A turning point in the Yugoslav national question : no more room for Yugoslavs

Abstract

In the first postwar years, the CPY followed Lenin’s thesis on the merging of the nations, which they emphasized in their speeches. However, the merging would occur only after the nations would reach the same level of development. After the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, the Yugoslav soft nation-building project was accelerated. During the 1950s, the soft nation-building process was latently stimulated through language, culture, censuses, and changes in the constitutional and socialist system. The idea of national or ethnic Yugoslavism reached a climax during the VII. Congress of League of Communists of Yugoslavia in 1958 and with some intellectuals that defined the Yugoslav ethnic community. In 1964 the Party abandoned the idea of a melting pot. This turning point was visible in the ideological shift of the Party’s chief ideologue Edvard Kardelj. A redefinition of the socialist Yugoslavism followed in the mid-1960s, without ethnic or national connotations. Two Yugoslavisms were created: a socialist one propagated by the Party and a national one that lived among the population in small proportions. The latter constantly pressured the Party via the Yugoslav media and by sending letters advocating for their rights. Since the early-1960s the Party also extensively financed the newly established research field of interethnic relations. The main role in the field was played by the Institute of Ethnic studies in Ljubljana and the Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade. Both institutions were used as a political tool: the first one as a bulwark of Slovenian national rights and the second as the advocate of the merging of nations. Due to the reforms of the Yugoslav system in the 1960s Yugoslavs were never recognized as a nation. Consequently, the abandonment led to several national revivals in Yugoslavia. The census of 1971 presented a confrontation between national Yugoslavs and the Party, regarding the Yugoslav category.