Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Yugoslavia

(SAWPY; Socijalisticki Savez Radnog Naroda Jugoslavije), a mass sociopolitical organization created to replace the People’s Liberation Front (PLF), which was organized during Yugoslavia’s war of national liberation (1941-45) as a union of all patriotic antifascist forces, led by the working class. Ideological, political, and organizational leadership was provided by the Yugoslav Communist Party. In 1945 the PLF was renamed the People’s Front, and in February 1953 it became the SAWPY.

According to the rules adopted by the alliance in 1975, the SAWPY is a sociopolitical organization for the united action of the working class, peasantry, intelligentsia, and all strata of working people in Yugoslavian society, headed by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. It leads the people in the struggle for social, economic, material, political, and cultural advancement in order to realize and develop the social relations of socialist self-government and to improve living and working conditions.

The SAWPY is regarded as the political foundation of the system of self-government and socialist democracy in Yugoslavia. A united front of organized socialist forces, it encompasses the League of Communists (the leading ideological and political force of the Alliance), the Confederation of Unions of Yugoslavia, the Socialist Youth League, the League of Associations of Veterans of the War of National Liberation, and other public organizations and citizens’ associations. These organizations ensure, on a broad political platform, political unity and unity of action.

Workers and other citizens may belong to the SAWPY by joining one of its organizations or one of the sociopolitical organizations associated with it. The SAWPY has regional divisions, which, in turn, may establish smaller local units.

The highest body of the SAWPY is the Federal Conference, which grants equal representation to delegations from the republic-level and regional organizations of the SAWPY, delegations from sociopolitical organizations, and delegates from citizens’ organizations and associations. A congress of the SAWPY may be convened in order to vote on political decisions of exceptional importance, if the state of public affairs requires it. The political executive body of the Federal Conference is the Presidium, which in turn elects the Secretariat. In 1977 the SAWPY had more than 8.6 million members. The acting chairman of the Federal Conference is M. Cetinic. Since 1954, the central organ of the SAWPY has been the newspaper Borba (Struggle).