Flexible Exercise of Authoritarian Power in the Yugoslav Communist Leadership: A Discursive Profile of Vladimir Bakarić

Abstract

This paper analyses the lifelong political activity of the Yugoslav/Croatian communist leader Vladimir Bakaric (1912-1983) who, as one of the closest collaborators to Josip Broz Tito, led Croatian communists between 1944 and 1969 and was member of the Yugoslav State Presidency in the 1974-1983 period. The focus of analysis is primarily his public and behind-the-closed-doors discursive strategy. The research is premised on the fact that Bakaric, one of the leading communist intellectuals in Yugoslavia since the 1930s, carefully and skilfully used his knowledge of Marxist theory to enhance his political status and acquire political gain. The methodological basis of this article is discourse analysis, more specifically, critical discourse analysis (CDA) as developed by the German theoretician Siegfried Jager. Bakaric entered Tito’s closed circle in the 1950s to become one of its very few permanent and life-long members. Bakaric’s power in Yugoslav leadership originated in his initial role as Tito’s trusted representative in Croatia during the 1940s. As Croatia grew on importance within Yugoslavia in later years, Bakaric gained on personal influence. His distinctive function in the Yugoslav leadership was to permanently represent Croatian national and ‘republican’ interests, which he tried by circumventing Croat ethnic nationalism and centralism at the same time in order to preserve his vision of a federal Yugoslav state. As a senior statesman, Bakaric came to exercise important influence on Yugoslav federal level in later decades as one of the few official interpreters of the most important part of the regime’s discourse - ideological framework of the self-management socialism. His power came from his role of Yugoslavia’s referential authority on the regime’s discourse whose flexibility, including periodic fluctuations between authoritarianism and liberalism, and intellectualism found in Bakaric a perfect representative, but he never acquired a fully independent power position and remained dependent on the support from Tito. After 1966, and especially after 1974, Bakaric, Tito, and a few select others worked together as informal joint heads of state, who shared out the government and Party positions among themselves and worked towards the same discursive goal, implementation of self-management reforms. In addition, as the power of state institutions (especially federal) of Yugoslavia became increasingly decentralized, Bakaric’s personal power grew because the importance of the ideological consensus of the communist elite(s) for keeping the socialist system and Yugoslavia itself together became paramount. This position enabled him to exercise power through official and unofficial channels - through various “consultations”, conferences and selected media appearances - over lower-level ranks of the Party and the State and to outmaneuver his opponents.