Yugoslav Communists Give Up Monopoly on Government Control

Yugoslavia’s Communist Party renounced its constitutionally guaranteed monopoly on power today after 45 years of unchallenged rule and decided to permit the creation of a multi-party system.

The move was the latest in a string of abdications by Communist parties in Eastern Europe, the most recent in Bulgaria, which like the others chose to give up monopolies on power held since World War II.

“The League of Communists (the party) renounces its constitutionally guaranteed leading role in society,” said Momir Bulatovic, Communist Party chief of the republic of Montenegro and chairman of a plenary session at the party’s congress.

“(The party) proposes to the Yugoslav Parliament that it pass a law on political pluralism including a multi-party system,” he said.

Only 28 out of 1,654 delegates at the congress voted against the renunciation at the end of a stormy plenary session.

Delegates earlier shouted down speakers from the republics of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia who demanded the Yugoslav Communist Party dissolve as a unified body and break up into several parties.

“We propose the . . . (League of Communists) transform itself into two parties--one Communist and the other Socialist,” said Bosnian delegate Desimir Medjovic.

“The gradual suicide of the League of Communists is all the more worrying because it burdens social relations in Yugoslavia,” Medjovic shouted amid derisive applause and calls for him to leave the podium.

Slovenian Communists proposed that the Yugoslav party break up into a confederation of party branches from the country’s eight republics and provinces which would enjoy almost complete autonomy.

“I warn you that this demand represents the stand of an entire party branch and not just one delegate,” Slovenian Communist Party chief Ciril Ribicic told the stormy session.