Contemporary Approaches to Yugoslavia and its History: Post-Socialist Historical and Cultural Revisionism (original) (raw)
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University of Vienna, 2019
This Thesis is an analysis of Tito’s Yugoslavia, focusing on the sources of stability and instability; it employs International Relations Theory and historical narrative. A major concept that will be utilized is “balance of power” theory, which will illustrate how in Yugoslavia “supranational” stability was achieved by ensuring an “equilibrium of power”. In this Thesis Yugoslavia has to be perceived not as an ordinary, single national state, but more as its own “mini state system”, since the Yugoslav Federation itself was composed of several Republics with their own respective rights and identities.Tito’s approach of assuring stability with his policy of “brotherhood and unity” initially prevented the formation of “destabilizing factors”, in the case of Yugoslavia nationalist tendencies themselves, which constantly threatened his “Pan-Slavic” union.Tito’s methods to preserve his second Yugoslav “experiment” are also visible through major events which shaped Yugoslavia for generations to come, like the “Tito-Stalin Split”, the establishment of a Yugoslav “self-management system” or the “Croatian Spring” movement. Throughout this Thesis it is also shown how Tito tried to ensure a “balance of powers” not only on a national level, but also between the Yugoslav ethnicities themselves, especially through his key ideology of “brotherhood and unity”, which was enforced with a “sticks and carrots” approach - in form of reforms, but also with repressive measures. In order to ensure stability, Tito fiercely persecuted political and cultural dissidents in his Yugoslavia, which were often imprisoned in labour camps (“Goli Otok”). The approach of viewing Yugoslavia as its own state system ultimately allows to grasp how Tito managed to preserve the Yugoslav Federation: on an authoritarian level first and, after his constitutional amendments of 1974, on a “plural” level second.
Why together, why apart? An epistolary discussion about Yugoslavia and its remnants
Canadian Slavonic Papers Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, 2024
In this unusual contribution, three prominent younger scholars of the post-Yugoslav region discuss through a series of letters what was socialist Yugoslavia as political community and what came to replace it. Igor Štiks claims that every political community, past and present, is based on the citizenship argument that imposes itself as hegemonic. He explains why we are together as community in the first place, who belongs, and who is excluded. Štiks tries to understand what arguments socialist Yugoslavia was built on and what were the arguments used to subvert and finally destroy it. Ivan Đorđević responds by highlighting how the new states were built on a combination of ethnic nationalism and savage capitalism, resulting in a series of disasters. Biljana Đorđević explains the life of her post-Yugoslav generation and its sense of gloom. All three authors contrast political events with their own destinies that were determined by where (Sarajevo, Belgrade, Vranje) and when (in 1977 and 1984) they were born, and under what circumstances, personal and political, they came of age. Besides their attempts to understand Yugoslavia’s disintegration and the new post-Yugoslav reality, they reflect upon what the Yugoslav socialist legacy could mean for emancipatory movements in the twenty-first century.
Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country (review)
Journal of Cold War Studies
Journal of Cold War Studies 4.1 (2002) 120-122 The wars of Yugoslav succession have resulted in a flood of academic and journalistic publications. With a few notable exceptions, these works have concentrated on contemporary aspects of the conflict, often at the expense of historical analysis of the long-term causes of Yugoslav disintegration. The second edition of John Lampe's Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country admirably fills this gap, providing a reliable, judicious, balanced, and clearly written guide to the histories of the two Yugoslavias -- the interwar kingdom and Josip Broz Tito's Communist Yugoslavia. By adding a new chapter on the wars of Yugoslav succession, Lampe brings his narrative all the way up to the intervention in 1999 by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) against the "rump" Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The book is divided into twelve chapters, each focusing on a distinct period of pre-Yugoslav or Yugoslav history. The...