Yugoslavia And Macedonia Before Tito

Held together by apparatchiks and, later, Tito's charisma, Yugoslavia never really incorporated separate Balkan nationalisms into the Pan-Slavic ideal. Macedonia - frequently ignored by Belgrade - had survived centuries of Turkish domination, Bulgarian invasion and Serbian assimilation before it became part of the Yugoslav project in the aftermath of the First World War. Drawing on an extensive analysis of archival material, private correspondence, and newspaper articles, Nada Boskovska provides an arresting account of the Macedonian experience of the interwar years, charting the growth of political consciousness and the often violent state-driven attempts to curb autonomy. Sketching the complex picture of nationalism within a multi-ethnic, but unitarist state through a comprehensive analysis of policy, economy, and education, Yugoslavia and Macedonia before Tito is the first book to describe the uneasy and often turbulent relationship between a Serbian-dominated government and an increasingly politically aware Macedonian people. Concerned with the question of integration and political manipulation, Boskovska gives credence to voices critical of Royal Yugoslavia and offers a fresh insight into domestic policy and the Macedonian question, going beyond traditional high politics. Broadening the spectrum of discussion and protest, she reveals the voices of a people protesting constitutional and electoral fraud, the neglect of local needs and state machinations designed to create a satellite province.

"Drawing on an extensive analysis of archival material, private correspondence, and newspaper articles, Nada Boskovska provides an arresting account of the Macedonian experience of the interwar years, charting the growth of political consciousness and the often violent state-driven attempts to curb autonomy. Sketching the complex picture of nationalism within a multi-ethnic, but unitarist state through a comprehensive analysis of policy, economy, and education, Yugoslavia and Macedonia before Tito is the first book to describe the uneasy and often turbulent relationship between a Serbian-dominated government and an increasingly politically aware Macedonian people".

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.

Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise is a new history of the disintegration and collapse of the former Yugoslavia. Commencing with the death of Tito, Meier presents an insider's guide to all the regions of Yugoslavia, including Macedonia, and in particular, emphasizes the crucial part played by Slovenia before the outbreak of war in 1991. Drawing on official federal and republican archives, but also sources which are not yet officially open for scholarly use, the book covers: * the legacy of Tito's regime * the personalities who dominated the Yugoslav stage during its dismemberment * the military threat against Slovenia in the late 1980s * the attempts to find a peaceful solution * the political conditions in Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina * Western policy towards Yugoslavia's disintegration and terror.

The Macedonian Question - the struggle for control over a territory with historically ill-defined borders and conflicting national identities - is one of the most intractable problems in modern Balkan history. In this lucid and persuasive study, Dimitris Livanios explores the British dimension to the Macedonian Question from the outbreak of the Second World War to the aftermath of the Tito-Stalin split. Investigating British policy towards the Bulgar-Yugoslav controversy over Macedonia, the author assesses the impact of British actions and strategy during this period, with a particular focus on wartime planning concerning the future of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, and attempts to prevent Tito from creating a federation of the South Slavs, both during and after the war. Making extensive use of British archives, Livanios brings to light important documentary evidence to offer a fresh perspective on the emergence of the federal Macedonian unit within Tito's Yugoslavia, and on the efforts to create a functioning Macedonian national ideology.

This book examines the relationship between national history, identity, and politics in twentieth-century Macedonia. It focuses on the reverberating power of events surrounding an armed uprising in August 1903, when a revolutionary organization challenged the forces of the Ottoman Empire by seizing control of the mountain town of Krusevo. A century later, Krusevo is part of the Republic of Macedonia and a site for yearly commemorations of 1903. In the course of the intervening hundred years, various communities have vied to establish an authoritative account of what happened in 1903--and to weave those events into a longer and wider narrative of social, cultural, and national evolution. Keith Brown examines how Krusevo's residents, refugees, and exiles have participated--along with scholars, journalists, artists, bureaucrats, and politicians--in a conversation about their vexed past. By tracing different approaches to understanding, commemorating, and narrating the events of 1903, he shows how in this small mountain town the "magic of nationalism" by which destiny is written into particular historical events has neither failed nor wholly succeeded. Stories of heroism, self-sacrifice, and unity still rub against tales of treachery, score settling, and disaster as people come to terms with the legacies of imperialism, socialism, and nationalism. The efforts of Krusevo's successive generations to transcend a past of intercommunal violence reveal how rival claims to knowledge and truth acquire vital significance during rapid social, economic, and political change.

Volume 2 picks up the story of Macedonia from the triumph of Ottoman rule in Macedonia, and the consequent insertion of Islam into the Balkans. This led not only to protracted rivalry between Islam and Christianity, but also to the introduction of both variants of Islam, Sunni and Shia. As elsewhere, this gave rise to periodic upheavals when Shia factions tried to challenge the authority of the Sunni Ottoman State. Sunni – Shia tensions have never quite disappeared in Macedonia. Later topics include the violent but incompetent Macedonian struggle against Ottoman rule between 1878 and 1909, Macedonian involvement in the Balkan Wars and World War I, the demographic upheavals of the period, and the renewed Bulgarian insurgency against Yugoslavia between the World Wars. Macedonia’s half-hearted involvement in World War II, and the Communist insurgency in Greece in 1944–49 left a lingering legacy of fear and distrust that even today colours the attitudes of the Greeks towards their Macedonian neighbours. The book also reviews the less-than-admirable history of Mount Athos in its decadence during the modern and contemporary periods. Communist rule between 1944 and 1990, much neglected in research on Macedonia, is treated in its own chapter, which explains the imposition of Communism and its eventual abandonment in response to its utter developmental failure. The collapse of Communism also led to the fragmentation of the former Yugoslavia – a protracted and murderous affair, from which the Macedonians were lucky to escape lightly. The final chapter is devoted to the travails of the insecure new Macedonian Republic. Though the Republic traces its (alleged) origin to the ancient Macedonian kingdom, it only achieved statehood in 1991 by a historical accident. It was immediately embroiled with Greece over the question of its identity and of its very existence. Both volumes throw light on this piece of unfinished political business, and the ways in which Macedonia, Greece and Bulgaria have sought to misuse their historical experience to justify their conflicting claims on the territory.

This book is a comprehensive and dispassionate analysis of the intriguing Macedonian Question from 1878 until 1949 and of the Macedonians (and of their neighbours) from the 1890s until today, with the two themes intertwining. The Macedonian Question was an offshoot of the wider Eastern Question – i.e., the fate of the European remnants of the Ottoman Empire once it dissolved. The initial protagonists of the Macedonian Question were Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia, and a Slav-speaking population inhabiting geographical Macedonia in search of its destiny, the largest segment of which ended up creating a new nation, comprising the Macedonians, something unacceptable to its three neighbours. Alexis Heraclides analyses the shifting sands of the Macedonian Question and of the gradual rise of Macedonian nationhood, with special emphasis on the Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian claims to Macedonia (1870s–1919); the birth and vicissitudes of the most famous Macedonian revolutionary organization, the VM(O)RO, and of other organizations (1893–1940); the appearance and gradual establishment of the Macedonian nation from the 1890s until 1945; Titos’s crucial role in Macedonian nationhood-cum-federal status; the Greek-Macedonian name dispute (1991–2018), including the ‘skeletons in the cupboard’ – the deep-seated reasons rendering the clash intractable for decades; the final Greek-Macedonian settlement (the 2018 Prespa Agreement); the Bulgarian-Macedonian dispute (1950–today) and its ephemeral settlement in 2017; the issue of the Macedonian language; and the Macedonian national historical narrative. The author also addresses questions around who the ancient Macedonians were and the fascination with Alexander the Great. This monograph will be an essential resource for scholars working on Macedonian history, Balkan politics and conflict resolution.

It is 1968. Across America, citizens march for social reform and an end to the Vietnam War. Amid all this, Surya Green--a New York-born, self-absorbed, modern young woman--is a student at Stanford University, blithely pursuing a graduate degree in communication. Her view of life's purpose unexpectedly starts to expand when she says "Yes" when her Stanford film mentor selects her for a writing job at Zagreb Film in Yugoslavia. Family and friends marvel at her courage, or foolishness. The Zagreb studio may be the renowned producer of the first non-American animated film to win an Oscar, but it is in a country most Americans fear and reject as "communist." Green has no idea that her stay in Yugoslavia will ultimately take her beyond national borders to the outermost limits of her mind. Although penned in the first person against the backdrop of Tito's Yugoslavia in historic 1968, Once Upon a Yugoslavia is, paradoxically, most timely. The global economic crisis has compelled people to question excessive consumption and redefine success and the good life while embracing new lifestyle priorities--just as Yugoslavia required of Surya Green decades ago. Once Upon a Yugoslavia addresses this present-day longing while also offering a lively history lesson. History books have objectively described the former Yugoslavia, but Once Upon a Yugoslavia gives personalized look at the everyday lives of people in pre-1989 Eastern Europe that shows how the experience transformed one young woman's American Dream. Chronicling the sights, sounds, and ups and downs of the everyday Yugoslav existence, Green speaks to both the positive and negative aspects of the contemporary phenomenon known as "Yugo-nostalgia." The pros and cons of the American and Yugoslav societies fly to and fro during Surya's conversations with a host of colorful characters--some of whom she lodges with and travels the countryside with, others of whom she dates. In this strange Big Brotherish country of perplexing language, culture, and customs--which gives Surya an early experience of living a monitored life without privacy in a land where paranoia is contagious--more than once readers will hear her sobbing at night. Ultimately, the Yugoslav social experiment--its plus points, at least--were to give Surya Green a considerably altered view of the American values with which she was raised. And it is what led to that perspective--a personal transformation that started for her in explosive, memorable, life-changing 1968 in Tito's Yugoslavia, and continues to this day--which makes Once Upon a Yugoslavia such a unique and remarkable book. From the Trade Paperback edition.