The former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was an important exception among the communist countries, because after the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, it abandoned socialist realism along with other elements previously imported from the Soviet system and allowed greater artistic freedom. Miroslav Krleža, one of the leading Yugoslav intellectuals, gave a speech at the Third Congress of the Writers Alliance of Yugoslavia held in Ljubljana in 1952, which is considered a turning point in the Yugoslav denouncement of dogmatic socialist realism.