Tito and Yugoslavia 2.0 (1945-91)

Act 4 of "20th-century Balkans: a tragedy in 5 acts"

Yugoslavia had been devastated by World War II, with more than a million people killed in complex, multi-sided violence. At the end of it, the once-tiny Communist Party, led by Tito, ascended to power on the strength of its wartime militia, the Partisans.

The task now was to rebuild; to banish — or at least, to suppress — the ethnic hatreds of the past; and to assert legitimacy as the political force that promised peace and harmony for the future.

At first, the new régime was tied closely to the USSR. But in 1948, Tito and Stalin had a major falling out — and thereafter, Yugoslavia was a sort of Marxist experiment: independent of Moscow; outside the Cominform and the Warsaw Pact; and, after the 1960s at least, with rather more freedoms than were the abysmal norm in the Communist world.

During the Cold War, this left the country in an extremely advantageous, mediating position on the global stage. Internally, though, the whole edifice was held together by Tito's personal authority and Marxist ideology. What would happen after Tito? What would happen when Communism finally became unsustainable?