Yugoslavia and the Legacy of the Cold War

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chapter 6 Conclusions: Yugoslavia and the Legacy of the Cold War

Not a single one of our republics would mean anything if we were not all together. Socialist history of Yugoslavia united also in the future.1 Josip Broz Tito ∵

To understand the historical significance of how leaders attempted to build legitimacy in Titoist Yugoslavia, the process needs to be situated in the broader history of the twentieth-century. As the century of ideology, the competition over legitimate worldviews defined how leaders both shaped their state’s iden- tities and outlined the nature of alliances. The century began with a profound hope that Enlightenment values would persist indefinitely into the future and that human progress was destined to achieve all things imaginable. World War I brutally called into question this positive outlook on progress and chal- lenged the core values held by people not only in the West, but also throughout the world. The tremendous devastation from the war laid the groundwork for an ideological battle that took on awesome proportions for the remainder of the century. When war raised its ugly head again at the end of the 1930s, thanks primarily to irrational aggression, the provocative power of ideology took on a radical new dimension. The warring parties drew boundaries that were more concrete over what separated “us” versus “them” and made the struggle for survival larger than life. For each side, the world’s freedom was at stake and everything fell into its own intellectual compartment. Fascism’s defeat in 1945 meant that the world was down to two: Democratic market-capitalism and Marxism. For the wealth of leaders who harnessed political control across the globe for the first time and attempted to fill the political vacuum that followed fascism’s defeat, they all found state building in the post-1945 world unfeasible absent one of the compelling worldviews.

1 Josip Broz Tito in Janja Glogovac, Tito: A Documentary Film, (TV Slovenija, Česka Televize & Bindweed Soundvision, 2001).

State building in an era of tensions shaped the nature of how the gover- nors could govern. Fear over nuclear devastation—especially once the Soviet Union attained atomic weapons—helped form not only government policy in both East and West, but also reinforced popular movements such as the stu- dent rebellions of 1968 and the Green Revolution. But the two superpowers eventually worked out a system whereby conflict would be controlled and lo- calized; nuclear holocaust remained in the background while proxy wars in the Third World prevailed over direct confrontation. Nonetheless, the Cold War brought fear to a new height. For Tito, his fragile creation stood on the frontier between East and West; its own divided legacy—torn between the Habsburgs, the Ottoman Sultans, and, to an extent, the Romanovs—made the Cold War dilemma even greater for him and the people of Yugoslavia. Where would their allegiances fall if World War III set into motion the fateful clash between the superpowers? What hope did Yugoslavs have for a peaceful future and prosper- ity in a stable environment? Finally, what goals could the regime have pointed to as paramount in their attempt to control the direction of change? First and foremost, Tito felt that he could solve the security problem facing Yugoslavia by being the most powerful in the Balkans following World War II.2 With the destruction of that ideal in 1948, Tito searched for a reform program that would redefine his state and build a solid legitimacy.3 By the end of the 1960s, with these reforms in full swing, everything was in synch: “in the same breath in which they mentioned self-management socialism, brotherhood and unity, the Party or Tito, the regime cited the commitment to the principle of non-alignment.”4 These ideals mattered in so far as it showed a consistency in the party’s leadership but it also showed that Tito and Yugoslavia were in- ternationally important. Yugoslavia was not going to be like Albania. Isolated and dependent on others, Enver Hoxha’s Albanian socialist creation posed a recurring “other” for Tito but Tito instead saw the benefits of engagement and a global awareness. He might not win every victory but he would be a voice of reason that would be heard and respected as a sovereign state that in- cluded Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians, Slovenes, Serbs, and other minorities. International importance fueled Tito’s larger designs. My look at Tito and his creation focuses on how power, legitimacy, and ideology intersected to instruct the course of events. Change over time unveils a state wrapped up with modes of dynamism yet forever stuck as a static rep- lica of the ideologically driven past with the resiliency of a one-party system.

2 Tvrtko Jakovina, Treća strana Hladnog rata, (Zagreb: Fraktura, 2011), p. 31. 3 Jakovina, Treća strana Hladnog rata, p. 636. 4 Jakovina, Treća strana Hladnog rata, pp. 33–4.