Yugoslavia and Tito in the Fifties: From Balkan Stalin to Would-Be World Leader
Author(s)
Pavlowitch, Stevan K.
Abstract
Josip Tito’s ambitions outside Yugoslavia, which he considered a regional Communist center, caused Stalin’s resentment and Tito’s defensive position against Soviet charges. After 1949 the Western powers favored Tito, interpreting the conflict with Stalin as an ideological contrast and a sign of liberalization of the Communist regime. “Titoism” then denoted a form of Communism trying to be independent from the Soviet Union. Tito accepted fellow Yugoslav Communist Milovan Djilas’s proposal of self-management of factories to show that Yugoslavia was more communist than the Soviet Union yet more democratic than the West. The new constitutional law of 1953 contained the concept of socialist direct democracy as the expression of the working people through self-management. With the death of Stalin, Tito was reconciled with the Soviet leaders, and Djilas’s attempt to apply criticism of Soviet Communism to Yugoslavia led to his trials and incarceration. Liberalization of Communism ended in Yugoslavia and Tito turned his ambitions as a leader outside the two blocs, to the countries of the Third World.
