Rethinking Yugoslavia: Serbian Intellectuals and the National Question in Historical Perspective

Tools

Dragovic-Soso, Jasna. 2004. Rethinking Yugoslavia: Serbian Intellectuals and the National Question in Historical Perspective. Contemporary European History, 13(2), pp. 170-184. ISSN 0960-7773 [Article]

Preview

Text
Dragovic-Soso.pdf - Published Version
Download (118kB) | Preview

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0960777304001638

Abstract or Description

This article examines the evolving concepts of the state among Serbian intellectuals since the nineteenth century, and then focuses on their final attempt at conceptualising a new and reformed Yugoslavia before the disintegration of the country in 1991. Three concepts of the state historically existed in Serbian national thought: a centralised Yugoslav state, a federal Yugoslav union and a ‘Greater Serbia’ acting as an alternative to South Slav unification. This article argues that the Serbian intellectuals' main platform of the 1980s, the ‘Contribution to the Public Debate on the Constitution’ of 1988, remained within the main ‘pro-Yugoslav’ tradition, but that its proposals were neither genuinely ‘centralist’ nor ‘decentralist’. Rather, they were shaped by exclusively Serbian concerns and were too incoherent to resuscitate Yugoslavia.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777304001638