Titoism
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Titoism is a term given to the ideology associated with Yugoslav leader, Josip Broz Tito, which includes primarily political, but also religious elements.
The political elements of Titoism are characterized by policies and practices based on the principle that in each country, the means of attaining ultimate communist goals must be dictated by the conditions of that particular country, rather than by a pattern set in another country. During Tito’s era, this specifically meant that the communist goal should be pursued independently of (and often in opposition to) U.S.S.R. policies.
The religious elements of Titoism are characterized by strong loyalty, admiration, and at an extreme, fanatical devotion to Tito, who by means of the cult of personality that surrounded him, was believed by some to be a deity or alternatively, to be more than a mortal human-being.
The term was originally meant as a pejorative and was labelled by Moscow as a heresy during the period of tensions between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia known as the Informbiro period from 1948 to 1955.
Unlike the rest of East Europe which fell under the iron rule of Stalin post World War II, Yugoslavia, due to the strong leadership of Marshall Tito, became the only country to resist pressure from Moscow to join the Warsaw Pact and remained "socialist, but independent" rightup until the collapse of Soviet communism in the late 1980's. Throughout his time in office Tito prided himself on Yugoslavia's independence from Russia, with Yugoslavia never accepting full membership of COMECON and Tito's open rejection of many aspects of Stalinism as the most obvious manifestations of this.
A personal favourite of Stalin at first, Tito had led the left-wing oppositon to the Nazi ocupation during the war, and had met Stalin several times immediately after the war as they negotiated over the future of post-Nazi Yugoslavia. Over time, however, these negotiations became increasingly less cordial as it became clear to the Russians that Tito had no intention of handing over executive power in the form of a "puppet government" as had happened elsewhere in Eastern Europe - cf. Rakosi's dictatorship of Hungary.