Suchergebnisse

This article discusses and challenges some popular myths and perceptions about interwar Yugoslavia in post-socialist (and post-Yugoslav) Serbia. These include discourses that blame 'others' – 'treacherous' Croats and other non-Serbs, the 'perfidious' west, especially Britain – and that are also self-critical, of Serbs' 'naivety' as exemplified in their choosing to create Yugoslavia at the end of the First World War, and of, later, embracing communism. The article also offers a reassessment of the interwar period, often neglected by scholars of former Yugoslavia.

This work sheds light on British official and unofficial responses to the 'Djilas affair' in its early stages. The analysis is centred around two letters written in April 1956 - by Milovan Djilas to Morgan Phillips, the Labour Party Secretary, and a letter Phillips wrote to the Yugoslav President Tito, expressing his concern for Djilas' predicament. The article contributes to a better understanding of the Djilas affair in several ways. Djilas' letter offers a good insight into both his character and the predicament in which he found himself 2 years after the conflict with the Yugoslav leadership began and only 7 months before he was first arrested. Phillips' action reveals that some leading members of the Labour Party were prepared to act on Djilas' behalf. The governing Conservative Party, on the other hand, was more concerned with keeping good relations with Belgrade than with the destiny of the first significant dissident in Eastern Europe

Introduction -- Dejan Djokic and James Ker-Lindsay -- Yugoslavism in the early twentieth century : the politics of the Yugoslav committee / Connie Robinson -- The Great War and the Yugoslav grassroots : popular mobilisation in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914-18 / Mark Cornwall -- Forging a United Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes : the legacy of the First World War and the "invalid question" / John Paul Newman -- National mobilisation in the 1930s : the emergence of the "Serb question" in the kingdom of Yugoslavia / Dejan Djokic -- Ethnic violence in occupied Yugoslavia : mass killing from above and below / Tomislav Dulic -- Yugoslavia in exile : the London-based wartime government, 1941-45 / Stevan K. Pavlowitch -- Reassessing socialist Yugoslavia, 1945-90 : the case of Croatia / Dejan Jovic -- The break-up of Yugoslavia : the role of popular politics / Neboja Vladisavljevic -- Popular mobilisation in the 1990s : nationalism, democracy and the slow decline of the Miloševic regime / Florian Bieber -- The "final" Yugoslav issue : the evolution of international thinking on Kosovo, 1998-2005 / James Ker-Lindsay -- Coming to terms with the past : transitional justice and reconciliation in the post-Yugoslav lands / Jasna Dragovic-Soso and Eric Gordy