatian protest against the Yugoslav state
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69226252@N05/6551163563/

Opposition voices against Yugoslav policies became loud, especially

in the fall of Rankovic, the head of the secret service, in 1966

Student organizations (e.g. Croatias Praxis), intellectuals, and

members of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia began criticizing
the federal economic and cultural policies
The Croatian opposition
The Croatian opposition was led by both the communists
and the intellectuals, referred as the Croatian Spring, was
a period of student protests, inflammatory nationalistic
rhetoric and political crisis in the country

Tito and his collaborators realized the real danger the

renewed Croatian nationalism posed for the stability and
the unity of Yugoslavia
The External Threat from
Soviets
The Yugoslav people were prone to believe that the
potential weakening of Yugoslavia, which might invite a
Soviet invasion, could be far more debilitating effects on
their regions
Tito used the external and exaggerated threat to
dissuade regional leaders from pushing for major reforms
along nationalistic lines
Titos last attempt to satisfy all the
nationalities
After the alarming crisis of the 1960s had been partially
resolved, Tito and his cabinet produced a new
constitution for Yugoslavia
The new constitution was the fourth one produced in less
than thirty years and it made extensive provisions for
local self-management to the six republics
The content of this constitution made Yugoslavia a
defunct confederation of six republics and two provinces
unified by the effect of the external threat posed by the
Soviet Union
 The U.S. support for
Yugoslavia

According to Warren Zimmerman(1996), the U.S.

ambassador to Yugoslavia, the U.S. supported Yugoslavia
in order to encourage and promote socialist countries to
maintain their independence and develop alternative non-
Soviet models of socialism
Foreign Borrowing
The key role that Yugoslavia played during the Cold war enabled
both its federal and its republican leaders to borrow extensively
from foreign banks and international monetary organizations
The U.S. controlled International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank were more than happy to assist Yugoslavia in its
modernization with extremely favorable loans
The extensive borrowing had the intended effect in the short-run as
it ameliorated the internal economic crisis, which was deepening
by the time the oil shock occurred in 1973 due to wrong economic
policies, ineffective bureaucracy and decreasing productivity
The borrowing had devastating long-term economic and political
effects
The Debt Crisis
With Titos death, Yugoslavia lost its respected leader
and the brand name that had provided the country with
much credibility
The crisis was deepened because the republics had
borrowed individually and uncontrollably from abroad
after gaining significant control over their regions from the
1974 constitution
From the total amount borrowed, the central government
had borrowed only 35 percent while the six republics and
the two autonomous provinces had borrowed the
remaining 65 percent
The Debt Crisis contd
The richer republics of Slovenia and Croatia, due to the
disproportionate contributions they were obliged to make for
servicing the debt, became increasingly nationalistic
As the gap between the richer and poorer regions increased,
richer ones also refused to make transfers to poorer republics
and provicnces
By the end of the 1980s, the economic crisis had become so
serious that living standards had fallen by 40 percent inflation
reached at one point 2000 percent in 1989
The cheap loans that Tito provided helped ameliorate the
domestic interethnic tensions, but the failure of repaying them
gave rise to nationalist and chauvinist forces
Other major changes were occurring in Europe as the
political and economic crises of the 1980s were
worsening in Yugoslavia
Socialist regimes were falling one after the other and
Europe was swept by nonviolent revolutions
Gorbachev made it clear that the USSR was not going to
intervene in any of the Warsaw Pact members
international affairs, thus removing the threat that had
helped to keep Yugoslavia united
Yugoslavia and the international
system in flux
As a result of the developments in the international context,
Yugoslavia lost its special international position as a buffer zone
between the two blocks
Slovenia and Croatia, which had grown extremely nationalist during
the 1980s were convinced that their dreams for independent
republics had a real chance in post-Cold War Europe

Yugoslavia, thus, could not count on the two greatest contributors to

its internal stabilitythe external threat and the financial support of
the U.S.
The U.S. shifted its interest away from the region and passed its
watchdog role to the European Union, which had a confusing
strategy towards Yugoslavia
The end of Yugoslavia

Both Croatia and Slovenia were the first to declare

their independence in 1991
Macedonia followed months later and finally Bosnia
These changes marked the end of Yugoslavia and
the beginning of the worst bloodshed in post-World
War II Europe
Montenegro declared independence in 2006 and
lastly Kosovo in 2008