The evolution of Slovenian communist leaders' attitudes towards Yugoslavia and socialism from 1986 to 1988

The dissertation focuses on the development of the attitudes of the political elite in socialist Slovenia towards key issues of the state framework and the political and economic system in 1986-1988. Using archival sources, the weakening of the Yugoslav orientation and beliefs about the prospects of the socialist self-government system are examined. The Slovenian political elite in the period under study was characterized by a high sensitivity to public opinion in their republic, in which nationalism and criticism of the communist government had been growing since the early 1980s. Some of the assumptions of the existence of the common state began to be abandoned by Slovenian leaders in the summer of 1987, while a year later they begun to move directly away from the federal arrangement of Yugoslavia towards a confederation. On the subject of the economic system, a turning point in the thinking of the Slovenian and overall Yugoslav communist elites occurred in the spring of 1988 under the pressure of the prolonged economic crisis. The dismantling of the pillars of self-management socialism began then. The Slovenian communist leaders, led by Milan Kučan, coped well with this loss, also thanks to the success of nationalism, which in their ranks in the late 1980s grew rapidly, as it did in the general public