ABSTRACT

Unlike the first Yugoslavia, the second one had a leadership with global ambitions. Following its dismemberment by the Axis Powers, Yugoslavia re-emerged as a unified state, forged in the fires of anti-fascist Partisan struggle, at the end of the Second World War. Having led the resistance, Tito and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) seized absolute power by November 1946, earlier than other Communist parties in Central and Eastern Europe. Brimming with confidence, they saw Yugoslavia as the center of a new Balkan Federation. More than that, they were convinced that they were the vanguard of a new wave of international revolution that would grip the peasant masses of the colonized and oppressed countries. This process was already visible in Southeast Asia and the Far East. The new states arising from this wave of popular revolt would transform world affairs at the expense of the United States and Western Europe. Together, and aided by the Soviet Union, they would achieve fast industrialization and urbanization, and break from the underdeveloped state in which they were kept by an unjust world system dominated by the imperialist centers of power.