IDEOLOGY OF ANARCHO-LIBERAL DISSIDENTS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE YUGOSLAV STATE SECURITY SERVICE (1965–1985)

Abstract

Over the past few decades, scholars from the social sciences and humanities have detected and begun to extensively study a unique trend among the leftist groups involved in demonstrations that marked the late ’60s. This phenomenon was an ideological transformation from the positions of far-left ideologies towards the position held by either right or left-wing liberals, who gained prominence in the early ’80s. A certain number of those who took part in university movements of 1968 in Yugoslavia followed what appeared to be a global trend, and gradually abandoned their former anarchist, Trotskyist or democratic socialist ideas in favor of those that today can be defined as early neoliberal ideas. Dissident actions and ideological development of radical leftists who became liberals were closely observed and described by agents and associates of the Yugoslav secret service and later analyzed within the analytical departments of State Security Service. The aim of this article is to convey new findings discovered by analyzing thus far available historical sources created by the security service analysts, which will help reconstruct a perception of the secret service about the ideological changes among the dissidents. Also, it is necessary to bring these research results into the appropriate social and historical context, and try to assess how much the trends recorded by Yugoslav secret service had in common with the paths of evolution of the leftist intellectual and ideological thought in the Western Europe and United States. Results of the studies previously published by scholars from various fields of social sciences and humanities were compared with the results provided by this archival research.