Suchergebnisse

Yugoslavia's history has been shaped by paradox. Twenty million people share a land area of approximately 96,000 square miles, which includes the mountainous south, with a largely nomadic population, and the flat river plains of the north, the agricultural heartland. Through its long history the people have been divided by unending confrontations between Eastern and Western Europe, between the Byzantine Empire and the Empire of the Francs, between the Moslem and the Christian worlds. Yugoslavia has been everyone's battleground. The imperial ambitions of Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy have all ravaged Yugoslavia.All this has created a people possessing many important differences and many equally important similarities.

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? The Complete History of Yugoslavia by Marie-Janine Calic 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.

In the 1960s, Yugoslavia faced rising unemployment, inflation, & an increasing national debt; while many suffered personal hardships, the elite class enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle. Influenced by these social & economic problems as well as by news of student movements all over the world, students in Yugoslavia occupied their universities for seven days on 2-9 June 1968. Among their demands were: (1) democratization of social & political life in Yugoslavia; (2) establishment of socialist solidarity; (3) removal of the political elite; & (4) democratization of the university. This was the first open political mass protest in postwar society. Repressive policies against student leaders, student organizations, & supportive professors followed. However, many of those involved in the 1968 protest later found success in other fields & continued to fight for the democratization of Yugoslav society. M. Malas