Structural History and Yugoslav Marxism

Abstract

This manual on the development, form, and directions of historical science is noteworthy not only for itself but for the dialogue it has precipitated in Yugoslavia. Mirjana Gross is a professor of history at the University of Zagreb and one of Yugoslavia's most eminent and active historians. She is an editor of an excellent journal, Casopis za suvremenu povijest (Journal of Contemporary History), published by the Institute for the History of the Workers' Movement in Croatia. A frequent participant in international as well as Yugoslav historical meetings, Professor Gross spent the academic year 1978-79 as a visiting professor at the University of Virginia and lectured at various American universities from coast to coast. Among her many writings, the best known are in the field of modern, particularly nineteenth-century, Croatian history. She was a major contributor, with Jaroslav Sidak, Igor Karaman, and Dragovan Sepic, to a useful and most welcome survey of Croatian history published in 1968, Povijest hrvatskog naroda 1860-1914. In 1973, Professor Gross published an impressive monograph, Povijest pravaske ideologije, which deals with the history of the ideological development of the Croatian Party of Rights in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The book is an exhaustive analysis of a significant aspect of modern Croatian nationalism. A mature scholar of recognized standing, Mirjana Gross had no need to venture beyond her securely established domain into the tangled thickets of historiography and its ideologies and methodologies. Yet she was persuaded by a sense of professional obligation to write a work which has significance both as a useful manual and as a reflection of her own beliefs concerning the significance and future of the historical profession. Professor Gross has written a competent and informative survey, intended particularly to meet the needs of students of history at the University of Zagreb. The book deals, first, with the development of historiography in Western civilization from ancient times to the early 1970s, and second, with the methodology of historical inquiry. All this is presented with a wealth of footnotes and charts, a bibliography (compiled by Stefanija Popovic) of major ancient and modern historical works cited in the text which are available in Serbo-Croatian translation, an English summary (which, alas, repeatedly refers to the French Annalistes as analysts), and a serviceable index. Any country would be glad to have such a solidly packed, conscientiously written, and critically penetrating handbook, especially one that is so up to date and, indeed, forward-looking. Western historical scholars will find nothing in this book that is new or not available elsewhere. Professor Gross's account of historiography is fairly conven-