History, Tito’s Yugoslavia

For the next 45 years Croatia was part of Tito’s Yugoslavia. First a faithful copy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Yugoslavia changed after Tito’s break with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1948. There was a gradual process of decentralization (in which greater power devolved to the republics, including Croatia, and their own Communist leaderships), easing of repression, and abandonment of collectivization. The government introduced economic experiments such as “market socialism” and “workers’ self-management.” Leaders of Croatia’s branch of the Yugoslav Communist Party, renamed the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) in 1952, played prominent roles in this process of liberalization from 1965 to 1971. Freer expression of sentiments and interests, which previously had been suppressed as nationalist actions and a revival of prewar conflicts between the Yugoslav republics, were byproducts of these developments.

A new generation of Croatian Communist leaders centered around Miko Tripalo and Savka Dabcevic-Kucar, initially supported by their mentor and veteran Croat leader, Vladimir Bakaric, pressed for even more liberalization and republican autonomy. They argued that richer republics like Croatia and Slovenia were being exploited for the benefit of poorer republics and held back by the remaining federal controls and taxes. A rising tide of nationalist sentiment produced a Croatian Mass Movement (masovni pokret, abbreviated as Maspok), with non- and anti-Communists competing for its control and demanding a separate army, banking system, and UN membership. In 1971 Tito moved to depose Tripalo and Dabcevic-Kucar and suppress the Maspok. Party purges and numerous arrests and dismissals followed. The ensuing freeze on open dissent and liberalization lasted more than 15 years.

The death in 1980 of Tito, the ultimate and authoritative arbiter in disputes between increasingly autonomous republics, coincided with the onset of an economic crisis that by 1985 had lowered production and living standards to 1965 levels. Tito’s successors, leaders of republics with conflicting national aspirations and economic interests, could not agree on effective remedies. Acceptance of “Tito’s Yugoslavia” declined everywhere, especially in Slovenia and Croatia. An aggressive campaign to reassert Serb and the Communist party’s hegemony over a recentralized Yugoslavia was initiated in 1988 by Slobodan Milosevic, president of the Serbian League of Communists and then of Serbia, but only accelerated Croat and other non-Serb opposition to the Yugoslav federation. After the collapse of Communism in the rest of Eastern Europe in 1989 the LCY disintegrated in January 1990. In multiparty elections later that year, parties with nationalist programs were victorious in each republic.

In Croatia the elections of 1990 produced a parliamentary majority for the Croatian Democratic Union (CDU; Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica or HDZ in Croatian), an anti-Communist nationalist party. Franjo Tudjman, its founder and leader, formerly a Partisan and Communist general imprisoned for nationalist activities twice after 1971, was duly elected president of Croatia. His and the CDU’s accession to power and flamboyant use of Croatian national (including Ustase) symbols and ceremonies aroused great enthusiasm among most Croats. At the same time, Croatian Serbs, especially in the region of Krajina, where Ustase genocide was still a living memory, feared an independent Croatia would be a new NDH. Krajina Serbs declared their secession from Croatia and union with Serbia in February 1991.