Diplomacy and National Sovereignty in a Socialist and Federal State-the Case of Yugoslavia-

Sovereignty and International Relations

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to consider the meaning of national sovereignty in diplomacy of the socialist and federal states, especially in Yugoslavia.
Excommunicated from the Cominform in June 1948, the most important item in Yugoslav diplomacy was to secure full sovereignty of its own. It held true of Yugoslav foreign policy after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in the summer 1968. According to the Constitution of 1974, considering peaceful coexistence and active cooperation among states and peoples, irrespective of differences in their social systems, as indispensable conditions for peace and social progress in the world, Yugoslavia based its international relations on the principles of respect for national sovereignty and equality, non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries. From this view point one may say that Yugoslav nonaligned diplomacy had achieved great success in the field of foreign policy.
However, what has to be noticed is that Yugoslav inner politics had continued to infringe on national sovereignty from within. In other words, democratic centralism as the basic principle of the Communist Party (League of Communists) had ascendancy over federalism as the principle of the state order.
Consequently it was natural that the collapse of the Communist party followed malfunction of the federal organizations and stripped Yugoslav national sovereignty of all its contents.