L’antifascisme et les fronts populaires en Yougoslavie. Le chemin vers le pouvoir, 1935-1945

Mouvements. 2020. No. 4(104). P. 58–68.

Mladenović I., Gužvica S.

Using a case study of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, we try to present the multitude of different tactics that were applied under the communist strategy of the “Popular Front,” hence using the phrase in plural. Although the popular front is now seen primarily as a strategy of class compromise for the sake of struggle against fascism, the story of Yugoslav communism shows that it was far more ambiguous than that. The Popular Front period did see both genuine communist attempts at preserving the pre-WW2 status quo and genuine communist revolutionary upheavals. The dominance of one or the other depended on a variety of factors, from the very local or national to the general geopolitical interests of the Soviet Union. It also depended on a given moment of time and the balance of forces. The history of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia between 1935 and 1945 is the story of constant negotiation between attempts to pacify the revolutionary impulses and struggles to overthrow the old order.

Keywords: Yugoslavia, antifascism, Stalinism