Charles Jelavich Professor of History, Emeritus Indiana University
Joshua Forster R600 Prof. R.F. Byrnes Nov. 29, 1993 With the publication of South Slav Nationalisms, Textbooks and
Yugoslav Union Before 1914, Charles Jelavich has provided the student of Balkan affairs with some perceptive insights into the origins of the present conflict there. It has been argued elsewhere! that world politics is entering a new era in which the motivation for hostilities will no longer be primarily ideological or economic but rather/ cultural.' With the bloody ethnic and religious confrontation raging in the Balkans, Jelavich's most recent publication should prove e-e the ideal study in which to test this thesis.
Charles Jelavich's interest in the Balkans began in the autumn of 1940, when he entered the University of California at Berkeley with the or ' nal intention of completing a degree in one of the natural sciences. However, by the time he received his A.B. in
1944, the flux of global events had so dramatically altered the young man's perceptions of the world/ that scientific pursuits and the clinical environment of the laboratory seemed dull in comparison. As he tells it, his interests in Russia and Eastern
Europe developed quite accidently and as a result of two separate events - the crusade against European Fascism, and the advice he received from a neighbor.
The second factor would seem to be of less significance were it not for the pivotal role that it played in changing the
'See Samuel P. Huntington's "The Clash of Civilization's?" Foreign Affairs (Summer, 1993.) pp.22-49.
1 direction of Jelavich's life. Prior to entering Berkeley, Jelavich was forced to decide which language to study as a requirement for graduation. Despite his south slav ethnicity, Jelavich had decided
to study Spanish, because, as he would later confess to a family
2 friend, "I had heard that it was the easiest language to learn."
Upon hearing this, a neighbor and recent Berkeley Slavics graduate,
Lionel Richards remarked, "That's a hell-uv-ah reason to study a
language." With this admonishment] Charles Jelavich decided to
study Russian instead, which launched him upon an academic and military career that would span the era of the Cold War and would
secure for him a place as one of the most prolific American
scholars on Balkan affairs.
Charles Jelavich was born on November 15, 1922 in Mountain
View, California, a suburb of San Jose, the second son of Martin
and Kate Jelavich who were first generation Croatian emigres from
Dalmatia. Upon completion of high school, Jelavich was offered a
scholarship at Berkeley. After his first year of Russian, a class
that consisted of only ten students at the time, Jelavich entered
a Balkan history course taught by his future mentor and disser-
tation committee chairman, Professor Kerner. The influence of
Dr. Kerner eventually led Charles Jelavich to study Russian and
Balkan history. For as Jelavich relates, "Dr. Kerner brought
history alive for me."
After receiving his undergraduate degree in Slavic Languages,
2Personal interview with Professor Charles Jelavich, 23 Nov. 1993. [All subsequent quotes are taken from this interview.]
2 Jelavich joined the military and was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia,
where he completed the Reserved Officer Training Course and was
then commissioned as a second lieutenant in the army. While at
Benning he married Barbara Brightfield, whom he had met while an
undergraduate at Berkeley and who was an emerging East European
historian in her own right. Thus, began a collaborative working
relationship that lasts to this day.
Later in that year, Jelavich was transferred to Camp Ritchie,
Maryland, where he was to be trained in military intelligence.
However, after only two weeks at Ritchie, Jelavich received orders
to join SHAEFE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces
Europe) in Paris. Arriving at SHAEFE, Jelavich was assigned to the
staff of General Galaiy as a public relations officer. From Paris
Jelavich moved with SHAEFE to Frankfurt, and later to Berlin. While
in Berlin Jelavich was assigned to the interpreters pool of the
Coordinating Council at the Allied Control Commission, which was
responsible for drafting joint communiques with the other occupa-
tion powers. While assigned to these duties he was responsible for
translating the texts of meetings in which Eisenhower, Montgomery,
Zhukov, Clay, and later, McNarney participated.
Jelavich's recollections of this period are fascinating.
In his capacity as a Russian translator and public relations officer with the American occupation forces, Jelavich was placed in a position in which he observed the growing discord between the
Western Allies and the Soviets at the highest levels. His sagacious assessments of characters and the conflicting allied aspirations,
3 as well as a number of amusing personal anecdotes, w provide
the interested student with invaluable insights into the origins of
the Cold War.
In 1946, after receiving enough separation points, Jelavich was honorably discharged from the army. Returning to his native northern California, Jelavich entered Berkeley's graduate program
in history, where his wife Barbara was finishing her Master's
Degree. When queried as to why he selected Berkeley, Jelavich replied, '"Tht at the time, Berkeley had the best Slavic Studies program in the nation. And that my old mentor, Professor Kerner was still teaching there." In 1947 Jelavich received his Master's in
History and two years later he completed his doctorate. In addition to Russian, he is fluent in Serbo-Croatian and possesses a compe- tent command of Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovenian, German, and a reading knowledge of French.
After receiving his Ph.D.;Jelavich was appointed Instructor in
History at Berkeley. Prior to this he had served as a Junior
Instructor and Instructor in Serbo-Croatian at Berkeley. In 1957, he was named Associate Professor of History and was made Chairman of the Center for Slavic and East European Studies at Berkeley. In
1960, the history department at Indiana University made an offer to fill two vacant faculty positions. Many thought Jelavich mad for even considering giving up his tenured position at Berkeley but at the time -t-here-w~s a policy at Berkeley, as well as a number of other institutions, that prohibited the employment of husbands and wives in the same department. Furthermore, by 1960 it had become
4 apparent that the administration was giving less priority to the
Slavicp('program. According to Jelavich, then Chancellor C Kerr, thought that the Berkeley program could not compete with the programs of the Ivy League. In addition, Kerr had decided to give funding priority to the African, Chinese, and Latin American Area
Studies programs. Unable to alter the administrative decisions made by Kerr, Charles and Barbara Jelavich decided to accept the offer of joint appointments at Indiana in 1961. they wen-e--to become the first husband and wife team to receive tenure in the same department in the United States.
In his academic career, Jelavich has served on a variety of departmental admissions, fellowships, faculty search and promotion committees. He has also served on the editorial boards of a number of East European journals and has been a member or chairman of numerous Slavic and East European organizations, including the
Chairman of the Slavic Review Committee, the Conference on Slavic and East European History, and the East European Fulbright
Committee. In addition, he was the Vice-President and President-
Elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic
Studies from 1985 to 1986.
He has delivered more than forty papers to national and international conferences and seminars on Slavic and East European affairs. In addition, he has co-authored, with Barbara Jelavich, five texts on Russian and Balkan history and has edited three others (see appendix). He has also contributed more than thirty articles to journals such as Balkan Studies, Slavic Review, the
5 Journal of Central European Affairs, and Sudost-Forschungen, as well as compiling two bibliographies on Yugoslavia/ and serving as a contributing editor to three atlases.
In his forty years in academia, Jelavich has taught history courses on the Balkans, the Hapsburg Empire, and Modern Eastern
Europe. He has served on more than fifty doctoral committees and is proud of the fact that most of these former students are teaching in some of the most prestigious universities in the nation. Furthermore, he has resided abroad in Greece and the former
Yugoslavia, as well as conducted research in most of the major libraries of Europe.
Never one to rest on his laurels, Jelavich is currently researching his next book which will be a continuation of his most recent publication South Slav Nationalisms, Textbooks and Yugoslav
Union Before 1914. The conceptualization for this text originated in a 1948 conversation Jelavich had with Slobodan Jovanovic,
Serbia's most distinguished historian. Jovanovic suggested that in order to understand why the 1918 creation of the Kingdom of the
Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes proved so ephemeral/ one must examine the educational milieu of the generation of leaders who came to power during the interwar period.
That the educational institutions of the Balkans reinforced patriotic sentiments cannot be doubted, but to what degree did these institutions and their instructional materials inculcate enduring nationalist aspirations and thus, separatist attitudes amongst the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes? Jelavich's pioneering
6 study seeks to address this question by the unique methodological approach of examining the elementary and secondary school textbooks used in Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia prior to the First World War.
Jelavich's conclusions reveal that the idea of Yugoslavism, as formulated by south slav intellectuals, was little more than an illusion. A rigorous examination of the textbooks demonstrate an ethnocentric attitude amongst nationalities, which was particularly manifested in religious affiliations and the respective influence of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches in the Balkans.
Jelavich's study represents an evolution in the author's earlier opinions on the formation of the Yugoslav federation. In his Master's Thesis, entitled The Yugoslav Movement, 1903-1914,
Jelavich argued in favor of south slav unity, but now he believes that the only salvageable part of this research project is its bibliography. One cannot, however, say the same for his most recent work, which undoubtedly will remain essential reading for anyone
seeking a better understanding of the current regional conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
'64 -V"
7 Appendix
Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism: Russian Influence in the Internal Affairs of Bulgaria and Serbia 1876-1886 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958. Reprinted by Greenwood Press, 1978) 304pp.
Russia in the East 1876-1880. The Russo-Turkish War and the Kuldia Crisis As Seen Through the Letters of A. G. Jomini to N. K. Giers (Leiden: Brill, 1959) 173pp. (with Barbara Jelavich).
The Education of a Russian Statesman: The Memoirs of Nicholas Karlovich Giers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962. Reprinted by Greenwood Press, 1982) 241pp. (with Barbara Jelavich).
The Balkans in Transition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963. reprinted by Archon Press, 1974) (with Barbara Jelavich).
The Balkans (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1965) 248pp. (with Barbara Jelavich).
Selected Problems in the Relations of the Federal Government and the States in Modern Literary Development in America and Yugo- slavia (Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, 1968) 493pp. (Edited with Tihomir Vulovic).
Language and Area Studies: East Central and Southeastern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969) 483pp. Editor.
The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804-1920 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977) 358pp. (with Barbara Jelavich).
South Slav Nationalism, Textbooks and Yugoslav Union Before 1914 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990) 352pp.
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