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The aim of the article is to reconstruct – on the base of archive sources, memoirs and other material – the history of the weekly Naprijed, the offi cial newspaper of the Communist Party of Croatia (CPC) which was fi rst published in 1943 and was closed down at the beginning of 1954 in the atmosphere of the showdown with Milovan Djilas. The paper presents the course of the transformation of the newspaper through phases of its existence and tries to answer the question to what extent the changes in the newspaper were caused by political changes in the country. At the same time it points to the mechanisms of functioning of the media in terms of the communist system. Finally, it attempts to detect the causes and circumstances of Naprijed’s “turn” towards dissidence. Through the majority of its existence, Naprijed published the offi cial Party documents, Congress materials and texts written by senior Party offi cials. Although Party leaders occasionally expressed dissatisfaction with Naprijed because of being insuffi ciently on the Party’s line and because of its low quality, Naprijed generally remained orthodox, and therefore also rather uninteresting for the general public. Signifi cant changes in its concept have become particularly noticeable after 1952, and it eventually turned into a weekly paper dealing with social, political and cultural issues. Since Naprijed was recognized as close to Djilas, it led to open confl ict with the top of the Party – the result was suppression of the newspaper. Its journalists were forced to stop their work in journalism. History of the weekly Naprijed clearly illustrates the political and ideological trends in socialist Yugoslavia during the postwar period. Mechanisms of the Communist Party’s control over Naprijed were similar to the case of other media, but the status of the offi cial Party newspaper turned Naprijed.
