The Communist Party of Yugoslavia

Of all the changes that have occurred in Yugoslavia since 1948, one of the most interesting is the development of a new theory and role for the Communist Party. Now officially called the League of Communists, the Yugoslav Party illustrates both the well-known dominant role of Communist parties in states where they have come to power and at the same time the peculiar nature of Yugoslav Communism that has set it apart from the Soviet variety.Organized on the Soviet pattern and headed by men steeped in the Soviet tradition, the Yugoslav Communists even in 1945 occupied a position like that of their comrades in the USSR, where, as Stalin said, “not a single important political or organizational question is decided without directions from the Party ….†Even after the Cominform dispute had produced a new ideological pattern, a more liberal approach to Communism, political and economic decentralization and profuse professions of democracy, few could doubt that, as Stalin said about the situation in the Soviet Union, “the Party governs the country.â€