The time between 1936 and 1940 was a crucial formative period of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ), that determined the party’s permanent features from the 1940s on. Based on new archival sources from Moscow, Stefan Gužvica has written the first history of this period in the Serbo-Croatian language. In the book, he presents the roots of the factional struggles in the KPJ, the fall of its general secretary, Milan Gorkić, and the activity of the people who fought for the throne after Gorkić was murdered in Moscow on false charges of espionage. Gužvica explains how and why Josip Broz Tito had managed to prevail over other candidates and become the new party leader, and what were the long-term consequences of such a development, both for the Yugoslav and the international communist movement.

Stefan Gužvica is a doctoral student of history at the University of Regensburg, where he is working on a doctoral dissertation about the Balkan Communist Federation. He is the author of the book “Before Tito: The Communist Party of Yugoslavia during the Great Purge (1936–1940)”