The project is financially supported by the Slovenian Research Agency under the code N6-0039

Project leader: Dr. Jože Pirjeve

The project aims at rethinking the Yugoslav political system of socialist self-management in an international and transnational perspective. After the split with the Cominform in 1948 Yugoslav system confronted different agents and traditions of the European leftist thought: on one side it was seen by Western left-wing circles as a laboratory of »democratic socialism«, while on the other side for East European politicians and intellectuals it posed as a model of resistance toward Soviet hegemony. The analysis of these processes offers a unique opportunity to observe the transnational conceptual and political interaction which went beyond the strict division between East and West and addressed an intriguing issue of combining liberal democracy and Marxism-Leninism but also unmasked the democratic deficits of Yugoslav one-party system. This interaction which was most clearly revealed during the existence of Yugoslav socialist experiment will be presented in three interrelated sections:

1) Laboratory of political innovation: the origins, construction, and international influence of self-management socialism;

2) Opening different ways to socialism: Yugoslavia and the international labour movement;

3) Yugoslav intellectual encounters: critics of institutional and perspectives of democratic Marxism.

Our main goal is to present consequences of mutual transfers and influences of political thought and practice and to investigate the ways they contributed to the theory of democratic socialism, a more just economic organisation of the world, preservation of peace, and many other still relevant issues.

Projects co-financed by Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS)