Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia

The Central Committee was the highest organ of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the ruling party of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, between two congresses, which it was elected by and reported to. An exception to this rule occurred at the LCY 9th Congress in 1969 when the Central Committee was replaced with the Conference, which lasted until the reestablishemtn of the central committee at the 10th LCY Congress in 1974. The central committee oversaw the work of the LCY as a whole and ensured that the guidelines and assignments adopted by the LCY Congress were complied with. It could set policy and formulate a political platform within the parameters set by the last convened party congress. All central committee members were of equal standing, including the presidency members. Specifically, the LCY Central Committee had the right to elect and remove members of its political-executive organ, the LCY Presidency, which led the LCY when the central committee was not in session.
Until 1966, the LCY was a unitary organisation in which the central party leadership controlled cadre appointments and national policy alone through the central committee apparatus and primarily through its secretariat. This system was institutionally reformed after the purge of Josip Broz Tito's long-standing heir apparent Aleksandar Ranković and replaced with a system in which the LCY Central Committee became a more independent body. With its reestablishment in 1974, each republican LC branch had two representatives and one ex officio member, each autonomous province one representative and one ex officio member and the League of Communists Organisation in the Yugoslav People's Army had one ex officio member. In this system, Tito, the LCY leader from 1939 to his death on 4 May 1980, was the only member of the central committee who was not elected to represent a constitutive branch of the LCY, and was an ex officio member through holding the office of president of the LCY Central Committee. Upon his death, the LCY presidency was abolished and replaced by the office of president of the Presidency of the LCY Central Committee. The officeholders had the right to convene the LCY Central Committee for sessions.
The post-Tito system of collective leadership succeeded in spreading power, but it was widely argued that these reforms weakened the federal party organs at the expense of the organs of the LCY's branches. With the fall of communism in 1989 in most of Eastern Europe, as well as heightened conflict within the LCY on ethnic lines, the LCY split at its 14th Congress, held on 20–22 January 1990. The congress was adjourned and did not reconvene before May 1990; in the meantime, the LCs Macedonia, Slovenia and Croatia had left the LCY. On 26 May 1990, the 14th LCY Congress elected a Committee for the Preparation of the Democratic and Programmatic Renewal to function as a provisional leadership with the task of convening the 15th LCY Congress. The congress was never convened, and the committee itself―the last federal organ of the LCY―dissolved itself on 22 January 1991.

History

Formation and revolutionary period: 1919–1948

A weak institution: 1948–1969

The 5th Congress, held on 21–28 July 1948, amended the party statute. According to Ranković, the statute adopted "was by and large a copy of the Statute of the Soviet Communist Party". Like its Soviet counterpart, the Yugoslav party centralised most decision-making at the expense of lower-level organs. The 6th Congress, held on 2–7 November 1952, amended the statute. These amendments weakened the central committee. The statute of the 5th Congress had bestowed on the central committee the right to appoint and dismiss party organisers in special areas. This right was now deemed undemocratic and harmful to party development. Moreover, the position of "Candidate of the Central Committee", where the officeholder had "no right except an advisory vote", was abolished. If, by any chance, central committee vacancies were reduced to a third of those elected at the previous congress, an extraordinary congress was to be convened to elect members to fill the remaining spots. The 6th Congress also sought to democratise and make the party more transparent in its activities. For instance, the proceedings of the 3rd Extraordinary Session of the Central Committee of the 6th Congress, held on 16–17 January 1954, were publicly broadcast and made public in written form in Komunist, which was in contrast to the Soviet Central Committee which kept its activities mostly secret. These changes remained in force until the 8th LCY Congress, held on 7–13 December 1964.
The 8th LCY Congress sought to clarify in the statute the accountability of the LCY Executive Committee to the central committee. According to scholar April Carter, "Despite the stated intention of the new Statute to subordinate the Executive Committee to the wider body of the Central Committee, no real change appears to have occurred although there was an indication, made in a brief aside at the Fifth in October 1966, that attempts had been made earlier to invigorate the Central Committee through reorganisation". Critiques of Ranković claimed that he had created a machine within the LCY Central Committee that was neither accountable to the sessions of the central committee nor its executive committee. Ranković defended himself, saying that he barred the other secretaries from discussing issues outside their scope of responsibilities. Others, such as the Montenegrin LCY Central Committee member Budislav Šoškić, criticised the 8th LCY Congress for passing a statute he described as "a half-way measure" which contained "a fair amount of compromise solutions".
The institutional framework established at the 8th Congress lasted until the 5th Session of the Central Committee of the 8th Congress on 4 October 1966. Earlier, at the 4th Session of the Central Committee of the 8th Congress on 1 July 1966, the LCY had purged Tito's presumed heir apparent Ranković, the Vice President of Yugoslavia and the head of the State Security Administration, for allegedly bugging Tito's bedroom. In a bid to reform the party structure, the fifth session established the Commission for the Reorganisation and Further Development of the LCY, headed by Mijalko Todorović and composed of 40-members, to recommend party organisational reform. The main problem was perceived to be the central committee's failure in holding its executive organs to account. This was now blamed on Ranković, who had stifled debate both at the federal level but also within the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia, according to LCY and SKS Central Committee member Dragi Stamenković, "as soon as we get to the lobbies real discussion begins. We have often heard, or made jokes, about this. If the debates in the lobbies had taken place in the conference hall, every Central Committee meeting would have been lively and what a meeting of the Central Committee is supposed to be."
Rejecting calls to convene an extraordinary congress of the LCY, the fifth session abolished the secretariat and the executive committee and replaced them with a presidency and a new executive committee. The executive committee was to be held accountable to the presidency, while the presidency was given the right to convene central committee sessions, set the agenda for central committee sessions and review its work. Furthermore, stipulations were made to clarify that commissions of the LCY Central Committee worked independently and reported on their to the sessions of the central committee in a bid to weaken the executive committee's meddling in their affairs. Despite these changes, the executive committee still managed to relegate the central committee, as it did at the 9th Session of the LCY Central Committee on 16 July 1968. At the session, the executive committee proposed abolishing the central committee altogether and delegating its functions to a new institution, the "Conference of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia", and others to the LCY Presidency. The ninth session adopted the proposal. Apparently, the main reason for pressing these changes was the executive committee's perception that reorganising the central party bodies would make rejuvenating the LCY's leadership organs easier.

Preparing for Tito's death: 1974–1980

The 10th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, held on 27–30 May 1974, reestablished the LCY Central Committee and sought to recentralise power by emphasising democratic centralism. The presidency and executive were accountable to it. Tito argued in favour of reestablishing the central committee, telling the congress, "The League of Communists needs a strong, dynamic and influential leadership, or to be more precise, that kind of ideological-political centre—the central committee with its executive organs—which, with its organised and timely action, with its political positions and decisions, will secure unity of leadership and unity of action of the entire League of Communists, will steer its activities towards the solving of the vital issues of the socialist self-management development of the Yugoslav community." The statute adopted at the congress referred to the central committee as "the highest organ of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia between two congresses". Rules regarding membership was clarified on 20 March 1978 at the 6th Session of the Central Committee of the 10th Congress, which decided to institute a fixed formula of branch representation. Each republic was to be represented by 20 members in the LCY Central Committee, of which 19 were elected and one member, the president of the presidency of the republican branch in question, serving ex officio. The party branches in the autonomous provinces and in the army were represented by 15 members, of which 14 were elected, and one served ex officio. Combined, this would total 165 members. Additionally, the LCY Central Committee president also served as ex officio, bringing the membership to 166. From then on, the republican parties were equally represented in the LCY Central Committee. Dane Ćuić, the President of the Presidency of the Committee of the League of Communists Organisation in the Yugoslav People's Army, explained the system the following way, "The Leagues of Communists of the republics and provinces are equally represented in the LCY Central Committee and its Presidency, and on that basis it is impossible to have outvoting and the imposition of anyone's views".
Three months after the 11th Congress, held on 20–23 June 1978, the presidency convened and adopted on 19 October 1978 the "Rules of Procedure on the Organisation and Working Method of the Presidency" to institute and protect collective leadership. It established a new position, the Chairman of the Presidency of the LCY Central Committee, in which the officeholder was limited to a one-year term in office. Later, at the 2nd Session of the Central Committee of the 11th Congress on 19 December 1978, the presidency adopted the "Rules of Procedure on the Organisation and Working Method of the Central Committee" to institute and protect collective leadership. The rules of procedure were adopted unanimously and stated that the LCY Central Committee was the highest decision-making body of the LCY between the two congresses. Its responsibilities regarding the realisation of congressional decisions and political positions were clarified. It also made clear that all LCY Central Committee members were responsible for the work and decisions of the central committee and not any other body except the party congress. The intention of these reforms were to strengthen the party and prepare for the post-Tito years.
Tito died of natural causes on 4 May 1980. The 11th Session of the 11th Central Committee convened on 12 June 1980 and on the suggestion of Bosnian Croat Branko Mikulić, decided that the LCY Presidency and Central Committee "should work in accordance with their duties and with the authorisation provided for in the Standing Rules of the Party Statutes concerning their work and on the basis of the decisions to be made at today’s plenum." The eleventh session decided not to elect a person to serve as president of the LCY Central Committee and instead transformed the office of chairman of the Presidency of the LCY Central Committee into the office of president of the Presidency of the LCY Central Committee. It was decided that the LCY Central Committee would retain its role as the highest organ between two congresses but opted against turning it into a collective party presidency. Instead, a five-member Working Presidium of the LCY Central Committee, which was to be elected at each convocation of a session of the LCY Central Committee, would function as the collective party presidency. It was decided that the president and secretary of the LCY Presidency would be nominated by a special commission of the LCY Presidency while other presidency members were to be nominated and elected by a special commission of the LCY Central Committee.