Nonaligned Movement: Limits

Nonalignment had its limits. For all its accolades and accomplishments, for all its pomp and prestige, the Nonaligned Movement constantly bumped against reality. All that Yugoslavia achieved with its foreign policy of nonalignment must be placed side by side with all that it could not. 

With Agustín Cosovschi, Natalija Dimić Lompar, and Damir Vučićević. Featuring music by Duo Aguayo Huayamabe (courtesy of Caife) and Jazzaria (Creative Commons). Part 6 of 7.

Listen: “Nonaligned Movement: Limits” (Episode #111)

Bonus Extras: “Nonaligned Movement: Limits” (Episode #111)

Extended, ad-free version of “Nonaligned Movement: Limits” (Episode #111).

Transcript: “Nonaligned Movement: Limits” (Episode #111)

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: This episode of Remembering Yugoslavia is brought to you by Yugoblok. 

Yugoblok is a member-supported global community and information hub for all who remember Yugoslavia. Through membership contributions, Yugoblokniks make this podcast and a whole lot more possible and available to all. 

Yugoblok is a social network, a place where ex-Yugoslavs, post-Yugoslavs, yugodiasporans, yugophiles, and the yugocurious come together and keep the memory of the lost country alive. 

Yugoblok is podcasts (including an extended version of this episode as well as a members-only show), it’s articles, translations, newsletters, events, merch, and more—it’s all Yugoslavia, all the time. 

Visit Yugoblok.com to explore and join. 

[JINGLE] 

PETER KORCHNAK: This is Remembering Yugoslavia, the Yugoblok show exploring the memory of a country that no longer exists. I’m your commandante, Peter Korchnak.

For all its accolades and accomplishments, for all its pomp and prestige, the Nonaligned Movement would throughout its history constantly bump against reality. All that Yugoslavia did and achieved with its foreign policy of nonalignment has to be placed side by side with all that it did not. 

And that’s our story today, in the penultimate episode of our series on nonalignment: the limits of the Nonaligned Movement, nonalignment, and Yugoslavia’s nonaligned policy.

But first, this podcast too has its limits. Like every episode in the series, this one comes with an ad-free, extended version, featuring extra analysis, stories, and music. These bonus extras are available exclusively to Yugoblok members. To get access and listen at Yugoblok or in your podcast listening app, go to Yugoblok.com/join and sign up to be a Yugobloknik today. 

In addition to ad-free extended and bonus episodes and other perks of membership, your contribution will ensure the podcast and much more remains free and available to all who remember Yugoslavia. So go to Yugoblok.com slash join and enroll to become a Yugoblok member today.

[SOUNDBITE] 

Limits on Nonalignment

PETER KORCHNAK: Nonalignment had its limits. 

In their struggle for survival, countries that wished to eschew either superpower wanted to increase their influence in the international order; they opted to do so by banding together. Hence the Nonaligned Movement. 

But there was no escaping the cold Cold War reality: member countries and the Movement itself still had to engage with the superpowers they purported to oppose in one way or another. Inevitably, they became part of the Cold War whether they wanted to or not. As with stars and planets, the gravitational pull (and yes, pressure, too) that the superpowers exerted were impossible to escape. 

The dynamics of the Cold War both influenced and limited actions of all nonaligned countries, individually and as a Movement. 

Once the détente between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1970s eased the competition between them, the Nonaligned Movement’s core political purpose weakened. This is when we also saw the shift of the Nonaligned Movement’s goals toward economic development. 

By the time confrontation between the two superpowers resumed in the 1980s, Nonaligned Movement’s leader, Yugoslavia, was mired in an economic and political crisis, and indeed disintegrating. Once the Cold War ended, nonalignment lost its purpose completely.

Internal dynamics of the Nonaligned Movement created another limit. The movement was a hodgepodge of liberal democracies, socialist or communist countries, authoritarian states, monarchies, and so on, and sometimes the regimes changed as well. All these countries strived to unite behind a set of common goals, including mutual respect for sovereignty, non-aggression and noninterference, equality, and peaceful coexistence and cooperation. 

But they each continued, had to continue to purse their own interests—and those interests often came into conflict. Beyond developing ties to fellow nonaligned countries, member states cultivated or were forced to cultivate their own relationships with each superpower, and these relations could change over time as their internal regimes changed. So you could have Ethiopia, Angola, and others gradually gravitating toward the Soviet Union or Latin American members toward the U.S. 

Member states were also sometimes at war, like Cambodia versus Vietnam, India versus Pakistan, Algeria versus Morocco, and so on. The war between Iran and Iraq led to the cancellation of the planned 7th summit in Baghdad in 1982. 

And there was conflict over the goals and direction of the Nonaligned Movement itself. Competition developed between Cuba and Yugoslavia—more on that later in the show. 

Nonalignment in Latin America

There was one place that exemplified all these and other limits of Yugoslavia’s nonalignment very well. 

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: Latin America shows well all the limitations that Yugoslavia had not only in strategic terms; all the limitations that it had because its approach was not so productive, or it did not yield so spectacular results.

PETER KORCHNAK: Agustín Cosovschi is a historian from Buenos Aires at the École française in Athens, dealing with socialist Yugoslavia and its relations with Latin America. 

On the imaginary level—

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: There is a whole mythology about Yugoslavia in different places in Latin America. 

PETER KORCHNAK: In Cosovschi’s native Argentina, there’s a myth of Tito having spent some time there in the 30s and parallels drawn between Titoism and Peronism as alternative approaches to international politics. But in fact—

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: —relations were not very meaningful, actually, between Argentina and Yugoslavia throughout the Cold War. And I started to think that maybe much of this was basically a fantasy. 

PETER KORCHNAK: As all myths and fantasies, this one had some basis in reality.

Yugoslavia established, or perhaps restored from the pre-war Kingdom, diplomatic relations with Argentina, Brazil, and Chile already in 1946. It signed first trade agreements soon after, in 1948 with Argentina and in 1950 with Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. By 1950, Argentina and Brazil were among Yugoslavia’s top ten trading partners; by 1970 these two countries accounted for 80 percent of Yugoslavia’s trade on the continent. 

Yugoslavia established relations with most of the other countries of Latin America in the early 50s, and cultivated them throughout the decade with diplomatic missions aiming to improve relations and develop trade. 

From the late 1950s on, Yugoslavia signed cultural cooperation agreements with Latin American countries as well. Various cultural activities, like film screenings, art exhibitions, including at the Sao Paulo Art Biennial, as well as engagements with the diaspora communities took place throughout the 1960s. 

Yugoslavia systematically worked to build influence in Latin America. But rather than official, state level, it was most successful elsewhere.

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: Much of Yugoslavia’s involvement in the continent had to do with Yugoslavia’s actions among political parties and movements, and not so much to the level of official diplomacy and governments. 

On the contrary, it was much harder to actually create alliances, like official alliances, with governments in Latin America, especially because Washington exerted a very heavy pressure back then—I’m talking about the 1950s and early 1960s—so it was very complicated for Latin American governments to actually, have enough margin of maneuver to be able to establish an alliance, or a strategic partnership with a communist country, even with Yugoslavia, but it was much easier for Belgrade to create alliances with political parties and movements on the ground, which were much less visible. 

PETER KORCHNAK: By the early 1960s, through the activities of the federal Socialist Alliance of Working People, Commission for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, and Confederation of Trade Unions, Yugoslavia developed good relations with progressive movements in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, and Perú. Tito, Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav brand of socialism, and the nascent nonalignment had a positive image, and even enjoyed some popularity and influence among these leftwing movements and parties. Yugoslav officials visited South America to spread the word, South American socialist leaders visited Yugoslavia to learn from it.

Things got so good that a 1960 CIA report included Latin America among Yugoslavia’s spheres of interest. 

Tito then toured Latin America in 1963, at the peak of Yugoslavia’s engagement with the continent, visiting Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico (but not Cuba) seeking to expand trade and bring Latin American nations into the nonaligned fold. 

These networks came into prominence when the parties or movements behind them ascended to power, most prominently in Chile. 

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: In the 1950s Chile became the main foothold of Yugoslav power in Latin America, because the Chileans had a Socialist Party which was extremely akin to Yugoslavia in ideological terms, and it was also extremely powerful, and very well organized. Again, they were not in power, but they eventually came to power in the 1970s so in a way, the history of contact with Yugoslavia was useful, I mean, it was always useful, but it became even more useful in the late 1960s and early 1970s. 

PETER KORCHNAK: “Socialist Yugoslavia helped define the ideas and the activity of Chilean socialism,” writes Cosovschi in Jacobin. Chile was the main center of Belgrade’s foreign policy on the continent. The Popular Socialist Party (PSP) was very interested in the Yugoslav socialist model. A “close political friendship” developed between Chilean socialists and Yugoslav communists. 

Chilean socialists attended the Nonaligned Movement summits and other meetings, and Chile joined the movement in 1971 under Salvador Allende. Yugoslavia hosted university students from Chile (as well as Bolivia) on scholarships. 

A lot of visits and fact-finding missions took place. Yugoslavia also welcomed socialist exiles from the Pinochet junta after 1973.

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: Yugoslavia, in a way, throughout these connections, again, to low level of politics, or also sometimes the higher echelons of politics managed, throughout the 1950s to convey an image of it being a country that was worth visiting and as a country that could maybe become a model for Latin America. 

And you could find these things in different books of the time and different it’s the travel diaries and stories and things like that. In a way, Yugoslavia went from being quite unknown still in 1951, 52 to being in most people’s minds already by the late 1950s.

PETER KORCHNAK: At the same time—

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: It is extremely complicated to evaluate to which extent this had a proper impact. 

PETER KORCHNAK: As in other parts of the world or other elements of its nonaligned policy, quantifying the accomplishments and results is nearly impossible.

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: In economic terms, it’s very hard to know whether Yugoslavia’s endeavors and political actions in Latin America actually had an impact, because economic, I mean, exchange and economic cooperation with Latin America grew throughout the period, but at the same time, economic cooperation grew everywhere. I mean, the 1950s and 1960s are a moment of economic expansion generally, and of growth of international commerce in general. So it’s very hard to actually figure out, except if you go very into the details of certain sectors in certain countries, and who are the people responsible for one thing or another. 

Everything suggests that Yugoslavia was, at the same time trying to encourage these political relations that I talked about, and at the same time also encourage some an expansion in commerce. Both were probably unrelated, but maybe in the Yugoslavs mind was part of the same mission.

PETER KORCHNAK: Latin America’s importance for Yugoslav foreign trade remained considerably low compared with Africa, and even more so when compared with Asia. In the 1950s, trade with Latin America comprised around 5 percent of Yugoslavia’s balance, though it rose throughout the 60s. 

But again, the full economic impact is impossible to asses as official statistics did not account for business from branches of Yugoslav companies like Energoprojekt and Energoinvest, or for remittances from Yugoslav settlers and migrants. 

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: I would, on the contrary, tend to focus on how this had an impact on Yugoslavia, recruiting people for the Nonaligned Movement. And the fact that the sort of the Chilean socialists, for instance, attended the Belgrade conference in 1961 is for me, a proof that Yugoslavia’s endeavors in throughout the 1950s actually gave some results. 

This also shows that people could be recruited for the Nonaligned Movement, even outside the sphere of the state. And of course, this is fundamental, because it is the government of Salvador Allende which will bring Chile into the Nonaligned Movement. 

[SOUNDBITE] 

PETER KORCHNAK: At the same time, Chile and Argentina teemed with generations of immigrants from the southern parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Yugoslavia.

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: In both countries, you have a lot of people coming in the late 19th century, so coming basically for economic reasons, not for political reasons. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Thousands of Austro-Hungarians, especially from the territories of present-day Croatia, settled in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, and southern Brazil. This influx continued into the twentieth century and intensified when the U.S. in 1924 passed a restrictive immigration law. By 1928, some 150,000 people from the Yugoslav territories lived in South America. 

In Chile, most quote unquote Yugoslav immigrants came from Dalmatia, and most of those from the island of Brač. They remained moderate, and on balance positively inclined toward Yugoslavia.

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: In Chile, let’s say that the right-wing, anticommunist immigration that comes in the postwar period never really gains the upper hand in terms of the intracommunity politics, meaning that the Yugoslav immigration in Chile never became fully right-wing, never became fully fascist, or extremely conservative, as it did in Argentina, meaning that in Chile, it became a middle class, maybe moderate, maybe center, I mean, voting center-right, some of them even being involved in left-wing politics. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Chile’s president since 2022, Gabriel Boric [borich], is the descendant of 19th century immigrants from the now-Croatian island of Ugljan, near Zadar, to southern Chile. In Punta Arenas, whence Boric hails, there stands a monument created in 1970 by the sculptor Miodrag Živković to honor quote unquote Yugoslav immigrants; the monument’s name was in the 90s changed to the Monument to Croatian Immigrants (of course, neither Yugoslavia, nor Croatia existed at the time of this migration).

Things were different in Argentina.

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: After the Second World War, so many anticommunist emigres came to Argentina that basically they ended up, I wouldn’t say, monopolizing the politics of the diaspora, but let’s say gaining a lot of power. The politics of the diaspora in Argentina became extremely right-wing, while in Chile, they tended to be a bit more moderate. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Argentina saw a huge influx of Croatian exiles who were escaping prosecution in the new socialist Yugoslavia for their wartime activities in the Nazi satellite Independent State of Croatia. Buenos Aires in particular was quote, “a hub for fascist Ustaša activities.”

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: This had, of course, an impact on relations between Yugoslavia and Latin American countries. 

And the issue of Ustaše refugees was a big problem, a major issue in Yugoslavia’s relations and dealings with Peronist Argentina. The Yugoslavs wanted these people back, to judge them, they wanted to punish them somehow, they wanted to do something about this. And the Peronist government hid them and collaborated with them and included many of them in their structure, in their structures of power, even Peron included many of them in their in his intimate circles. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Some 350,000 people in Argentina claim Croatian ancestry. 

They include: the late Diego Maradona whose maternal great-grandfather, Mateo Kariolić, was from the island of Korčula; and the current president Javier Milei, whose maternal grandfather, last name Lučić, was from Hvar.

[SOUNDBITE] 

PETER KORCHNAK: For all its early successes, Yugoslav relations with Latin America peaked just as the Cold War was heating up. The radicalization of the Cold War, as Cosovschi terms it, caused a number of problems for Yugoslavia and its foreign policy.

First, the Cuban Revolution brought a radical communist regime to power. Fidel Castro became increasingly popular and influential across the continent. 

Having overthrown a bourgeois regime in their backyard, Castro supplanted Tito as the model revolutionary leader for leftwing Latin America. 

Though the two countries established relations at first and Cuba attended the first Nonaligned Movement summit, Cubans would increasingly criticize Yugoslav market socialism and self-management, even calling it revisionist.

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: In a very short time period of like two years or three years, Yugoslavia went from seeing Cuba as a potential ally, as seeing it mostly as a contender in the nonaligned world. From 1959 to 1961, 62, relations between both countries changed radically. They started in a very friendly manner and with a lot of perspective, perspectives for cooperation, and already 1961, 62 things were extremely messy and very complicated. 

PETER KORCHNAK: With a newly communist state on its doorstep, the U.S. intensified pressure on Latin American countries to oppose all forms of communism. 

Additionally, a number of coups d’etats in the 1960s and 70s, some of them U.S. sponsored, shifted the ideological balance of power across the continent. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Uruguay all fell under right-wing authoritarian or dictatorial rule, leaving little room for little socialist Yugoslavia. 

Finally, the Cuban Missile Crisis re-focussed attention on the superpower conflict and nuclear war.

PETER KORCHNAK: In terms of nonalignment, the Yugoslav version, marked by active neutralism and moderation, meshed poorly with the Cubans’ revolutionary zeal, pro-Soviet orientation, and militant anti-Americanism. It was the Cuban Revolution, not nonalignment that came to symbolize anti-imperalist resistance in Latin America. 

Things came to a head at the 6th summit of the Nonaligned Movement in Havana in 1979, culminating a debate within the movement between two visions of nonalignment: Castro’s radical one, which favored allying nonalignment with socialism and the Soviet Union, and Tito’s moderate one along the original principles, which countered that going socialist was not only against these principles, it would pretty much destroy the Nonaligned Movement as such. 

Most dramatically, the Movement split over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a member state, later that year. Most nonaligned countries, including Yugoslavia, condemned the invasion, but Cuba supported it which diminished its radical vision of nonalignment.

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: The Yugoslavia never fully grasped how limited the possibilities of the Cubans were. And they thought that they could maybe apply a softer line in international politics, that they could maybe not so much radicalize their politics. 

I think that, On the contrary, the context made it that Cuba had to radicalize its revolution. But I think that Yugoslavia, had no notion of the complications, the intricacies of regional politics sometimes. And I think that was one of the main limitations of their approach in Latin America.

PETER KORCHNAK: As a result, Yugoslavia’s partners across Latin America, writes Cosovschi in a paper, “became increasingly unreceptive” to any nonalignment, let alone the Yugoslav version of it. 

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: Yugoslavia had always promoted this sort of soft line of nonalignment, soft line of neutralism, which was a little bit a bit less militant, or a bit less a bit less feisty than the one promoted by Cuba. And in the 1950s they had a lot of— a lot of a huge audience for that. And in the 1960s, on the contrary, what happened is that basically the Cold War radicalized ideologies in the continent, and people were a bit less receptive to Yugoslavia’s brand of socialist internationalism and nonalignment. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Within the Nonaligned Movement, quote “the radicalization of the Cold War in the 1960s ensured that [it] would increasingly face internal tensions and pressures to abandon its discursive equidistance from the two blocs or that it would simply face the increasing risk of becoming morally inspiring, but politically inconsequential, in the increasingly militarized confrontations that took place in the peripheries of the bipolar world.”

PETER KORCHNAK: The inaugural conference of the Nonaligned Movement in Belgrade, in 1961, only had Cuba as a member state. Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Paraguay, El Salvador, and Uruguay never became members of the Nonaligned Movement.

[SOUNDBITE – “Mi Ultima Ilusion” by Duo Aguayo Huayamabe]

PETER KORCHNAK: That was Duo Aguayo Huayamabe from 1960s Ecuador with “Mi Ultima Ilusion.” I’ve played it for you with the kind permission of Daniel Lofredo Rota who has revived and is reissuing music from his grandfather’s defunct Ecuadorian label Caifel. Buy their music on Bandcamp and check out the label’s story, it’s fascinating. All the links are at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia.

NATALIJA DIMIĆ LOMPAR: When we talk about this distinctiveness of Yugoslavia and its role as a nonaligned country when dealing with [the] Third World, there is always this fine line between what was Yugoslavia’s advantage and what was its flaw or weak point. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Natalija Dimić Lompar is a historian in Belgrade, working as a research associate at the Institute of Recent History of Serbia. 

You’ve already heard this story in a sense. Yugoslavia’s ambitions constantly butted against its capacities; in other words, its nonaligned policy was hampered by its resources.

NATALIJA DIMIĆ LOMPAR: Yugoslavia did have potential or capability to turn its flaws into advantages, sometimes. But eventually, especially at times of severe international crisis, these advantages that are for a country like Yugoslavia that had limited capacities, limited economic capacity, limited military capacities, this, I would say soft power potential that it had was not enough. 

PETER KORCHNAK: If hard power entails influencing (pushing) other countries with weapons and money, soft power entails persuasion (pulling) with culture, values, and shared objectives.

NATALIJA DIMIĆ LOMPAR: The fact that it lacked hard power, made it an appealing partner as its assistance it was unconditioned because Yugoslavia had no means to condition its assistance to the Third World.

I always like to rephrase. Alan Rubenstein’s words from his book published back in 1970s—

PETER KORCHNAK: —Yugoslavia and the Nonaligned World—

NATALIJA DIMIĆ LOMPAR: —he stated that Tito, in fact, he struck the right note with the right audience at right moment in time. 

In other words, what Yugoslavia was offering, in a way, to these developing countries was the possibility of being not aligned with either of the blocs. We’re talking about countries, about the recently liberated countries, and political leaders of these countries could not want to replace their colonial masters with new ones, be it Moscow or Washington or China. So Yugoslavia offered, at least with the image or the way it presented itself to these countries, it offered the possibility of being nonaligned, being independent, yet cooperating with all sides in this conflict, in the global conflict, and it was at the same time a relatively developed country. So it could offer assistance, technical assistance, equipment, experts, scholarships, not in large amounts, but it was able to offer them. 

And what differed from Soviet Union or China, for example, was or the United States, was the fact that it did not have a power to condition its material assistance. The very fact that it did not have the power to condition its assistance is what’s made its assistance appealing.

PETER KORCHNAK: Yugoslavia did not attach strings to its assistance because, having been bullied by the Soviet Union, it advocated for non-interference and non-aggression. It turns out, it also lacked the very spool from which to spin those strings to begin with.

NATALIJA DIMIĆ LOMPAR: On the other hand, when this assistance was needed, when hard power was needed, it lacked those resources.

PETER KORCHNAK: So what marked Yugoslavia’s nonaligned policy was—

NATALIJA DIMIĆ LOMPAR: —this dichotomy and ambivalence between what were imperatives of solidarity and providing assistance to developing countries on one hand, and economic reality and economic strains and economic limits that were Yugoslavia’s reality at the time.

PETER KORCHNAK: It’s difficult to project power externally when you’re collapsing internally. Ongoing decentralization and competition among the republics for federal resources, which began already in the 1960s, gradually weakened the state and limited its ability to act internationally.

To bring it back to Cuba. Yugoslavia was sending arms and other assistance to Angola for its liberation struggle. But by the mid-70s Yugoslavia was running out of budgetary steam, the Soviets and the Chinese were sending even more weapons, and the Cubans were sending combatants. As Dimić Lompar notes, “It was difficult, if not impossible, to dissuade and confront [the] argument about the fundamental differences between the two blocs, when Angolans witnessed Cuban soldiers “shedding their blood in Angola in the name of proletarian internationalism!””

The same went for Latin America. With Cuba a spearhead into America’s underbelly, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia became much more involved on the continent, providing a counterbalance to American influence. The Chinese invested on the continent as well and their version of socialism, too, became an attractive option for leftwing Latin America. 

“Yugoslavia’s economic capacities could not meet the requirements of its foreign policy,” writes Dimić Lompar. Yugoslavia simply couldn’t compete. 

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: When push comes to shove, Yugoslavia it doesn’t really have the resources or the will to actually intervene when a Cold War crisis become a because it becomes a full Cold War crisis. And that makes it that you’re gonna have limits in the Third World if you’re not sending, like, a lot of guns and a lot of soldiers and a lot of things you guys like it did that did that in a way, Yugoslavia did that sometimes, sometimes it helped. It did give a lot of military support to certain movements, one should not forget this. But it was, in general, quite moderate compared to what the Soviets were doing already by the late 1960s and I think the Soviets, in a way, they understood the radical, this radicalization much better than Yugoslavia.

PETER KORCHNAK: Lack of resources limited Yugoslavia’s capacity to send arms and other assistance to the Third World. It also limited the reach of its scholarship program. It was mostly the children of political or economic elites in the recipient countries who received these scholarships and many recipients simply moved on to the West, all of which limited the impact of the policy. 

This was doubly the case with military education and training; Yugoslavia could only do so much with what it had and so it focused on the top military echelons.

In Angola, writes Dimić Lompar, “the Yugoslavs assessed that the USSR, Cuba, and other East European countries were present in all aspects of the newly liberated Angolan society, whereas Yugoslavia managed to build ties only with Angolan leadership, rather than with the middle ranking officials and the Angolan population.” End quote. And once the leaders of the two countries died, the cooperation was pretty much over. 

NATALIJA DIMIĆ LOMPAR: When you read Yugoslav internal analysis, they’re quite often critical of the fact that Yugoslavia is not able to reach middle ranking officials or middle, middle ranking either party or military members.

It’s again rather a matter of resources. They’re often not really precise numbers and figures, and it’s really difficult to say how many people got trained in Yugoslavia, how many people got scholarships in Yugoslavia, how many Yugoslav experts went to certain country and that in comparison to other countries? But some figures that I came across regarding Angola stated, for example, that in the early 70s, in certain years, as I think, 1973, the MPLA had around 150 military officers or future fighters undergoing trainings in the Soviet Union, around 200 in China, and their number in Yugoslavia was limited to a couple of people, and those six or seven people were future high ranking military officials in Angola. But what the MPLA at the time needed was some five or six hundred fighters trained on a monthly level, and that’s something that Yugoslavia simply could not afford. They probably would have provided more if they could.

PETER KORCHNAK: The Yugoslavs, writes Dimić Lompar, citing archival sources throughout, “assessed that the majority of the MPLA members, except the leading circles, follow the experience and practice of East European countries [and China who] were able to establish political and ideological influence on the middle-ranking party and army members, which resulted in ‘an uncritical acceptance of Soviet slogans, unadjusted propaganda, and insufficient knowledge of the experiences of other countries and of different paths to socialism on part of the Angolan comrades.’”

Military and other assistance to liberation movements in the Third World was a matter of some debate in Yugoslavia.

NATALIJA DIMIĆ LOMPAR: So on one hand, some analysis, internal analysis, internal foreign political analysis they urge Yugoslav ministries to provide larger assistance, or more scholarships, more trainings, and on the other hand there’re economic experts within Yugoslavia on the other hand, urging to somehow adjust this

assistance policy of providing assistance with what would be financial reality of Yugoslavia, so and some commercial interest, commercial basis on which Yugoslavia economy was supposed to be reformed. 

PETER KORCHNAK: It all came back to money.

Economic factors, indeed deficiencies, limited the Nonaligned Movement overall. Its reorientation toward development in the 1970s meant to change that dynamic, but many of these countries were starting from a low base, so it was hard to catch up and build up sufficient power.

NATALIJA DIMIĆ LOMPAR: One can say that [the] Nonaligned Movement was one of the rare actors that had the power to influence the Cold War rivalry and influence the superpower politics, on one hand. 

But on the other hand, in cases, as was the their endeavors to influence the North-South dialog, New International Economic Order, New International Information Order, nonaligned countries and [the] Nonaligned Movement, the Global South did not have the power to influence the more developed countries, to reshape the world order.

I’m probably going to sound pretty much Marxist now but those limits are very much related to the lack of so called material bases of the developing countries.

[SOUNDBITE – “Mambo de la Noche” by Jazzaria]

PETER KORCHNAK: “Mambo de la Noche” by Jazzaria, licensed under Creative Commons. 

Self-Management and Nonalignment

PETER KORCHNAK: Self-management, exposed additional weaknesses and limits of Yugoslavia’s nonaligned policies.

First, the was the organizational aspect of it. As decisions within the country devolved to the level of enterprise or later any organization, Yugoslavia’s capacity to conduct a unified foreign policy diminished. This was best exemplified in art, but it went across the board.

“Yugoslavia’s approach was neither sufficiently systematic nor institutionally organized,” writes Dimić Lompar. “Yugoslavs concluded that insufficient economic and cultural cooperation with Angola derived from “an unsynchronized approach of Yugoslav companies and the uncompetitive nature of its economy.” 

NATALIJA DIMIĆ LOMPAR: With this story about internal reforms and decentralization, it was more about turning advantages into flaws, in a way, because— I mean on one hand, the whole process of implementing self-management and promoting self-management, one of Yugoslavia’s identity pillars and from the early 50s on. 

But on the other hand, it turned out that for many things, it was just more complicated, complex, disorganized, dysfunctional at the time. So here is also this fine line between what was advantage, what was disadvantage.

PETER KORCHNAK: The soft, carrot rather than hard, stick approach to promoting itself in the Global South was also exemplified with self-management. Several nonaligned countries found self-management to be an attractive option. Yugoslavia for its part was not foisting it on them, but rather highlighting its advantages and accomplishments, trying to lead by example rather than directive. It was as if its soft power also came with a soft sale strategy.

For example—

DAMIR VUČIĆEVIĆ: When Egypt was looking to define its Arab socialism in the 1960s one of the models that they looked at was the Yugoslav model. They really wanted to study the Yugoslav self-management. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Damir Vučićević is a historian from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The Egyptians were positively inclined toward Yugoslavia because of its support in the Nubia Monuments Campaign and particularly the Suez War in 1956. Active bilateral diplomacy also played a role.

DAMIR VUČIĆEVIĆ: Beginning the late 50s, you have these Yugoslav delegations, high ranking delegations like Kardelj, going to Egypt and talking about self-management, how it’s implemented in Yugoslavia, what are the benefits, what are the quirks of it, really emphasizing decentralization.

So in 1961 the so called July laws in Egypt were passed. So the first socialist laws. One particular law was law 114 which explicitly stated labor participation in management of industries, where they tried to specify what the roles of the managers were, what the roles of the workers were, and then what the role of the state was. Law 111 for example, called for profit sharing in industry. 

PETER KORCHNAK: The experiment lasted about a decade and a half. 

DAMIR VUČIĆEVIĆ: Throughout the 60s, Egypt’s committed to socialism and the experiment continues in the 1960s and it actually continues into the 1970s as well. And sort of ironically, the capitalist or the shift towards sort of mixed economy is officially inaugurated in Egypt in 1974 after the October war, 1973.

Anwar Sadat, the successor to Nasser, does sort of liberalize the state little bit more, it kind of loosens the repressive apparatus of the state. And they continue to experiment with these laws that were passed in 1960s, these labor management laws.

The change really comes in 1977.

PETER KORCHNAK: The so-called bread riots that year saw a spontaneous uprising across Egypt against a sharp increase in prices of staples. 

DAMIR VUČIĆEVIĆ: Emergency laws are passed and the repression begins again. Beyond 1977 Egypt goes full on neoliberal. 

Yeah so it lasted roughly decade and a half that experiment with self-management, or again, didn’t call it self management, they called it labor participation. And they were always trying to negotiate it, sort of interpret it and apply it to Egyptian conditions. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Self-management was cancelled and it left nary an imprint on Egypt.

Yugoslavia’s nonalignment ended where recipient countries’ internal politics began. 

In the case of Angola, writes Dimić Lompar, “the Angolan society did not enter a phase of peaceful development after gaining independence.” The US, South Africa, the USSR, and Cuba all continued their engagement there in the conflict, and again Yugoslavia, having punched above its weight already, simply could not keep up.

Which ties it all back to Yugoslavia’s political and especially economic capacity, as a small, pretty much developing country, to exert influence. And it again speaks to states pursuing their own interests, which could change as their rulers or regimes changed. In a way, Yugoslavia would always play catch up, and often just end up running around.

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: A few other realities limited the impact of nonalignment and the Nonaligned Movement. 

One was purely on the human level. Interests and policies are one thing, but it’s people who implement them. And those people were overwhelmingly men.

DAMIR VUČIĆEVIĆ: There were these interesting moments where the Yugoslavs would welcome these delegations. In one instance, it was a Moroccan labor union representatives. And, you know, the Yugoslavs ready to— they had this presentation, this is what how Yugoslav self-management functions, and they were going to take them to these different factories, Zenica or the shipyards in Croatia in Split. 

But anyway, the Moroccan delegation, you know, they come and they’re sitting here—this was noted in the report, later in the Yugoslavs report—and they were, like, you know, this is all fine and interesting, but can you guys take us out somewhere? You know, we want to meet some Yugoslav women, you know, we want to go out and have a good time. And there were, you know, these are sort of mid-level party Communist officials, you know. And they were, like, very serious and diligent about their job, you know. And they were taking it back, you know, the report was like, well, we ended up taking them to dinner. You know so, yeah, there were, there were moments like this, where people sort of use the opportunity to sort of just, sort of just see the world and explore the world. And it wasn’t always as doctrinaire as the Yugoslavs had hoped it would be. 

PETER KORCHNAK: And there were other internal debates within Yugoslavia when it came to nonalignment, debates that transcended the economics of it all.

AGUSTÍN COSOVSCHI: Yugoslavia, had an issue with its own position in the world, not being sure whether it was in Europe or in the Third World. And these debates actually took place throughout the 1960s in the media. People discussing, are we a European country or a Third World country, like, who do we want to trade with? Who do we want to talk to? Which one is our table to discuss world politics? 

I think that Yugoslavia, again, was playing all the time, this balancing act which yielded very good results at certain points, but I would not call it shortsighted, but it was extremely adapted to a certain dynamic of the Cold War, which could be reversed at a certain point, and which definitely stopped making sense when the Cold War ended.

[OUTRO MUSIC – “Jugoslavijo / Od Vardara pa do Triglava” by Horn Orchestra]

PETER KORCHNAK: That’s all for this episode of Remembering Yugoslavia, thank you for listening. 

All guests’ opinions expressed are solely their own; unless otherwise noted they do not express, reflect, or represent the views or opinions of any third party, including myself. 

Find additional information, sources, embeds, links, photos, and the transcript of this episode at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia. 

And while you’re there, join Yugoblok as a member and take part in a growing community of yugodiasporans and others.  

Outro music courtesy of Robert Petrić. Interludes courtesy of Sticky Keys. 

The track by Jazzaria licensed under Creative Commons; the song by Duo Aguayo Huayamabe courtesy of Caife records and Daniel Lofredo Rota. Buy their music on Bandcamp!

I am Peter Korchňak. 

¡Adios!

Additional Sources

• Bernard, Sara and Agustín Cosovschi. “Cooperation, Migration and Development: Yugoslavia and the Southern Cone in the Postwar Period.” In: Maria Damilakou and Yannis Papadopoulos, eds. Migration and Development in Southern Europe and South America. New York: Routledge, 2022
• Cosovschi, Agustin. “Searching for Allies in America’s Backyard: Yugoslav Endeavors in Latin America in the Early Cold War.” The International History Review Vol. 43 No. 2 (2020): 281–296
• _______. “Seeing and Imagining the Land of Tito: Oscar Waiss and the Geography of Socialist Yugoslavia.” Balkanologie Vol. 17 No. 1 (2022): 1-15
• _______. “In the Days of Tito and Allende, Yugoslavia Helped Define Chilean Socialism.” Jacobin, 01.15.2022
• _______. “From Santiago to Mexico: The Yugoslav Mission in Latin America during the Cold War and the Limits of Non-Alignment.” In: Paul Stubbs. ed. Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Imaginaries. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023, pp. 283-301
• _______. “Clashing Visions of Non-alignment: The Origins of the Cuban-Yugoslav Conflict.” Cold War History Vol. 25 No 2 (2025): 197-217
• Dimić, Natalija. “Achievements and Limitations of Yugoslavia’s Policy in Angola during the 1960s and 1970s.” Afriche et Orienti Vol. 19 No. 3 – International Solidarities and the Liberation of the Portuguese Colonies (2017): 9–30
• Lazic, Milorad. “Arsenal of the Global South: Yugoslavia’s Military Aid to Nonaligned Countries and Liberation Movements.” Nationalities Papers Vol. 49 No. 3 (2021): 428–445
• _______. “Comrades in Arms: Yugoslav Military Aid to Liberation Movements of Angola and Mozambique, 1961–1976.” In: Dallywater, Lena, Chris Saunders, and Helder Adegar Fonseca, eds. Southern African Liberation Movements and the Global Cold War ‘East’ Transnational Activism 1960 – 1990. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019, pp. 151-179
• Lüthi, Lorenz M. “The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War, 1961–1973.” Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 18, No. 4 – Neutrality and Nonalignment in World Politics during the Cold War (2016): 98-147
• Simić, Bojan. “Socijalistička Jugoslavija i države Južne Amerike (1946-1950) – uspostavljanje diplomatskih i ekonomskih odnosa.” Tokovi istorije Vol. 30 No. 2 (2022): 73-99
• _______. “Brazil u politici socijalističke Jugoslavije (1946-1952).” Tokovi istorije Vol. 31 No. 3 (2023): 133-156
• _______. “Diplomatic Relations Between Yugoslavia and Chile, 1947-1950: From Severance to Renewal.” Journal of Historical Researches Vol. 32 (2021): 206-220