Retrospective Lessons and Generational Gaps: The Impact of Yugoslav Communist Émigrés in Interwar Czechoslovakia on the Postwar Yugoslav State

Abstract

This article examines the activity of Yugoslav communist émigrés in Czechoslovakia between 1928 and 1938. Prague was a major center of communist activity and most prominent members of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had spent a significant amount of time there in the interwar period. By looking at their political actions at the time and their subsequent reflections on it, the author argues that a qualitative difference exists between the subsequent political development of those who became communists during the so-called “Third Period” of the Comintern (1928–1934), and those who were radicalized during the Popular Front era (1934–1939). The Generation of the Third Period was more conservative and more loyal to Stalinism, whereas the Generation of the Popular Front led the reform process in socialist Yugoslavia after the war.