We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
In 1919, France and Poland signed a Convention on emigration/immigration in order to expedite the sending of Polish workers to France. No clause in this document provided for the schooling of Polish children. French employers and Polish workers then set up a Polish-speaking education programme.With a view to possibly and soon returning to their homeland, maintaining Polish identity was necessary and entailed that people learn their native language, but also all about Poland’s history and geography. Faced with the creation of these “Polish classes”, several government circulars were published in the 1920s to regulate these teachings and authorise foreign instructors, thus infringing the principle of non-differentiation of children educated under the French Republican school system. When studying this issue of Polish lessons taught in France between 1919 and 1939, it is interesting to see how the Polish minority held a vital (and enduring) role in the establishment of the Native Languages and Cultures education programme in France (the ELCO, still currently at the heart of a debate).
More...
Sport, and football in particular, became very important factors in the social life of the 20th century Serbia and Yugoslavia. Because of its significance and influence on the masses, football was under heavy pressure of the political establishment throughout the century and those political factors tried to use football for their own political goals. The policy of football control which existed in pre-WW II Yugoslavia and during the war and occupation was continued during socialism. The communist authorities abolished the „bourgeois” sporting system and tried to build their own, using constraint, ideological indoctrination and propaganda. The popular notions of footballers were created and promoted by the controlled media, such as the press and the radio, and those notions were accepted by the public as completely true. Narratives which suited the authorities, such as the one about Stjepan Bobek and Rajko Mitić, which promoted and symbolized the idea of „Brotherhood and Unity”, camaraderie, modesty and willingness to work hard, were constantly present in the public sphere. The seamy side of Yugoslav sport, such as misconduct of sportsmen, ethnic tensions and moral and political corruption, were hidden away from the public. Using the propaganda, in the late 1940's and throughout the 1950's, the notion was created that footballers were model youths and upstanding and worthy members of the socialist community. In the 1960's there was a major shift in the popular views on football and footballers. The public generally focused more on the negative sides of football and footballers who were outside the box and who broke the standard patterns of behavior generally accepted in socialist Yugoslavia. During the 1960's a few footballers emerged who were both loved and hated by the press and by the public alike, such as Dragoslav Šekularac from the „Crvena zvezda” football club. He was probably the first real superstar of Yugoslav football. The causes of this shift in perspective were numerous, most notably larger accessibility of the media content to the average Yugoslav, but also the general trend of liberalization of the public sphere in 1960’s Yugoslavia, which allowed the press to write more freely. The consequences of such a change were numerous, the most important being that the Yugoslav football was rarely used in state political propaganda in the coming years. The football public became more critical and the negative trends in football more visible, making thus the further development of Yugoslav football more similar to that in the rest of Europe and of the world.
More...
There is no doubt about the help USSR lent to the People’s Liberation Movement in the struggle for international recognition of changes which came about in Yugoslavia during WWII. USSR and its leader Stalin were not willing to side unreservedly with the Communist movement in Yugoslavia since they didn’t want to spoil their relations with the Western Allies. They were directing the Yugoslav Communists to reach a compromise with the royal Yugoslav government. As shown by the partisan military diplomacy, it was through a compromise that the common government (the National Committee of Liberation of Yugoslavia and the royal Yugoslav government) was built at the end of the war. However, one shouldn’t forget the independence of the Yugoslav movement and its leader J.B. Tito. The autochthonous Yugoslav military power which developed during the war in Yugoslavia, deserves special mention. The Yugoslav leader J.B. Tito learned exactly at that time what the interests of the world politics were. He would prove his self–assuredness later on by clashing with Stalin and USSR and by putting into question the unity of the Communist East.
More...
The paper analyses how personalization of tragedy of the participants of WWII was used to strengthen Yugoslav-Soviet ties in the first days after the liberation of Yugoslavia. The text also analyzes the processes of rapprochement and of establishing closer ties between the two countries during 1960s when new forms of political and cultural cooperation were based on renewed remembrance of the courage of the participants in the war. Special attention was devoted to interpretations of WWII in contemporary historiography which unearthed new data and opened new perspectives. Turning to experiences of individuals was suggested as a possibility of drawing conclusions without ideological revisions of the whole history of 20th century.
More...
General Mihailo Živković was one of the outstanding Serbian military commanders of the Balkan wars and World War I. He made his first officer steps during one of the 19th century wars, and finished his military service at the time of the largest military conflict in the history of Serbia and the world. Being one of the most talented infantry officers of his generation, Živković built a brilliant officer career and took the high post of military minister during the Annexation crisis. During the Balkan wars, he commanded the Ibar Army, and during World War I headed the defense of Belgrade and the Serbian Volunteer Corps in Russia. His views on military science were very close to the Russian military theory and military practice. He trained in Russia, diligently followed the changes in the Russian army, and kept close ties with Russian officers. On the other hand, the Russian military representatives highly appreciated Mihailo Živković and regarded him as the bearer of Russian influence in the Serbian military circles.
More...
This paper deals with the part of the ideological world of Russian emigrants, primarily priests and theologians, who wrote on the pages of the Serbian church press of the 1920s about the reasons and causes of the coup in Russia in 1917. The approach from the standpoint of providentialism, which was traditional for Christian church in explaining the historical processes, dominated; at the same time, apocalyptic–symbolic–esoteric tones prevailed as they were intensified by the real difficulties of refugee life. When Russian emigrants tried to study the mystery of success of the October revolution, they used the Serbian church periodical press to show their anti-Semitic moods, criticism of communism from the Christian position and fear of the Bolshevism.
More...
As a dominant social class within the country’s population and as a social group which suffered most of the war casualties, Serbian peasantry had provided a crucial contribution to the creation of Yugoslav state in 1918. It remained a reservoir of manpower and of physical, moral and economic strength of the Serbian people in the Yugoslav Kingdom, serving as a faithful guardian of „national thought“ and tradition. However, the peasantry failed to assume a greater political influence in the country. The main reasons for quite a passive and marginal status of Serbian peasantry in political life were its backwardness, fear of authorities and its economic underdevelopment. Regardless of the fact that political parties have usually betrayed the peasants` expectations, Serbian peasantry continued to enter the polls and to vote. Actually, the peasantry was „voting” rather than having opportunity to choose between political options. One cannot say it was outwitted by unrealistic promises, more likely it was under the influence of traditional belief that the state must be attributed with the power, no matter what. The state interests were a kind of „sanctity” for a peasant in interwar Serbia.
More...
Both occupiers’ partition of Yugoslavia in 1941 and the establishment of the collaborationist regimes caused a major change in many aspects of life, including the agrarian structure of Yugoslav territory and the whole agriculture as well. A number of changes regarding the land property relations have occurred within the occupiers’ zones of partitioned Yugoslavia and in the territory of quisling formations. These were primarily related to the annulment of the interwar agrarian reform and colonization implemented before 1941, which was accomplished by expelling and killing of former settlers. This particularly applies to the area of the so-called Independent State of Croatia, as well as areas under Hungarian, Bulgarian and Italian occupation. Another important aspect was the forced relocation of natives (mostly Slovenes and Serbs) from the area in which they lived. Furthermore, many farms in Yugoslavia were deserted due to a mass destruction and killing of rural population. According to data obtained during the postwar identification of the World War Two consequences, there were 289,000 completely destroyed households in Yugoslavia.
More...
The interweaving of patriarchal and emancipatory values in Serbian society during the second half of the twentieth century was manifested in various social segments, shaping the everyday life of women and affecting their lifestyle habits and practices. However, the overcoming patriarchal social inhibitions in socialism were not comprehensive at all. Тhe essential continuities of patriarchal value system and their rootedness in everyday life were often concealed underneath formal changes facilitated by the state. On the other hand, many strongholds of social inequalities have collapsed during the socialist Yugoslavia and Serbia, while the effects of emancipatory politics were evident in many spheres of life. The socialist model of development and transformation led to changes, primarily in the domain of formal gender relations, as well as in education and women employment policy. Regardless of this, an unequal participation of men and women in family chores has survived which produced a gender inequality again, leading to further conflicts regarding the role of a working woman. The coexistence of traditional and modern forms, values and behavior, had more conspicuous demarcation in distinction between urban and rural, among other things. Finally, the apparent differences between the urban and rural women life have remained almost the same even in socialist period.
More...
Throughout its existence, sports in Serbia and Yugoslavia developed, to a large degree, under the influence of politics and various political ideologies. In the Kingdom of Serbia, MPs and government ministers had the power to both help and hinder sporting clubs, and in the return they gained popularity and prestige that went hand in hand with the executive posts in sporting clubs and with the presence in the executive boxes of the stadium terraces. In the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia, sport, among other domains of public interest, represented a ground for clashes between the state officials, which used sporting clubs and organizations as tools for promoting government policies and, starting in 1929, as instrument for spreading the ideology of integral Yugoslavism, and the opposition, both democratic and nationalistic, which also held great influence in sports, especially in the Croatian parts of the country. The socialist period of Yugoslav history was not much different. Totalitarian ideologies paid great attention to sports and physical culture, not just as an ideal medium for self-promotion and advertising the superiority of one’s own political and social model, but also as generally important segments of social and cultural life of one nation, ideal for implementing various models of social engineering. Yugoslav communists paid much attention to the issues of sport and physical culture from the earliest days of their action, continuing the traditions of early socialists, who saw the connection between sports and physical exercise and the general state of nation’s health, especially the health condition of urban working population. Members and officials of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia participated in the work of Moscow-based Red Sport International (or Sportintern) and other international communist sporting associations and at the same time managed numerous sporting clubs throughout the country. There were hundreds of sporting clubs in Yugoslavia controlled by the communists with thousands of members and competitors. During the Second World War, the communist- controlled National Liberation Army organized numerous sporting events, such as the partisan „Olympics“ in Foča in 1942, sporting games of the youth in Drvar in 1944, football matches in the liberated island of Vis in 1944 or the foundation of the „Partizan“ sports society in Topusko in 1944. Immediately after the liberation of Serbia in 1944, the new public authorities were being established. Due to the need to arrange the pressing issues as soon as possible, sporting life in Serbia was for a while in a sort of a vacuum. Technically speaking, sports and physical culture were at the beginning controlled by the Ministry of Education, but practically, in 1944 was controlled by no one. In 1945 the direction of new sports politics was becoming more obvious – the initiative was left to youth and syndicalist organizations, as well as the army, and they took upon themselves the obligation to reckon with bourgeois tendencies in sports and to set completely new foundations to Serbian sport. Main characteristics of the earliest period of post-war Serbian sporting history were suppression of the old civic sporting clubs and associations and confiscation of their property, creating new clubs, which represented new authorities and social and political organizations, as well as organization of supreme controlling bodies, which were to keep their eyes on the entire sporting life of the nation. The model on which the new clubs were organized can best be seen on the examples of the two Belgrade sporting associations founded in 1945 – „Crvena zvezda“, a club run by Serbian United Antifascist Youth League, and „Partizan“, club run by the Yugoslav army. It is important to mention that control over the sporting clubs was to certain extent decentralized – in the beginning, the main authorities in sports were Physical Culture Councils, which were organized at the level of federal units, which meant that supreme governing body of Serbian sport was the Physical Culture Council of Serbia, while the Yugoslav Physical Culture Council was just a federation of basically autonomous organizations. This meant that different Yugoslav republics actually led quite different sporting policies. The policies especially differed in Serbia and Croatia. Yugoslav sport in the period of socialism was in the constant process of change. With the partial change in the political and ideological course of the state due to the confrontation with the Cominform, the grip on sport was somewhat loosened. The relations in Yugoslav sport also changed when the politics of self-governing was introduced. However, the radical transformation of Serbian sport from the earliest period of communist rule shaped the sport in the second half of the 20th century and some of the decisions then made still linger today.
More...
The ideological and political changes in the Balkans at the end of the Second World War had a great impact on both the publishing policy and the contents of history textbooks. Due to a way in which communism was established in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, as well as because of changes initiated by the Resolution of IB, the educational publishing policies in these two countries were quite different. The Soviet model of a textbook written by Evgeny Alexeyevich Kosminsky „History of the Middle Ages” was translated in both countries, infl uencing changes in interpretations of national history. The model was introduced in Yugoslavia immediately after the war, as a result of a complex ethnic structure, but also due to a desire of Yugoslav communists to present them as a vanguard in spreading the Soviet influence. On the other hand, since Bulgaria was a country of „people’s democracy” (just like GDR, Poland, or Romania), the Soviet textbook was translated and introduced in history teaching as a consequence of consolidation within the Eastern Bloc after the Tito-Stalin conflict. Since the Soviet textbook was concentrated mainly on general history, neglecting the history of Yugoslav and Bulgarian nations, the education authorities in Sofia supplemented their edition with lessons from national history. After the Resolution of IB, the Yugoslav authorities have approved the writing of new history textbooks in which the history of South Slavs preceded the national history of „new Yugoslavia”. The most radical change in history textbooks in both countries concerned the harmonization of national history with the Marxist ideology. Furthermore, the history of the Byzantine Empire was modifi ed in accordance with the requirements of current ideology, while the question of Bulgarian ethnogenesis has undergone signifi cant interpretive changes: due to ideological requirements during the first post-war decade, modern Bulgarians in Bulgarian history textbooks turned from the people of Turkish origin into a purely Slavic nation. All the textbooks published immediately after the Second World War showed a high degree of ideologization of medieval history.
More...
Modernization measures of the socialist state and the changes occurring within the family after the Second World War influenced the situation of women and were reflected in their lives. The situation of women was strongly influenced by full legal equality between men and women, extended education and increased economic independence based on the fact that the proportion of employed women was much larger than previously. The process of family nuclearization, liberalization of divorce and the possibility of birth control were also important determinants of the status of women in socialism. All this did not suffice to completely overcome traditional ways of thinking about female being and social function, to overcome the traditional values and change the deep ingrained roles of man and woman within the family. Women still did most of the housework, and they took unto themselves care of children, even when they were employed. Despite all the changes which took place during the after-war years, the perceptible differences that marked the ways of living of men and women in town and in the country in the inter-war period were not disposed of. The system of norms and behaviour typical for patriarchal ideology was more important and exercised greater influence in the country than in towns and cities. Many signs point to the fact that the modernization process of rural families and changes within them are neither clear-cut nor that they completely overcame the patriarchal system. Together with pronounced differences in the status and way of life of women in urban and rural areas, in various types of families, with the echo of emancipation on the one hand, and the strong influence of tradition on the other, as well as with all the changes which came about during the socialist modernization, female inferiority remained a constant, particularly within the framework of traditional family roles.
More...
The article explores the relations between the Serbs in Croatia and Serbia in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The results of the research indicate that the Serb people from the Croat territories, not having lost the feeling of spiritual unity with the Serbs of Serbia even under the Habsburgs, remained loyal to Serbia in the new state too. Not only the Radical, but also the Democrat/Independent-Democrat part of the Serb community cherished the awareness of Serbia’s greatness and importance. It seems the Serb national entity perceived in Yugoslavism no obstacle to attachment to Serbia, which had to be borne in mind even by that part of its political leadership which joined the Croats in their struggle against Belgrade in the second half of 1920s. However, when Serbian politicians and intellectuals from Croatia are in question, or at least those of their representatives who were active in public life, they left a number of interesting and provoking opinions about Serbia, mentality of its inhabitants and its leaders. These attitudes well reflect certain split between the political and intellectual elites from Serbia and Croatia. From a gamut of different views, ideas, experiences and reactions, the most representative have been picked out. Among them are the attitudes of politically independent intellectuals (Ljubomir Macić for example). Particularly critical attitude toward Serbia was shared above all by members of the circle around Svetozar Pribićević, as well as those who were democratically inclined. No harsh words about Serbia were to be heard from the ranks of the Radical politicians; on the contrary, they were prone to defend it, appreciating the victims and sufferings of Serbia and its contribution to the liberation and unification of all Serbs and other Yugoslav peoples. They were denouncing as irrational and unproductive the division into the Serbs from Serbia and from without it. The existence of two different political options, one of which siding with Zagreb, threatened to spoil not only the relations within the Serb community in Croatia, but also to weaken the feeling of loyalty of the Serbs from Croatia toward Serbia and to sever the ties binding them fast to their conationals from the Serbian mainland.
More...
The problem of functioning of Serbian emigrants’ schools in the United States of America between the two world wars constituted not only an educational and schooling matter, but also as a matter of preservation of national consciousness, and – indirectly – also as the problem of ethnic survival of the Serbian emigration in America. However, even though both the Yugoslav government and the emigrants realized their importance, little was done in order to secure the necessary conditions for normal functioning of these educational institutions. Practically from the very beginning, the Serbian schools were plagued by lack of all school equipment, schoolbooks, adequate rooms for instruction, as well as by lack of trained teaching personnel. Irregular instruction, temporary character of their work and inequality of the teaching process were concomitant elements in the work of these schools. The main props of the educational process, the Church above all, but Serbian supportive associations too, tried to improve to certain extent the state in which education was. In these attempts they sought the support of the Yugoslav authorities too. However, the beginning of the Second World War would put an end to these attempts, with wartime events in the fatherland and the world gaining the uppermost priority in the activities and thoughts of the Serbian emigrants.
More...
Two groups of emigrants from the Serbian territory found themselves in the territory of Egypt in the years following the Second World War. The first group was formed by the emigrants who settled there in several waves since mid-19th century, and the second one were the former army officers and diplomats who fled from Yugoslavia to the Middle East after the collapse of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in spring 1941. For larger part, the older emigration, together with members of other Yugoslav peoples living in the Egyptian territory, was organized in several Yugoslav clubs. The Yugoslav Embassy tried to act politically and propagandistically through these associations. The anti-Communist Egyptian regime did not tolerate this, so these associations were disbanded and their members subjected to various kinds of repression which lasted until the bilateral relations were improved after the Egyptian revolution in 1952. The emigrants who arrived in Egypt during the Second World War tried to act politically against the newly established regime in Yugoslavia. In that they enjoyed the support of the Egyptian government, and, according to the opinion of the Yugoslav diplomats, also of some Western intelligence agencies. The students of Islamic universities stemming from Serbia who refused to return to Yugoslavia, were also propagandistically active against the Communist regime in Yugoslavia, enjoying the support of the Egyptian government and the Arab League in the process. An incipient collaboration in the common struggle against Communism in Yugoslavia can be observed between these groups since 1946. Due to speedy improvement of the Yugoslav-Egyptian relations after the revolution of 1952, these groups ceased operating under the threat of arrest and expulsion, whereas part of their adherants moved out of Egypt.
More...
The problem of the Serbian and other Yugoslav national minorities in the neighboring Hungary and Romania was one of the most important matters in Yugoslavia’s relations with these countries after the Second World War. Since it represented only part of a much broader problem of national minorities in the Communist world, it reflected not only a crisis in the bilateral relations, but also a crisis between the newly-formed Communist countries of Eastern Europe. The Situation of the Serbian national minority, as well as of the Yugoslav minorities living in Hungary and Romania, was exceedingly difficult in 1953. The legal status of these minorities was not defined by mutual conventions with Yugoslavia but only by internal legal acts which provided almost no protection. The rights these acts guaranteed to the Serbian and other minorities, remained largely on paper. In contravention of the positive laws the Serbian minority in Hungary and Romania had neither freedom of movement, nor the right to express political opinions, and even less the satisfactory education in mother tongue or the freedom to cultivate its individuality through its cultural and educational institutions and organizations. Unfortunately, before struggling for these and other minority rights, the Serbian minority, faced with deportations and economic exploitation, had to conquer the most elementary right – the right to live and to survive physically.
More...