The Economic Struggle for Power in TITO’s Yugoslavia

Abstract

Following Susan Woodward's (1995) path-breaking research in Socialist Unemployment, Unkovski-Korica tries to explain the emergence of Yugoslav self-management, and the wider market reforms, in the early post-WWII period in relation not only to the ideological positions of the Yugoslav leadership and the political pressures of bloc politics, but also in relation to the country's international economic position, most importantly its current account deficit. In addition, Unkovski-Korica explores statesociety relations in the first decade and a half after WWII in Yugoslavia-how the party-state interacted with trade unions, workers, workers' councils after they were formed, various organizations in the Popular Front, the peasantry, and others, and how this conditioned the Party's domestic reforms. The book is divided into 4 chapters, an introduction and a conclusion. The first chapter deals with the 1944-1948 period, from the liberation of Belgrade to the Tito-Stalin split. It focuses on the Communist Party's attempts to bring about quick economic reconstruction and development, and its oscillation between using mass mobilization and administrative controls versus trying to build a more stable and market-oriented institutional

Why Do Political Elites Fracture? The Unusual Case of the Yugoslav Communist Elite

“…Later conflicts were continual and often had to do with the distribution of foreign loans and their servicing among republics. Many conflicts were about the General Investment Fund, a federal non‐return fund active until 1964 (Haug, 2012, p. 188; Unkovski‐Korica, 2016; Zečević, 1998, p. 171). We will focus on one event only in the 1969 to 1972 period: “the Slovene highway affair”.…”

“…A strong basis for this was to be found in the different levels of economic development, differences which would not fade, although the objective of their decrease was permanent, and in 1947 Kidrič they would soon be eliminated, as noted. The stark contrast between this initial goal and the reality of ever greater disparities‐‐ while those most developed still considered they were contributing too much, and others thought they were not receiving sufficient support‐‐was also a pillar on which awareness of economic interests grew (Burg, 1983; Unkovski‐Korica, 2016; Woodward, 1995, pp. 3–30).…”