ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the Yugoslav Communists’ accession to power at the end of World War II and the measures they undertook during the first postwar years in order to change Yugoslav society as their core ideology dictated. The short but turbulent period was marked by liberation from foreign occupation followed by harsh repression for large sections of the society. The first to bear the brunt were wartime ideological enemies, churches, and the propertied classes, but soon wartime allies such as the peasant majority also came under pressure. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia faced grave social and economic problems while going back on wartime promises to the Western Allies by imposing a Communist regime under Josip Broz Tito that permitted no political opposition. The initial coordination with the USSR did not however go as smoothly as expected by the Soviet side. Confident from a wartime resistance unsupported by the Soviet Union, the Yugoslavs resisted Stalin’s direction in economic and regional relations. His celebrated break with the Tito regime followed in 1948.
