Drakulić uses this as the term for the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which existed from 1945 to 1991. This was also the name of the country from 1929-1945, though prior to Tito’s government it was ruled by a monarchy. Yugoslavia means “south Slavs,” and the state was always multiethnic and multilingual. Tito’s socialist Yugoslavia consisted of six republics in a confederation: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia. The country officially dissolved in 1991 when Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence. By 1992 only Serbia and Montenegro remained within the federation. Montenegro and Serbia became independent from one another in 2006. 

This umbrella term refers to states that built their governments on the socialist principles of Karl Marx, and, if they were aligned with the Soviet Union, with Marxism-Leninism. Social classes and their material position in history are key concepts in this ideology: The working class, or proletariat, is destined to overthrow the bourgeoisie, those who exploit laborers and own the means of production. Marxism-Leninism declared that Marx’s proletarian revolution could be carried out through the leadership of a single, enlightened party, which could lead peasants and workers to the formation of a revolutionary government, the “dictatorship of the proletariat.