Part I: Slovanský přehled/Slavonic Review 1/2017: 65-103.
Part II: Slovanský přehled/Slavonic Review 2/2017: 343-371.
This work deals with the previously under-researched topic of the Yugoslav communist student émigrés in Prague in the interwar period who would go on to become the political and intellectual elite of socialist Yugoslavia in the post-World War II era. Drawing primarily on sources from the National Archive in Prague and the Archive of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, as well as memoirs of the movement’s participants, this paper attempts to retrace their political activities and intellectual development through a period in which Comintern policy changed frequently, forcing the young communists to adapt to a constantly changing political climate. The first part of the article examines their attempts to take over the legal organizations of Yugoslav students in Prague, as well as their cooperation with the non-communist left which occurred in spite of Comintern’s ultra-left policies in the period between 1928 and 1935. This twofold strategy helped them to ultimately gain the upper hand in their frequent confrontations with the representatives of the Yugoslav Legation in Prague.
This second part of the article deals with the communist takeover of “Jugoslavija,” the umbrella organization of Yugoslav students in Prague, in 1935. Following their ultimate victory over the monarchists, they continued their agitation in the student dormitory, drawing in large numbers of new communist organizers and sympathizers. Soon after, however, they departed for Spain to fight in the Civil War, after which their organization effectively ceased to exist. Those who survived World War II went on to become the political elite of the new socialist state. Their subsequent writings reveal the impact of their activity in Prague on their later political and intellectual development. They show that, even though the communist students rarely questioned the tenets of Stalinism before 1948, the experience of working in a pluralist left-wing environment, as well as within an internationalist and pan-Yugoslav framework, had been an influence on their postwar efforts aimed at reforming socialism and creating a system different than the one centered in Moscow.
