Yugoslav Partisans

The Yugoslav Partisans, or simply the Partisans (officially the People's Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia, abbreviated NOV i POЈ)Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, , Cyrillic: Партизани; the long name is ; ; were a Communist-led World War II anti-fascist resistance movement in Yugoslavia. The Partisans were the military arm of the People's Liberation Front (JNOF) coalition, led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) and represented by the AVNOJ, the Yugoslav wartime deliberative assembly. The commander of the Partisans was Marshal Josip Broz Tito.

The Partisans' goal was to create an Communist state in Yugoslavia. To this end, the KPJ attempted to appeal to all the various ethnic groups within Yugoslavia, by preserving the rights of each group. The rival resistance movement, the Chetniks, emerged earlier, were united by their desire to ensure the survival of the Serbian population and loyal to the old Royalist regime. Relations between the two movements were uneasy from the start, but from October 1941 they degenerated into full-scale conflict. To the Chetniks, Tito's pan-ethnic policies seemed anti-Serbian, whereas the Chetniks' Royalism was anathema to the Communists.Tomasevich 2001, p....
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