Chapter 1 examines Yugoslavia’s abrupt postwar political reorganization – from a prospering kingdom to a restrictive communist state – and the impact this new political structure had on all spheres of cultural life. In the new communist Yugoslavia, avant-garde interwar composers had to carefully navigate the challenges of restricted travel, virtually no contact with the outside world, and constraints mandated by the newly implemented doctrine of socialist realism. These impediments marked the first fifteen postwar years as the most challenging for Yugoslav composers. Socialist realism stood in direct opposition to freedom of artistic expression, innovation, and modernism, which they had been exploring across European music centers. It mandated that artists create works that conveyed the communist-socialist message of rebuilding the nation through unity and brotherhood, art that had to speak directly to the “masses.” This chapter surveys the Yugoslavian version of socialist realism – “moderated modernism” – offers a history of complex regional alliances and territorial divisions among Serbs, Slovenes, and Croats, and examines the composers’ search for a pan-Yugoslav musical identity.