YUGOSLAVIA AND EUROCOMMUNIST PARTIES DURING THE ‘LONG YEAR’ OF EUROPEAN DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM (1974–1976)

Abstract

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mediterranean communist parties’ political practices and party ideologies, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia’s (LCY) policies, and the socialist model of the Yugoslav state, underwent gradual changes according to similar principles. This allowed existing cooperation between the LCY and future Eurocommunist parties to expand. At this time, the countries of Western Europe were experiencing a period of unprecedented economic growth and a reduction in social inequalities. This period eventually ended in political turmoil and crisis caused by ideological and cultural changes significantly driven by the same long-term consequences of developing welfare state models in the Western Bloc’s largest economies. A new social reality in Western Europe, the Mediterranean region, and Yugoslavia, the Mediterranean’s closest socialist country, would influence the events leading to the zenith of the LCY’s influence on the European far left and also to the eventual downfall of the international leftist initiatives launched by the LCY and the Eurocommunist parties. This article will present findings from archival research regarding certain aspects that may have influenced these changes in the international positions of and relations between the LCY and the Eurocommunist parties. It will compare it to those of previous studies within the humanities and social sciences.

Keywords

• Eurocommunism, democratic socialism, welfare state, Cold War, League of Communists of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, Enrico Berlinguer