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Copyright of TEME: Casopis za Društvene Nauke is the property of TEME: Casopis za Drustvene Nauke and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper analyzes the relations between the communist parties of Yugoslavia and Italy during 1956, one of the most important years of the history of communism. The dissenting nature of those relations, which were based on the mutual wish to limit the Soviet hegemony within the global communist movement, is in the focus of this analysis. Finally, this paper aims to demonstrate how the roots of the close friendship between the two parties during the sixties and seventies can be traced back to 1956, and how the Yugoslav communists influenced or tried to influence their Italian counterparts.

Throughout Serbian history there is a dominant cultural and political direction which points to the fact that in our culture there is one fatal flaw - valuing power over personality. The aim of this paper is to describe similar elements of both work and behaviour of a certain class of people, primarily the "intellectual elite", which prefers the highest economical and political positions. In addition, through parallelism of past and present similarities between semi-intellectuals (Jovanovic), "intelligence" (Reiss), and communist-capitalists as the new-old social phenomenon in the post-socialist society, the paper draws attention to a constant state and behaviour spanning over the nineteenth and the twentieth century with a tendency to proceed well into the next millennium. There is a noticeable phenomenon of the longevity of the same type of people (and their offspring), who, all of a sudden, as one promised future collapses, appear as the heralds of a new future. Therefore, this negative social phenomenon is the posed challenge for our national existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of the paper is to expose the counterfactual, scientifically unfounded and unscholarly statements by Mihaljević and Miljan in the paper “Was Tito’s Yugoslavia not Totalitarian?” We needed to treat the issues of (1) totalitarianism as a scholarly concept and a social construct, (2) the typological characterization of Tito’s Yugoslavia, where there is substantial agreement among scholars that consociation fits it; (3) the organization of security services in Yugoslavia of the period, (4) the role of the republics in conducting foreign policy, which increased steadily; (5) monetary policy and seigniorage which came about, of which our critics were completely unaware, (6) the issue of the political system’s dynamics (there were very substantial changes in the period 1945-1991) and (7) the issue of the political system’s legitimacy. We also noted a number of minor mistakes, errors, and omissions by the authors at issue. A general failure by the authors to achieve scientific objectivity and to master the notions necessary for analysis is found.

The paper is a contribution to a scholarly debate on the controversial secular nature of the Communist state. It aims to challenge a presumed affiliation of Yugoslav Communist model of church and state separation to French laical approach through examination of legal status of religious communities in Yugoslavia between 1946 and 1991. Methodologically restricted to a normative analysis of basic legal framework, the paper particularly sheds light on religious liberty, religious education and public funding of religious communities. It detects signs of evolution in official legal politics towards religion and emphasizes differences between the eight parallel Yugoslav legal systems that existed since the mid-seventies. Strictly analytical, the achieved results justify plausibility of starting presumption without pretending to give a final answer. As such, the paper presents a groundwork for further enquiries that would combine its normative findings with relevant sociological and historical data.

Socialists today can learn from Marcuse. Starting from this premise this paper discusses and elaborates on Herbert Marcuse’s trajectory to socialism. Marcuse successfully eluded the trap of “economism”, and turned to subjectivity in search of a socialist solution. The transition to socialism is possible through the creation of new anthropology expressed through the concept of “new sensibility”. The prototype of a new socialist human is an anti-superman. Peace and beauty are important characteristics of Marcuse’s socialism. “Libertarian socialism”, “feminist socialism”, “integral socialism”, “socialist humanism”, “socialism as the work of art”, and “utopian socialism” are all terms that testify to Marcuse’s open and many-faceted understanding of socialism in all of its complexity of meanings. Some of those meanings can inform debates on future prospects of socialism.

This study examines the phenomenon of the so-called ‘Vojvodinian historiography’ which flourished in the Socialist Autonomous Province of Vojvodina from the late 1960s until the early 1990s as a special kind of party historiography. The paper focuses on the ‘Vojvodinian historiography’s’ institutional framework, theoretical and methodological features and general ideological profile as well as its outcomes. As a result of its close ties with the ruling Communist League of Vojvodina, the political collapse of the Vojvodinian communists marked the disappearance of this extremely ideological kind of historiography.

The paper deals with the complicated process of coming to terms with the communist regime in Slovakia. Since the fall of the communism in 1989 the process has attracted the attention of researchers and the public. In many ways, this process is seen to have been unsuccessful –communist crimes remain unpunished and the “drawing of thick lines” prevails. Some representatives of the communist regime have even been honoured with memorial plaques, despite public protests. However, the situation has changed in recent years. Several acts have been adopted to help former political prisoners and to reduce the pensions of communist officials.

The paper analyzes social capital's properties in relation with the level at which it is generated, as a type of social capital. The second part of the paper is dedicated to examining of possibilities for implementation of the concept of social capital in various social and political circumstances. Analysis of the Putnam's concept of social capital in reviewing of the process of democratization of post-communist societies has shown that assessment of the social capital’s role in democratic transition of these societies must take into account specific social and political circumstances which influenced social capital's trends and forms. In contrast to economically developed societies with long democratic traditions, it turned out that social capital in former communist societies developed and moved in almost opposite directions. It is characterized by competitiveness, non-community spirit and exclusivity. This may be explained by predominant informal associating forms as a survival strategy in conditions of deprivation and ideological mobilization at the time of communist party states which during transition turned into suspicious conversions of various capital types. It is an open issue how much the social capital concept is applicable in post-communist societies of Eastern and Central Europe and how it should be designed for the purpose of adequate implementation in creating of social policies.

The paper examines the attitudes of monarchist Russian émigrés towards pro-Soviet tendencies in a refugee setting through the case of discovering the plans to establish a communist party in the First Russian Cadet Corps “Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich” in the town of Bela Crkva in 1934. The investigation, subsequent hearings and sentences handed down to the cadets reveal the attitudes and ideas typical of this community in the interwar period, which would influence the political and ideological positioning of Russian émigrés in the Second World War.

In this paper the author interpreted the historiographic span of work of Eric Hobsbawm, one of the most famous and most influential contemporary historians. Bearing in mind the extensiveness and complexity of this span of work, the author limited his analysis to two theoretical problems - Hobsbawm's view of the concept of 'social history' and the exploration of the function of 'historical materialism' in the emergence and realisation of this concept. In the author's opinion, Marxism served Hobsbawm as a productive theoretical standpoint in the thematisation of the history of the 'long 19th century', but it prevented him from understanding more fully the 'short 20th century' (The Age of Extremes). The basic reason for this lies in the fact that the 'Soviet experiment' which in essence defined the 20th century cannot be explained from the 'historical-materialistic' perspective. It is precisely in the theoretical deficits of the Marxist theoretical paradigm, and not in Hobsbawm's political bias, that the author identifies the basic cause for the weakness of his interpretation of the epoch of Communism. For this reason, in the final part of the paper the author formulated the thesis on the necessity of formulating a new theoretical framework and conceptual apparatus which would provide us not only with a better understanding of the past, but of the present and the future as well.

In December 1989, thousands of Romanian citizens took to the streets, protesting against Nicolae Ceausescu's policies. This was no surprise-some time ago, the Warsaw Pact countries, which for decades languished in the ideology of communism and the one-party system, struggled to put this era behind them. These uprisings initiated the fall of the current regimes through initial protests, which was why the then political elite often responded hysterically with repression and political violence. As the last country from the Central-Eastern bloc, Romania started the changes in the most repressive way and ended the era of communism. The most impressive aspect of this transition is the behaviour of Nicolae Ceausescu, the president of Romania at that time, who ignored the mentioned events in the neighbourhood. The initial revolt of the Romanian people, which Ceausescu visibly defied without suspecting that it would affect him, finally happened and closed his rule in blood. Relying on a wide range of different sources of material, in this paper we will try to present the historiography of the Romanian revolution authentically, from the perspective of the present moment. The starting point for the work is a conceptual analysis of the rule of Nicolae Ceausescu-from the very beginning, through the characteristic periods, all the way to the year of its completion. His rule, characterized by other Warsaw Pact states as the most severe form of communism, led to violence and revolutionary riots that left a bloody mark on Romania's history. Some of the theses presented, such as the coup d'etat, conspiracy, or foreign intervention, which were presented as the cause of the collapse of Ceausescu's regime, opened space for many reflections. But the real picture seems much simpler: the people of Romania, after the most difficult period of austerity, poverty, and torture, rose against a dictatorial regime that has denied the most basic social and humanistic values.

This paper is a response to the article “What Typological Appellation is Suitable for Tito’s Yugoslavia” published by Sergej Flere and Rudi Klanjšek in Istorija 20. veka, in which the two authors reflected on our article “Was Tito’s Yugoslavia Not Totalitarian?” Instead of engaging in an open academic debate based on arguments and empirical data, Flere and Klanjšek concentrate their approach on detecting textual mistakes, which they then use as proof of our superficial and counter-factual approach. In this article, we focus on providing arguments and empirical data which demonstrate that Flere and Klanjšek’s arguments as well as their newly introduced views on the subject hold little merit. In fact, we have shown that their attempt to discredit us is nothing but an example of how an academic debate can turn into a blatant non-academic debate when scholarly based approach, academic professionalism and facts are run over by sentiment.

This paper is a response to an article “Was Tito’s Yugoslavia totalitarian?” published in the journal Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (2014). The two authors indicate the inadequate theoretical framework and untenable interpretations made by Flere and Klanjšek, who provided a distorted picture of former Yugoslav society and the position of an individual in it. Their reduced theory of totalitarianism combined with their simplified interpretations served their aim of proving that the system established by the Yugoslav communists was not totalitarian nor did it strive to become one. Flere and Klanjšek’s main argument for the absence of totalitarianism is that of a federal state concept of Yugoslavia, which is not in correlation with contemporary understanding of totalitarianism. By deconstructing their arguments, this article argues for a more elaborated and up-to-date conceptual understanding of Tito’s Yugoslavia and its relation to the concept of totalitarianism.

The paper brings new facts and analyses regarding the number and structure of political prisoners in Yugoslavia who were detained in labour camps and prisons as supporters of the Informbiro (“ibeovci”) from 1948 to 1956. Based on available documents from the archives of the secret police, today it is possible to determine the number as well as the ethnic, social and gender structure of the victims of the political persecution at Goli Otok and other camps. It is also possible to reconstruct very precisely the methodology of terror, the conditions of detention, and the role of the state institutions and parties in implementing persecution and conducting torture.

The paper gives an overview and analysis of the activities of inner enemies in the SFRY in the early seventies as seen by the State Security Service. On the basis of a number of readily available documents, the operations of the security service were analysed against the vast opposition to the communist regime and the dissidents at the time of the strong-arm policy that came out as a reaction to the liberalist reversals during 1966-1972. On the basis of these documents it is possible to see the structure of the enemy numbers, as well as their forms and ways of acting as a carrier of resistance, as well as the repressive responses of the party and the state to these challenges. In the article, we analyse in detail the strength of the inner enemy according to type: anarcho-liberals, nationalists, Ranković followers, liberals, neo-liberals, etc. Their attempt was to create a broad opposition front against the government. In the early 1970s, records show about 20,000 political prisoners (5,000 in Belgrade alone), including some 1,500 former leaders of the Quisling administrative and military apparatus; about 500 agents of foreign intelligence services – discovered and prosecuted in the post-war years; about 2,000 returnees arrested fleeing the country in connection with hostile operations; about 8,000 returnees. There were also around 10,000 persons, most of who were presumed to be former members of various illegal post-war enemy groups and organizations. More than 500 people were discovered as writers of anti-government pamphlets and other propaganda materials; more than 1,200 hostile members of the clergy, as well as about 20,000 people who maintained connections and supported Western ideology and politics. Also, out of the total number of around 30,000 individuals who appeared in various ways as supporters of the Cominform, close to 5,000 were high-profile figures in society (party and state officials, officers and other members of the JNA, the SUP and the state apparatus). Nearly 4,000 of those who were sentenced and tried for their pro-Cominform activities, about 70% of all suspects were in Belgrade. There were also about 3,000 emigrant returnees from the EE countries who had fled the country in the post-IB period.

The restoration of religious education in elementary and high schools in the former republics of SFR Yugoslavia coincided with the break up of this state and establishing of democratic multiparty system, after half century of the rule of Communist Party of Yugoslavia that excluded religious education from public schools. The fall of communist values and ideals in Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe preceded the return of democratic values, freedom of faith and religious education. However, legal solutions were not identical in all former republics of SFRY: some still do not have religious education in public schools (Montenegro, Slovenia, Macedonia), while some define religious education as an elective course (with varying instructive representation and authority in educational system). Religious high schools, as well as public elementary and high schools founded by religious communities, do not have same legal status in former Yugoslav republics. In this paper, the author discusses legal regulations that define status of religious education and religious schools and explains different legal solutions, as well as relations of churches and religious communities with states in the field of education.

Copyright of Socioloski Pregled is the property of Srpsko Sociolosko Drustvo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Socioloski Pregled is the property of Srpsko Sociolosko Drustvo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper offers a critical discussion of the thesis about the revived philosophical and political significance of Lenin, as recently propounded by Slavoj Zizek. Analyzing Zizek's writings, the author argues that the call for a "return to Lenin" derives from Zizek's strategy of "textual provocation" and the frustrating position of the leftist, radical tradition of political thought after the collapse of communism.

The post-war “new woman” was supposed to reject fashion as a cultural practice of the decadent bourgeois world. The paper analyzes the attempt made by the Yugoslav communist regime to establish original socialist clothing outside the influence of western systems of fashion. I will explore the characteristics of “utopian clothing” and the bases of a new aesthetic. Simple, practical, unobtrusive and appropriate clothing displayed the role of women in socialist society to the world at large, at the same time reminding women of the duties and limitations which came with the role. Even though gaudiness was declared backward, the public taste could be appeased through the use of ethno motives. Ornamentation based on the reinterpretation of traditional cultural heritage was interpreted as a defense against western influences as well as a visual display of national harmony. However, the attempt to establish a radically different course in fashion was deeply conflicting. The imposed oblivion towards old dress codes implied a look back: the production of exemplary styles mimicked not only traditional material heritage, but also western fashion of the early 1940’s.