Aleksandar V. Miletić

YUGOSLAV COMMUNISTS AND THE NORWEGIAN LABOUR PARTY 1951–1956 

Abstract: The topic of this paper includes cooperation between the Yugoslav Communists and The Norwegian Labour Party in the first half of the 1950s, a period marked by turbulent events in Yugoslav foreign policy, from the crisis to the normalization of relations with the Eastern Bloc and the USSR. The research was mostly based on unpublished sources of Yugoslav provenance and relevant scholarly literature. 

Keywords: Yugoslav Communists, The Norwegian Labour Party, Yugoslavia, Norway, Scandinavia, Cold War, foreign policy 

Summary: After the Second World War, and especially after the Yugoslav-Soviet conflict in 1948, geostrategic interests united Yugoslavia and Norway, two geographically distant European countries. These relations were determined by the geographical closeness of the Scandinavian countries to the borders of the USSR and the relations between Yugoslavia and Moscow, which between 1951 and 1956 advanced from tension to normalization of relations. The cooperation of the Yugoslav communists and the Norwegian Labour Party at that time also meant the cooperation of the two countries, since both of them, each in its own way, held power in their countries. Since 1951, relations between the Yugoslav Communists and the Norwegian Labour Party have progressed steadily, unlike many other Western European socialists who, depending on changes in Yugoslav policy, have changed their attitudes towards Yugoslavia. The beginning of the cooperation was the visit of the first high-level delegation of the Norwegian Labour Party to Yugoslavia in October 1951. In the following years, cooperation progressed, even more so after Stalin’s death and the beginning of the normalization of relations between Yugoslavia and the USSR.  Even certain moments of misunderstanding (such as the “Đilas case”) did not significantly undermine these relations. The visit of the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia to Norway in October 1954 was a confirmation of mutual cooperation, so that in the next two years the dynamics of relations were maintained through regular contacts between Yugoslav diplomatic representatives in Oslo and The Norwegian Labour Party and reciprocal visits in 1955 and in 1956, with the Norwegian-Yugoslav “socialist conferences” at which mutual experiences in social development were analyzed in detail and current foreign policy issues were  discussed. The visit of the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia to Norway in October 1954 was a confirmation of mutual cooperation, so that in the following two years the dynamics of relations were maintained through regular contacts between Yugoslav diplomatic representatives in Oslo and The Norwegian Labor Party and reciprocal visits in 1955 and 1956. The Norwegian-Yugoslav “socialist conferences”, which were organized annually in Norway and Yugoslavia, have been very helpful in strengthening cooperation. At these conferences, mutual experiences in social development were analyzed in detail and current foreign policy issues were discussed. The difference between the Norwegian Labour Party and the Yugoslav Communist Party, especially in ideological terms, was not small, but it was not an obstacle to cooperation and recognition of common interests in the Cold War world of conflicting blocs.