A Stalin supporter at the heart of Tito’s party
At the April 1948 Central Committee meeting, he opposed Tito’s reply to Moscow.
Sreten Žujović was a Serb Yugoslav communist and labour organiser who passed through the First World War and the Yugoslav Partisan struggle. He helped organise the wartime uprising, served with the Supreme Headquarters, and became finance minister after liberation. In the 1948 conflict between Tito and Stalin, he defended the Soviet line as the sole dissenter at the decisive Central Committee meeting, and was removed from the party and office and imprisoned. Released after a public self-criticism in 1950 and later readmitted, he embodied the fracture between revolutionary internationalism and Yugoslav autonomy.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1918–1924Labour movement and trade-union organiser after the war
- 1924–1933Joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and worked as a party organiser
- 1938–1940Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia
- 1941–1944Partisan command and Supreme Headquarters work in Serbia and Yugoslavia
- 1945–1947Federal Minister of Finance of Yugoslavia
- 1948Supported the Cominform line during the Tito–Stalin split
- 1948–1950House arrest and imprisonment, released after self-criticism
- 1950–1971Readmitted to the party; executive at Borba and an economic institute
Related historical events
- 1941–1945The Yugoslav Partisan WarPartisan command staff in SerbiaHe helped organise the wartime partisan uprising and served with the Supreme Headquarters.
- 1948–1955The Tito-Stalin Splitanti-Tito internal opponentAt the April 1948 Central Committee meeting, he was the only Politburo member to oppose Tito.
Labour organising and Comintern training
After returning from the First World War, Žujović entered the labour movement and organised trade unions. He joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in Belgrade in 1924, worked as an organiser, and later became a party secretary. He was arrested for communist activity and remained under police surveillance after his release. In 1933 he left the Kingdom of Yugoslavia for the Soviet Union, where he received a scholarship to study at a Comintern school. This phase links his early work in trade-union organising to party activity and international communist training.