Thirteen years after independence from the former Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, Slovenia has become one of the most advanced transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe and will become a member of the EU in May 2004. This publication examines the country's recent political and socio-economic history, its transition to a market economy and the challenges that lie ahead. It includes contributions from Slovenia's president, a former vice prime minister, the current and previous ministers of finance, the minister of European Affairs, the current and former governors of the Bank of Slovenia, as well as from leading development scholars in Slovenia and abroad.
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.
Focusing on the life and career of Slobodan Milosevic from the perspective of both a diplomatic insider and a scholar, this text provides first-hand observations of Milosevic during his rise to power and, later, in the endgame of the Bosnian war.
This book re-constructs the evolution of the border conflict between Croatia and Slovenia. The aim is to reveal the processes at work, the historical and contemporary circumstances, and the strategies and motives of the actors involved. The book highlights the roles of the European Union and of judicial third parties in the management of the conflict. Further, it considers the precedent-setting value of the Slovenian-Croatian conflict, the attempts at its resolution, and what they mean for the ongoing and prospective EU enlargement in South East Europe. Internal documents and interviews are at the heart of this process-tracing analysis, which discusses the third-party roles of the European Commission and the EU Council Presidency in 2008/2009 as a mediator-facilitator in the drafting stages of the arbitration agreement, and the judicial work of the arbitration tribunal and the EU Court of Justice. Lastly, the book offers policy recommendations on how to strengthen dispute resolution and solve current bilateral issues in the EU accession process.
Yugoslav People's Army brats Jovana and Hristijan grew up in a secluded border-watch compound, dreaming of grander horizons. They get their wish in the worst way possible when Predrag, a rogue Army captain, kidnaps Jovana for no apparent reason. Hristijan manages to rescue her, but their ordeals are far from over. On the run, they uncover the shocking secret behind Jovana's upbringing: she is the chosen successor to Marsal Josip Broz Tito. With Yugoslavia on the brink of collapse, it is her duty to keep order among the country's quarrelsome nationalities - and stop the Serbs from grabbing power. There's only one tiny problem: Jovana was never trained to take on her new role as the only hope for a unified Yugoslavia. Joining forces with a hard-fighting mute girl, Jovana and Hristijan must make their way to Slovenia to prevent its secession from the Yugoslav Federation. To get there, they will have to outwit Predrag, who is determined to capture Jovana and win the approval of his Serb nationalist father. The fate of Yugoslavia now rests with a band of snarky teenagers. Armed with nothing but a few guns and an old Army truck, they are about to make their mark on history.
In the 1990s, amid political upheaval and civil war, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia dissolved into five successor states. The subsequent independence of Montenegro and Kosovo brought the total number to seven. Balkan scholar and diplomat to the region Mieczyslaw P. Boduszynski examines four of those states—Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia—and traces their divergent paths toward democracy and Euro-Atlantic integration over the past two decades. Boduszynski argues that regime change in the Yugoslav successor states was powerfully shaped by both internal and external forces: the economic conditions on the eve of independence and transition and the incentives offered by the European Union and other Western actors to encourage economic and political liberalization. He shows how these factors contributed to differing formulations of democracy in each state. The author engages with the vexing problems of creating and sustaining democracy when circumstances are not entirely supportive of the effort. He employs innovative concepts to measure the quality of and prospects for democracy in the Balkan region, arguing that procedural indicators of democratization do not adequately describe the stability of liberalism in post-communist states. This unique perspective on developments in the region provides relevant lessons for regime change in the larger post-communist world. Scholars, practitioners, and policymakers will find the book to be a compelling contribution to the study of comparative politics, democratization, and European integration.
This book contains more than 360 documents relevant to the international legal position of the Yugoslav territories in the 19th century, the creation of Yugoslavia as a common state of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, 1918, its constitutional development, and the process of dissolution of Yugoslavia and the creation of the new states of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It includes documents from the beginning of the 19th century showing the international legal position of the Yugoslav territories under the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, the independence of Serbia and Montenegro, recognized by the Treaty of Berlin, 1878, and the major events in the history of the creation of Yugoslavia as a joint state of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, in 1918, concerning both its international position and its constitutional organization. The process of the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (covering the period from 1990 to September 1, 1993) is presented through reproduced documents of international organizations (United Nations, European Community, Western European Union, Organization of Islamic Conference, etc.), of the different conferences and forums (CSCE, Group of Seven, etc.) and documents issued by Yugoslav organs and the organs of new states of the former Yugoslavia. The book also includes documents of a constitutional nature concerning the creation of the new states of Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It provides researchers in the field of international law, political science of history with documentary information involving international legal and constitutional aspects relating to Yugoslavia.
Workers' self-management was one of the unique features of communist Yugoslavia. Goran Musić has investigated the changing ways in which blue-collar workers perceived the recurring crises of the regime. Two self-managed metal enterprises, one in Serbia another in Slovenia, provide the frame of the analysis in the time span between 1945 and 1989. These two factories became famous for strikes in 1988 that evoked echoes in popular discourses in former Yugoslavia. Drawing on interviews, factory publications and other media, local archives, and secondary literature, Musić analyzes the two cases, going beyond the clichés of political manipulation from the top and workers' intrinsic attraction to nationalism. The author explains how, in the later phase of communist Yugoslavia, growing social inequalities among the workers and undemocratic practices inside the self-managed enterprises facilitated the spread of a nationalist and pro-market ideology on the shop floors. Yet rather than being a mass taken advantage of by populist leaders, the working class Musić presents is one with agency and voice, a force that played an important role in shaping the fate of the country. The book thus seeks to open a debate on the social processes leading up to the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
A multidisciplinary approach exploring the historical antecedents and the dynamic process of Yugoslavia's violent dissolution. This volume examines issues broadening our understanding of the Yugoslav case, and also sheds light on how to deal with state fragility and failure.
