Titoism

Josip Broz Tito.
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Titoism is an adaptation of communist ideology named after Josip Broz Tito, leader of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, primarily used to describe the specific socialist system built in Yugoslavia after its refusal of the 1948 Resolution of the Cominform, when the Communist Party of Yugoslavia refused to take further dictates from the Soviet Union.

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Elements of Titoism are characterized by policies and practices based on the principle that in each country, the means of attaining ultimate communist goals must be dictated by the conditions of that particular country, rather than by a pattern set in another country. During Tito’s era, this specifically meant that the communist goal should be pursued independently of (and often in opposition to) the policies of the Soviet Union.

The term was originally meant as a pejorative, and was labeled by Moscow as a heresy during the period of tensions between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia known as the Informbiro period from 1948 to 1955.

Unlike the rest of Eastern Europe, which fell under Stalin's influence post-World War II, Yugoslavia, due to the strong leadership of Marshal Tito and the fact that the Yugoslav Partisans liberated Yugoslavia with only limited help from the Red Army, remained independent from Moscow. It became the only country in the Balkans to resist pressure from Moscow to join the Warsaw Pact and remained "socialist, but independent" right up until the collapse of Soviet socialism in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Throughout his time in office, Tito prided himself on Yugoslavia's independence from the Soviet Union, with Yugoslavia never accepting full membership of the Comecon and Tito's open rejection of many aspects of Stalinism as the most obvious manifestations of this.

The Soviets and their satellite states usually accused Yugoslavia of Trotskyism and Fascism, charges loosely based on Tito's samoupravljanje (self-management) and the theory of associated labor (profit sharing policies and worker-owned industries initiated by him, Milovan Đilas, and Edvard Kardelj in 1950). In these, the Soviets saw (or pretended to see) the seeds of Council Communism or even Corporatism.

The propaganda attacks centered on the caricature of Tito the Butcher [of the Working Class], aimed to pinpoint him as a covert agent of Western Imperialism. Tito was in fact welcomed by Western powers as an ally, but he never lost his communist credentials. The period was, however, marked by severe repression of opponents, people who expressed admiration for the Soviet state. Most notably, many dissidents were sent to the penal camp on Goli otok.[1]

Background

Initially a personal favourite of Stalin, Tito led the left-wing opposition to the Nazi occupation during the war, then met with the Soviet leadership several times immediately after the war to negotiate the future of Yugoslavia. Over time these negotiations became less cordial because Tito had neither the intention of handing over executive power nor accepting foreign intervention or influence (a position Tito later continued within the Non-Aligned Movement).

Tito angered Stalin by agreeing with the projects of Bulgarian leader Georgi Dimitrov, which meant to merge the two Balkan countries into a Balkan Federative Republic according to the projects of Balkan Communist Federation. This led to the 1947 cooperation agreement signed in Bled (Dimitrov also pressured Romania to join such a federation, expressing his beliefs during a visit to Bucharest in early 1948). The Bled agreement (also referred to as the "Tito-Dimitrov treaty") was signed 1 August 1947, in Bled, Slovenia. It foresaw also unification between Vardar Macedonia and Pirin Macedonia and return of Western Outlands to Bulgaria. The policies resulting from the agreement were reversed after the Tito-Stalin split in June 1948, when Bulgaria, being subordinated to the interests of the Soviet Union took a stance against Yugoslavia.[2]

The policy of regional blocs had been the norm in Comintern policies– displaying Soviet resentment of the nation-state in Eastern Europe and of the consequences of Paris Peace Conference. With the 1943 dissolution of Comintern and the subsequent advent of the Cominform came Stalin's dismissal of the previous ideology, and adaptation to the conditions created for Soviet hegemony during the Cold War.

Outcome and influence

Although the Soviets revised their attitudes under Nikita Khrushchev, during the process of De-Stalinization, and sought to normalize relations with the Yugoslavs, while obtaining influence in the Non-Aligned Movement, the answer they got was never enthusiastic, and the Soviet Union never gained a proper outlet to the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, the Non-Aligned states failed to form a third Bloc, especially after the split at the outcome of the 1973 oil crisis.

Leonid Brezhnev's conservative attitudes yet again chilled relations between the two countries (although they never degenerated to the level of the conflict with Stalin). Yugoslavia backed Czechoslovakia's leader Alexander Dubček during the 1968 Prague Spring, and then cultivated a special (albeit incidental) relation with the maverick Romanian President Nicolae Ceauşescu. Titoism was similar to Dubček's Socialism with a human face, while Ceauşescu attracted sympathies for his refusal to condone (and take part in) the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which briefly seemed to constitute a casus belli between Romania and the Soviets. However, Ceauşescu was an unlikely member of the alliance, since he profited from the events in order to push his authoritarian agenda inside Romania. After Czechoslovakia was made to obey Brezhnev's policies, Romania and Yugoslavia maintained privileged connections up to the mid-1980s. Ceauşescu adapted the part of Titoism that made reference to the "conditions of a particular country", but merged them with Romanian nationalism and contrasting North Korean Juche beliefs, while embarking on a particular form of Cultural Revolution. The synthesis can be roughly compared with the parallel developments of Hoxhaism, and found Ceauşescu strong, perhaps unsought, supporters in National Bolshevism theorists such as the Belgian Jean-François Thiriart.

Tito's own ideology became less clear with the pressures of various nationalisms within Yugoslavia and the problems posed by the 1970s Croatian Spring. However, his economic views remained steady, amounting to the high standard of living enjoyed by the country - slowly, Yugoslavia became a virtual free market, neatly separated from other Socialist regimes in Eastern Europe (and marked by a permissive attitude towards seasonal labor of Yugoslav citizens in Western Europe). At the same time, the leadership did put a stop to overt capitalist attempts (such as Stjepan Mesić's experiment with privatization in Orahovica), and crushed the dissidence of liberal thinkers such as former leader Milovan Đilas; it also clamped down on centrifugal attempts, promoting a Yugoslav patriotism.

Although still claimed as official dogma, virtually all aspects of Titoism went into rapid decline after Tito's death in 1980, being replaced by the rival policies of constituent republics. During the late 1980s as nationalism was rising, revised Titoism was arguably kept as a point of reference by political movements caught disadvantaged by the main trends, such as civic forums in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Macedonia. It is still the major theme of Yugo-nostalgia.

The socialist variant of workers' self-management was also adopted by the Spanish Carlist Party in the 1970s founded by Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma, a rival claimant to the Spanish throne. However it did not attract many followers during the Spanish transition to democracy, and many Carlists preferred their centuries-old right-wing tendency.

See also

References

  1. ↑ According to historian R.J. Rummel, thousands were killed in the anti-Cominformist purges. Hawaii.edu
  2. ↑ Kampanyarchivum.hu

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