BETWEEN COOPERATION AND RIVALRY: ATTEMPTS OF YUGOSLAV AND ITALIAN COMMUNISTS TO DEFINE COMMON ATTITUDES TOWARDS MOVEMENTS OF THE EARLY NEW LEFT IN 1968
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51738/kpolisa.2026.1r.lfKeywords:
Eurocommunism, New Left, democratic socialism, League of Communists of Yugoslavia, Communist Party of ItalyAbstract
Deep structural changes of the western European societies in the years after the Second world war and the creation of welfare state policies influenced leftist political thought in the countries of the western Block to take many different paths of ideological evolution. Two of the most important currents that emerged on the European left in the aftermath of the political turmoil which marked the year 1968 were Eurocommunism and ideologies of the New Left. Meanwhile, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia developed close cooperation with the Italian Communist Party, which would soon become the first Eurocommunist party in Europe, and participated in creation of the Reformist Block, an informal group of European Marxist parties that would start numerous political initiatives in order to weaken the Soviet influence in the international socialist institutions. This paper will try to summarize the results of historical research conducted in three archives in modern-day Serbia on the subject of Yugoslav participation in the formation of the collective attitudes and policies of communist parties from the Reformist Bloc towards political organizations associated with ideologies of the New Left. Also, the aim of this paper is to contribute in the long research process that could eventually provide an answer to the question – was cooperation between Eurocommunists and the New Left ever possible, and to what extent did their rivalry influence the events on the European left?
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