Yugoslav Women Fight For Freedom

This book focuses on the mass participation of women in the communist-led Yugoslav Partisan resistance during World War II.

On women's role in the Yugoslav partisan movement of WWII. Examines the various functions that women performed in the fight against fascism and German occupation--as soldiers, as members of the Yugoslav Communist Party, and as part of the effort to provide support to those on the front lines. Paper edition (unseen), $16.95. Published by Arden Press Inc., PO Box 418, Denver CO 80201. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

BASED UPON THE AUTHOR’S EXCLUSIVE MATERIAL, THIS INCREDIBLE STORY OF YUGOSLAVIA—THE COUNTRY OF THE CROATIANS, SERBIANS AND THE SLOVENIANS—AND HER HEROIC STRUGGLE HOLDS A SIGNIFICANT LESSON FOR THE DEMOCRACIES In a sequel to The Native’s Return and Two-Way Passage, Louis Adamic, writing with deeply felt conviction, tells the tragic story of Yugoslavia under Axis domination and of a struggle for power that will vitally affect the future of Europe and America. Drawing on his intimate knowledge of Yugoslavia and its people and on personal eyewitness reports which have been reaching him through secret channels, he paints the grim picture of life and death under Axis occupation and shows what it actually means in terms of people’s lives. These personal stories and portraits are unforgettable. They go behind the headlines to the experience that is the lot of people not in Yugoslavia but all of occupied Europe, to the unbelievable heroism that lifts the heart and steels it for the time ahead. He tells also the story of Yugoslav resistance, of two years of intensifying guerrilla warfare, of a struggle that has been confused, bitter, tragic.

This book highlights the extent to which women were positioned as historical subjects in the process of constructing political, social, and cultural history in Yugoslavia, while simultaneously facing the politics of institutional exclusion and academic ignorance of progressive ideas and emancipatory struggles. To this effect, the book interprets a series of works written in interwar Yugoslavia by women or about women’s position in public space. The research corpus is varied, including LGBT literature, autobiographies, travelogues, literary correspondence, political writings, parody, bibliographies and dictionaries, etc. The book argues that women have been programmatically made absent from the so-called universal canon of (post)Yugoslav literature, or else negatively valorised or labeled, while at the same time women’s writing in interwar Yugoslavia reflected, articulated and mapped significant social, political and cultural issues. The book proposes a re-reading of the once censored and forgotten texts to counter the politics of exclusion that operates even today in the post-Yugoslav space. This re-reading is carried out in the light of contemporary feminist theories and aims to reveal and emphasise the emancipatory importance of women’s authorship. In this way, Jelena Petrović provides a fresh perspective on the topical issue of the still contested (post)Yugoslav space.

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.