Communist Yugoslavia Research Articles

“We know that you were not born a scoundrel...”. János Kádár interrogating László Rajk, 1949

In the context of the conflict with Tito’s Yugoslavia, unleashed on Stalin’s initiative in 1948, the Soviet Union took steps to rally all the countries of the emerging Eastern bloc on the anti-Yugoslav platform. Particularly active in the anti-Yugoslav campaign was the leader of the Hungarian communists, Mátyás Rákosi, who feared that Moscow would not forgive him for his former closeness with the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party. In order to prove his loyalty to Stalin, and at the same time get rid of the most powerful domestic political competitor, Rákosi organized a large show trial of László Rajk, prepared with the participation of advisers from the USSR, modeled on the great Moscow trials of the 1930s. The Rajk trial of September 1949 further escalated the campaign against the Tito regime, during which, in accordance with a new resolution of the Cominform, adopted in November 1949, Yugoslavia was declared a country which was no longer in the power of just nationalists and revisionists, but spies and killers. The reader is invited to read the protocol of interrogation of László Rajk with the participation of the future leader of Hungary, János Kádár, who himself would be subjected to severe repressions by the Rákosi regime two years later on similar charges. For the communist reformer János Kádár, involvement in the Rajk case became as indelible a stain on his political career as the suppression of the popular uprising in 1956.

VAŽNOST NAČELA KONTINUITETA I PRIMATA DRŽAVLJANSTVA U POSTUPCIMA DENACIONALIZACIJE NA PRIMJERU SLUČAJA GROFA DRAŠKOVIĆA

In denationalization procedures, that is, the right to compensation and/or return of confiscated property according to the Law on Compensation for Property Confiscated During the Yugoslav Communist Rule, the question of nationality is (was) extremely important. Namely, from 1996 to 2002, foreign nationals did not have the right to be entitled to compensation. Since 2002, the holder of the right to compensation is any previous owner, regardless of nationality, whose right to compensation for confiscated property is not regulated by an intergovernmental agreement. Therefore, the question of nationality is still important for the possibility of instigating denationalization procedures. In the mentioned procedures, until 2002, the question could arise as to whether a person was a Croatian national or not, that is, after 2002, the question could arise as to whether a person was a national of a state with which there is an intergovernmental agreement on compensation for confiscated property. In determining the nationality of a potential recipient of compensation, two principles of nationality law are extremely important - the principle of continuity and the principle of the primacy of nationality. The paper will analyze these two principles and their application in the denationalization process will be shown in the case of count Drašković.

Jugoslovenska ekonomska pomoć Albaniji 1945–1948: motivi, opseg i ishod

The study focuses on the phenomenon of Yugoslav economic aid to Albania following WWII. The Yugoslav communist leadership’s idea to unite Yugoslavia and Albania into a single state began to be implemented in the field of economy, with the transfer of industrial machines and products from Yugoslavia to Albania and the establishment of a common economic and customs space between the two countries. Around 700 Yugoslav experts and workers were sent to Albania to help implement the country’s first five-year economic plan, which had previously been agreed upon with the Yugoslav five-year plan. Over 1000 Albanian students and youth received professional training at Yugoslav faculties, secondary vocational schools, and industries. In 1948, the ambitious project came to an end with the abolition of diplomatic relations between the two countries and the expulsion of Yugoslav citizens from Albania.

Yugoslav Politics in the 1980s from the Perspective of Boris Muževič and Other Former Slovenian Communists

The paper reviews the recently published diary of Boris Muževič and earlier memoirs of former Slovenian communist officials. Along with selected archival sources, this literature is used to discuss the role of Muževič and his Slovenian colleagues in the events that preceded the breakup of Yugoslavia. In particular, the attention of the Slovenian politicians was moving from ideological to statehood issues over the period 1985–1989, while Muževič actively participated in escalation of conflicts in the Yugoslav communist leadership.

Smiljana Rendić and the Contribution of the Glas Koncila [The Voice of the Council] Column „Mi, ovdje“ [We, here] in Transcending the Boudaries of Freedom of Public Speech in Communist Yugoslavia in the Sixtie

Rad predstavlja doprinos koji je novinarka Smiljana Rendić dala pomicanju granica slobode javne riječi u Hrvatskoj u vrijeme komunizma rubrikom „Mi, ovdje“ u Glasu Koncila. Iz ukupnog korpusa rubrike „Mi, ovdje“ izdvojeno je deset tekstova koji se mogu čitati u kontekstu doprinosa širenja granica slobode javne riječi. Tekstovi su analizirani metodom kvalitativne analize sadržaja. Analizirani tekstovi, kojima se u radu pristupa kao spoju eseja, reportaže i novele, otvaraju teme koje su šezdesetih godina 20. stoljeća bile praktički proskribirane u javnosti i medijima. To su pitanja poput redovitog vjerskog života u urbanim i industrijaliziranim sredinama, uloga katoličkih intelektualaca u javnosti, pastoral vojnika, gradnja novih crkvenih objekata, karitativna djelatnost Crkve te komplementarnost vjere i znanosti. U ozračju totalitarnoga nadzora nad društvom Rendić je, osim novinarskoga stila pisanja, upregnula i svoju književnu umješnost i imaginaciju da bi „zamaskirala“ stvarne identitete osoba koje su bile protagonisti rubrike „Mi, ovdje“.

The Concrete Rupture: An Examination of Yugoslav Islamic Heritage in the Aftermath of the 1963 Skopje Earthquake

The study of the Cold War built environment and its links with communist ideology have permeated the field of architectural history and theory since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. However, the treatment of Ottoman Islamic heritage under state socialist rule remains a little examined subject. The earthquake that demolished large swaths of the Yugoslav city of Skopje in 1963 caused heavy damage to Ottoman architecture. In the years that followed, the reconstruction of Skopje became a symbol of a singular, international collaboration between countries from both sides of the Cold War divide. The city that arose became the 1970s brutalist capital of the Balkans. This article examines the treatment of Ottoman urban heritage in Skopje and its sociocultural and political implications during the post-disaster (re)construction of a modernizing and modernist city. I argue that disregard for the historical breadth and the continuing religious, cultural, and social significance of the region’s Ottoman-era urban spaces and structures for Skopje’s Muslim community in the creation of the brutalist city was not exclusively based on anti-Muslim rhetoric. Rather, it was part of the driving quest for modernity sought by the Yugoslav communist leaders in the second half of the twentieth century.

The question of national identity and the immigration of Kosovo Muslims to Turkey during the Yugoslav communist regime

ABSTRACT This paper attempts to answer some questions about the Yugoslav communist regime's identity policy in Kosovo: did the authorities encourage Turkification of Albanians or Albanisation of Turks, and how was the issue of Turkish emigration from Yugoslavia to Turkey handled in the 1950s? Answers to these questions may also prove useful in discussing the question of the determinants of the nationality policy of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito. The study is based on the analysis of state documents kept in different archives in Belgrade, Pristina, and Tirana, and the relevant literature in Serbian, Albanian, Turkish, and English. It is my contention that the Turkish minority in Kosovo was in the first post-war years denied the recognition of its national identity and minority rights, and that its status largely depended on the Yugoslav communist leadership's strategy of subordinating Yugoslavia's national interests to the particular interests of the six federal and two autonomous units into which it was divided. I argue that the Yugoslav government implemented different policies regarding emigration to Turkey in Kosovo and Macedonia and that it sought to halt the emigration of Kosovo Albanians, as evidenced by available data.

Yugoslav communists and European far-left - from first supporters of Italian Eurocommunists to last allies of French neo-stalinists (1965-1985)

Complex structural changes of social realty in SFRY and Western Europe during post-war decades have created the need for the largest Marxist parties of Europe outside Eastern Bloc to accommodate their party policies to new political challenges and social circumstances. Gradually, communist parties of Mediterranean started to contemplate creation of a new Marxist ideology for the welfare state era, which in practice meant seizing attempts to adjust principles of Bolshevik socialist model to their unique local circumstances, and moving away from the influence of Soviet party. League of Communists of Yugoslavia supported the reformist fractions of Italian, French, Greek and Spanish communist parties, which opened the path for further expansion of international influence and prestige of the Yugoslav communists. However, historical evolution of SFRY state policies and Yugoslav party ideology eventually took a different course than the reforms of party policies and ideologies of early Eurocommunist parties. The purpose of this article is to contribute to further understanding of the long term social and historical process which created a drift between the leading reformist parties of Europe. This is to be achieved by applying comparative method to the results of archival research conducted on historical sources that testify about the cooperation between Yugoslav, Italian and French communists at various time points during the twenty year long period, while using the findings of numerous historical, sociological and philosophical books and articles in order to bring the research results in the appropriate social and historical context.

Orders of Socialist Yugoslavia awarded to Russian diaspora representatives

The article analyzes the state award system in the socialist Yugoslavia. It deals with awarding the Russian diaspora representatives in the country the state orders. Paper is based on official government gazette, which contained the list of persons awarded the state awards, as well as the archival documents: Yugoslav Army Official Military Personnel Files, kept in Military Archives. On the one hand, after Yugoslavia was liberated and Communist Party came to power, the Russian diaspora representatives were subjected to repression by the Yugoslav secret services and the Soviet counterintelligence. On the other hand, the policy of the new government in Yugoslavia was aimed at integrating Russian emigrants loyal to the country and to the regime, as evidenced by the practice of presenting Russian emigrants of both the first and second generations to state awards — heroes-partisans of the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia and figures of science, culture and art. During the study, cases of awarding the same persons with orders of both the pre-war Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the post-war socialist Republic were identified, which indicates the continuity of the state communicative policy towards emigrants. However, state award system in socialist Yugoslavia also implied an educational function in relation to Yugoslav society, therefore, the Russian diaspora representatives never received the highest awards of Communist Yugoslavia — the Order of Freedom and the Order of the People’s Hero, established in 1945 and in 1944 respectively. The highest order awarded to a representative of the Russian diaspora was the Order of the Partisan Star. A certain number of Russian members of the Resistance movement were awarded a Partisan memorial badge of 1941. And the Order of Merit for the People was awarded not only to the fighters of the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia and Russian members of the Resistance movement, but also to figures who made a great contribution to the development of the economy, culture and science of Yugoslavia. It is noteworthy that the conjuncture of Soviet-Yugoslav relations directly affected the measures applied to Russian emigrants, and the holders of Yugoslav orders were no exception and were also subjected to repression during the Soviet-Yugoslav tension. After the Soviet-Yugoslav relations normalized, orders were awarded mainly to the Russian scientists and artists.

1950년대 중립주의의 발흥과 남·북한의 반응

Examined in this article is how both South and North Koreas perceived and responded to the concept of Neutralism, which emerged all around the globe after the Korean War. Analyzed in particular is rather ‘symmetrical responses’ displayed by both South and North Korean governments, to global events that occurred in the wake of such ideology emerging in the 1950s, such as the Bandung Conference in 1955, Austria’s Neutralization and Unification during the same year, the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, and the drafting of the first version of the Yugoslav Communist Alliance Code in 1958.BR Research shows that both South and North Korean governments responded rather symmetrically toward the Asian and African regions where Neutralism prevailed(as we can see from the Bandung Conference), the Free World(as in the case of Austria), and the Communist realm(as in cases of Hungary and Yugoslavia), during the Cold War of the 1950s. Their such responses varied, depending on whether they could benefit from the effects of supporting neutrality.BR Previous studies of the Cold War History, either from Korean scholars or from scholars abroad, have concentrated on the relations between ‘Central regions,’ or relations between regions which were rather ‘Central’ while the other was mostly categorized ‘Peripheral.’ Attempted in this work conversely is to define and determine the relationship between regions that could both be considered as ‘Peripheries.’ It should be noted that South and North Koreas have together formed one of the last front-lines of the Cold War on the Korean peninsula which has always been perceived as a ‘Peripheral region,’ and that other countries which declared Neutralism in the hope of escaping clutches of the polarizing nature of the Cold War order were also such peripheries.

Bleiburg and Croatian Political Emigration – Commemorations, Interpretations and Use in Anti-Yugoslav Propaganda

The paper presents forms of commemoration of the Bleiburg tragedy and the Way of the Cross in the communities of Croatian political refugees in the West and different interpretations of the mentioned events. It also analyzes some cases in which the world public was made aware of the massacres committed by communist Yugoslavia, as well as forms of repression and diplomatic pressure by the Yugoslav authorities to prevent commemorations in Bleiburg.

Bleiburg and Croatian Political Emigration – Commemorations, Interpretations and Use in Anti-Yugoslav Propaganda

The paper presents forms of commemoration of the Bleiburg tragedy and the Way of the Cross in the communities of Croatian political refugees in the West and different interpretations of the mentioned events. It also analyzes some cases in which the world public was made aware of the massacres committed by communist Yugoslavia, as well as forms of repression and diplomatic pressure by the Yugoslav authorities to prevent commemorations in Bleiburg.

Between Repression and Defence The Condition of the Catholic Church in Communist Yugoslavia from relationes ad limina (1946-58)

In post-World War II Yugoslavia, the issue of relations with the Communist state becomes central to the Catholic episcopate. The defence of the ecclesial presence and the preservation of the faith in the face of the repression carried out with force by the political authorities is a dominant aspect in the relationes sent by the bishops to the Holy See. In the complex and articulated Yugoslav reality, where different religious and national identities are intertwined and oppose each other, the bishops note that religious sentiment is still quite alive among the faithful, even in a political-social context dominated by socialist materialism, sustained by the state, and in this, the first instances of a kind of practical materialism also appear.

Spectral Politics in Emir Kusturica's Underground

Spectral Politics in Emir Kusturica's Underground Zina Giannopoulou The film Underground (Dir. Emir Kusturica, 1995) examines the history of the former Yugoslavia—in a state of war from the 1940s to the 1990s—as a palimpsest of catastrophes. The film won the 1995 Palme d' Or in Cannes around the time that the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia and later Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRFY) ceased to exist, having been divided into six independent countries. Framed by a prologue and an epilogue, the narrative of the film proceeds in three parts, each signaled by an intertitle. "Part 1—War" begins with the Nazi bombing of Belgrade on 6 April 1941 and shows the beginning of the Partisan resistance until the Allies bomb the remains of Belgrade in 1944; "Part 2—Cold War" marks the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tito's communist Yugoslavia and the opening up of the country to the West; and "Part 3—War" refers to the Bosnian conflict and breakup of former Yugoslavia. Kusturica is known for his raucous portrayals of Balkan life, but Underground's audiovisual and narrative excess sparked a domestic and international controversy. Some critics claim that the film propagates Balkanism by depicting "the impaired moral standards innate in the Balkan social character."1 Others interpret the characters' lust for life as "the authenticity of ordinary Yugoslavs that nourished the utopian impulse for a transnational identity."2 Still others stress the film's self-referentiality, its calling attention to itself as both fiction and document of historical reconstruction.3 Kusturica describes Underground as "a film about manipulation, the way that one or two people can keep large numbers of others in their power. In Tito's time, people were kept in a kind of metaphorical cellar, isolated and believing that they were living the best of lives. And in recent years the people who had kept the others in cellars announced themselves as democrats and promptly created new cellars."4 Instead of seeing these critical strands—wild Balkan passions, extravagance as impulse to a utopian and nostalgic pan-Yugoslavism, and cinematic self-reflexivity—as separate from or mutually incompatible with one another, I synthesize them into a reading that tries to do justice to the complex politics of former Yugoslavia as seen by Kusturica. My focus will be on the epilogue, the film's most spectacular sequence and "the main image that Kovačević and Kusturica (the screenwriters) had in mind when they first started working on the project and that they were determined to use as a metaphor in their film about Yugoslavia."5 I read the epilogue both intratextually, as the last narrative segment of a tripartite structure (the other two segments being the prologue and Part 2/the cellar), and intertextually through the theoretical lens of Derridean spectrality and the event, as articulated mostly in Specters of Marx (1994), a text written at the time Underground was made and grappling with the epistemological, ethical, and political exigencies occasioned by the collapse of the Soviet bloc after the fall of the Berlin Wall. [End Page 4] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 5] My reading aims to answer two main questions. First, how does Kusturica use time, space, and cinematic self-referentiality to represent the political realities of former Yugoslavia? Given that Underground, like all Kusturica's films, is a specimen of historiographic metafiction, a term coined by Linda Hutcheon for hybrid texts of "fiction that is historically conditioned and history that is discursively structured," how does its inter-threading of history and fiction engage with the Yugoslav past?6 And secondly, how does the Derridean specter help to envision a space and time for Yugoslavia post-mortem that avoids traditional utopianism which Derrida rejects as rooted in ontology and thus closed to the transcendental "possibility of possibilities"?7 I begin with an overview of the film's use of time, space, and cinematic selfreferentiality, and then I examine these elements in the prologue, the cellar, and the epilogue. A brief detour into Derrida's spectrality and the event precedes my reading of the epilogue. Underground, or A Country Under Siege The titular...

Yugoslav Communists between peace and dispute

The Yugoslav Communists, since their very appearance on the socio-political scene, have occupied a significant place in the historical perspective. During the Second World War in Yugoslavia, there was a significant change in political and social relations. The existence of ideological and civil war in the period 1941-1945 is crucial for understanding war and post-war events. The People's Liberation Army, ie the party's military instrument for the implementation of political and social changes, proved to be a key and decisive factor for the establishment of communist rule. The communist party did not observe the war in Yugoslavia through anti-fascism and anti-fascist struggle but through the so-called national liberation struggle and the socialist revolution. The key goal of the Communist Party was a fundamental change of social paradigm. In order to realize that idea, the party acted realpolitik. Initially, the party promoted common goals. Nevertheless, the party turned to its partial interests as soon as favorable military-political circumstances were created. The initial promotion of common goals was just a mimicry of the real intentions of the party. The Communist Party had a clearly defined political platform and goals for the national liberation struggle. These goals included taking over and establishing power, modeled on the Soviet Union. The conflict in Yugoslavia contained all the elements of an ideological-civil war because all the warring parties used the turmoil of war to carry out their political goals. In the context of the CPY, the basic form of the uprising was the partisan war, which escalated into a war against the enemy, those who were considered a threat to the party's future plans. In 1942, the People's Liberation Army was formed with the first divisions and corps (within it), while the decisive battles in 1943 definitely strengthened the People's Liberation Movement. A real understanding of the place and role of the Yugoslav communists, within the framework of historical reality, is the basic problem of this research. The aim is to review this phenomenon without any idealization, but also without the reduction of historical relevance, to review this phenomenon. There is no doubt that the Yugoslav communists achieved enormous success, in a political and social context. In the first years of first Yugoslavia, it was a marginal group, which was soon banned. However, during the great war, in which the collapse of the previous state took place, as well as the forms of civil war, the Yugoslav communists had the opportunity to reorganize the social, political, and economic order. The research within this paper is limited by the interest in the activities of the Yugoslav communists, from their appearance on the political scene to the moments when they become a powerful political force, without which the period behind us cannot be understood. The elaboration of the mentioned topic implied the application of all basic methods of scientific research. Of the general scientific methods, the hypothetical-deductive method and the comparative method were used. Obtaining empirical data was achieved by applying the method of analysis (content) of relevant documentation.

Jugoslovenski komunisti i norveški laburisti 1951–1956.

The topic of this paper includes cooperation between the Yugoslav Communists and The Norwegian Labour Party in the first half of the 1950s, a period marked by turbulent events in Yugoslav foreign policy, from the crisis to the normalization of relations with the Eastern Bloc and the USSR. The research was mostly based on unpublished sources of Yugoslav provenance and relevant scholarly literature.

„Ne može se više ponoviti 1948. godina!“ Jugoslavija i italijanski komunisti i socijalisti 1957–1962.

The paper presents an analysis of relations between Yugoslavia and the two most important parties of the Italian left: the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) at a time when relations between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union deteriorated again. It is an effort to explain the way in which the dispute between Belgrade and Moscow affected the relations of the Yugoslav communists with those Italian parties.

Neuspjeli pokušaj atentata jugoslavenske službe sigurnosti na obitelj Deželić u SR Njemačkoj 1965.

The article analyzes the failed assassination attempt by the Yugoslav communist security service on Croatian émigré Berislav Đuro Deželić and his family in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1965. The unofficial position of the Yugoslav communist regime was that only those political opponents who engaged in violent anti-Yugoslav actions were killed abroad. Based on the documents of the Yugoslav Security Service, it is proven that Deželić was not involved in such activities, but that the Yugoslav regime tried to kill him for exclusively non-violent political work.

World War Two as the Source of Legitimisation and Political Mobilisation Today

Topics concerning the Second World War are widely present in the public spheres of ex-Yugoslav countries. Owing to the absence of democratic legitimization of the Yugoslav Communist Party’s government and Josip Broz Tito himself, the tale of the National Liberation Battle became the main legitimizing source of their regime and foundation myth of socialist Yugoslavia. Due to that, the partisan struggle from the time of the Second World War was in the limelight of propaganda during the communist regime, but at the same time the Communist Party kept the interpretive monopoly on it. Because this part of history has been turned into a myth and a free debate on the traumas of war has been impossible, the peoples of former Yugoslavia have failed to face and overcome a painful past. Nonetheless, nationalist narratives that saw their own nation as an exclusively innocent victim of others survived the socialist period. In this way, they greatly contributed to the new war of the 1990s.The situation in ex-Yugoslav countries is quite dynamic and complex, and each country has its specifics concerning the memory of WW2, while still it is the, or one of the, fundamental sources used for legitimization by groups aspiring for power and for the mobilization of their supporters everywhere.

Prostitution in socialist Yugoslavia: from Stalinism to the Yugoslav way

ABSTRACT This article explores how Yugoslav communists formulated their ideas about prostitution, and how these ideas informed their approach towards sex workers. Yugoslav communists’ attitudes towards prostitution were a complex combination of Stalinist gender policies, the Partisan experience of the Second World War, and attempts to find a Yugoslav path following conflict with the Soviet Union. The first postwar Yugoslav laws closely resembled Soviet models of the 1930s, but transferring a Soviet approach also meant adaptation for the Yugoslav setting. Yugoslav communists expected prostitution to disappear after the revolution and introduced harsh measures to punish sex workers. These punishments included forced labour, detainment in centres of ‘re-education’ and expulsion from their hometowns. Broader changes in attitudes towards women’s sexuality, however, led to a more lenient approach in the 1950s. The state opted to abolish labour colonies, ‘re-education’ centres and harsh administrative measures, but prostitution remained illegal. Finally, this article examines how prostitution was depicted in films, often the only platform within which sex workers were visible.