Constructing Yugoslavia

Vesna Drapac provides an insightful survey of the changing nature of the Yugoslav ideal, demonstrating why Yugoslavism was championed at different times and by whom, and how it was constructed in the minds of outside observers. Covering the period from the 1850s to the death of Tito in 1980, Drapac situates Yugoslavia in the broader international context and examines its history within the more familiar story of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This approachable study also explores key themes and debates, including: - The place of the nation-state within the worldview of nineteenth-century intellectuals - The memory of war and commemorative practices in the interwar years - Resistance and collaboration - The nature of dictatorships - Gender and citizenship - Yugoslavia's role from the perspective of the 'Superpowers' Drawing on a wide range of sources in order to recreate the atmosphere of the period, Constructing Yugoslavia traces the formation of popular perceptions of Yugoslavia and their impact on policy toward Yugoslavs. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the history of this fascinating nation, and its ultimate demise.

Vesna Drapac provides an insightful survey of the changing nature of the Yugoslav ideal, demonstrating why Yugoslavism was championed at different times and by whom, and how it was constructed in the minds of outside observers. Covering the period from the 1850s to the death of Tito in 1980, Drapac situates Yugoslavia in the broader international context and examines its history within the more familiar story of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This approachable study also explores key themes and debates, including: - The place of the nation-state within the worldview of nineteenth-century intellectuals - The memory of war and commemorative practices in the interwar years - Resistance and collaboration - The nature of dictatorships - Gender and citizenship - Yugoslavia's role from the perspective of the 'Superpowers' Drawing on a wide range of sources in order to recreate the atmosphere of the period, Constructing Yugoslavia traces the formation of popular perceptions of Yugoslavia and their impact on policy toward Yugoslavs. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the history of this fascinating nation, and its ultimate demise.

When Yugoslavia was created in 1918, the new state was a patchwork of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and other ethnic groups. It still was in January 1929, when King Aleksandar suspended the Yugoslav constitution and began an ambitious program to impose a new Yugoslav national identity on his subjects. By the time Aleksandar was killed by an assassin’s bullet five years later, he not only had failed to create a unified Yugoslav nation but his dictatorship had also contributed to an increase in interethnic tensions. In Making Yugoslavs, Christian Axboe Nielsen uses extensive archival research to explain the failure of the dictatorship’s program of forced nationalization. Focusing on how ordinary Yugoslavs responded to Aleksandar’s nationalization project, the book illuminates an often-ignored era of Yugoslav history whose lessons remain relevant not just for the study of Balkan history but for many multiethnic societies today.

This book focuses on the cultural processes by which the idea of a Yugoslav nation was developed and on the reasons that this idea ultimately failed to bind the South Slavs into a viable nation and state. The author argues that the collapse of multinational Yugoslavia and the establishment of separate uninational states did not result from the breakdown of the political or economic fabric of the Yugoslav state; rather, that breakdown itself sprang from the destruction of the concept of a Yugoslav nation. Had such a concept been retained, a collapse of political authority would have been followed by the eventual reconstitution of a Yugoslav state, as happened after World War II, rather than the creation of separate nation-states. Because the author emphasizes nation building rather than state building, the causes and evidence he cites for Yugoslavia’s collapse differ markedly from those that have previously been put forward. He concentrates on culture and cultural politics in the South Slavic lands from the mid-nineteenth century to the present in order to delineate those ideological mechanisms that helped lay the foundation for the formation of a Yugoslav nation in the first place, sustained the nation during its approximately seventy-year existence, and led to its dissolution. The book describes the evolution of the idea of Yugoslav national unity in four major areas: linguistic policies geared to creating a shared national language, the promulgation of a Yugoslav literary and artistic canon, an educational policy that emphasized the teaching of literature and history in schools, and the production of new literary and artistic works incorporating a Yugoslav view. In the book’s conclusion, the author discusses the relevance of the Yugoslav case for other parts of the world, considering whether the triumph of particularist nationalism is inevitable in multinational states.

With Muslim, Croatian, and Serbian journalists and historians as contributors, Burn This House portrays the chain of events that led to the recent wars in the heart of Europe. Comprised of critical, nonnationalist voices from the former Yugoslavia, this volume elucidates the Balkan tragedy while directing attention toward the antiwar movement and the work of the independent media that have largely been ignored by the U.S. press. Updated since its first publication in 1997, this expanded edition, more relevant than ever, includes material on new developments in Kosovo. The contributors show that, contrary to descriptions by the Western media, the roots of the warring lie not in ancient Balkan hatreds but rather in a specific set of sociopolitical circumstances that occurred after the death of Tito and culminated at the end of the Cold War. In bringing together these essays, Serbian-born sociologist Jasminka Udovicki and Village Voice Washington correspondent James Ridgeway provide essential historical background for understanding the turmoil in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo and expose the catalytic role played by the propaganda of a powerful few on all sides of what eventually became labeled an ethnic dispute. Burn This House offers a poignant, informative, and fully up-to-date explication of the continuing Balkan tragedy. Contributors. Sven Balas, Milan Milosevi ́c Branka Prpa-Jovanovi ́c, James Ridgeway, Stipe Sikavica, Ejub Stitkovac, Mirko Tepavac, Ivan Torov, Jasminka Udovicki, Susan Woodward

The Social Construction of Man, the State, and War is the fist book on conflict in the former Yugoslavia to look seriously at the issue of ethnic identity, rather than treating it as a given, an unquestionable variable. Combining detailed analysis with a close reading of historical narratives, documentary evidence, and first-hand interviews conducted in the former Yugoslavia, Wilmer sheds new light on how ethnic identity is constructed, and what that means for the future of peace and sovereignty throughout the world.

When the Yugoslav communists came into power in 1945, they claimed to have introduced a socialist solution to the Yugoslav national question. But what did this claim imply? 'Creating a Socialist Yugoslavia: Tito, Communist Leadership and the National Question' charts the approach pursued by Yugoslav communist leaders from their endorsement in 1935 of a strategy committing to the search for a 'socialist solution' to the national question within a multinational Yugoslav context, until the party disintegrated in 1990. Hilde Katrine Haug examines the impact of the communist leadership's aspirations to create a socialist Yugoslavia on their management of national conflict in the highly heterogeneous Yugoslav state entity.

Based on extensive archival research and fieldwork and the culmination of more than two decades of study, The Three Yugoslavias is a major contribution to an understanding of Yugoslavia and its successor states.