Ideology, Scientific Organisation, and Science Policy: Yugoslav Nuiclear Program (1948-1965)

Abstract

Yugoslavia left the Eastern Bloc in 1948 to develop an autonomous political position in South-Eastern Europe. The new Yugoslav system of socialist self-management combined elements of workers’ self-government, controlled market relations, state decentralization and Party control. Most of these elements revised or opposed the, until then dominant, ideology of Marxism-Leninism. The Yugoslav system represented a heterodox form of socialism. The author of this presentation will try to briefly describe the development of the Yugoslav nuclear program in the socialist self-management society during the Cold War. The main focus of the presentation will be tracking and analyzing changes in the organization and policy of Yugoslav Nuclear program in the context of ideological changes in Yugoslavia. The key task of the presentation is to examine the connection between relatively new ideological changes in socioeconomic structure (decentralization and controlled market relations) with the organization and policy of Yugoslav Nuclear Program. This will also require discussing the dynamics of relations within Yugoslav state, its legislature and the development of nuclear physics in Yugoslavia in general. In order to fully and accurately analyze the relationship between the Yugoslav system and nuclear science, the author will shortly present Yugoslav position in foreign relations after the break with the USSR in this period (USA, USSR, Non-aligned movement).