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Tito lovers of the world, unite!

Anyone here care much about Yugoslavia? I'm pretty interested at the moment, namely because:

worker self management seems rad
pretty cool multiethnic state that balanced minority rights, regional autonomy, and party oversight pretty well
a bit like a red precursor of the EU
property law was radically different and separated nominal ownership (pretty much all the state) from use rights (enterprises etc) in basically the same way old English common land did
choosing industrial democracy over political democracy doesn't seem like a bad choice at all

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I think ultimately history has shown that the Yugoslav line regarding market socialism was mostly correct and the split between them and the rest of the socialist bloc was a grave mistake from all sides involved.

I absolutely detest the great man-ism that clouds even communists' minds around this period. Tito probably never said badass things about Stalinist assassins or whatever and Stalin probably didn't personally want Tito's head on a spike. It was more complicated than what it's made out to be, and focusing attention on two Great Men instead of the ruling parties and material reality writ large does a disservice to historical understanding. It's everywhere, though.

The CPY/LCY shouldn't have split with the Cominform and should have maintained communication instead of running to the west/U.S. at the sign of any criticism. The Cominform should have addressed its Soviet-centric model of prescribed socialism and allowed for pragmatic differences in socialist construction between parties based on national realities while maintaining a sense of proletarian internationalism and socialist fraternity. As with the Sino-Soviet split, dogmatism and petty nonsense helped facilitate the beginning of the destruction of yet another socialist project that should still be standing today.

TLDR: Yugoslavia pretty good.

hkto

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Turns out I didn't see this reply at the time, but: yes! The focus on individuals blinds us to the processes. I've an interest in the splits that occurred that we're talking about here and I honestly have no idea what forces out there in the world could have led to them: the Great Man approach is blinding.

On that note.. any idea what a good not-Great Man book covers this kind of thing?