86 IVO BANAC
nationality question at the apex of power. Two blocs emerged—
unitarist-centralists and federalists—who contended for influ-
ence over a variety of issues, including Church policy. Whereas
the former favored a strongly centralist state, united in a project-
ed integral Yugoslav identity, the latter proposed to empower the
six federal republics and seven constituent national groups. The
former were partisans of strong-arm governance, which the lat-
ter eschewed in favor of more conciliatory methods, even toward
traditional opponents, including the religious communities.
The unitarist-centralists had a natural leader in Aleksandar
Ranković, the vice president of Yugoslavia and the member of
the party’s secretariat responsible for internal security and gen-
erally for the Serbian Party organization. Slovenian and Croatian
Communists—men like Edvard Kardelj and Vladimir Bakarić—
stood at the head of the federalist bloc. The conflict was fought
over a series of issues, from the construction of a new model of
social self-management and genuine federalism (“federalizing
the federation,” in Bakarić’s parlance) to the market approach in
planning and a distancing from the USSR.32 A dire economic situ-
ation complicated matters, especially with the drop in industrial
production in 1965 that resulted in previously unknown levels of
unemployment. This forced the government to permit the export
of labor “on temporary work abroad,” especially to Western Euro-
pean countries.
Under the circumstances, the Yugoslav leadership did not wish
to create the impression that the détente with the Church and a
planned resumption of relations with the Holy See were signs of
weakness. As a result, the first contacts with the Vatican were in-
- This refers to the Yugoslav ideological model of Communist rule, nominally
through a devolving system of self-management in the workplace and in the pub-
lic sphere more generally. For a favorable interpretation of the system, which was
seen as a democratic alternative to Soviet Bloc “real socialism,” see Ellen T. Comisso,
Workers’ Control under Plan and Market: Implications of Yugoslav Self-Management
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979).