This study, based on the author's doctoral dissertation at UCLA, examines Yugoslav economic policy from 1918 to 1929, how it was made, and how it was affected by political developments of the time. It studies the activities of Yugoslavia's regional political and business elites, political groups, and corporations, their reactions to Yugoslav economic policy and their efforts to influence it. The study contains a detailed analysis of party politics and the manner in which the political process affected economic policy. The study uncovers and explains relationships between state, elite, class, national-confessional groups, and territorial regions in the determination of social and economic policy in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, later renamed Yugoslavia, and the relationship between these groups and the Yugoslav state.
Why did Yugoslavia fall apart? Was its violent demise inevitable? Did its population simply fall victim to the lure of nationalism? How did this multinational state survive for so long, and where do we situate the short life of Yugoslavia in the long history of Europe in the twentieth century? A History of Yugoslavia provides a concise, accessible, comprehensive synthesis of the political, cultural, social, and economic life of Yugoslavia—from its nineteenth-century South Slavic origins to the bloody demise of the multinational state of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Calic takes a fresh and innovative look at the colorful, multifaceted, and complex history of Yugoslavia, emphasizing major social, economic, and intellectual changes from the turn of the twentieth century and the transition to modern industrialized mass society. She traces the origins of ethnic, religious, and cultural divisions, applying the latest social science approaches, and drawing on the breadth of recent state-of-the-art literature, to present a balanced interpretation of events that takes into account the differing perceptions and interests of the actors involved. Uniquely, Calic frames the history of Yugoslavia for readers as an essentially open-ended process, undertaken from a variety of different regional perspectives with varied composite agenda. She shuns traditional, deterministic explanations that notorious Balkan hatreds or any other kind of exceptionalism are to blame for Yugoslavia’s demise, and along the way she highlights the agency of twentieth-century modern mass society in the politicization of differences. While analyzing nuanced political and social-economic processes, Calic describes the experiences and emotions of ordinary people in a vivid way. As a result, her groundbreaking work provides scholars and learned readers alike with an accessible, trenchant, and authoritative introduction to Yugoslavia's complex history.
This is a meticulously researched history of the rule of the Axis powers in occupied Yugoslavia, along with the role of the other groups that collaborated with them—notably the extremist Croatian nationalist organization known as the Ustashas.
The Peasantry of Eastern Europe, Volume II: 20th Century Developments reviews research findings concerning rural life and rural transformation in Eastern Europe during the 20th century. The economic and political problems of states where collectivization has been successful are examined, including Hungary and Romania. The social and societal aspects of rural transformation are also discussed. Case studies of peasants in Russia are presented, with emphasis on their response to the attraction of urban life and the imposed autocracy and tyranny of Soviet rule. Comprised of 12 chapters, this volume begins with an analysis of the conditions and the minds of Russia's peasants during the period 1900-1917, followed by a detailed account of the peasantry under Soviet rule. The discussion then turns to private farming and the status of peasants in Poland since World War II; land reform in Yugoslavia; and agro mass production in Hungary. Subsequent chapters explore rural transformation in Romania; rural education in Bulgaria; the transformation of the Hungarian peasantry in the 20th century; peasantry in China; and the role of women in the transformation of rural life in post-revolution Yugoslavia. The book also considers the Third World experience with rural transformation before concluding with an assessment of the peasantry of Eastern Europe under communism. This monograph is intended for students, academic specialists, economists, and agriculturists.
Traversing the politics, economics, demography, and culture of the former Yugoslavia, John B. Allcock examines and makes sense of the region's troubled past and troubling present. Though many think of the Balkans as a uniquely troubled region, the author asserts that the continuities in Balkan history constitute the same processes of development that have occurred in other societies and are part of the ongoing process of global modernization.
First published in 1997, this book analyses some of the key economic issues facing Europe in the interwar period, against the uncertain international, political and economic background of the time. Among the subjects discussed are the legacy of the peace settlements, inflation, trade and reconstruction, international lending, depression and recovery, the position of Eastern and Central Europe, and the progress of the peripheral nations. The book contends that the peace treaties raised more problems than they solved, while the policy mistakes of the Allied powers after the First World War, and their failure to devise an adequate programme of economic and financial reconstruction, weakened the already divided continent, contributing to its disintegration.
Bojan Aleksov's study portrays the origins and the spreading of the Nazarenes - the first Protestant Serbs - in South Hungary and Serbia as an indicator of social change among the Serbian people, whose demands and needs the Orthodox Church had failed to meet. In order to account for the success of Nazarene missionaries, it also illuminates the strategies employed by Nazarenes in expanding and maintaining their communities which range from communalism, group mores and practices, internal economic organization of the Nazarene communities and their attitude towards economic change, and finally the appeal of the Nazarene faith and worship. Looking at the social, economic, cultural and historical motives of conversions to Nazarenes, it examines in depth the Nazarenes' challenge to the Serbian Orthodox Church and the latter's belated response in the form of the so-called re-Orthodoxization (in line with newly invented tradition of the Serbian version of Orthodox Christianity - Svetosavlje) and the development of the mass Bogomoljci movement with its implications for the development of the Serbian national self-identification observed in the changes of the notions of Church, religion and piety, which finally (during the interwar period) resulted in a discourse that combined and fused the nation and the Orthodox Church and closed the long-lasting gap between the Church and the Serbian people/nation.
Even before it collapsed into civil war, ethnic cleansing, and dissolution, Yugoslavia was an archetypical example of a troubled multinational mosaic, a state without a single national base or even a majority. Its stability and very existence were challenged repeatedly by the tension between the pressures for overarching political cohesion and the defense of separate national identities and aspirations. In a brilliant analysis of this complex and sensitive national question, Ivo Banac provides a comprehensive introduction to Yugoslav political history. His book is a genetic study of the ideas, circumstances, and events that shaped the pattern of relations among the nationalities of Yugoslavia. It traces and analyzes the history and characteristics of South Slavic national ideologies, connects these trends with Yugoslavia's flawed unification in 1918, and ends with the fatal adoption of the centralist system in 1921. Banac focuses on the first two and a half years in the history of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, because in his view this was the period that set the pattern for subsequent development of the national question. The issues that divided the South Slavs, and that still divide them today, took on definite form during that time, he maintains. Banac provides extensive treatment of all of Yugoslavia's nationalities; his sections on the Montenegrins, Albanians, Macedonians, and Bosnian Muslims are unique in the literature. In this unbiased account, all of the principals and groups assume a tragic fascination. When published in 1984, The National Question in Yugoslavia was the first complete introduction to the cultural history of the South Slavic peoples and to the politics of Yugoslavia, and it remains a major contribution to the scholarship on modern European nationalism and the stability of multinational states.
