Abstract: The paper analyses the debate among French communists over the Yugoslav socialist model, both before and after the confrontation between the leaderships of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ) and the Communist Party of France (KPF) during the 1968 student uprisings. Employing a comparative methods and historiographical research of archival sources, the article attempts to critically reconsider these issues. It investigates the sudden spike of interest among French communists in the historical evolution of the Yugoslav socialist model amidst the dispute within Europe’s extreme left. It also explores the level of understanding among French communists about the evolution of SKJ party politics and Yugoslav sociopolitical reality.

Keywords: Communism, Socialism, Eurocommunism, Student rebellions,1968, League of Communists of Yugoslavia, French Communist Party

Summary

French communists began discussing the Yugoslav socialist model during and immediately following the 1968 student protests in France and SFRY. These debates continued irregularly and in a rhetorically somewhat milder form in the party papers of the Communist Party of France, even after the military intervention in Czechoslovakia, which occupied the attention of the communist parties of Europe in the autumn of the same year, forcing the French party to adopt the Manifesto on Socialism and Democracy. The event, denoted as the onset of ideological reform within the French Communist Party, facilitated research visits by French communists to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) until the mid-1980s. This persisted despite the party’s adoption of revised official stances on SFRY’s state policies and ideology amid the advent of Eurocommunist reforms. The analyzed sources support the assessments of certain contemporaries, Yugoslav and Italian communists, who assumed that representatives of the reformist stream of the French party used discussions about the Yugoslav socialist model to covertly criticize the policy of their party directorate, which was similar to the views of the Soviet party, and to propose party reforms similar to the changes implemented in SFRY from 1964 to 1972. Representatives of the conservative faction within French communism underscored their interpretations of Yugoslav societal issues and instances of internal strife between Yugoslav communists and civilian opposition. Their aim was to caution against the ramifications of deviating from the fundamental principles of the Bolshevik socialist model. Despite this stance, conservative French communists invoked specific positions within the Yugoslav party leadership, like Kardelj’s advocacy for bureaucracy, to rationalize their party’s policies. They argued that certain “Bolshevik” measures remain essential, even within a purportedly “decadent“ socialist model such as Yugoslavia’s.