Yugoslavia Research Articles

Istorijom oblikovani identitet kosovskometohijskih Srba

The author considers characteristics meaning of Serbian culture in Kosovo and Metohija, thoughtout a historical period dating from the XIII and XIV century to the present days. Theoretical and methodological difficulties of such studies are being stressed in the introductory part of the paper. In the second part, existential conditions of cultural life of Serbian people are presented both during the Middle Ages and a long period of the Turkish domination and Albanian islamization. Yugoslav state experience (1918- 2000) and NATO aggression are discussed in the context of culture. The third part, deals with basic characteristic meanings of Serbian culture: 1) Shift of cultural creation and destruction of cultural heritage, 2) Cultural life in the condition of violence, isalmization, and expulsion, 3) Cultural contacts. 4) Tragic feeling of life, 5) Orthodox faith as a central point of culture, 6) Folk features of culture, 7) Absence of cultural institutions, of institution, 8) Mythology awareness of Kosovo battle, 9) Endowment, 10) Impact of Kosovo cultural heritage within the Serbian cultural space. In the final part of the paper, the discontinuity of Serbian culture in Kosovo and Metohija is emphsize. Afret having had a freedom of Medieval cultural creativity expressed through Ortodox Cristianity, the Serbs have found themselves in a long lasting period of violence, expulsion and struggle for their biological survival.

The Serbian Orthodox Church in Western Historiography: Maria Falina, Religion and Politics in Interwar Yugoslavia: Serbian Nationalism and East Orthodox Christianity, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023)

This essay is a review of Maria Falina’s book, which investigates the complex interaction between the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC), nationalism, and politics in Yugoslavia during the interwar period. It delves into Maria Falina’s ideas, historical context, and various perspectives that she offers. Falina questions commonly held beliefs about the natural relationship between religion and Serbian nationalism, and digs into the SOC’s changing role as a political actor during a period of profound social and political change. Falina investigates the influence of people such as Nikolaj Velimirović and Justin Popović, the Church’s reaction to the Yugoslav state, religious competition, and modernity issues.

Mercenaries of a Phantom War The “Hostile Emigration” in Yugoslavia’s Globalized Ideology of Insecurity

Yugoslav state security services became infamous for organizing dozens of targeted killings against hostile emigrants abroad. What can be regarded as an interlinked chain of violence and counter-violence has more to it. First, there is the experience of external threats (not only) common to Communist leaders. But in the Yugoslav case, the global non-aligned position of the country strengthened the insecurity felt by the leadership. This was caused by a close identification with Third World countries affected by Cold War interventions. Officials and politicians concerned with security matters interpreted the continuing aggression of the “hostile emigration” as part and proof of a subliminal “Special War” against the socialist self-administration system. As a response, the state security stepped up the lethal operations in the host countries of the “hostile emigration”. The study starts with the development of anti-Communist and pro-Soviet exile activism in the post-war period. It traces the reinforcement of the danger posed by hostile émigrés back to the early 1960s, when Yugoslavia became a prominent member of the Non- Aligned Movement. Also, it analyses the roots of the “Special War” and shows how this idea of external intervention was transferred to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). The consequences of the adaptation to the Yugoslav conditions are addressed as well as the outcome for the treatment of the “hostile emigration.” A critical assessment of émigré terrorism is followed by the presentation of exemplified cases. This essay seeks for a better comprehension of the mental disposition behind the drastic measures applied by Yugoslav secret services. Therefore, it is focused on the importance of the antagonistic emigration for the concept of the “Special War.”

Depoliticizing the Modern Nation

Taking the case of the interwar Yugoslav Sokol (Sokol Kraljevine Jugoslavije), this article examines the complex relationship between the discourses of organic nationhood and political socialization in what was the largest voluntary association in the country. While Sokol typically projected a vision of itself as an apolitical entity—as it claimed to represent the organic national body—this article will explore the dynamics, as well as contradictions, between such discourses and the socio-political reality they aimed to describe and eventually alter in their pursuit of improving the ‘national body.’ In conversation with scholarship on the conceptual history of modern East Central European nationalisms, including the social history of ideas and movements and political socialization more specifically, this article provides insight into the contextual, conceptual history of nationhood by focusing on selected thinkers engaged in Sokol, against the backdrop of particular mass practices and modes of political socialization in the organization. The tension between the involvement of the masses in the allegedly apolitical formations and the reality of subjecting them to political socialization en masse provides the central axis around which the argument is organized. The article concludes that their concept of nationhood was intimately intertwined with that of democracy and simultaneously posited against (party) politics and statism. Moreover, it demonstrates that Sokol was rooted in notions of civilizational hierarchies and directly linked to producing modern political subjects for the new Yugoslav state by means of the gymnastic and educational practices they promoted and conducted.

Heroes from the Past and Harbingers of the Future: Yugoslav History Politics in and through Amateur Film Practices

Heroes from the Past and Harbingers of the Future: Yugoslav History Politics in and through Amateur Film Practices

‘We build Barren Island, Barren Island builds us’: Of imprisoned humans and mobilized stone in the Yugoslav Cominformist Labor Camp (1949–1956)

ABSTRACT Goli Otok (Barren Island) was a site of the master political prison and forced labor camp of the socialist Yugoslavia between 1949 and 1956. The imprisoned, accused of siding with Stalin in the Tito–Stalin political rift, were sent to undergo ‘self-managed re-education’ through ‘socially beneficial labor’ in the island’s limestone quarries. The inmates were forced to build their own prison out of that very limestone – the first known human dwellings on the previously uninhabited island. They were also often forced to break, crumble and to carry massive stone loads from one place to another and back, with no constructive or productive purpose. However, the labor camp authorities also operated a lucrative business, oriented towards country-wide distribution, and sometimes towards international export of the island’s limestone. The quarried stone of the island therefore travelled more widely than its excavators, whose movements were limited to their island-prison. Set at the intersection of labor history and environmental history and drawing on the archival materials of the Yugoslav State Security Service, oral history interviews with the former prisoners, and their published and unpublished written memoirs, this paper examines the interrelations of the prison-island, its stone material, and the prisoners’ laboring bodies.

Natural'naya ospa: polveka spustya posle poslednej epidemii v Evrope – Yugoslaviya v 1972 g.

The article gives a short overview of the spread of smallpox in the world, as well as the short background of the struggle against this disease in Serbia in the 19th century and during the period of the Yugoslav state founded in 1918, going on to present further the epidemic of smallpox in socialist Yugoslavia in 1972. It was the last outbreak of smallpox in Europe, prior to its eradication in 1980.

Making Gymnastics Catholic: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of the Croatian Orao in Interwar Yugoslavia

Abstract This article focuses on the Croatian Orao, a gymnastic organization that became hegemonic among the Croatian Catholic population of interwar Yugoslavia. The first section examines the genesis of the Croatian Orao within the changing Catholic landscape of Croatia, Yugoslavia, and Europe more broadly, with particular emphasis on Orao’s relationships with Orel – a gymnastic movement very similar to Orao that was popular among Slovenes – and the Holy See, as well as Orao’s role in conflicts in the Croatian Catholic sphere. Part 2 will situate the Croatian Orao in the complex ecosystem of youth and gymnastic organizations present in the first Yugoslav state, especially with respect to the different Sokol organizations. Focusing on the actual sport activities practiced in Orao, the aim is to tackle the specific place of gymnastics in the associational culture of the Croatian Orao. The third and final part will explore the dismantling of Orao’s associational network by the state in 1929, and the association’s reorganization in other, more radical guises in 1930.

Patriotic and Religious Perspectives in the Literature of Boro Pavlović — Echoes of Tradition in Modernity

Croatian poetry of the 20th century is characterized by a great diversity of worldviews and ideas regardless of whether one examines it from a synchronic or a diachronic standpoint. The spiritual stratification process of Croatian poetry began at the turn of 20th century with a discussion between traditionalists and modernists on the principles of literary creation, and it developed partially among modernists toward an acceptance of contesting notions regarding Christianity. A step further in this respect was taken during the first two decades, when literary creation in the Yugoslav state of that time was under strong communist ideological pressure which resulted in a departure from the spiritual, but also from national–patriotic content, either by rejecting/neglecting it or through a negativistic attitude toward it. Among those who successfully resisted this pressure and thus preserved the spirit of tradition in modernity is the writer Boro Pavlović (1922–2022). The aim of this article is to determine the relationship between modernity and tradition in his literary work by taking into account the aforementioned elements. As a paradigmatic field for research and interpretation, examples were taken from the author’s patriotic and religious poetry, as well as some of his essays and studies on Croatian writers and literary themes which point to the fact that Pavlović’s literary work is a model of the inclusive interweaving of modernity with tradition in regard to worldviews and ideas, content and themes, but also, though only partially so, in regard to linguistic expression.

SVEČANA PROSLAVA PRVE DECENIJE RADA FILOZOFSKOG FAKULTETA U SKOPLjU

Not long after the end of the First World War and the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Minister of Education Pavle Marinković started an initiative to establish a Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje. In December 1919. he sent a letter to the, then rector of Belgrade University, Jovan Cvijić, in which he requested that the institution headed by Jovan express its opinion on the mentioned initiative. The very next day, the Council of the University of Belgrade met and supported the proposal of minister Marinković, pointing out that the establishment of the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje will be of great national and cultural importance. On February 2, 1920, the Decree was passed on the establishment of the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje, which officially “gave birth” to this institution. During the first decade of its existence, the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje built the image of an institution to be respected, despite objective difficulties and considerable problems it has faced since its inception. It was the only high school institution of the Yugoslav monarchy in the area between Belgrade and the border with Albania, Greece and Bulgaria. Faced with post-war poverty, the material, infrastructural and technological backwardness of the southern regions, as well as various socio-political crises and turmoil, it nevertheless became a lively center of educational, scientific and cultural life of the Yugoslav south part.On February 1, 1931, a solemn celebration of the tenth anniversary of the work of this institution was organized. As part of the aforementioned event, the day of Saint Sava was also celebrated. A formal session of the council of this faculty was held, greeting speeches by high dignitaries were heard, the consecration of the foundation of the student dormitory was performed, an exhibition of old printed and handwritten books, ancient frescoes, archaeological and ethnographic collections in the Museum of Southern Serbia was held. The celebration ended with a performance in the Skopje National Theater. The main organizer and host of the meeting was a prominent theologian and historian Radoslav Grujić, then dean of the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje. It was a dignified, well-organized manifestation with an appropriate program and with the participation of distinguished people not only from Skopje and the Vardar region, but also from the wider area of the Yugoslav state.

The Mirror Reflection of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine in The Western Balkans: Opening New Conflicts as a Distraction

Background: The Western Balkan region has long struggled under extensive pressure and influence from Russia and the West. World developments have occasionally echoed tensions among nations in the region, including a prolonged EU and NATO membership process, which has increased the possibility of Russia’s influence, especially after the aggression in Ukraine. This article analyses the increase in Russia – Ukraine tensions and its direct correlation with the increase of tensions in the Western Balkans through hybrid war methods understood through Zhyhlei and Syvak’s definition: “a fragmentary and situational combination of different methods and theories of war, their integration into different spheres, especially political, religious, ideological, ethical, economic and informational.”5 The higher Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, the higher the pressure on Serbia to fuel tensions in the Western Balkans. This pressure comes through direct threats, media propaganda, and influence on parallel structures and financial support for CSOs, through which Russia increases its influence in the Balkans through Serbia as its closest ally. This influence strategy is particularly important for Russia to undermine the power and influence of the West and NATO in former Yugoslav states, especially those with open conflicts which serve as a global distraction from a possible power decline in Ukraine. Methods: Through discourse and thematic analysis, this article analyses local, regional, and international media, data, and publications of international organisations, press releases of international and regional institutions, conclusions of distinguished scientists and heads of state over the current situation in the Western Balkans, and interviews with representatives of CSOs and institutions in Kosovo. The influence of Russian aggression in Ukraine, with Russia’s pressure to increase tensions in the Western Balkans, has been analysed in the framework of Western unipolar influence and Russia’s attempts to return to multipolarity. Results and Conclusion: Among others, it is concluded that Russian influence is present in the Western Balkans and seeks to destabilise the region by activating passive conflicts from the past or opening new conflicts to defer international attention from the power decline in Ukraine, which did not produce the results that Russia had expected. This is possible through Serbia, Russia’s closest ally. The solution to prevent Russian influence and any future conflicts among Balkan states is to accelerate NATO and EU’s integration of Western Balkan countries.

The languages of monarchism in interwar Yugoslavia, 1918–1941: variations on a theme

ABSTRACT Through a selection of primary sources, this article demonstrates the political and legal languages which articulated monarchist ideas in interwar Yugoslavia. Variations on the theme emerged in different periods. First, the national and so democratic character of the monarch and monarchy was a prevalent image at the end of the First World War and in the first decade of the Yugoslav state’s existence. During the domestic political crises in the second half of the 1920s, the language of monarchism shifted toward discourses of stability and public order. After the declaration of the royal dictatorship in January 1929, the language of monarchism became fully invested in expressing the monarch’s absolute political authority, legally inviolable character, and the resulting ‘unity of state and nation’. For the political Right, the king embodied the spirit of integral Yugoslavism. While the language of monarchism could serve disparate political ideologies – as in the liberal monarchist emigration after spring 1941 – it was rather primarily linked to the political visions of the Right in the final decade of interwar Yugoslavia.

CONTEMPORARY POLITICS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA: HISTORICAL DETERMINANTS AND POLITICAL EXPERIENCES

The original foundations of democratic politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina were developed during the period of Austro-Hungarian occupation, and political pluralism was institutionalized in an incomplete form in 1910. The monarchical regime in the first Yugoslav state did not stimulate political development in Bosnia and Herzegovina, because fictitious political pluralism was introduced in political practice. It was not possible to achieve enviable political development not even in a second Yugoslav state, because it was built on the principles of socialist monism. The independent and sovereign existence of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina is limited by ethnocracy and imposed stabilocracy. First, this article will investigate to what extent the post-socialist development of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which takes place in the stages after the multi-party elections in 1990, is determined by earlier political experiences, and above all by the original concept of incomplete democratic politics founded during the Austro-Hungarian occupation government.

Slovenians in the Anti-Fascist Struggle in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Building the Federal Foundations of Yugoslavia (1941-1945)

Understanding the socio-historical processes after the April War of 1941 and the dismemberment of Yugoslavia presupposes a deeper knowledge of opposing national perspectives since 1918, when this country was created, of the events between the two world wars, as well as their multidimensional characters, since they largely determined wartime polarizations and alignments. The Second World War is one of the most problematic historical periods in the post-Yugoslav area, from a scientific and political point of view. With numerous relief and insufficiently explored components, it still belongs to the so-called “hot memory”. The disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1941 was greeted by its peoples and political subjects with different visions of whether (and if so: how) a new Yugoslavia should be established. The anti-fascist struggle was led by a partisan movement with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) playing a dominant role. Each Yugoslavia (“old” and “new”) also meant “a new constitutional concept of the relationship between its main peoples/political groups” (Dejan Jović). The history of the Slovenes, wrote Edvard Kardelj at the end of the thirties of the 20th century, “is nothing but a long chain of oppression and trampling of a small nation”. After the First World War (the “Great War”), the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and the collapse of Austria-Hungary divided the Slovenes among four countries. The parcelization of the Slovenian ethnic space did not end there. The territory of Slovenia (Drava Banovina) after the fragmentation of Yugoslavia in 1941 was divided between Germany, Italy and Hungary, into six parts, with different administrative regimes. The Slovenian people were torn apart, humiliated, threatened with destruction and disappearance from the ethnic map of Europe. This people was one of “the most fragmented in Europe and all the occupiers planned to wipe it out through persecution, assimilation and denationalization. Research on refugees and exile is closely related to issues of human rights, nationalism, genocide and ethnocide. This issue has a humanitarian, political, legal and moral dimension. Part of the exiled Slovenes also came to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1941, which was part of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Slovenes have a specific place in the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina since the end of the 19th century. They also contributed to the development of the National Liberation Movement ( NOP) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by acting in an illegal revolutionary movement and partisan units, as well as participating in the constitution of the new government and defining the future internal structure of post-war Yugoslavia. The war in the territory of occupied Yugoslavia was, among other things, a civil war that destroyed the idea that this monarchist state can be restored in the form in which it was created in 1918. The ranks of the NOP included Slovenians who lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina before the war, as well as those who came as exiles in 1941. Major events related to the construction of the “new” Yugoslavia took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which Slovenians participated, important for the history of Slovenia as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina. By actively participating in the anti-fascist war, the engagement and visions of their prominent representatives at the top of the NOP (Edvard Kardelj and others) and in the activities of the AVNOJ in 1943, determining and making its landmark decisions, the Slovenians had a significant share in the victory and establishment of a new, federal the Yugoslav state and the construction of the statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Complex Yugoslav federalism, with scattered forms and models, represented a specific historical phenomenon.

Valeska Bopp-Filimonov and Martin Jung, eds. Kaleidoskop Rumänien. Einblicke in die aktuelle Vielfalt des interdisziplinären Faches Rumänistik

Valeska Bopp-Filimonov and Martin Jung, eds. <i>Kaleidoskop Rumänien. Einblicke in die aktuelle Vielfalt des interdisziplinären Faches Rumänistik</i>

Climate Therapy and the Making of a Slavic Riviera on the Yugoslav Coast

AbstractBeginning with the profound geopolitical changes created by the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the creation of the Czechoslovak and Yugoslav states, this article examines how medical knowledge about maritime climate and sea-based therapies was mobilized in Czech popular touristic writing about Yugoslavia's Adriatic coast in the 1920s. The analysis of archival documents as well as non-specialist medical publications of Czech or Prague-trained doctors show that Czech tourists and curists (travelers in search of health treatments) were offered a freeform, all-encompassing therapeutic environmental approach. Inspired by Neo-Hippocratic principles, doctors stressed the importance of factors such as salt water, clean air, temperature variation, sunshine, flora, and modern facilities for disease prevention or the restoration of one's health. These doctors’ relative success in promoting the therapeutic virtues of the Adriatic Sea is explained in large part, this article argues, by a broad nexus of intertwined interests (such as the growth of tourism, concerns about public health, and the influence of Neo-Slavism) embedded in the project of transforming the Adriatic Sea into a therapeutic site.

Slivovitz and Everyday Nationalism: The Analysis of Slovene Newspapers in Interwar Yugoslavia

AbstractBy analyzing selected Slovene newspapers, the article discusses the role of slivovitz in the reproduction of everyday nationalism in interwar Yugoslavia. The article is based on an analysis of texts containing the word slivovka (the Slovene word for slivovitz or plum spirit) that appeared in three major Slovene newspapers and three minor Slovene pro-Yugoslav newspapers in the period 1919–1945. In the period in question, slivovitz did not (yet) have the role of a signifier of the Yugoslav state, the Yugoslav nation and other elements associated with Yugoslav identity, but it was becoming part of the “structure of national feeling” – the specific experience of life in a given time and place that was common to the Yugoslav nation. Slivovitz, frequently included in repetitive and everyday habits, practices and assumptions, began to define the Yugoslav nation through a specific culture of drinking and drinks and became a component of this everyday, largely unnoticed reproduction of the Yugoslav nation.

Karadağ'daki Ortodoks Kilisesi Ile Ilgili Olarak Radikal Ateizm 1945-1960

The roots of radical atheism in Montenegro can be found at the beginning of the existence of the Yugoslav state in the interwar period. The Podgorica Assembly, which had the goal of formalising the unification of Montenegro with Serbia and other Yugoslav provinces, was held in November 1918. The Assembly proclaimed the decision to merge Montenegro with Serbia. Three members of parliament (MPs) came forward with radical atheistic requests at the Assembly, demanding that all the church’s property should be confiscated and handed over to the state. Some churches and monasteries were to be turned into public chapels for burials, and the others into schools and cultural institutions. During the interwar period, the Communist Party existed mostly illegally in Montenegro, and did not show any greater intent to impose radical atheism. During the Second World War, a strong revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party developed in Montenegro, as did also a counter-revolution. At that time the Communist Party and the partisan movement showed a strong degree of radical atheism, with elements of militant atheism, especially in the killing of a large number of church clergy (monks, priests and graduate theologians) during the war. However, the Communist Party did not implement radical atheism in the fields of ideology and the economy. It would do that only after the Second World War, when it assumed power over all spheres of social and public life. At that time, within the process of nationalisation and agrarian reform, significant material goods (buildings, land, forests and movable property) were taken away from the Orthodox Church in Montenegro. The same was done to the Catholic Church and the Islamic religious community. The process of radical atheism in an ideological sense took place parallel with this process. The intention of the Communist Party was to completely remove the church from social life, and implement atheism among the people, and practically turn them into believers of the new Marxist-Leninist ideology.

Opšti pogled na karakter upravnog spora u prvoj jugoslovenskoj državi

The text is an attempt to re-test certain authorial hypotheses regarding the character of the administrative dispute in the first Yugoslav state, by using descriptive and evaluation methods. In the first part of the paper, the readers are briefly reminded of the basic theoretical assumptions concerning the concept, subject and classification of administrative dispute. The second part of the paper presents a review of the normative framework and accepted legal solutions in the analyzed period. In the third part of the paper, the author addresses the more significant doctrinal dilemmas on this issue. In the last part, instead of concluding, a simplified assessment of the character and legal nature of the administrative dispute in the mentioned period is offered. It is concluded that the system of administrative court control of the administration belonged to the group of European-continental ones, that the subject of the administrative dispute was determined by a combination of the general clause method and the negative enumeration method, and the dispute was defined as a subjective dispute about the legality of the administrative act. A particular emphasis is placed on the existence of an objective administrative dispute and the views on the existence of a form of full jurisdiction in the law of the first Yugoslav state are accepted.

Overcoming the Soviet-Yugoslav crisis. The translation of Serbian literature into Russian language during the second half of 1950-s

In the history of Yugoslavia, the period of 1948–1953 is called “the times of Information Bureau”, when all the relations between USSR and Yugoslavia were severed, including cultural ones. In the second half of the 1950s they began to recover. The most important part of this process was the translation of Serbian literature into Russian language. The main works of Serbian classic and modern literature were published (P. Negosh, R. Domanovich, B. Nushich, B. Chopich, D. Chosich). Special attention was given to the works of Ivo Andrich. The translators, authors of prefaces, comments and notes were mainly professional slavic scholars from Moscow State University and University of Saint Petersburg. The poets M. Zenkevich and I. Golenischev-Kutuzov had significant impact on the development of poetry translation from Serbian into Russian.