Elusive Compromise: A History of Interwar Yugoslavia - Brossura

Djokic, Dejan

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1850658641 ISBN 13: 9781850658641

Casa editrice: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, 2006

Riassunto

Before Tito's Yugoslavia, which disintegrated violently in the 1990s, there was another Yugoslav state. This book is about the original, interwar Yugoslavia (1918-41), and is based on the author's research in Croatian, Serbian, British and American archives and on extensive study of published sources. Unlike other scholars, Dejan Djoki argues that the period can be best understood through an analysis of attempts to reach a Serb-Croat compromise. Historians have long recognised the Croats' rejection of state centralism, but Djoki shows that many Serbs had also accepted federalism by the mid-1930s. Djoki challenges the popular perception of the period as one of constant conflict between Serbs and non-Serbs and argues that the political mismanagement of the country paved the way for the radicalisation of the war years (1941-5) and the subsequent communist takeover. Although primarily a study of conflict management in a multinational state, the book provides an insight into the effects of politics on 'ordinary' people. "Elusive Compromise" places Yugoslavia in the context of a Europe-wide struggle between democracy and dictatorship, and contributes to an understanding of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and other multinational states.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

'Dejan Djokic is to be commended for having produced an excellently researched and very well- written book. He has avoided nationalist clichés and a strongly partisan tone and presented the reader with new interpretations of original source material. As such, the book contrasts markedly with much of the writing about the former Yugoslavia since the 1990s.' --European History Quarterly

'Logical as the idea of a unified South Slav state seemed in the late nineteenth century, since such a state failed twice in the next century, catastrophically the second time, it is now easy to assume that the hope was flawed from the beginning and that the problem is in Serbian-Croatian relations.Key scholars have posited that failure was in the DNA of the first Yugoslavia- born of the First World War, destroyed by the Second - but Djokic argues that interwar Yugoslavia was not doomed by conflicting Croatian and Serbian national ideologies. Failure came rather from the inability of politiciansto compromise over the centralization of state power. Hence, the state failed because of political decisions taken or not taken in the flush of events,not because of primordial forces. Djokic does not ultimately prove the counterfactual that the Yugoslav idea could have been saved, but he gives it plausibility.' --Foreign Affairs

'Fascinating and compelling. ... an extremely important addition to the historiographyof Yugoslavia.' --Prof. V.P. Gagnon, author, The Myth of Ethnic War:Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s

L'autore:

DEJAN DJOKIC is Lecturer in Serbian and Croatian Studies at the University of Nottingham. He is the editor of Yugoslavism: Histories of a Failed Idea, 1918-1992 (Hurst, 2002).

Su questa edizione

• Editore: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
• Data di pubblicazione: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1850658641
• ISBN 13: 9781850658641
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 310