In 2011 the Constitutional Court of Slovenia designated the entire political order during 1945-1990, the period of 'Tito's Yugoslavia', as 'totalitarian', without limitations as to time or to substance in its qualification; according to this judgment, it also prohibited the use of Tito's name in nominating new streets in Slovenia. The Constitutional Court did not invoke any systematic treatments of totalitarianism, nor did it analyse this phenomenon and its presence in the time period referred to. One cannot deny that in 1945 Yugoslavia was established predominantly as a totalitarian state. However, this paper denies that the order in Yugoslavia after the 1960s was totalitarian, and in particular not with respect to any of the elements laid down by Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski in their classic study (1956). In Yugoslavia during the 1960s, e.g. millions of copies of religious materials were freely published annually, economic firms did not operate within a non-monetary planned economy; although the political system was officially a one-party one, republics (as of 1971 also provinces) acted as autonomous political entities, taking care of their interests and conflicting mutually. Although Tito was appointed president with a life mandate and his cult proliferated, his actual power was limited by the federal nature of the state and opposing federal units. Also, with respect to no other elements noted by the authors there is no reason for Yugoslavia to be designated a totalitarian state as of the middle of the 1960s.

Rights