Jelena Batinić.Women and Yugoslav Partisans: A History of World War II Resistance.

Abstract

The historiography of World War II Yugoslavia—and indeed the historiography of socialist Yugoslavia—has been in desperate need of Jelena Batinić’s groundbreaking study of women and the Yugoslav Partisans. While early postwar Yugoslavia was awash in studies of partizanke (female partisans), most of it was of a rather two-dimensional, ideologically iconographic variant. Western Cold War scholarship tended to “re-fight” the civil war between Josip Broz Tito and Draža Mihailović and ignored deeper social and cultural developments. This gender blindness has largely continued since the end of Yugoslavia, leaving Batinić with a veritable lack of published material on her topic. Batinić circumvents this otherwise depressing reality by relying on a wide array of archival and primary sources, as well as the published histories of women in other resistance movements. As a result, the author presents refreshingly novel interpretations and fascinating transnational comparisons between partizanke and their contemporaries in Mao Zedong’s Red Army, the Greek People’s Liberation Army, the French Resistance, and other such organizations. On certain questions, such as Partisan sexual mores, Batinić’s contribution is truly trailblazing.