ABSTRACT
Once, not long ago, Yugoslavia was considered a pioneer within the so-called communist world. First among the countries with communists as their uncontested rulers, she defied the Soviet Union and took an independent socialist road of her own. The intentions might not originally have been to stand as a forerunner; her Communist Party, after all, was thrown out of the Cominform in 1948. However, it soon became evident that if the communist heroes of the Partisan movement wanted to stay in power, they had to develop their own brand of socialism-which they eventually did-and thereby, Yugoslavia’s unique position among countries with communist regimes was established (Brzezinski 1967:58-64, Hoffman and Neal 1962:107-51, Ulam 1952).
