Political Circumstances of Introducing the Military Doctrine of Total National Defence

Abstract

In the Second Yugoslavia the military doctrine of total national defence was introduced due to the foreign politicai and closely related military or defence reasons. These reasons originated in the East, in the ideologically similar political-military camp, led by the Soviet Union. The foundations for this doctrine, based on the experience gained from the partisan warfare in World War II and the Marxist idea of arming the people, were established towards the end of the 1940s, in the time of the so-called Cominform dispute, and revived and operationalised twenty years later during the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia. The decision for the introduction of this military doctrine was exceedingly political. Therefore the military leadership accepted this but was not happy about it. Namely, in the introduction of territorial defence units, answering to the authorities of the republics, it saw the possibility for the formation of nationally-based military units, which would supposedly degrade the unity of the Army and its command. ln the Slovenian territorial defence the military leadership saw the groundwork for the Slovenian army and an expression of Slovenian »separatism«. On the basis of archive materials of politicai origins (League of Communists) and (published) memory resources (military sources are not available), the author outlines the politicai developments during the change of the military doctrine in Yugoslavia in the end ofthe 1960s.