League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia

Last updated
League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia
  • Savez socialističke omladine Jugoslavije (Serbo-Croatian)
  • Zveza socialistične mladine Jugoslavije (Slovene)
  • Сојуз на социјалистичката младина на Југославија (Macedonian)
Founded10 October 1919
Dissolved24 February 1991
Headquarters Belgrade, SFR Yugoslavia
Membership3.6 million (1983) [1]
Ideology
[ citation needed ]
International affiliation World Federation of Democratic Youth (until 1948)
National affiliation Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia

The League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia (SSOJ) was the youth movement, member organisation of the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia (SSRNJ). [2] Membership stood at more than 3.6 million individuals in 1983. [1] It was originally established as the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia (SKOJ) on 10 October 1919 and retained that name until 1948. [3] Although it was banned just two years after its establishment and at times ruthlessly prosecuted, it continued to work clandestinely and was an influential organization among revolutionary youth in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and consequently became a major organizer of Partisan resistance to Axis occupation and local Quisling forces. After World War II, SKOJ became a part of a wider organization of Yugoslav youth, the People's Youth of Yugoslavia, which later became the League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia.

Contents

Building in Zagreb where SKOJ was founded in October 1919. Zgrada osnutka SKOJ-a.jpg
Building in Zagreb where SKOJ was founded in October 1919.
Memorial plaque on the building. Spomen-ploca osnutku SKOJ-a.JPG
Memorial plaque on the building.

History

Original SKOJ

SKOJ was founded in Zagreb on October 10, 1919 as a political organization of revolutionary youth the youth which followed the policy of the communist Socialist Workers' Party of Yugoslavia. [4]

Regional committees were originally established but they were abolished in 1920. In 1921, the organization was banned together with the party, which had in the meantime been renamed Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Two congresses were held clandestinely during the 1920s, the Second Congress in June 1923, and the Third Congress in June 1926. SKOJ was affiliated to the Young Communist International. Regional committees were reestablished in 1939.

Seven Secretaries of SKOJ

Seven Secretaries of SKOJ, also known as Seven Courageous, were seven leading figures of the organization, between 1924 and 1931, who died at the hand of the government, in direct confrontation with the gendarmerie, suicide, or indirectly as a consequence of being subjugated to extremely poor conditions during imprisonment and/or torture, which lead to their death from extreme weakening and illness. The Seven were, in sequence of taking the role of a secretary of the organization: [5] [6] [7]

During WWII

After Axis powers occupied Yugoslavia in 1941, SKOJ organized a united youth front with the program of struggle against fascism and war, Anti-Fascist Youth Committees which at the Congress of Anti-Fascist Youth of Yugoslavia in Bihać in 1942 united into the Unified League of Anti-Fascist Youth of Yugoslavia (Ujedinjeni savez antifašističke omladine Jugoslavije - USAOJ). SKOJ became a part of the umbrella organization, but continued to act autonomously within it.

Post-WWII socialist Yugoslavia

Branko Kostic speaking at the VIII Congress of the SSOJ in Belgrade in 1968 Govor Branka Kostica na VIII kongresu Saveza omladine Jugoslavije.jpg
Branko Kostić speaking at the VIII Congress of the SSOJ in Belgrade in 1968

In May 1946, USAOJ was renamed People's Youth of Yugoslavia (Narodna omladina Jugoslavije - NOJ), and in 1948 SKOJ and NOJ were united into a single organization, which continued to use the name People's Youth of Yugoslavia, and the use of the name SKOJ was discontinued.

NOJ was later reorganised into League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia] (SSOJ), which was founded as a merger of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia and the People's Youth of Yugoslavia organizations after World War II. Membership in the organization, though not compulsory, was desirable for those wishing to pursue higher education and a career in public service, and typically began after children completed their time in the Union of Pioneers of Yugoslavia at around 14 or 15 years of age. Similarly to the party itself, the SSOJ was decentralized and each Republic of Yugoslavia had a branch of its own. It was one of the five main government sanctioned socio-political organizations of Yugoslavia and sent its own delegates to the Federal Assembly. [8]

In the 1980s, attitudes within the SSOJ began to change its structure, and by the latter half of the decade it helped facilitate a network of alternative social and political opinions within the youth sphere of Yugoslavia. [8] The organization attempted to subvert the growing threat of nationalism while following a liberal approach to social issues. The SSOJ tried to facilitate youth culture by encouraging the promotion of the arts, including literature and popular music styles. [9] Following the dissolution of the SKJ shortly after the 14th Congress in 1990, the SSOJ was disbanded as well.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">League of Communists of Croatia</span> Political party in Croatia

League of Communists of Croatia was the Croatian branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ). It came into power in 1945. Until 1952, it was known as Communist Party of Croatia. In the early 1990s, it underwent several renames and lost power.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">League of Communists of Yugoslavia</span> Communist political party in Yugoslavia (1919–1990)

The League of Communists of Yugoslavia, known until 1952 as the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, was the founding and ruling party of SFR Yugoslavia. It was formed in 1919 as the main communist opposition party in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and after its initial successes in the elections, it was proscribed by the royal government and was at times harshly and violently suppressed. It remained an illegal underground group until World War II when, after the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, the military arm of the party, the Yugoslav Partisans, became embroiled in a bloody civil war and defeated the Axis powers and their local auxiliaries. After the liberation from foreign occupation in 1945, the party consolidated its power and established a one-party state, which existed in that form of government until 1990, a year prior to the start of the Yugoslav Wars and breakup of Yugoslavia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Football Association of Yugoslavia</span> Association football governing body in Yugoslavia

The Football Association of Yugoslavia (FSJ) was the governing body of football in Yugoslavia, based in Belgrade, with a major administrative branch in Zagreb.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stipe Šuvar</span> Croatian politician and sociologist

Stipe Šuvar was a Croatian politician and sociologist who was regarded to have been one of the most influential communist politicians in the League of Communists of Croatia (SKH) in SR Croatia in the 1980s during Yugoslavia.

The New Communist Party of Yugoslavia is an unregistered Marxist–Leninist communist party in Serbia. Its goal is the reunification of Yugoslavia as a communist state according to Marxism–Leninism. The party participated in the 2023 Serbian parliamentary election in coalition with the Russian Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marija Bursać</span> Yugoslav partisan (1920–1943)

Marija Bursać was a member of the Yugoslav Partisans during World War II in Yugoslavia and the first woman proclaimed a People's Hero of Yugoslavia. Bursać was born to a Bosnian Serb farming family in the village of Kamenica, near Drvar. After the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers and their creation of the Independent State of Croatia in April 1941, Bursać supported the Partisan resistance movement led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ). Like other women in her village, she collected food, clothing, and other supplies for the Partisan war effort. Bursać became a member of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia in September 1941. The following August she was appointed political commissar of a company of the 1st Krajina Agricultural Shock Brigade, which harvested crops in the Sanica River valley, and was admitted to the KPJ at the end of that summer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socialist Alliance of Working People</span>

The Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia (SSRNJ), known before 1953 as the People's Front of Yugoslavia (NFJ), was the largest and most influential mass organization in SFR Yugoslavia from August 1945 through 1990. It succeeded the Unitary National Liberation Front, which gathered and politically backed anti-fascist layers of society throughout Yugoslavia since 1934. By 1990, SSRNJ's membership was thirteen million individuals, including most of the adult population of the country. Together with the League of Communists of Serbia, it merged in July 1990 to form the Socialist Party of Serbia.

The Socialist Party of Yugoslavia was a political party in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The party was founded on 18 December 1921 with Živko Topalović as the secretary and Vilim Bukšeg as the president of the party.

The Socialist Youth League of Yugoslavia was a youth organization in Yugoslavia, the youth wing of the Socialist Party of Yugoslavia. It was founded by the students circle in Zagreb in 1921. As of the late 1920s, the claimed to have around 1,500 members.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maja Bošković-Stulli</span>

Maja Bošković-Stulli was a Croatian slavicist and folklorist, literary historian, writer, publisher and an academic, noted for her extensive research of Croatian oral literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pavle Marganović</span>

Pavle "Paja" Marganović was a Serbian communist activist and one of the Seven secretaries of SKOJ.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aleksandar Savić</span>

Aleksandar Savić was a Croatian communist activist and member of the partisan resistance movement in Croatia, murdered during the Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Viktor Rosenzweig</span> Croatian communist, poet and writer

Viktor Rosenzweig (1914–1941) was a Croatian-Jewish communist, poet and writer.

The League of Socialist Youth of Bosnia and Herzegovina was a youth organization in the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. SSOBiH traced its roots to the youth resistance movements during World War II, and became the main youth organization in the republic during the Tito era. During the 1980s, SSOBiH became increasingly autonomous from the party line and eventually became a political party of its own. It was succeeded by the Liberal Democratic Party.

The 1st Split Partisan Detachment or the 1st Split Detachment was a short-lived unit of the Yugoslav Partisans during World War II. It was composed of volunteers from the city of Split and was created in August 1941, just four months after the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, and the annexation of Split and most of Dalmatia by the Kingdom of Italy. The unit, composed mostly of young men with little or no fighting experience, planned to relocate to the Dinara mountains to join other Partisan units in fighting the Axis powers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nikola Hećimović</span> Croatian communist (1900–1929)

Nikola "Niko" Hećimović, also Nicholas Hećimovića was a Croatian communist organizer and secretary of the Yugoslav branch of International Red Aid.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ratomir Dugonjić</span> Yugoslav Partisan fighter and politician

Ratomir "Rato" Dugonjić was a Yugoslav Partisan fighter in the antifascist liberation struggle of the people of Yugoslavia, Minister in the Communist Government, Ambassador with the Non-Aligned Movement, president of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Vice president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Dugonjić was a member of the Politburo Central Committee, League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a member of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia of the Fifth to Eighth Congress and member of the Presidium of the Central Committee. He was a member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia and Federation Council.

The Provincial Committee for Serbia or Provincial Committee of Serbia was the branch of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) active in Serbia during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and German-occupied Serbia in World War II. It was transformed into the Communist Party of Serbia on 8 May 1945.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">6th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia</span> Political event in Yugoslavia

The Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) convened the supreme body for its 6th Congress in Zagreb on 2–7 November 1952. It was attended by 2,022 delegates representing 779,382 party members. The 6th Congress sought to discuss new policies, first of all in reaction to the Yugoslav–Soviet split and Yugoslav rapprochement with the United States. The congress is considered the peak of liberalisation of Yugoslav political life in the 1950s. The Congress also renamed the party the League of Communists of Yugoslavia.

The leadership, consisting of the president and the secretary of the Presidency, led the work of the Committee of the League of Communists Organisation in the Yugoslav People's Army (LCY–YPA), the party organisation of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) in the military. The president served ex officio as a member of the LCY Presidency and of the LCY Central Committee. To be eligible to serve, the president had to be a member of the LCY–YPA Presidency.

References

  1. 1 2 Delury, George (1983). "Nepal-Zimbabwe, and smaller countries and microstates". World Encyclopedia of Political Systems & Parties. Facts on File. ISBN   0871965747.
  2. ↑ Fred Warner, Neal (1957). "The Communist Party in Yugoslavia". The American Political Science Review. 51 (1): 99–100. doi:10.2307/1951773. JSTOR   1951773. S2CID   146357000.
  3. ↑ Djilas 1991.
  4. ↑ "Political parties, social-political organisations and trade unions" at the Croatian State Archives (in Croatian)
  5. ↑ Damir Pilić (12 September 2017). "Turbulentni životi i tragične smrti sedmorice sekretara SKOJ-a: tko su bili mladići kojima Bandić postavlja biste u Zagrebu?". slobodnadalmacija.hr (in Croatian). Slobodna Dalmacija. Retrieved 2 September 2020.
  6. ↑ "Priče o 7 sekretara SKOJ-a: "Vezanog lancima i bosog, sprovodili su ga pešice iz Skoplja u Zagreb"". yugopapir.com. Retrieved 2 September 2020.
  7. ↑ "SEDAM SEKRETARA SKOJ-a – CRTICE IZ HISTORIJE". historija.info (in Bosnian). 13 January 2019. Archived from the original on 2 June 2019. Retrieved 2 September 2020.
  8. 1 2 Ljubica Spaskovska (30 April 2017). The last Yugoslav generation: The rethinking of youth politics and cultures in late socialism. Manchester University Press. ISBN   978-1-5261-0634-6.
  9. ↑ Dalibor Mišina (1 April 2016). Shake, Rattle and Roll: Yugoslav Rock Music and the Poetics of Social Critique. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-317-05670-6.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.