The book The Role of the “Josip Broz Tito” School of Politics of the League of Communists in Kumrovec in the Disintegration of the Socialist Yugoslavia by Dr. Momčilo Diklić (Association of Serbs from Croatia and the Institute od European Studies, 2022) is an unusual and first-hand account of the role of the most important leaders of the famous political school in Kumrovec, once known as “the greatest forge of brotherhood and unity”, of the school itself, as well as of those who inherited it in the last years of the life of Socialist Yugoslavia, in the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. The author first gives a broad historiographical account of the most important social and political topics in post-war Yugoslavia, such as the cult of personality of Josip Broz Tito, issues of treating the Chetnik and Ustasha movements, confrontations with Serb cadres of Yugoslav orientation after 1948, including the indispensable topic of the “Goli otok”. After that, the author shifts research focus to the founding of the “Josip Broz Tito” School of Politics of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in Kumrovec, its activities and some of the key historical figures related to the breakup of the SFRY who paraded through it like Ivica Račan who became school principal in 1980 and had one of the crucial roles in breaking up the state. The book provides a significant insight into the system of personnel production in the school from its founding in 1980 to the collapse of 1990 followed by the closure of the League of Communists, many of which later took important positions in independent Croatia and its newly formed parties such as HDZ and SDP. who had previously developed strong anti-Yugoslav and anti-Serbian positions in ideological and practical terms. The great value of this book lies in the fact that its author is Dr. Momčilo Diklić is the first and only author of a master’s thesis dedicated to the position of Serbs in Croatia during “AVNOJ Croatia”, as well as the fact that the author was an educator in the “Goli otok” prison and a lecturer school in Kumrovec, which qualifies him as an authentic witness to the processes that are the subject of research in this book. Dr. Momčilo Diklić spent the last eleven and a half years of his working life at the Institute for European Studies, where he retired on July 1, 2019, leaving behind a rich scholarly material consisting of 15 monographs and dozens of scientific papers on the position of Serbs in Croatia and Serb-Croat relations. The reviewers of this book, which conasists of 227 pages and abounds in scholarly material and original documents on which it is based, are Prof. Petar Milosavljević and Dr. Aleksandar Gajić.
