Yugoslavia: The Outworn Structure

Yugoslavia did not have tremendous success as a unified political entity. Tensions among the various nationalities inside Yugoslavia's border always threatened to undermine the control of the Communists. In order to address these longstanding and threatening tensions, in 1971, the Yugoslavian Communist Party prepared a set of sweeping reforms to create semi-autonomous regions to provide some domestic independence for each nationality, while the Party would maintain centralized control over foreign policy. Just before these reforms were publicized, the CIA published this intelligence briefing on Yugoslavia, which both outlined the goals for the reforms, and the continuing resistance to any form of political change. There were many centers of concern and potential solutions seen by the Yugoslavian communist leadership (Tito & Kardelj most importantly) but dealing with the various regional differences remained the central goal of the central leadership. The last paragraph, in particular, lays out the CIA's assessment of the continuing dangers of nationalist divides, which effectively predicts the problems that would emerge in the late 1980s.