Precarious Balance: The fragility of Tito’s Yugoslavia. Between “bratstvo jedinstvo”, repression and self-determination from 1945 to 1991. (original) (raw)

2019, University of Vienna

This Thesis is an analysis of Tito’s Yugoslavia, focusing on the sources of stability and instability; it employs International Relations Theory and historical narrative. A major concept that will be utilized is “balance of power” theory, which will illustrate how in Yugoslavia “supranational” stability was achieved by ensuring an “equilibrium of power”. In this Thesis Yugoslavia has to be perceived not as an ordinary, single national state, but more as its own “mini state system”, since the Yugoslav Federation itself was composed of several Republics with their own respective rights and identities.Tito’s approach of assuring stability with his policy of “brotherhood and unity” initially prevented the formation of “destabilizing factors”, in the case of Yugoslavia nationalist tendencies themselves, which constantly threatened his “Pan-Slavic” union.Tito’s methods to preserve his second Yugoslav “experiment” are also visible through major events which shaped Yugoslavia for generations to come, like the “Tito-Stalin Split”, the establishment of a Yugoslav “self-management system” or the “Croatian Spring” movement. Throughout this Thesis it is also shown how Tito tried to ensure a “balance of powers” not only on a national level, but also between the Yugoslav ethnicities themselves, especially through his key ideology of “brotherhood and unity”, which was enforced with a “sticks and carrots” approach - in form of reforms, but also with repressive measures. In order to ensure stability, Tito fiercely persecuted political and cultural dissidents in his Yugoslavia, which were often imprisoned in labour camps (“Goli Otok”). The approach of viewing Yugoslavia as its own state system ultimately allows to grasp how Tito managed to preserve the Yugoslav Federation: on an authoritarian level first and, after his constitutional amendments of 1974, on a “plural” level second.