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In the second half of the 19th century, Southeastern Europe was home to a vast and heterogeneous constellation of Jewish communities, mainly Sephardic to the south (Bulgaria, Greece) and Ashkenazi to the north (Hungary, Romanian Moldavia), with a broad mixed area in-between (Croatia, Serbia, Romanian Wallachia). They were subject to a variety of post-Imperial governments (from the neo-constituted principality of Bulgaria to the Hungarian kingdom re-established as an autonomous entity in 1867), which shared a powerful nationalist and modernising drive. The relations between Jews and the nation-states’ governments led to a series of issues relating to the enjoyment of civil rights, public an...
In this study of Macedonian Slavs in the Greek Civil War, the author examines how their participation in the conflict, and the attempts by other groups to manipulate them, gave rise to modern issues that continue to affect politics in the region today. The Macedonian Question has confounded academics, politicians and the people of the Balkans since the nineteenth century. While the countries have resolved the territorial component of the Macedonian Question, the critical and confusing question surrounding the ethnic and linguistic identity of the people of the region continues to be the source of international debate. Part of the reason for this confusion is because the history of the Macedonian Question is shrouded in nationalist polemics. The role of the Macedonian Slavs involvement in the Greek Civil War is particularly contentious and embedded in nationalist polemics, which has impacted academic inquiry. This book argues that the preponderance of Macedonian Slavs within the communist forces during the Greek Civil War influenced the actions of all the major actors involved, and is a significant factor in shaping the modern Macedonian national identity.
Voices of Yugoslav Jewry emphasizes the role of history in shaping Yugoslav Jewish identity. World War II imposed irreversible effects on this population of Jews, leaving them with an acute sense of disjuncture and fragmentation. This once-unified Jewish community lost its secure place in the politico-symbolic order of a single multiethnic state, and the surviving local Jewish communities, which are now a part of new states, face the task of refashioning their identities once again. The process of creating the new Yugoslavia has allowed for the emergence of a new Jewish collective voice, one that blended harmoniously with the emerging voice of Tito. This collective voice manifested itself by using language, material culture, and dramaturgical performances in ways that exhibited high public integration with the symbolic order of the new state. In searching for the voices of individuals and listening to them closely, a wide range of diverse individual experiences and ways of constructing meaningful Jewish selves can be heard. It is these voices that constitute the core of the book.
This is the first systematic pan-European study of the hundreds of thousands of non-Germans who fought - either voluntarily or under different kinds of pressures - for the Waffen-SS (or auxiliary police formations operating in the occupied East). Building on the findings of regional studies by other scholars - many of them included in this volume - The Waffen-SS aims to arrive at a fuller picture of those non-German citizens (from Eastern as well as Western Europe) who served under the SS flag. Where did the non-Germans in the SS come from (socially, geographically, and culturally)? What motivated them? What do we know about the practicalities of international collaboration in war and genoci...
The first book in English to discuss the politics of gender relations in both socialist Yugoslavia and its post-socialist successor states.
This book examines the relationship between nationalism and the rise and fall of Yugoslavia under the rule of Josip Broz Tito. It deals particularly with the interactions between communist and intellectual elites. The authors analyze elites’ initial enthusiasm about the Yugoslav federation and how, with time, they found themselves unable to suppress the nationalists in Yugoslavia. Other scholars have argued that, in a certain sense, Tito’s Yugoslavia proved to be a “hatchery” for the nations that once constituted Yugoslavia, making them ever closer to “completeness.” However, as the authors highlight in this study, this process was one of conflict. The personal role of Tito as an...