Abstract: Faced with the challenges of strong foreign policy isolation, the Yugoslav leadership in the early 1950s was busy looking for an opening into the international political scene, especially in the West. In this sense, contacts with various representatives of the Western European left were very important and useful. This article offers a historiographical analysis of a lesser-known episode in the political biography of Milovan Djilas - his involvement in the Yugoslav leadership’s strategy to exert influence on the Western political scene through Spanish communist dissidents in exile and their political organization, the Movement of Socialist Action (MAS).

Keywords: Milovan Djilas, Spanish Emigrants, Communist Dissidents, The Movement of Socialist Action

Summary: In conditions of complete political, economic and military isolation from the East, from the USSR and its satellites, after the Cominform Resolution of 1948, the Yugoslav leadership was forced to seek alternative paths for a diplomatic and political opening into the world, which implied acquiring new allies, especially those in the West. One such alternative possibility was the Western European socialist and social democratic left, which was on the rise in Western Europe after World War II. As left-wing parties independent of Soviet influence or control, they appeared to the Yugoslav leadership as suitable partners for cooperation. Consequently, during the first half of the 1950s, contacts and collaboration were established with the leading socialist parties in the West. One of the options was also Western European communist dissidents from the communist parties of Italy, Spain and Germany. Milovan Djilas, the leading party ideologist and one of the most influential people at the top of the Yugoslav government, was at that time in charge of contacts with the Western left, as the chairman of the Foreign Policy Commission of the Central Committee of the CPY. In the early 1950s, this group of dissidents formed their own political organization, the Movement of Socialist Action (MAS), with which the Yugoslav side promptly established ties, offering both political support and financial assistance. The entire cooperation for several years (until 1953) was carried out through the Foreign Policy Commission and its chairman, Milovan Djilas. In practice, cooperation was carried out through individual contacts, delegation visits, meetings, exchange of views, etc. When the MAS, primarily due to the heterogeneity and disunity of its leadership, failed to show results, the Yugoslav side stopped helping, and the movement gradually died out. Djilas's role extended beyond coordinating cooperation and organizing contacts, he also provided advice, commentary and ideological and political ”interventions”. These activities significantly shaped the Yugoslav approach to covert operations in the sphere of foreign policy and contributed to the expansion of its influence within various political circles in the West.