VOJVODINA IN THE NATIONAL POLICY OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA 1918-1945

Abstract

The national policy of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), between the two world wars, was formulated under the direct influence of the Comintern and was therefore subject to sudden and radical changes in the foreign policy of the USSR. Thus, in accordance with the foreign policy interests of the first socialist state, the national policy of the CPY ranged from demands for the disintegration of the Yugoslav kingdom to insisting on its constitutional reorganization. Within the federalist concept of the CPY, Vojvodina, as a “historical, geographical, and economic entity,” was also envisaged to have the status of a federal unit, with occasional and conditional acceptance of its autonomous status. Although based on a different ideological matrix, the arguments used by the communists to justify the need for a special constitutional status for Vojvodina were identical to the demands of the Croatian political movement and a segment of the civic opposition in the Vojvodina Front, which the CPY formally supported in the mid-1930s. Despite the fact that autonomist and federalist projects for Vojvodina were not widely supported by either the Serbs or its national minorities for various reasons, Vojvodina became an autonomous province when the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, at the end of World War II, established a federal Yugoslavia in the context of agreements among the interested major powers.