page_title: League of Communists of Yugoslavia
section_title: Founding
hierarchical_section_title: League of Communists of Yugoslavia / Founding
caption_attribution_description: Српски / srpski: Spomen-ploča pred hotelom Slavija u spomen održavanja Prvog kongresa SRPJ u toj zgradi u Beogradu 1919. godine. Self-made. Maj 2011.
context_page_description: The League of Communists of Yugoslavia, known until 1952 as the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, was the founding and ruling party of SFR Yugoslavia. It was formed in 1919 as the main communist opposition party in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and after its initial successes in the elections, it was proscribed by the royal government and was at times harshly and violently suppressed. It remained an illegal underground group until World War II when, after the Invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, the military arm of the party, the Yugoslav Partisans, became embroiled in a bloody civil war and defeated the Axis powers and their local auxiliaries. After the liberation from foreign occupation in 1945, the party consolidated its power and established a one-party state, which existed until the 1990 breakup of Yugoslavia.
  The party, which was led by Josip Broz Tito from 1937 to 1980, was the first communist party in power in the history of the Eastern Bloc that openly opposed the Soviet Union and thus was expelled from the Cominform in 1948 in what is known as the Tito–Stalin split.
context_section_description: When the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created after World War I, the different social democratic parties that had existed in Austria-Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro called for a unification of their parties. The idea was widely accepted by parties and organizations from all over the country and in April 1919 a Congress of Unification was held in Belgrade, attended by 432 delegates representing 130,000 organized supporters of the workers’ class movement from all parts of the Kingdom except Slovenia. The ministerial branch of the Social democrat party of Slovenia was minorized in April 1920, when the Slovenes joined ranks with other social-democrats turned Marxist–Leninist revolutionaries. Slovenes joined officially at the Second Congress, held in Vukovar in late April 1920.
  The congress was marked by opposing positions towards the concepts of the revolutionary and reformist currents. Bolshevik influence was introduced by soldiers who during the war had been captured by Russian forces and had experienced the October Revolution. The Congress decided to form a single political party (not a federation of parties) named Socialist Labor Party of Yugoslavia (of Communists) (Socijalistička radnička partija Jugoslavije (komunista)) which would be a member of Comintern. Its highest organs, to which all other organs were subordinate, were the Congress and the Central Committee, headed by Filip Filipović and Živko Topalović as political secretaries and Vladimir Ćopić as organizational secretary. The party program, the Basis of Unification, was a "synthesis of the Social Democratic ideological heritage with the experiences of the October Revolution", spoke in terms of an imminent revolution, while the Practical Program of Action was oriented to a long-term political struggle within the capitalist system. The party considered the national question to be solved by the events of 1918, supported a unitarian state merging the different "tribes" into one "nation" as the best basis of class struggle, and opposed ″federalism".
  In the wake of the Congress, the United Socialist (Communist) Woman Movement (Jedinstveni ženski socijalistički (komunistički) pokret), and the Central Workers’ Trade-Union Council (Centralno radničko sindikalno vijeće) were also founded, while the Young Communist League of Yugoslavia was formed later that year.
caption: Plaque in front of modern Hotel Slavija in Slavija Square, Belgrade, commemorating the First Congress of the Socialist Labor Party of Yugoslavia (Communists), which was held in the old Hotel Slavija in 1919.
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