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provided by Serbian Academy of Science and Arts Digital Archive (DAIS) UDC 930.85(4–12) ISSN 0350–7653 SERBIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND ARTS INSTITUTE FOR BALKAN STUDIES

BALCANICA XLVI ANNUAL OF THE INSTITUTE FOR BALKAN STUDIES

Editor-in-Chief DUŠAN T. BATAKOVIĆ Director of the Institute for Balkan Studies SASA

Editorial Board JEAN-PAUL BLED (Paris), LJUBOMIR MAKSIMOVIĆ, ZORAN MILUTINOVIĆ (), DANICA POPOVIĆ, BILJANA SIKIMIĆ, SPIRIDON SFETAS (Thessaloniki), GABRIELLA SCHUBERT (Jena), NIKOLA TASIĆ, SVETLANA M. TOLSTAJA (Moscow)

BELGRADE 2015 448 Balcanica XLVI (2015)

Like in the subchapters on Kosovo, The political situation in the self- the author outlines the political activity proclaimed Republic of Kosovo and in of the Turkish parties in , as Macedonia remains problematic and well as the Turkish community’s activi­ volatile. Albanian-Serbian and Albanian- ties through numerous cultural and civic Macedonian relations are always first to organisations. As already mentioned, the come to mind when trying to explain the dispersion of the Turkish population is a complexities of the region’s recent history, limiting factor as regards their represen­ and they certainly are key to understand­ ing its past and future. But Çelik offers tation in the parliament and local coun­ the readers of his book a new perspective, cils, and impedes more ambitious politi­ that of the region’s Turkish minority. Al­ cal engagement. Moreover, as is often the though the numerical strength and politi­ case, political, ideological and personal cal and cultural influence of the Turkish divisions within the Turkish political population is relatively weak, they form class further complicate political life. an integral part of these societies and are The main division is into adherents of a active participants in political events and moderate liberal political stand and na­ developments in the central Balkans, es­ tionalists who accept the Turkish-Islamic pecially given the support they enjoy from synthesis. the Republic of .

Kosta Nikolić, Mit o partizanskom jugoslovenstvu [The Myth of Partisan ]. : Zavod za udžbenike, 2015, xvii+502 p. Reviewed by Dragan Bakić*

Many generations of born after , in particular, a section of population, 1945 thought that their socialist homeland not limited to youth-nostalgic older genera­ had been forged in the Second World War tion, still maintains a strange affection for in the heroic armed struggle fought by Tito’s dead and buried . All this makes communist against the occupiers the necessity of scholarly examination of and their collaborators (narodnooslobodilačka the phenomenon more pronounced. That borba). It was then, as the communist origin is exactly what Kosta Nikolić, one of the myth expounded, that the nations and na­ most gifted Serbian historians, embarks on tional minorities of Yugoslavia forged their in his most recent monograph. His analy­ (bratstvo i jedinstvo) sis is a continuation of what he had already which laid ground for the post-war socialist discussed in his excellent Srbija u Titovoj federation. That new country replaced the Jugoslaviji (1941–1980) [Serbia in Tito’s “rotten monarchist dictatorship” that was Yugoslavia] (Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike, the destroyed in the 2011). Nikolić has presented a thorough Axis invasion of 1941 and put an end to na­ deconstruction of what he terms “the myth tional discrimination of non-Serb peoples of partisan Yugoslavism”. It should be noted that was synonymous with the rule of a that his study is not that of the history of “Greater-Serbian hegemonic clique”. The the Yugoslav idea or the Yugoslav state from legacy of communist Yugoslavism, however, seems to have survived the break-up of the country nearly twenty-five years ago. In * Institute for Balkan Studies SASA Reviews 449

1918 onwards. It focuses on the official dis­ Ustashas, Montenegrin separatists, pro- course of Yugoslav communists and draws Bulgarian IMRO, the Albanian Kosovo largely on the impressive range of sources of Committee. Complying with Stalin’s turn their own provenance and not that of their “to the left” into world revolution to top­ opponents. ple European fascist regimes which were Nikolić analyses the communist view about to start a military crusade against of Yugoslavism from the inception of the the , the CPY codified its bolshevised Communist Party of Yugo­ anti-Yugoslav orientation in the decisions slavia (CPY) at the Vukovar congress in of the 1928 Dresden congress. 1920. This included the struggle for prole­ As a corollary of this emphasis on a tarian dictatorship and terror as means of national-revolutionary agenda came the achieving it and ensured that the CPY be­ transformation of the CPY from a single came but a mere section of the Comintern working class party organisation into whose policy it would blindly follow. It also several national parties. Serbian com­ meant that Lenin’s view of Yugoslavia as munists were completely marginalised in an artificial Versailles creation that needed this ideological shift and their role was re­ to be broken became the guiding principle duced to extending help to the struggle of of CPY; the exploitation of the national communists from the “oppressed” nations question in this country became “the most for their national liberation. This process efficient method” to accomplish its dis­ was rounded off with the elimination of memberment and seize the power (p. 26). the most prominent Serbian commu­ Rather than adhering to their internation­ nist, at least partly independent-minded al doctrine, the communists thus opted for Marković; after that, the next generation “national communism” as the author aptly of Serbian communists trained their rev­ puts it. Based on Lenin’s interpretation olutionary consciousness “with no regard that communists should support revolu­ for national interests of their own people” tionary national liberation movements in which was “a unique phenomenon in the “backward” countries, the “left faction” of political history of the European twenti­ CPY insisted on encouraging national dif­ eth century” (pp. 144–145). The founding ferences with the view to bringing down of the Communist Party of and the Kingdom. Those Serbian communist the Communist Party of in 1937 such as Sima Marković and Filip Filipović was a concession to separatist tendencies who believed that the national question of Croat and Slovene communists and was democratic and constitutional had to prepared the ground for (con)federalisa­ renounce their views and accept those of tion of the Yugoslav party and later the their Croat and Slovene party colleagues. communist Yugoslav state. This was the The latter proclaimed Yugoslavia to be a organisational structure of CPY that Tito “dungeon of nations”: the “ruling” Serbian sanctioned when he became its leader in nation – and not just a “Greater-Serbian 1940 emerging from Stalinist purges. bourgeois clique” – suppressed the other The true role of Tito’s partisans dur­ nations, Muslims, , and ing the Second World War in establish­ Macedonians, and the struggle for their ing their own brand of Yugoslavism is national liberation was instrumental in the perhaps the most revealing part of the struggle against capitalism and imperial­ book. Far from the official narrative about ism. Such attitude led to the CPY’s coop­ the joint struggle of all Yugoslav nations eration with nationalist and even terrorist and national minorities against the Axis organisations of all anti-Yugoslav shades, invaders forging brotherhood and unity, the , Ante Pavelić’s the partisans were participants in, and 450 Balcanica XLVI (2015) one of the initiators of, the horrible civil if not the Ustaha regime. In order to gain war fought along ethnic and ideological support of Croats and Muslims, Tito and divides which claimed the lives of the the CPY revived the bogey of “Greater majority of war casualties. Nikolić con­ Serb ” and went as far as to in­ vincingly argues his case in an analysis timidate them with the prospect of being of partisan war effort in each of Yugosla­ slaughtered by Mihailović’s chetniks un­ via’s regions with their different national less they joined the partisans. Even such structures. After having abstained from tactics did not yield much result until the fighting the occupiers as long as the 1939 capitulation of Italy in September 1943. German-Soviet pact of non-aggression Party headquarters in Croatia as well as in was in force, communists rose to arms at Slovenia had an absolute autonomy in the the Comintern’s order following Hitler’s conduct of military operations and acted attack on the USSR in June 1941. The in­ without coordination with each other surrection was quickly quelled by German or Tito’s Supreme Command. In Janu­ troops but not before the partisans initi­ ary 1943 when the survival of the main ated a civil war in Serbia against another partisan forces in was at stake, the resistance movement, Draža Mihailović’s commander of Croatian partisans, Ivan . In doing so, Tito discarded the Rukavina, refused direct requests for as­ Comintern’s instruction that “class strug­ sistance; Tito himself never set foot in gle” was a second phase of revolution that Croatia during the war (p. 459). He had should follow, and not precede, national- no less trouble with the disobedient and liberation struggle in which communists particularistic Communist Party of Croa­ needed to join forces with all anti-fascists. tia led by Andrija Hebrang which, in Tito and his Serbian partisans found ref­ Tito’s words, leant towards Greater Croat uge in and spread a civil war nationalism and separatism. Thus, there there, even crueller than that in Serbia. was no overall Yugoslav strategy and it Their main enemies became not Ger­ was not before mid-1943 that the CPY man and Italian occupiers, but rather Mihailović’s chetniks labelled “Greater started to insist on Yugoslavism and Yu­ Serb nationalists” who acted as military goslavia for the sole purpose of acquiring forces of the Yugoslav government-in-ex­ legitimacy among the Allied Powers. ile in London. Nikolić demonstrates how Elsewhere was the same. In Slovenia, the civil war in Montenegro was in fact communists were practically independent “a war for identity because communists of the CPY and promoted Slovenian na­ fought for Montenegrin and royalists for tional interests alone, including irreden­ Serbian statehood” (p. 303). The rhetoric tist claims at the expense of Italy – Yugo­ about fighting “the traitors” and “the fifth slavia was not even mentioned. The fact column” was conveniently employed to that Slovenian partisans did not carry justify a ruthless struggle for power. out a single military action outside their In June 1942, Tito’s partisans were ex­ province throughout the war speaks for pelled from Montenegro and they arrived itself. In Macedonia, Metodije Šatorov in western Bosnia, the heart of the Nazi- went as far as to attach Macedonian party puppet Independent State of Croatia. committee to the Bulgarian communist Their ranks and files were recruited from party and he was expelled from the CPY the Krajina subjected to genocide by in July 1941 because of his hostile atti­ the Ustashas whereas the Croat masses – tude towards Serbs (pp. 367–368). A rift and Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegov­ between pro-Yugoslav and pro-Bulgarian ina – supported an independent Croatia, Macedonians remained the main fea­ Reviews 451 ture of the partisan movement in that bian communists to protect Serbian na­ province. tional interests. The Sandžak area nearly It was in Bosnia that the partisan became a separate entity outside Serbia; movement managed to take root and it was because of the unwillingness of prepare the ground for taking power in local Muslims to join partisans and the the entire country. Brotherhood and unity formation of two other autonomous re­ policy was most successful in this ethni­ gions within Serbia that such designs cally-mixed area as a strategy of defend­ were dropped. Vojvodina and Kosovo and ing those who struggled for their life and were these autonomous regions offering Yugoslav solidarity and common – the latter despite the fact that the local army as a solution – Muslims were al­ supported the Axis occupation lowed to preserve their special identity and offered armed resistance to partisans among partisans and given the opportu­ as late as December 1944 (the Serbs in nity to escape their share of responsibil­ Croatia did not receive autonomous sta­ ity for Ustasha atrocities. It was in Bosnia tus although they were the backbone of that the national policy of CPY was fi­ partisan forces). This was effectively a nally shaped and formulated. This was a concession to Albanian nationalism and balancing act: Tito embraced the restora­ an attempt to placate it, a policy that tion of Yugoslavia unpopular with non- would carry on in post-war Yugoslavia. In Serbs, but inevitable in order to maintain fact, during the war Tito even considered his movement which mostly consisted of ceding Kosovo to communist . Serbs; on the other hand, he underscored It was a measure of Serbian commu­ the full national self-determination that nists’ impotence that their party was not non-Serbs would have in a new Yu­ formed until May 1945, at the end of the goslavia and passed over in silence the war and eight years after the formation genocide committed against Serbs. Fi­ of the parties of Slovene and Croat com­ nally, the foundations of communist Yu­ munists. In addition, repression against all goslavia were laid at the second meeting anti-communists was by far most ruthless of the partisan supreme governing body, in Serbia – this was a continuation of the AVNOJ. It was then envisaged that fed­ struggle against “Greater Serbianism”, the eral Yugoslavia would consist of six units most dangerous enemy of CPY since its (republics): Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and inception. (BiH), Serbia, Montenegro In conclusion, Nikolić has produced and Macedonia – BiH was the only one an excellent book which presents a well- that was not based on national principle documented account of the evolution as it had no absolute ethnic majority and nature of partisan Yugoslavism. His among local Serbs, Croats and Muslims. findings will be quite surprising to many Serbia was a clear loser in the new a reader but lucid and convincing never­ communist re-composition of Yugosla­ theless. Contrary to partisan mythology, via although Serbian communists alone Nikolić has proved, partisan Yugoslavism called their compatriots for the restora­ was a thin veil designed to cover rampant tion of that country. Nevertheless, Tito nationalism of Yugoslav communists, and his Supreme Command maintained with the noted exception of those of Serb firm control over Serbian communists, origin, and to provide a framework for the treatment of whom was sometimes dictatorial rule of Tito and CPY. As such, humiliating. The formation of Serbia as it planted the seeds of destruction of Yu­ a future federal unit bore witness to the goslavia in a civil war just a decade after utter inability and unwillingness of Ser­ Tito’s death.