This special issue places the socialist world at the centre of the modern history of humanitarianism. The contributions bring together a wide range of perspectives to explore the meaning, purpose, and practices of socialist humanitarianism at different scales and across continents. Closely examining practices and discourses from socialist contexts and actors across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America expands definitions of humanitarian action, highlights aid flows that upend traditional assumptions about unidirectional Global North-Global South transfer, and proposes alternative chronologies for tracing the development of the international humanitarian sector. This short introduction explores why the socialist world has been sidelined within international historiographies on humanitarianism and argues that placing it at the centre can offer new ways of understanding the evolution of humanitarian ideas and practices across the second half of the twentieth century.

Argentina is widely regarded as one of the most rigorous applications of the Carter administration's human rights diplomacy, and was certainly one of the most visible. In Argentina, the Carter administration broke with long patterns of supporting right-wing dictatorships in the name of anti-communism. Instead, Carter's policies mobilized support for human rights to challenge Cold War paradigms of national security that lead to US support for abusive regimes. Yet even with its rigorous bilateral diplomacy and the success of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights mission to Argentina, many argue that Carter allowed his human rights agenda to be subsumed by Cold War geopolitics in the final year of his administration. Tracing the Carter administration's human rights diplomacy through its campaign to hold the Argentine regime accountable for the disappeared, this article will show that although its public attention to the issue of human rights quieted in its last year in office, the Carter administration remained committed to the core of its human rights policy. Although the junta remained intransigent on the issue of the disappeared, the military leadership in Buenos Aires responded to the Carter administration's human rights diplomacy with concessions that ultimately opened spaces for Argentines to challenge their repressive government.

Autor na temelju deklasificiranoga dosjea britanskoga ministarstva rata (War Office) o ispitivanju potpukovnika Ivana Babića u Bariju početkom 1944., građe komunističke provenijencije, memoarskih zapisa i Babićeve korespondencije dopunjava dosadašnje spoznaje o misiji domobranskoga potpukovnika Ivana Babića. Iako je tijekom ispitivanja pred britanskim časnicima Babić odbijao govoriti o političkim ciljevima misije jer je djelovao kao svojevrsni kurir Hrvatske seljačke stranke (HSS) u zemlji i dijela domobranstva prema vrhu HSS-a u emigraciji, iz njegovih se odgovora razaznaju sudionici misije iz domobranstva i samoga HSS-a, ali i ciljevi zavjerenika, koji su namjeravali prebaciti regularnu vojsku Nezavisne Države Hrvatske (domobranstvo), kao i dio ustaških prebjega, na savezničku stranu u borbu protiv sila Osovine, ali uz suradnju s Narodnooslobodilačkim pokretom nasuprot četnicima. Zaključak je autora da je spomenutim planom HSS namjeravao osigurati svoje pozicije na završetku rata da bi Hrvatska imala odvojenu vojnu silu koja bi joj omogućila da se odupre uspostavi komunističke vlasti ili eventualnoj restauraciji jugoslavenskoga unitarizma.

Autor u članku na temelju arhivskoga gradiva pohranjenog u Rektoratu Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, tiska i relevantne literature razmatra djelovanje redovitoga profesora Pravnoga fakulteta dr. Ladislava Polića na Sveučilištu, s posebnim osvrtom na njegova dva rektorska mandata, njegov znanstveni doprinos u poljima prava i politologije, te ujedno rekonstruira njegovu doktorsku promociju sub auspiciis Regis, drugu takvu u povijesti Sveučilišta u Zagrebu.

Hrvatski i jugoslavenski pisac, književni teoretičar i publicist Predrag Matvejević napisao je 1974. pismo Josipu Brozu Titu nezadovoljan time što je ustavno postao doživotni predsjednik Socijalističke Federativne Republike Jugoslavije. Predložio mu je da odustane od te „počasti” ustvrdivši da institut doživotnoga mandata „ne zvuči dobro”. Sudbina toga pisma do danas je ostala nepoznatom i nerasvijetljenom zahvaljujući ponajprije samom Matvejeviću, koji je javnosti ispričao tri vrlo različite priče o tome, ali i novinarima, piscima i znanstvenicima koji su nekritički prihvaćali, prenosili i nadograđivali njegove priče.

Na temelju višegodišnjega istraživanja hrvatske povijesti u razdoblju kasnoga socijalizma u članku iznosim neka promišljanja o problematici Hrvatske u drugoj Jugoslaviji i (ne)uspješnosti komunističke modernizacije. Težište istraživanja bilo je na povijesti Saveza komunista Hrvatske, njegovoj organizaciji, metodi rada i odnosu s drugim društveno-političkim zajednicama i društveno-političkim organizacijama. U kontekstu čestih tvrdnji, pa i nekih povjesničara, o velikome modernizacijskom zahvatu smatram da su drugu Jugoslaviju komunisti sazdali na prevari, teroru i laži. To su bila tri stvarna temelja komunističke vlasti, koja su na kraju i bila razlog da se njihov modernizacijski projekt okonča u krvavom ratu nakon gotovo pola stoljeća postojanja druge Jugoslavije.

Unatoč tome što se često spominje u hrvatskoj javnosti i medijima, a nerijetko je i predmetom političkih razmirica, tema hrvatskih branitelja iz Domovinskoga rata u poslijeratnoj Hrvatskoj dosad je bila poprilično zapostavljena i znanstveno slabo istražena kao tema historiografskih istraživanja, za razliku od stanja istraženosti veterana kao relevantne društvene skupine u prošlosti i sadašnjosti u nekim inozemnim historiografijama. Ovaj rad u prvom dijelu obrazlaže nužnost znanstvenoga bavljenja braniteljima kao temom društvene povijesti i tematizira način bavljenja veteranima u recentnim domaćim i stranim radovima. U drugom se dijelu, utemeljeno u primarnim izvorima, daje pregled kako je pitanje državne skrbi za branitelje riješeno u Republici Hrvatskoj od samoga početka Domovinskoga rata do posljednjega zakona o pravima branitelja donesenog 2017., s naglaskom na promjene prilikom smjena vlasti 2000., 2004., 2011. i 2016.

This article introduces a special issue marking the fiftieth anniversary of Argentina's 24 March 1976 coup, which inaugurated a brutal civic-military dictatorship and a program to reshape the state, economy, and society. Situating the coup within Argentina's long history of cycles of authoritarianism and democracy, escalating political violence, and regional patterns of military intervention, the special issue highlights both continuities and ruptures. The last dictatorship was exceptional in its systematic repression and state terrorism, as well as in its ambitious economic neoliberalization. Bringing together contributions from political, social, economic, and transnational history, this special issue contributes to the historiography on the interaction between domestic struggles and global forces: the regime's evolving relationship with Washington, the role of international financial institutions, the activism of exiles and human rights organizations, and the Cold War in Latin America. It revisits the dictatorship's ideological foundations, institutional reforms, social transformations, and strategies of international legitimization, while tracing the emergence of resistance and the eventual transition to democracy. Together, the essays underscore the long-term legacies of the dictatorship, including persistent tensions in civil–military relations, debates over memory and justice, and the question of the link between authoritarianism and neoliberalism.

This introduction sets out the thematic and methodological framework of a special issue on historical refugee agency in the aftermath of the Second World War. It situates the volume within historiographical debates that move beyond narratives of passive victimization, instead foregrounding how refugees actively shaped their lives and the regimes that sought to govern them. The central question is how forced migrants exercised personal, proxy, and collective agency within severe constraints, and how such practices were connected across geographical and institutional contexts. Methodologically, the introduction highlights strategies for recovering refugee voices from fragmentary sources: reading bureaucratic records against the grain, tracing transnational networks, and identifying how administrative silences can register agency. It also underscores the value of the migration regime framework, intersectionality, and everyday practices in connecting perspectives on structural conditions with those on individual and collective action . In outlining these foundations, the introduction positions the special issue as a historiographical intervention that rethinks refugee history through the lens of agency.