Abstract
This study engages with the last stage of Czechoslovak-Yugoslav relations in the era of left-authoritarian regimes. Primarily on the basis of analyses of archival documents that were created through the activities of corresponding party and state institutions in both countries, it deals with transformations in the character of the bilateral contacts and their most important spheres.
It demonstrates that already by the end of the first half of the 1980s any remaining distrust and ideologically-motivated suspicion that had been typical in these bilateral relations since the rift between Stalin and Tito, or more precisely, since the renewal of relations in 1954, had disappeared. Cooperation between the two countries had been further complicated to varying extents by problems of a secondary or rather tertiary degree of importance, such as the Czechoslovaks' strongly negative balance in payments, the ongoing numerous emigration of citizens of the ČSSR to countries in the West through Yugoslav territory, and Belgrade's dissatisfaction with the number of students of Yugoslav studies in Czechoslovak universities.
As a consequence of Gorbachev's reform, the Czechoslovak leadership was increasingly isolated from the rest of the world and feverishly sought a new political concept that would enable it to hold onto its political dominance; thus, it attempted to carry several aspects of Yugoslav socialist self-management into its governing bodies. Some of Czechoslovakia's top political functionaries even began to look upon socialist Yugoslavia as a potential close ally, with which a more intense bilateral cooperation would replace relationship with states in the Soviet sphere of influence that were problematic or already petering out.