The unsettled foundation: self-management and its implications for Yugoslavia’s policy of Total National Defence

Abstract

ABSTRACT Whilst scholars have examined the long-term political, social, and cultural dynamics with regards to Yugoslavia’s collapse, the military has largely escaped similar scrutiny. This paper explores the League of Communists of Yugoslavia’s attempt to solve the nationalist problems of Yugoslavia through the ideology of self-management, and how the failure to do so affected the strategy of Total National Defence. The republics were able to construct their own armed forces due to Total National Defence’s devolution of powers and self-management making changes to the policy extremely difficult for the federal government and Yugoslav People’s Army.