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• Ethnic/religious groups of Habsburg Empire
• Historical breakup of Yugoslavia ('91-'09)
• Muslim populations in European countries
• History of Christianization of Europe
• Soviet Union, Communist influence
• Map of European ethnic groups
• Map of Arab and Turkish Rule in Europe
• Religions & ethnic groups in Russia
• Detailed map of French colonization
• Detailed map of British colonization
• Napoleon's conquests & legacy
• Ethnic & religious map of pre-Nazi Poland

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• Pecs, Hungary: crossroads between
East and West
• Auschwitz and Birkenau
• Poland's resistance to Nazis in pictures
• Stalin's private summer home
• Ravenna: capital of Gothic empire
• Czar Nicholas II's Ukrainian palace
• European traditional cultural costumes
• Inside the Vatican, house of all wealth
• Banknotes/currencies of Europe
• Croatia's Dubrovnik, untarnished gem

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• Arab Warriors vs. Christian Crusaders
• Poland-Lithuania vs. Teutonic Order
• Nevskiy's Russia vs. German Crusaders
• Ivan the Terrible vs. Muslim Tatars
• Soviet Propaganda: Defeat of Germany  

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• A Hungarian government perspective on Gypsy/Roma integration
• An analysis of Mussolini's 1938 racialist legislation
• The disastrous effects of Soviet collectivization on Kazakhstan
• Changing meaning of Italian identity under Fascist rule
• Yugoslavia's independent break from East and West
• Stalin's Ethnic Cleansing of Muslim Tatars
• The Galicians: the Celts of Spain
• The modern Macedonian Slavs and Alexander the Great
• An argument for the Romanians' links to ancient Dacians
• Mussolini's Italian death camp for Jews, Slovenes, and Marxists
• The disappeared Jews of Hungary and the Arrow Cross regime
• The Gypsies in history and today, treated as Europe's public enemy
• History of Chechnya versus Russia (1800-today)
• Post-WWII expulsion of 10 million ethnic German civilians
• Ethnic & religious history of Serbs, Croats, & Bosnians
• Breakaway states and independence movements in Europe
• The ancient Germanic Runic alphabet and Runestones
• Teutonic Order and their 800-year legacy in Eastern Europe
• 460-year struggle for Albanian homeland, and 540 for Kosovo
• 2,800-year-old white mummies of China, bringers of Buddhism?
• Alexander the Great's Greek descendents in Pakistan?
• Visual History of Yugoslavia and its breakup (1918-2008)

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Neither Western Democrat nor Eastern Communist: Yugoslavia's "Third Way" of non-aligned development during the Cold War
by James Mayfield (Chairman, European Heritage Library)

Print this Article    •    About the Author    •   Citations    •    Bibliography/Sources

This is an excerpt of my far larger thesis. It begins with a conceptual assessment of the evolution of the post-colonial state in general during the Cold War, as well as its changing interaction with superpower ideologies. It hastily debunks the prevalent beliefs in collective memory, especially the myth that the "East" and "Communism" were one singular ideological bloc with little internal distinction. It demonstrates that each nation pursued its own distinct course of ideological, economic, and political development -- often strictly divorced from both Washington and Moscow -- as the certain guarantors of their newfound self-determination. It must be remembered that there were many competing roads towards modernization on both sides, often breaking both power blocs into divergent fronts (as exemplified in the hatred between Communist China and the Soviet Union). Maoism, Stalinism, Khrushchevism, Hoxhaism, and other "Communist" ideologies all bitterly considered each other to be fraudulent and "revisionist." The larger thesis also analyzes post-colonial India's, Tanzania's, and Ghana's ideologies; this excerpt only includes Yugoslavia.

It may NOT under ANY circumstances be redistributed without my expressed approval. This is on record as a published thesis and any reproduction will be strictly prosecuted as damaging plagiarism.

Former US President Richard Nixon and his advisor Henry Kissinger once claimed that, “...the axis of history starts in Moscow, goes to Bonn [Germany], crosses over to Washington, and then goes on to Tokyo.”1 This mode of understanding the past encapsulates a profoundly skewed understanding of Cold War history that is far too prolific in American historical memory, namely that the world was uniformly divided between two monolithic spheres. According to this maxim, the so-called “West” was the bulwark of liberal democracy and capitalism, and the East was what Reagan called the “evil empire,” with its outmoded remnants of Communist despotism. The nations of the world were supposedly deadlocked in a bipolar war between two neatly-partitioned ideological fronts. This image portrayed an End of History, in which the twentieth century was a teleological struggle against totalitarianism from which liberalism emerged triumphant.

However, prevalent historiography and our general historical memory have failed to emphasize the distinct role played by the hundreds of post-colonial states that were caught in between “East” and “West” during the Cold War. Scholarly discourse on state formation, modernization, and the Cold War itself must devote greater scrutiny to the complex ideological factors beyond the two superpowers in order to gain a more lucid comprehension of the general evolution of the present world. Like Communism and democracy, history cannot be compartmentalized into stereotyped or simplified categories. Academics have a responsibility to understand worldviews, nations, and statesmen on their own terms. Each of these new nations had its own history, its own agency, and its own distinct interaction with the superpowers that greatly contradict our collective memory of a uniform two-front Cold War between “Communism” and “capitalism.”

Most post-colonial states entered into a binary world dominated by what they perceived to be two equally predatory imperial hegemons. The legacy of colonialism imprinted an enduring mark on the mindset of the developing state on its path towards modernity, and greatly shaped its foreign policy and ideology even into the present. As these new nations interpreted, imperialism did not whimsically end on Independence Day or when the British and French left the zones of colonial occupation. The old empires may have been crumbling, but new forces of exploitation were rushing in to fill the void. The developing world presaged a new phase of external hegemony that became known as “neo-imperialism,” in which the superpowers sought to exploit the market opportunities of the hundreds of post-colonial states joining the world stage. The competitive factors of the Cold War allowed this neo-imperialism to occur in a variety of surreptitious forms, including economic monopolization and dependency, strangling foreign investment and market manipulation, and especially behind the false ideological masks of spreading liberal democracy or socialist liberation. Overtures by the superpowers to promote the progress and well-being of the newly-independent nations were broadly perceived in the Third World to be mere ruses designed to bolster the geopolitical control of the two new imperial powers on both East and West. The hundreds of new nations, having just achieved rudimentary independence, were not about to forfeit their self-determination by opening the gates to new forms of subjugation by gravitating into dependency on either hegemonic sphere of the Cold War.

With the fear of an impending loss of their long-sought independence, the post-colonial state was forced to ask itself how best to pursue modernity, economic and sociopolitical development, and solidarity as the guarantors of its national sovereignty. Instead of selling themselves to the new imperial overlords in Moscow or Washington by aligning with “Eastern Communism” or “Western capitalism,” the hundreds of new nations of the developing world cultivated their own independent ideologies that rejected the authority and dogma of both sides as tools of neo-imperialism that failed to directly address their specific developmental and cultural problems. The liberalism and capitalism of the West was portrayed as decadent, hollow, and unhumanitarian, at the same time as the supposed Communism of the East was decried as a despotic and equally unhumanitarian ethos that stymied full economic growth. They argued that only by following their own unique courses could the post-colonial world truly achieve human progress, development, and self-determination in the face of the geopolitical competition of the Cold War. This diverse array of political doctrines, loosely coined the “Third Way,” was the post-colonial state's key to forging a sovereign nation free of all remnants of external hegemony. This call for independent development manifested in diverse forms, including combinations of “socialism with a human face” (as in Yugoslavia and Algeria), government-assisted private development (India), African socialism (Ghana and Tanzania), Arab socialism (Egypt and Syria), Islamic Jamahiriya (Libya), protectionism, and isolated nationalist centralization (Rhodesia, North Korea, Albania, and the former Zaire). Others, even avidly Marxist nations like Yugoslavia and Albania, did not reject Marxism-Leninism but rejected Moscow as a dictatorial conductor of the global revolution, insisting instead that socialist internationalism and peaceful coexistence must be taken literally. The modernizing models of East and West were simply not relevant to these diverse nations' conditions.

As a result, the hundreds of new nations – eventually comprising more than two-thirds of UN members and housing fifty-five percent of the world's population2 – pursued a policy of political non-alignment, and invented unique ideologies that blended the best elements of “Eastern” socialism with “Western” capitalism in order to pave their own roads to total liberation, modernity, and development on their own terms. “Positive neutrality” would allow them to enjoy the economic growth of capitalism and the human element of socialism without being subjugated by either neo-imperial bulwark. Their war was not against the evils of Communism or against the supposed exploitation by the capitalist bourgeoisie, but against their own specific crises of hunger, poverty, inequality, racism, and humiliating dependency. Rather than merely establishing a third bloc of the Cold War, the post-colonial states framed their new Third Way ideologies in a universal, humanized scope that sought to attain a new post-imperial world order of anti-imperialism, anti-dogmatism, mutual progress, cooperative humanism, and inviolable self-determination. These crucial themes shaping the historical evolution of the twentieth century can be best interpreted by analyzing the unique geopolitical, economic, and ideological experiences of Marshal Tito's Yugoslavia.

Yugoslavia under Marshal Josip Broz Tito experienced a very unique set of historical, ideological, and diplomatic conditions that encouraged it to break from the Eastern Bloc, strangely blend Marxism with capitalism, and ultimately become a leading force in the global Non-Aligned Movement after 1961. Although never formally colonized, Yugoslavia was, like the other nations of the so-called “Eastern Bloc,” both ceremonially and economically under Joseph Stalin's hegemony after 1945. Its agricultural and industrial policies were partially configured in accordance with Moscow's dictate, set to be most auspicious for the Eastern Bloc states and the Soviet economy. It was only upon Yugoslavia's total divorce from Soviet influence after 1948 that it considered itself completely sovereign and liberated. In this sense, Yugoslavia's process of state formation and its struggle to overcome foreign hegemony can be analyzed under a similar post-colonial lens as in India, Ghana, and Tanzania interpreted below. As in the rest of the “Third World,” development, modernization, and complete liberation from enduring elements of foreign imperialism were synonymous for the Yugoslavs. Yugoslavia was forced to ask itself how best to imagine a state, and increasingly found that the strictly Soviet model was insufficient for its own specific conditions and ultimately detrimental to its self-determination as a new nation.

Priding itself over its largely independent ouster of the Axis forces and the establishment of socialism, Yugoslavia pursued its own ideological and political structure from its inception. It instated its own unique political system of a federated socialist republic with topical autonomy for each kindred ethnic group, exemplifying the belief that Yugoslavia needed to respond to its own unique social situation in its own fashion in order to function and modernize.3 Unlike the Soviet Union and many states in the future Warsaw Pact, Yugoslavia was far more open to limited private plots, private farms, and foreign capitalist investment from NATO countries. It even eventually almost completely scrapped the idea of collectivization, believing that syndicate labor and semi-private agriculture were superior guarantors of economic growth than the singular dogma insisted upon by Moscow.4 For Tito and prominent theorist Milovan Đilas, Yugoslavia's unique condition was justified by the Marxist theories of peaceable internationalism, dialectical stages of progressive development (“gradualism”), Lenin's temporary capitalist experiment under the NEP, and the right of sovereign nations to pave their own roads to socialism. So too, Yugoslavia's geographic position between the trade markets of both sides of the so-called “Iron Curtain” availed Belgrade with irresistible tools for its economic growth along a socialist line. This course towards modernity, typically considered fundamentally contradictory for the “Communist East,” derived from Yugoslavia's distinct historical experience and its attempt to best address its own specific problems in its own way since its foundation.5

Although this “syncretism” is often interpreted as Tito's realpolitisch attempt to play both sides of the Cold War, Yugoslavia's fiscal openness and its apparent “impiety” to Marxist immaterialism was a means to establish a healthy economy and a developed nation using the best tools available. Only with the formation of a strong economy – best attained by using modes of both capitalism and Marxism – could Yugoslavia cement itself as a self-determinate, sovereign, and liberated nation. Since Yugoslavia had largely established its socialist republic on its own, its survival did not depend upon its obeisance to the hegemonic authority of the Soviet Union. Development would ideally be achieved not by directly emulating and serving Moscow as the singular conductor of the revolution, nor by succumbing to the supposed opiate of Western capitalism, but by creating a prosperous and unified socialist federation using the best means available. They could become socialist without becoming Soviet, and without forfeiting their long-sought autonomy. Modernity would come not from serving the Kremlin against the evil “West,” but by attaining a fully-independent, successful, and socialistic community. This course of development facilitated Tito's open friendship with both East and West at the height of the Cold War. Strictly confining themselves to the Soviet orbit would exclude the healthy investment and development borne of NATO trade, IMF loans, and even the crucial aid of the Marshall Plan that Yugoslavia exclusively enjoyed.6 To the same end, Yugoslavia, which proudly considered itself to be a true bulwark of Marxism-Leninism in a world dominated by corrupt Soviet imperialism, was not inclined to abandon its comrades in the international Communist movement and fully join the “West.” The Party of Communists of Yugoslavia insisted that, “...independent foreign policy must not be detrimental to the socialist countries and the workers movement...We are a part of the [revolutionary left] movement.”7 As its unique course of development was increasingly subjected to Soviet economic manipulation, Yugoslavia was increasingly pressured to break from both hegemonic blocs entirely and establish its own “third” approach of non-aligned development.

Tito's seemingly heterodox ideology and erratic economic behavior incited tension with Stalin's Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc “satellites” of the Second World, which criticized Yugoslavia as an opportunistic, bourgeois, Trotskyist, and politically unreliable nation in the service of the capitalist West.8 Stalin and his sycophants like Albania's Enver Hoxha lampooned Tito as a self-interested demagogue who engrossed himself with expensive suits and radiant palaces by prostituting the Yugoslav proletariat out to both power blocs.9 Stalin even boldly threatened Belgrade by warning that the Soviet Red Army needed only “lift a finger” and Yugoslavia would be dismantled if it did not fall in line with Soviet hegemonic interests.10 Tito's receipt of Western investment and technology aroused resentment among other “socialist” states and especially in Moscow, which greatly opposed the fact that Yugoslavia's economic openness was effectively profiting its rival Cold War superpower. The smoldering criticism from the Eastern Bloc for not “staying in line” reified to Tito that his supposedly Communist allies were not working for internationalism or socialist liberation, but were instead an imperial front seeking geopolitical control.11 The Soviets were using their interpretation of Communist ideology as a medium for dominance.

This neo-imperialism under the false veneer of ideology was certified in Tito's mind by the fact that Stalin refused to support the socialist revolt in Greece after 1945, and angrily castigated Yugoslavia when it offered military and financial assistance to the Greek Communist Party because it disrupted Stalin's territorial agreements with the Western Allies. Moscow also opposed Tito's independent deployment of troops in Albania to stop Albanian border irredentism in Kosovo and Macedonia, because it further upset Stalin's plans for a territorial détente with the Allies over Greek integrity. Stalin also disapproved of Yugoslavia's advocacy of a pan-Slavic Balkan Federation because it oddly sought to include Greece, because it overly empowered an increasingly unreliable Belgrade, and because it nay disrupt the longstanding economic benefits of Soviet joint stock monopolies in the Balkans.12 To the Yugoslavs, these behaviors demonstrated the Soviet Union's preference for economic and political control over its “satellites” and its complete indifference to international proletarian liberation. They also exemplified that Soviet influence was diminishing the agency of Yugoslavia, which was seeking to establish a totally self-determinate socialist actor of the global revolution. Tito's insistence upon national sovereignty was evidenced by the fact that he outlined an increasingly liberal and “de-Stalinized” political platform in order to counterbalance Stalin's increasing demand for the total “Sovietization” of Eastern Europe.13 In contrast to Moscow, Tito even accelerated the early collectivization program in order to emphasize that it was the Soviet Union that was deviating from pure socialism.14 The Cold War was therefore understood not as a war between the vanguard of Communism in the East and the “evil capitalists” in the West, but between two equally chauvinistic and materialistic hegemonic orbits.

Aside from Tito's increasingly bitter interpretation of the Soviet Union and its allies as ideologically perverted revisionists, Yugoslavs found much evidence of Soviet neo-imperial hegemony in the fact that Moscow expected the Yugoslav working class to produce the trade goods that best served the Soviet economy and the Eastern Bloc in general. As with Romania's oil under Petru Groza and Bulgaria's grain under Georgi Dimitrov, Moscow “advised” Belgrade on how to configure its agricultural policies, its industrial planning, and its exports, and therefore indirectly determined the occupations and sustenance of its working class. This was hardly self-determination. In the most exemplary case, Stalin pressured Tito to devote a segment of his labor force to mining Molybdenum in order to develop new methods of steel hardening for the Soviet Union and in turn the rest of the bloc. The cost, incurred upon the struggling Yugoslav economy rather than subsidized by Moscow, was projected at $10,000USD per tonne. Stalin ordered Tito to sell it to the USSR for only $900USD per tonne.15 Stalin also pressured Tito to collectivize almost all agriculture immediately, presumably to be shipped abroad for the USSR's war-time reconstruction effort.16 Tito later wrote disparagingly that, “the trade of the Soviet Union with the socialist countries is carried out on a purely capitalist basis. They sell it as high as possible and buy as cheaply as they can...Actually this means helping one imperialist country since Soviet foreign policy deviated completely from the right path...[that of] noninterference in the affairs of other country.”17 This reified that the “sovereign” Yugoslav socialist state was being used as a profitable pawn for the hegemony of Moscow in its geopolitical and economic competition with the West.

The theorist Milovan Đilas, traveling from Belgrade to Romania to propitiate their deteriorating relations, reflected upon this notion of Soviet imperial chauvinism by deriding the supposed “attitude of a 'superior race' and the conceit of a great power” that guided Soviet foreign policy.18 He was “shocked and repelled” by the duplicity and arrogant power politics that Moscow presumed over its allies and its fraternal Communist parties.19 The subjugation of the ceremonially sovereign Eastern European states under Moscow's authority was verified in the eyes of the Yugoslavs by the explosion of “anti-deviationist” show trials and police purges throughout the bloc that lionized Stalinism as the compulsory doctrine of global socialism.20 These liquidations were directly designed to punish Tito for his pursuit of an independent doctrine. Moscow justified this expansive influence by referencing its highly developed economy as a superpower, by presenting the USSR as the heart of the Cominform, the true vanguard of the Red Flag since 1917, and the conductor of the global socialist movement since Lenin. Here again, ideology can operate as a vehicle for political and fiscal imperialism when wielded by hegemonic states in a time of global geopolitical competition.

The intensifying discord culminated in Yugoslavia's formal expulsion from the Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) under Stalin's orders in 1948, the cession of subsidy, advise, and investment from Moscow to Belgrade, and an effective diplomatic and economic embargo by the Eastern Bloc states and the USSR. The official communiqué announced that the Yugoslavs were guilty of ideological apostasy and service to the capitalist West, declaring that, “...the Communist Party of Yugoslavia has pursued an incorrect line...a line which represents a departure from Marxism-Leninism...[they are] pursuing an unfriendly policy towards the Soviet Union...The Information Bureau denounces this anti-Soviet attitude of the leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, as being incompatible with Marxism-Leninism and only appropriate to nationalists...[they have] taken the path of seceding from the united socialist front against imperialism...”21 For not falling into line and devoting its policies to the benefit of the Soviet front, Yugoslavia was excoriated as “nationalistic” because it insisted upon being independent from the Muscovite leaders of the revolution. Tito responded to Soviet claims that the nationalistic Serbs were persecuting ethnic Russians and Soviet advisors by insisting that, “this is a definite lie...from the liberation [in 1945] until today all members of the Party have given full co-operation to Soviet citizens.”22 He rationalized that, “...we are nationalists [only] to the exact degree necessary to develop a healthy socialist patriotism among our people, and socialist patriotism is in its essence internationalism.”23 Milovan Đilas (at that point at least) and prominent economist Edvard Kardelj agreed with Tito that the Soviets' expulsion of Yugoslavia was imperialist by design and was strictly geared towards maximizing their hegemony over other sovereign bodies.24 For the Yugoslavs, they argued, their discord from Moscow was solely catalyzed by their desire to forge an independent and purely socialistic state, rather than because of any revisionist nationalism or opportunism.25

As a result of the Yugoslav-Soviet split, Yugoslavia was subsequently forced to suffer the economic consequences of embargo as punishment for its independent course of development. The injurious hegemonic influence Moscow exerted over Belgrade and the Eastern Bloc was supposedly verified by the fact that Yugoslavia soon suffered from a torpid economy and a 10% unemployment rate – unusually high for the “Communist” world – and was forced into what one historian has called a “Faustian pact,” forced to fund its Eastern socialism by borrowing from the capitalist West.26 The tool of ideology had provided the vocabulary and the mandate for Soviet geopolitical ambition. Although it was ultimately the Soviets who forced the Yugoslavs to divorce from the “Eastern” orbit, Yugoslavia had long pursued its own path of modernization and development that straddled the best of both power blocs since its foundation. But with Yugoslavia now forcibly outside of the Communist bloc, Belgrade was driven to more formally articulate its own independent Third Way ideology of non-aligned developmentalism that obeyed neither the Eastern nor Western hegemons.

Tito's Third Way even had to redefine socialist internationalism and Marxism itself as the vehicle for Yugoslavia's own modernization and development.27 The Yugoslav course was highly socialistic, but by no means Soviet. In contrast to the prevailing presumption that the two are synonymous, the Yugoslav ideology was categorically independent from both East and West. The Stalinist school of Communism – then dominating the chauvinistic USSR and Hungary, Romania, Albania, and Poland – was deemed illegitimate and unsuitable for the new socialist order that Tito hoped to attain. Not only did it stymie full economic growth by rejecting the foreign investment coming into Yugoslavia from the capitalist West, but its supposedly rampant despotism, imperialism, and purges also lacked the humanist element of spiritual liberation around which Tito increasingly defined his new Third Way worldview. In an attempt to purify the nation of what were portrayed as subversive agents of foreign imperialism, tens of thousands of “Cominternists,” Stalinists, and Soviet advisors were purged, executed, or imprisoned in internment camps like on the prison island of Goli Otok.28

As a result of its rejection of the Eastern dogma of Stalinism, Tito pursued a policy of strict non-alignment, refusing to capitulate its autonomy to either supposedly neo-imperial front. Its doctrine was to be its own, rather than an export from Moscow as the sole voice of proletarian internationalism. Yugoslavia was, in accordance with Marxist dialectical materialism, not ready for full socialism or Communism, and would therefore have to adopt a “gradualist” line of scientific socialism that welcomed limited privatization and investment in order to develop. Tito argued that each sovereign people's distinct stage of national development required it to pursue a different approach to socialist modernization.29 The new system therefore chose to emphasize a moderate approach to state formation. Tito claimed to be establishing a legitimate people's democracy (the first since Lenin's), writing that the new Yugoslav platform “constitute the material basis for a democracy of a new kind, differing from the formal, so-called West-European democracy.”30 Simultaneously, Tito emphasized the economic and ideological policies of Leninism as the legitimate reflection of Marxism (as opposed to the corrupted Stalinist revisionism). Tito cited Lenin's New Economic Policy (1921-28), which allowed limited private enterprise and foreign investment, in order to prove that Yugoslavia's temporary blend of Western capitalism with Eastern socialism was a legitimate pursuit of the Leninist principles that Stalin falsely claimed to espouse.31 Tito even pointed out Stalin's imperialist hypocrisy by referencing his and Lenin's “socialism in one country” program, implying that Yugoslavia was just as able to establish a modern and Marxist state without subjugating itself as a Soviet vassal.32

Tito's new Third Way approach toward development also espoused the unique concept of industrial anarcho-syndicalism. Under this model, the control of factories, shops, and agricultural collectives would be partly devolved from state bureaucrats to proletarian councils and families. Supposedly, the modes of production were to no longer be monopolized by the state, but by the proletariat through industrial “self-management.”33 Đilas ruminated on the new initiative that, “one day...it occurred to me that we Yugoslav Communists were now in a position to start creating Marx's free association of producers. The factories would be left in their hands with the sole proviso that they should pay a tax for military and for other [federal] states' needs that remained essential.”34 Industrial democracy through workers' communes and individuals, rather than state grandees, would also ideally inject the entrepreneurialism used in the West that the suffering economy so desperately needed to develop and to pay off its extensive IMF loans.35 Tito lionized workers' self-management as the “withering away of the [vanguard] state” that Marx and Lenin presaged.36 In contrast to placing the fate of the working class in the hands of the corrupt Stalinist bureaucracy that preferred imperialism to liberation, it was argued, the new road to socialism would be a far purer ideology than the hollow chauvinism demanded by the Soviets. The Yugoslavs, especially Slovene economist Edvard Kardelj, argued that this diverse approach to socialism was an exclusive level of liberation not found in either East or West.

To this end, Tito lampooned the Soviets' use of ideology for the purpose of global dominance, writing that they falsely “ thumb tirelessly through the scientific works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, in order to find quotations to corroborate their own erroneous points of view...”37 The central planning and authoritarian “apparatus of coercion” under Joseph Stalin was derided as a fundamentally un-Marxist modus of state hegemony.38 Đilas reflected in his The New Class that it was no historical accident that the Soviet Communist Party had installed a new imperialist ruling class of corrupt revisionists.39 The Soviets themselves, along with their empire-serving ideology, were therefore seen as the true obstacles to Yugoslavia's progress. True socialism and legitimate self-determination required the best tools of development from both sides of the Cold War, as well as the total rejection of all forms of external hegemony. Only by cultivating its own non-aligned ideology distinct from both East and West could Yugoslavia attain modernity on its own sovereign terms.

Tito insisted that Yugoslavia's divorce from the Eastern Bloc and the adoption of a new “heterodox” ideology did not constitute opportunism, a treacherous joining of the West, nor the abandonment of socialist internationalism. He insisted that, “we have always been imbued with the awareness that we are but a part of the working class and working people of the world, and that we are an inseparable part of the international Communist and, in general, progressive movement.”40 Belgrade equally insisted that it was not “Westernizing,” nor was it embracing American capitalism or liberalism. It was felt that American investment overtures were no less motivated by market manipulation and economic imperialism than the “foreign advisors” from Moscow. Yugoslavia's mistrust of the West as an exploitative force was also exemplified by Belgrade's crippling dependency on IMF loans and the eventual termination of most foreign subsidy from the United States and later from the European Economic Community.41 The West offered an invaluable economic lure to Yugoslavia's growth, but its ideology was in Tito's mind inherently flawed. Belgrade would continue to trade with both sides in order to enjoy the most developed economy possible, and would remain militarily neutral on both accounts so as not to incite the destruction of its sovereignty through invasion. Tito later reflected that “Yugoslavia was not belong to any bloc. If not attacked, she will not participate in any war....Aggression is not our method of spreading the revolutionary movement in the world.”42 Noninterference was understood as a basic moral maxim of the new post-imperial world order Tito hoped to create. Yugoslavia's Third Way ideology was not rejecting socialism, nor was it opportunistically gravitating towards the West as NATO officials hoped, but instead claimed to be wresting itself of two equally belligerent and unhumanitarian fronts of geopolitical competition. Belgrade's unique road to socialism, Tito reflected, was not “using any kind of stereotype [i.e. emulating Moscow] but...rather being governed by the science of Marxism and...going our own way, minding the specific conditions which exist in our country.”43 The Yugoslavs, now on their own, were finally a self-determinate nation addressing their own problems.

Tito maintained his non-aligned and independent ideology even after the death of Stalin in 1953 and Nikita Khrushchev's aspirations for détente with Stalin's former “victims.” Khrushchev, like Tito himself, bitterly denounced the excesses and imperial chauvinism of his predecessors and advocated a decentralized cooperation with his allies through “peaceful coexistence.” Rather than being a bloc obeisant to the dictate of Moscow, Khrushchev claimed, the orbit of international socialism would be a type of commonwealth with room for alternative roads to socialism like Yugoslavia's. He hoped this foreign policy would bring Tito back into the Eastern fold.44 Although accepting formal rapprochement with Moscow, Tito and Kardelj insisted to Khrushchev that Yugoslavia would pursue its own independent course. Tito proudly defended his “own road to socialism” and added that Belgrade was not simply “neutral,” but was rejecting neo-imperialism in all its forms.45 He even privately argued that Khrushchev's “peaceful coexistence” was fundamentally unfeasible during the Cold War due to the ulterior geopolitical and imperial nature of the two superpowers, but ultimately concluded that it at least “...is better than war...”46

Despite Khrushchev's claim to have overcome the Soviets' imperial behavior, he continued to chauvinistically extol Moscow as the leading authority of the global Marxist revolution, and asserted that all socialist states should follow the lead and example of the Soviet Union. Any direct deviation from the hegemony of the Eastern Bloc was met with Soviet aggression, expulsion, or embargo. This was demonstrated by Moscow's eventual cession of foreign aid and advisors to both the People's Republic of China and Albania after Mao Zedong47 and Enver Hoxha48 denounced Khrushchev as a revisionist and imperialist. Even attempts to liberalize the Khrushchevite model of Communism, as seen in Hungary's “socialism with a human face,” was met with full-scale invasion in 1956. The chauvinistic behavior of the Soviet Union under Khrushchev verified to the Yugoslavs that Moscow was inherently a predatory neo-imperialist force inhibiting the self-determination of sovereign states in its geopolitical war with the West. In response, Tito refused to join the Warsaw Pact, continued to deride Moscow as imperialistic and the Eastern Bloc states as its colonial satraps, and even opposed Communist China as a new player on the global scramble for material resources.49

Tito's Third Way ideology and his non-aligned foreign policy cemented Yugoslavia as a self-determinate state, providing it with the best developmental features of both East and West. Given Yugoslavia's historical struggle against the new face of imperialism, Tito increasingly framed his independent ideology in a global context that was directed at the post-colonial world as a whole. Yugoslavia was a microcosm for the struggle of the entire Third World. He proudly noted that Yugoslavia's “resistance [to imperialism] gives encouragement to the peoples of countries which have freed themselves from the yoke of colonialism and wish to build their lives on progressive foundations, the foundations of socialism.”50 Since Belgrade's process of state formation was concomitant with its rejection of external hegemony, Tito concluded that for the new nations of the Third World to become truly self-determinate and eventually reach socialism, they had to reject the influence of both Moscow and Washington. He derided these supposedly “infallible authorities” as “the brake on the correct development of the progressive world in general...”51 He called this a “world consciousness,” demanding an end to the outmoded “diseases” of chauvinism and imperialism that would be replaced by a new world order of humanism, non-intervention, and non-alignment.52 The Third World – which now included Yugoslavia – was encouraged to pave its own roads of independent development and, ideally, socialism. Tito's emphasis on alternate roads to socialism exemplified his belief that dogmatic ideology itself is a tool of neo-imperial dominance over the whole world and must therefore be transcended. The West was not seen as a beneficent locus of democracy and liberalism, nor was the East seen as the true beacon of socialist internationalism. The American market manipulation in Latin America over United Fruit, the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, the overthrow of Muhammad Musaddiq by the CIA in Iran in 1953 over oil conflicts, and the geopolitical conflicts between the Americans and Soviets in Vietnam and Korea demonstrated that both sides of the Cold War binary were direct obstacles to the liberation of the post-colonial world in general. As Tito pointed out, even the Chinese “Communists” were beginning to ensnare post-colonial Africa and Southeast Asia behind the veil of ideology.53 Each post-colonial state, Tito argued, must therefore cultivate its own Third Way ideology on its own terms as the true guarantor of its total sovereignty in the face of neo-imperial subjugation.

Tito brought his new worldview to the whole Third World by inviting representatives from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America to Belgrade in 1961. With Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nassir, and India's Jawaharlal Nehru, the Third World outlined its global struggle against neo-imperialism by founding the Non-Aligned Movement. Tito reflected that the members “do not believe that in the future the international situation must inevitably develop along lines whereby countries must align themselves with this or that camp...”54 To become truly modern was to be completely sovereign, and to be truly sovereign required non-alignment. The enduring psychological scar left by colonialism, as well as the universal perception of a continuous neo-imperialism, is evident in the fact that the Non-Aligned Movement would eventually comprise more than 113 nations and the majority of the world's population.55 The NAM was a new Bandung, reinforcing the importance of non-alignment and universal humanism in response to the intensifying Cold War between two neo-imperial predators.

The global geopolitical competition had become far worse since the first conference, forcing the world and even peoples outside of the two power blocs to the brink of nuclear cataclysm. To the participants, the nuclear arms race exemplified the brutality that imperialism can inflict upon the sovereign nations of the world, which Tito described as “the sword of Damocles over the head of mankind and threatening to destroy it.”56 In response, the Non-Aligned Movement more formally articulated the new humanist worldview of the Third World: anti-imperialism; non-intervention; anti-dogmatism; anti-chauvinism; non-alignment; nuclear disarmament, and independent roads towards development. This was not to be a third power bloc that subsumed the autonomy of nations under one authority, nor was it to be united under a common socialist or revisionist ideology. Tito insisted that “sectarianism of any kind is alien to non-alignment...Our movement does not visualize the future of the world as resting on the balance of bloc power...The NAM is an independent, united, and autonomous factor in world politics...”57 Tito himself similarly dismissed the idea of supporting a new Communist International system to replace the Khrushchevite model as the universal standard of Marxism, arguing that it contradicted the Leninist principle of national self-determination.58 The NAM was effectively establishing a new-age Westphalian framework, averring that the new humanist world must overcome the chauvinism and neo-imperialism of both sides of the Cold War. This independence would be accelerated by releasing the Third World from economic dependency upon their former colonial rulers, calling instead for protectionism and global trade agreements among poor nations.59 Each post-colonial state was now to attain its own modernity and self-determination on its own terms. Tito presaged this new world order by proudly noting that, “the number of Asian and African countries which took part in the Conference...show[s] that matters have reached a historical turning-point, in that the people of the two continents are determined to decide their own future for themselves...”60

________________________________________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James Mayfield is a historian and the Chairman of the European Heritage Library. I have a Cum Laude BA in History with a Minor in Germanic Studies (language and history), am presently working for my Masters in History, and plan to immediately progress to my PhD Doctorate. I have a special academic interest in Europe's diverse ethnic identities, languages, and cultures, and the political struggles of native European and immigrant minority identities. See my staff entry for more information.

CITATIONS:

1. David Priestland, The Red Flag: A History of Communism (New York: Grove Press, 2009), 473.
2. Cedric Grant, "Equity in Third World Relations: a third world perspective," International Affairs Vol. 71,
   No. 3 (1995): 567-587.
3. Josip Broz Tito, "Concerning the National Question and Social Patriotism," Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1948/11/26.htm.
4. Priestland, 320.
5. Ibid., 318.
6. "Yugoslavia, 1944-1949." Zentrale für Unterrichtsmedien. http://www.zum.de/whkmla/region/balkans/ yugo19441949.html.
7. Svetislav Ristić, Savez komunista Jugoslavije u medjunarodnom radničkom pokretu, 1948-1968 (Belgrade, Serbia: Sedma Sila, 1968), 103.
8. Misha Glenny, The Balkans (New York: Penguin Group, 1999), 546-7.
9. Miranda Vickers, The Albanians: A Modern History (London: I.B. Taurus, 2001), 169.
10. Paul Lendvai, The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory and Defeat (Princeton, NJ:
    Princeton University Press, 2004), 34.
11. Ted Grant, “Behind the Stalin-Tito Clash,” Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxist.com/History-old/yugoslavia48.html.
12. Ibid.
13. William Griffith, The Sino-Soviet Rift (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972), 43.
14. Glenny, 546-7.
15. “Exclusive visit to the man who defied the Kremlin,” Life, September 12, 1949.
16. Ibid.
17. Kalamesh Banerji, “Interview with Marshal Tito,” Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/fi/vol11/no06/banerji.html.
18. Mark Mazower, The Dark Continent (Vancouver, WA: Vintage Books, 2000), 263.
19. Geoffrey Hosking, The First Socialist Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 322.
20. Ibid., 264.
21. Paul Halsall, "Cominform Communique: Resolution of the Information Bureau Concerning the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, June 28, 1948," Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1948cominform-yugo1.html
22. Ted Grant.
23. Josip Broz Tito, "Concerning the National Question and Social Patriotism," Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1948/11/26.htm.
24. Kosta Čavoški, Tito-Technologija Vlasti (Belgrade: Dosije, 1991), 18-19.
25. Glenny, 575.
26. Priestland, 317, 423.
27. Hosking, 322.
28. Joseph Karakas, "Europe – Yugoslavia," Crime and Society, http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/rwinslow/europe/yugoslavia.html.
29. Josip Broz Tito, “Workers Manage Factories in Yugoslavia,” Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1950/06/26.htm.
30. Josip Broz Tito, "Speech in the Indian Parliament," Marxists Internet Archive,http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1954/12/27.htm.
31. Hosking, 322.
32. Josip Broz Tito, "Concerning the National Question and Social Patriotism," Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1948/11/26.htm.
33. Glenny, 575.
34. Priestland, 317.
35. Ibid., 320.
36. Josip Broz Tito, “Workers Manage Factories in Yugoslavia,” Marxists Internet Archive,
    http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1950/06/26.htm.
37. Josip Broz Tito, "Concerning the National Question and Social Patriotism," Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1948/11/26.htm.
38. Hosking, 322.
39. Ibid., 324.
40. Griffith, 132.
41. Ibid., 44.
42. Banerji.
43. Josip Broz Tito, “Workers Manage Factories in Yugoslavia,” Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1950/06/26.htm.
44. Priestland, 333.
45. “Interview with TANJUG,” Borba, 6 December, 1962.
46. Roy Allison, The Soviet Union and the Strategy of Non-Alignment in the Third World (New York: Cambridge
    University Press, 1988), 62.
47. Mao Zedong, "On Khrushchev’s Phoney Communism and its Historical Lessons for the World: Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU (IX)," Marxists Internet Archive, http://marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1964/phnycom.htm.
48. Enver Hoxha, “Imperialism and Revolution, Part 1,” Communist International,
    http://archive.250x.com/hoxha/english/imp_rev1.html.
49. Griffith, 18.
50. Josip Broz Tito, "Historical Development in the World Will Move Towards the Strengthening of Socialism," Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1959/04/19.htm.
51. Ibid.
52. Hans Köchler, The Principles of Non-Alignment: The Non-Aligned Countries in the Eighties: Results and Perspectives. (Vienna, Austria: International Progress Organization, 1982), 3.
53. Griffith, 132.
54. Josip Broz Tito, "Historical Development in the World Will Move Towards the Strengthening of Socialism," Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1959/04/19.htm.
55. Grant 1995, 567-587.
56. Josip Broz Tito, "Speech in the Indian Parliament," Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1954/12/27.htm.
57. Köchler, 132.
58. Banerji.
59. Patel, 244.
60. Josip Broz Tito, "Statement to Radio Belgrade on the Afro-Asian Conference at Bandung," Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1955/04/27.htm.
    

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