Download or read book Once Upon a Yugoslavia written by Surya Green and published by New Europe Books. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is 1968. Across America, citizens march for social reform and an end to the Vietnam War. Amid all this, Surya Green--a New York-born, self-absorbed, modern young woman--is a student at Stanford University, blithely pursuing a graduate degree in communication. Her view of life's purpose unexpectedly starts to expand when she says "Yes" when her Stanford film mentor selects her for a writing job at Zagreb Film in Yugoslavia. Family and friends marvel at her courage, or foolishness. The Zagreb studio may be the renowned producer of the first non-American animated film to win an Oscar, but it is in a country most Americans fear and reject as "communist." Green has no idea that her stay in Yugoslavia will ultimately take her beyond national borders to the outermost limits of her mind. Although penned in the first person against the backdrop of Tito's Yugoslavia in historic 1968, Once Upon a Yugoslavia is, paradoxically, most timely. The global economic crisis has compelled people to question excessive consumption and redefine success and the good life while embracing new lifestyle priorities--just as Yugoslavia required of Surya Green decades ago. Once Upon a Yugoslavia addresses this present-day longing while also offering a lively history lesson. History books have objectively described the former Yugoslavia, but Once Upon a Yugoslavia gives personalized look at the everyday lives of people in pre-1989 Eastern Europe that shows how the experience transformed one young woman's American Dream. Chronicling the sights, sounds, and ups and downs of the everyday Yugoslav existence, Green speaks to both the positive and negative aspects of the contemporary phenomenon known as "Yugo-nostalgia." The pros and cons of the American and Yugoslav societies fly to and fro during Surya's conversations with a host of colorful characters--some of whom she lodges with and travels the countryside with, others of whom she dates. In this strange Big Brotherish country of perplexing language, culture, and customs--which gives Surya an early experience of living a monitored life without privacy in a land where paranoia is contagious--more than once readers will hear her sobbing at night. Ultimately, the Yugoslav social experiment--its plus points, at least--were to give Surya Green a considerably altered view of the American values with which she was raised. And it is what led to that perspective--a personal transformation that started for her in explosive, memorable, life-changing 1968 in Tito's Yugoslavia, and continues to this day--which makes Once Upon a Yugoslavia such a unique and remarkable book. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Download or read book A History of Yugoslavia written by Marie-Janine Calic and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-15 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did Yugoslavia fall apart? Was its violent demise inevitable? Did its population simply fall victim to the lure of nationalism? How did this multinational state survive for so long, and where do we situate the short life of Yugoslavia in the long history of Europe in the twentieth century? A History of Yugoslavia provides a concise, accessible, comprehensive synthesis of the political, cultural, social, and economic life of Yugoslavia—from its nineteenth-century South Slavic origins to the bloody demise of the multinational state of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Calic takes a fresh and innovative look at the colorful, multifaceted, and complex history of Yugoslavia, emphasizing major social, economic, and intellectual changes from the turn of the twentieth century and the transition to modern industrialized mass society. She traces the origins of ethnic, religious, and cultural divisions, applying the latest social science approaches, and drawing on the breadth of recent state-of-the-art literature, to present a balanced interpretation of events that takes into account the differing perceptions and interests of the actors involved. Uniquely, Calic frames the history of Yugoslavia for readers as an essentially open-ended process, undertaken from a variety of different regional perspectives with varied composite agenda. She shuns traditional, deterministic explanations that notorious Balkan hatreds or any other kind of exceptionalism are to blame for Yugoslavia’s demise, and along the way she highlights the agency of twentieth-century modern mass society in the politicization of differences. While analyzing nuanced political and social-economic processes, Calic describes the experiences and emotions of ordinary people in a vivid way. As a result, her groundbreaking work provides scholars and learned readers alike with an accessible, trenchant, and authoritative introduction to Yugoslavia's complex history.

Download or read book Race and the Yugoslav Region written by Catherine Baker and published by Theory for a Global Age. This book was released on 2018 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the territories and collective identities of former Yugoslavia within the politics of race - not just ethnicity - and the history of how ideas of racialised difference have been translated globally

Download or read book After Yugoslavia written by Radmila Gorup and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-12 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book brings together many of the best known commentators and scholars who write about former Yugoslavia. The essays focus on the post-Yugoslav cultural transition and try to answer questions about what has been gained and what has been lost since the dissolution of the common country. Most of the contributions can be seen as current attempts to make sense of the past and help cultures in transition, as well as to report on them. The volume is a mixture of personal essays and scholarly articles and that combination of genres makes the book both moving and informative. Its importance is unique. While many studies dwell on the causes of the demise of Yugoslavia, this collection touches upon these causes but goes beyond them to identify Yugoslavia's legacy in a comprehensive way. It brings topics and writers, usually treated separately, into fruitful dialog with one another.

Download or read book Researching Yugoslavia and its Aftermath written by Branislav Radeljić and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-06-14 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Researching Yugoslavia and its Aftermath, a common thread is the authors’ path through the time and space context in which fieldwork has taken place. Accordingly, this collection tackles problems that have always existed but have not been dealt with in a single volume. In particular, it examines a range of methodological questions arising from the contributors’ shared concerns, and thus the obstacles and solutions characterising the relationship between researchers and their objects of study. Being an interdisciplinary project, this book brings together highly regarded historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, cultural and social theorists, as well as experts in architecture and communication studies. They share a belief that the awareness of the researcher’s own position in fieldwork is a precondition of utmost significance to comprehend the evolution of objects of study, and hence to ensure transparency and ultimate credibility of the findings. Moreover, the contributors come from diverse backgrounds, including authors from the former Yugoslavia and others who have made their way to the region after starting their research careers; some from universities in the area, others from institutions in the Global North. Here, they explore cross-cutting issues such as the repercussions of gender, nationality, institutional affiliation and the consequences of their entry into the field. This is examined in terms of the results of the research and the ethical aspect of the relationship with the object of study, as well as the implications of the chosen time framework in the methodological design and the clash between this decision and the interests of the actors studied.

Download or read book The Myth of Ethnic War written by V. P. Gagnon, Jr. and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in neighboring Croatia and Kosovo grabbed the attention of the western world not only because of their ferocity and their geographic location, but also because of their timing. This violence erupted at the exact moment when the cold war confrontation was drawing to a close, when westerners were claiming their liberal values as triumphant, in a country that had only a few years earlier been seen as very well placed to join the west. In trying to account for this outburst, most western journalists, academics, and policymakers have resorted to the language of the premodern: tribalism, ethnic hatreds, cultural inadequacy, irrationality; in short, the Balkans as the antithesis of the modern west. Yet one of the most striking aspects of the wars in Yugoslavia is the extent to which the images purveyed in the western press and in much of the academic literature are so at odds with evidence from on the ground."—from The Myth of Ethnic War V. P. Gagnon Jr. believes that the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s were reactionary moves designed to thwart populations that were threatening the existing structures of political and economic power. He begins with facts at odds with the essentialist view of ethnic identity, such as high intermarriage rates and the very high percentage of draft-resisters. These statistics do not comport comfortably with the notion that these wars were the result of ancient blood hatreds or of nationalist leaders using ethnicity to mobilize people into conflict. Yugoslavia in the late 1980s was, in Gagnon's view, on the verge of large-scale sociopolitical and economic change. He shows that political and economic elites in Belgrade and Zagreb first created and then manipulated violent conflict along ethnic lines as a way to short-circuit the dynamics of political change. This strategy of violence was thus a means for these threatened elites to demobilize the population. Gagnon's noteworthy and rather controversial argument provides us with a substantially new way of understanding the politics of ethnicity.

Download or read book Explaining Yugoslavia written by John B. Allcock and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traversing the politics, economics, demography, and culture of the former Yugoslavia, John B. Allcock examines and makes sense of the region's troubled past and troubling present. Though many think of the Balkans as a uniquely troubled region, the author asserts that the continuities in Balkan history constitute the same processes of development that have occurred in other societies and are part of the ongoing process of global modernization.

Download or read book Serbian Nationalism and the Origins of the Yugoslav Crisis written by Vesna Pešić and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Europe from the Balkans to the Urals written by Renéo Lukic and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1991 shed entirely new light on the character of their political systems. There is now a need to re-examine many of the standard interpretations of Soviet and Yugoslav politics. This book is a comparative study of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union - as multinational, federal communist states - and the reaction of European and US foreign policy to the parallel collapses of these nations. The authors describe the structural similarities in the destabilization of the two countries, providing great insight into the demise of both.

Download or read book Yugoslavia s Ruin written by Cvijeto Job and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2002 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This remarkable book combines analysis and memoir to offer the unique perspective of an informed insider who lived through Yugoslavia's demise. Cvijeto Job's powerful and provocative story of Yugoslavia's birth, rise, and brutal destruction is intertwined with his family history as he probes deeply into the causes and legacies of Yugoslavia's ruin. The result is a sober assessment of the successes and unflinching critique of the failures of Tito's Yugoslavia and how policies that were intended to ameliorate the country's ethnic tensions were corrupted or abandoned, ending in its undoing. Job argues passionately for the intervention of the international community in Yugoslavia and offers concrete suggestions for preventing future ethnic atrocities. Anyone reading his book will come to think more deeply about the ways in which the web of history and collective political culture weave the fates of nations and individuals in times of crisis.

Download or read book Making and Breaking the Yugoslav Working Class written by Goran Musić and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Workers' self-management was one of the unique features of communist Yugoslavia. Goran Musić has investigated the changing ways in which blue-collar workers perceived the recurring crises of the regime. Two self-managed metal enterprises, one in Serbia another in Slovenia, provide the frame of the analysis in the time span between 1945 and 1989. These two factories became famous for strikes in 1988 that evoked echoes in popular discourses in former Yugoslavia. Drawing on interviews, factory publications and other media, local archives, and secondary literature, Musić analyzes the two cases, going beyond the clichés of political manipulation from the top and workers' intrinsic attraction to nationalism. The author explains how, in the later phase of communist Yugoslavia, growing social inequalities among the workers and undemocratic practices inside the self-managed enterprises facilitated the spread of a nationalist and pro-market ideology on the shop floors. Yet rather than being a mass taken advantage of by populist leaders, the working class Musić presents is one with agency and voice, a force that played an important role in shaping the fate of the country. The book thus seeks to open a debate on the social processes leading up to the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

Download or read book Coca Cola Socialism written by Radina Vučetić and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-20 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the Americanization of Yugoslav culture and everyday life during the nineteen-sixties. After falling out with the Eastern bloc, Tito turned to the United States for support and inspiration. In the political sphere the distance between the two countries was carefully maintained, yet in the realms of culture and consumption the Yugoslav regime was definitely much more receptive to the American model. For Titoist Yugoslavia this tactic turned out to be beneficial, stabilising the regime internally and providing an image of openness in foreign policy. Coca-Cola Socialism addresses the link between cultural diplomacy, culture, consumer society and politics. Its main argument is that both culture and everyday life modelled on the American way were a major source of legitimacy for the Yugoslav Communist Party, and a powerful weapon for both USA and Yugoslavia in the Cold War battle for hearts and minds. Radina Vučetić explores how the Party used American culture in order to promote its own values and what life in this socialist and capitalist hybrid system looked like for ordinary people who lived in a country with communist ideology in a capitalist wrapping. Her book offers a careful reevaluation of the limits of appropriating the American dream and questions both an uncritical celebration of Yugoslavia’s openness and an exaggerated depiction of its authoritarianism.

Download or read book Miss Ex Yugoslavia written by Sofija Stefanovic and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “funny and tragic and beautiful in all the right places” (Jenny Lawson, #1 New York Times bestseller author of Furiously Happy) memoir about the immigrant experience and life as a perpetual fish-out-of-water, from the acclaimed Serbian-Australian storyteller. Sofija Stefanovic makes the first of many awkward entrances in 1982, when she is born in socialist Yugoslavia. The circumstances of her birth (a blackout, gasoline shortages, bickering parents) don’t exactly get her off to a running start. While around her, ethnic tensions are stoked by totalitarian leaders with violent agendas, Stefanovic’s early life is filled with Yugo rock, inadvisable crushes, and the quirky ups and downs of life in a socialist state. As the political situation grows more dire, the Stefanovics travel back and forth between faraway, peaceful Australia, where they can’t seem to fit in, and their turbulent homeland, which they can’t seem to shake. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia collapses into the bloodiest European conflict in recent history. Featuring warlords and beauty queens, tiger cubs and Baby-Sitters Clubs, Sofija Stefanovic’s memoir is a window to a complicated culture that she both cherishes and resents. Revealing war and immigration from the crucial viewpoint of women and children, Stefanovic chronicles her own coming-of-age, both as a woman and as an artist. Refreshingly candid, poignant, and illuminating, “Stefanovic’s story is as unique and wacky as it is important” (Esquire).

Download or read book The Chetnik Movement and the Yugoslav Resistance written by Matteo J. Milazzo and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2019-12-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1975. This book fills a gap in the historical knowledge of wartime Yugoslavia. Focusing on the Chetnik movement provides a better understanding of the various ways that important segments of the population, including members of the Yugoslav officer corps and Serb civilians, perceived and responded to the occupation. The partisans' ultimate success does not conceal the fact that during the greater part of the war, several armed groups, owing at least some sort of allegiance to Mihailovic, chose very different courses of resistance. The overriding question for Milazzo is how a movement whose leadership was in no sense pro-Axis found itself progressively drawn into a hopelessly compromising set of relationships with the occupation authorities and the Quisling regime. What was it about the situation in occupied Yugoslavia and the Serb officers' response to that state of affairs that prevented them from carrying out serious anti-Axis activity or engaging in effective collaboration? The author attends to the emergence, organization, and failure of the Chetniks, the regional particularities of the movement, and Mihailovic's efforts to establish his own authority over the widely scattered non-Communist armed formations. The author also discusses the domestic opposition to Tito and the complex reality of the national and political civil war in Yugoslavia.

Download or read book Fools Crusade written by Diana Johnstone and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A discussion of the political illusion created by the humanitarian bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 that tests popular beliefs

Download or read book Where You Come From written by Sasa Stanisic and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award A Washington Post, Chicago Review of Books, Kirkus, and Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Month “Inventive, funny and moving.” —The New York Times Book Review Translated from the German by Damion Searls Winner of the German Book Prize, Saša Stanišic’s inventive and surprising novel asks: what makes us who we are? In August, 1992, a boy and his mother flee the war in Yugoslavia and arrive in Germany. Six months later, the boy’s father joins them, bringing a brown suitcase, insomnia, and a scar on his thigh. Saša Stanišic’s Where You Come From is a novel about this family, whose world is uprooted and remade by war: their history, their life before the conflict, and the years that followed their escape as they created a new life in a new country. Blending autofiction, fable, and choose-your-own-adventure, Where You Come From is set in a village where only thirteen people remain, in lost and made-up memories, in coincidences, in choices, and in a dragons’ den. Translated by Damion Searls, it’s a novel about homelands, both remembered and imagined, lost and found. A book that playfully twists form and genre with wit and heart to explore questions that lie inside all of us: about language and shame, about arrival and making it just in time, about luck and death, about what role our origins and memories play in our lives.

Download or read book Impossible Country written by Brian Hall and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-04-30 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Here is art which conceals art, and intellect which conceals intellect, so that by the end of the book one feels that one understands something one had not understood before. Mr Hall is witty and amusing, but not snide; he has a lightness of touch which allows him to write of extremely serious matters without solemnity; he knows how to convey a great deal in a few words' Sunday Telegraph 'He is an observant and witty writer...you believe implicitly that he has met the people he writes about, and that they said what he quotes them as saying' Sunday Times