The beginnings of the Non-Aligned Movement date back to 1961, when the first conference of the movement was held in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Tito, Naser, Nkrumah, Nehru and Sukarno played an important role in the formation of the organisation. They wanted to start a movement which would stand on its own politically and not align itself with or against any major power bloc. The goals of the movement were primarily economically oriented, since the members were mainly Third World Countries that wanted to become a part of the international political system through which they could make important political decisions. Despite the anti-bloc standpoint of the movement, the views held by the Soviet Union and the United States of America started to seep through and so their conflicts passed on to the member countries. Due to a different economic orientation, disputes also arose between Yugoslavia, the proponent of non-alignment, and Cuba, the proponent of Soviet views. Both countries had a desire to dominate the movement, because they wanted to bring the other non-aligned countries’ views closer to theirs. Cuba wanted the movement to align itself with the Soviet Union, since it was supposed to be the only natural ally to the movement. Cuba also condemned any cooperation with the United States. Yugoslavia, on the other hand, did not want to align itself with the Eastern Bloc because of a dispute with the Soviet Union, but instead wanted to seek allies in other countries in order to establish an economic connection. This master's thesis describes in detail and tries to clarify the individual disputes through an overview of several conferences.
The media regularly reported on the conferences and the movement itself. There have been extensive reports about the movement’s decisions and also its effectiveness and unity among members. However, not much has been written about disputes between the members, and it has been particularly difficult to trace a direct reference to the dispute between Yugoslavia and Cuba. According to the above, we can conclude that the public did not know or was not supposed to know about internal conflicts in the movement, because that would compromise the idea of the unity of the Non-Aligned Movement.
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