1st Edition
The Rise and Fall of Communist Yugoslavism Soft Nation-Building in Yugoslavia
The Rise and Fall of Communist Yugoslavism: Soft Nation‑Building in Yugoslavia examines how the Communist Party of Yugoslavia incorporated the idea of a Yugoslav nation into its ideology and created the Yugoslav Soft Nation‑Building project after the Second World War. With an innovative approach of researching three levels of research (from above, from below and from the viewpoint of interethnic relations) the book brings forward an original concept of soft nation‑building, with a focus on the Slovenian‑Yugoslav dimension.
Drawing on archival sources from Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo and Belgrade, the author argues that after the abandonment of the Yugoslav national idea, two Yugoslavisms were created in the mid‑1960s. State‑based socialist Yugoslavism was propagated by the Party and had no ethnic connotations, only a small proportion of the population identified themselves as “Yugoslav” in national terms. The created vacuum was filled by old national identities.
The book is of interest to specialists and advanced students of cultural and intellectual history, studies of nationalism, but also history of science and institutions and the history of everyday life. The book aims to appeal to scholars of Balkan, South‑East European and Yugoslav history.
1. History of Yugoslavism and the KPJ’s Stand on the National Question 2. The Soft Yugoslav Nation-Building Project 3. The Turning Point (1958–1969) 4. The Federal KMMO and the Split of Yugoslavism (1965–1969) 5. Changing the System 6. The Vacuum is Filled with Old National Identifications 7. Yugoslav National Identification and the 1971 Census.
Biography
Tomaž Ivešić is a director at the Study Centre for National Reconciliation (Ljubljana, Slovenia). He is a cultural and intellectual historian. Author of a number of scientific articles in Slovenia and abroad. Most notably on the Yugoslav soft nation‑building project (2021), exchanging the progressive experiences (2022) and the Yugoslav experts (2023).
