In 1969, Šuvar in a polemic with Matica hrvatska official Šime Đodan denied the claims by Maspok ideologists that Croatia was being exploited by other Yugoslav republics.

Participants of the meeting were handed materials containing quotations from texts of 186 (mostly Serbian and Slovenian) authors which had been published in the Yugoslav media between 1982 and 1984.

[8] In his address, Šuvar called for economic and political reforms "within the frameworks of socialism" and for combating nationalism in the entire country.

[10][11] In January 1989, after the Montenegrin leadership was brought down during new rallies in Titograd, and a few days before the 20th session of the SKJ Central Committee was to take place, a conference of the Vojvodinian communists (SKV) attacked Šuvar and asked the SKJ Presidium to dismiss him, which was supported by the Serbian leadership, and was followed by a new mudslinging campaign in the Serbian media and Party organizations against Šuvar.

[18] In the spring of 1989, the Croatian Parliament appointed Šuvar to represent SR Croatia in the Yugoslav Presidency, the collective body serving as head of state of Yugoslavia.

In April 1990 multi-party parliamentary elections took place in Croatia, in which Franjo Tuđman's recently formed HDZ won on an independence platform.

He expressed the hope for a new rise of the left in its struggle for socialism, and ironically congratulated HDZ for completing the Serbian-driven anti-bureaucratic revolution by eliminating him from politics.

The speech was twice interrupted by an uproar of the HDZ deputies and followed by sharply critical replies of several of them, while nobody of Šuvar's own SKH party spoke in his defence.

In 1994 he founded the magazine Hrvatska ljevica (The Croatian Left) and in 1997, he returned to politics by creating the Socialist Labour Party of Croatia (SRP).

Šuvar succeeded in bringing some respectable personalities into the fold, but SRP never managed to win more than 1% of the votes in parliamentary elections.

Šuvar was a vocal critic of nationalist policies of the regime of Franjo Tuđman in the 1990s which targeted Serbs of Croatia, especially after the 1995 Operation Storm.

[22] After 1990, Šuvar also continued publishing books, and gave a number of interviews in which he reflected on both his role in politics of former Yugoslavia and events after the country's break-up.