The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement, an international groupation established to maintain independence of countries beyond Eastern and Western Bloc from the major Cold War powers. Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, hosted the First Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in September 1961 and the Ninth Summit in September 1989.
Non-alignment was a cornerstone of Yugoslavia's Cold War foreign policy and ideology. As the only socialist state in Europe outside the Eastern Bloc, and one with strong economic ties to Western Europe, Yugoslavia pursued a careful policy of balancing and equidistance between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. This stance, together with active nonaligned multilateralism, was seen as a collective safeguard of the country's political independence. The Non-Aligned Movement also provided Yugoslavia with additional diplomatic flexibility, contrasting with neutral states such as Finland at the time, whose policies were more constrained by great power influences, a phenomenon often referred to as Finlandization. Yugoslavia's leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement granted it a disproportionately influential role in Cold War diplomacy, elevating its global standing beyond its comparatively modest population and economic size, and military power, with some authors even describing it as a "third diplomatic power" during certain moments of the Cold War, particularly in the Global South issues.
The end of the Cold War and the subsequent dissolution of Yugoslavia raised questions about the future of the Non-Aligned Movement. However, the movement's continuity was ensured through the pragmatic leadership of Indonesia during this period. Today, the archives in Belgrade and the rest of former Yugoslavia remain largely untapped but often vital for Cold War historians, offering unique insights due to the extensive documents produced and information collected by Yugoslav diplomats and intelligence services during that time.
History
Post–1948 Yugoslav context
During World War II, Yugoslav Partisans liberated their country with only minimal help from the Soviet Red Army and Western allies. This led the new communist authorities to the belief that contrary to other countries in Eastern Europe, they are entitled to follow a more independent socialist course. Unlike other communist parties in the region, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was able to rely on local army, police, and relatively high legitimacy among diverse Yugoslav demographic groups. Yugoslavia did not perceive itself as a client, but as a partner of the USSR, and in many respect pursued its own domestic and foreign policy which sometimes was more assertive than Moscow's policy. This was the case concerning the issue of the Free Territory of Trieste, Balkan Federation, Greek Civil War, Austro-Slovene conflict in Carinthia and infiltration and relations with the Albanian National Liberation Movement. Belgrade's independent policies raised tensions with Moscow and escalated in the 1948 Tito–Stalin split when Yugoslavia found itself isolated from the rest of the Eastern Bloc countries and in need to redefine its foreign policy.
The country initially oriented itself towards the Western Bloc and signed the 1953 Balkan Pact with the NATO member states of the Kingdom of Greece and Turkey. After the death of Stalin, Yugoslav relations with the USSR improved with the country's verbal support for the Soviet intervention in Hungary (contrary to the 1968 one in Czechoslovakia). The 1955 Belgrade declaration decreased reliance on the 1953 Balkan Pact which subsequently discontinued its activities. As the country still wanted to preserve its newly gained independence, it developed relations with European neutral countries such as Finland. It also avoided joining the Warsaw Pact established in May 1955. Yet in order to avoid isolation in deeply divided Europe, Yugoslavia looked for new allies among former colonies and mandate territories. Yugoslavia supported Egypt during the Suez Crisis, a country which became one of the founding members of the Non-aligned movement. Yugoslavia developed its relations with India, another founding member, from the time of their concurrent mandate at the UN Security Council from the end of 1949 onward.
Origins of the Movement In the early 1950 Yugoslav leaders sought to build ties with Western European socialist parties, especially the West German SPD, but were soon disillusioned by their unwillingness to distance themselves from the Western bloc. Disappointed, Belgrade turned its attention to recently decolonized countries, despite limited knowledge and internal scepticism about aligning with what some Yugoslav officials dismissively called the “world of miserables”. While initially wary of Third World elites, Yugoslav leadership gradually recognized the strategic value in exploiting tensions within both Cold War camps to advance their non-aligned path.
During the 1950 United Nations General Assembly session, prominent Yugoslav politician and at the time Minister of Foreign Affairs Edvard Kardelj stated that "Yugoslavia cannot accept that mankind must choose between domination by one or other power". The term non-alignment was used for the first time in the same year when both India and Yugoslavia rejected alignment with any side in the Korean War. In 1951 Tito said that he will never agree that only great powers should determine the destiny of the world in which he effectively rejected Comintern's idea on dichotomous division of the world. He rejected claims that India and Yugoslavia want to establish the third bloc. In August 1954 Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (at the time president of the United Nations General Assembly) visited Yugoslavia and invited Tito to visit India. On 22 December 1954 meeting in New Delhi Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and President of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito signed a joint statement stipulating that "the policy of non-alignment adopted and pursued by their respective countries is not 'neutrality' or 'neutralism' and therefore passivity, as sometimes alleged, but is a positive, active and constructive policy seeking to lead to collective peace".
From 1956 Brioni Meeting until the 1961 Belgrade Conference
The Brioni Meeting between Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser, took place on the Brijuni Islands in the Yugoslav constituent People's Republic of Croatia on 19 July 1956. The three leaders signed a document expressing that: "Peace cannot be achieved via division, but via striving for collective security on the global scale. Achieved by the expansion of the area of freedom, as well as through the ending of domination of one country over another."
In late 1958, and early 1959, president Tito, and the rest of Yugoslav delegation, initiated a three months long international boat trip on board the Yugoslav training ship Galeb. During the trip, the delegation visited Indonesia, India, Burma, Ceylon, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt and Syria. Indonesian president Sukarno called Tito a world citizen, while Tito referred to the Bandung Conference by saying "Bandung is the place from which a new spirit originated which permeate humanity". During his stay in Bandung president Tito received an honorary doctorate in law.
The 1961 Non-Aligned Conference in Belgrade
The 1961 Summit Conference of Heads of State or Government of the Non-Aligned Movement was the first official conference of the Non-Aligned Movement. A major contributing factor to the organization of the conference was the process of decolonization of a number of African countries in the 1960s. Some therefore called it the ″Third World's Yalta″ in reference to 1945 Yalta Conference. Twenty-five countries in total participated in Belgrade Conference including Afghanistan, Algeria, Burma, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Yemen, Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Cyprus, Tunisia, United Arab Republic, and Ceylon, while 3 countries, Bolivia, Brazil and Ecuador, were observers. The preparatory meeting of Non-Aligned Countries took place earlier that year in Cairo June 5–12, 1961. One of the issues was division of the newly independent countries over the Congo Crisis which led to a rift and creation of the conservative and anti-radical Brazzaville Group and radical nationalist Casablanca Group. All members of the Casablanca Group attended the conference, including Algeria, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Morocco and the United Arab Republic, while none of the Brazzaville Group was present.
The 1979 Non-Aligned Conference in Havana, Cuba
At least as early as 1978 some more conservative NAM member states initiated campaign against Cuba's chairmanship. Yugoslavia rejected to argue for a change of venue but nevertheless criticized Cuba for facilitating new forms of bloc dependence in Africa and argued against what Belgrade perceived as communist hegemony or capitalist imperialism. Yugoslavia's rejection of the need to move the Summit from Havana over the fear of divisiveness of such a move decisively calmed down those voices. Nevertheless, President of Yugoslavia Tito, who was the sole surviving founder of NAM at the time, launched a diplomatic campaign to keep the movement independent of both blocs. Yugoslavia wanted to preserve its hard-won independence from the Soviet Union and to prevent some Arab countries in their effort to deprive Egypt of its nonaligned status after the peace deal with Israel. Soviet Union accused Yugoslavia of conducting an unjustified campaign against Cuba and Vietnam. While Fidel Castro and Josip Broz Tito presented sharply different visions of the NAM both openly allowed for differing views and stressed the need of unity.
The 1989 Non-Aligned Conference in Belgrade
In an effort to rebuild internal cohesion via success in the foreign policies Post-Tito, Yugoslavia attempted to host prominent events and participate in a number of multilateral initiatives. One of them was a successful bid to host the 1989 Non-Aligned Conference in Belgrade after the city hosted the first conference in 1961. The initiative was pushed by the new Yugoslav foreign minister from the Socialist Republic of Croatia and future 1993-1996 UN Secretary General's Special Advisor on the NAM Budimir Lončar. It was expected that the new host would come from Latin America but at the time Nicaragua, which was the only Latin American country strongly lobbying to host the event, was not the preferred choice among a significant number of the member states.
Breakup of Yugoslavia