PART I: MANIFOLD YUGOSLAVISMS - Yugoslavism before the Creation of Yugoslavia
PART I: MANIFOLD YUGOSLAVISMS - Yugoslavism before the Creation of Yugoslavia

Author(s): Drago Roksandić
Subject(s): Recent History (1900 till today)
Published by: Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji
Summary/Abstract: Nations, understood primarily as a sovereign people, had in the “long 19th century”, already after the French Revolution of 1789, become historical subjects that had appropriated the experience of the national past, the national present and future, so that (Yugo) Slavism, too, originally a phenomenon of South Slavic interconnectedness, had conceptually changed its meanings dramatically in different national traditions. From that standpoint, (Yugo) Slavism cannot be an analytical concept, but nevertheless can be the subject of analysis, including in all its distinct, particular historical manifestations, meaning also as an ideologeme. Yugoslavism was essentially the only attempt among the South Slavs in mid-south-eastern Europe to use endogenic processes from “below” to go beyond the (sub) regional logic of survival at the periphery of imperial regimes, to secure a better future for all by constituting a multifaceted complex state union according to the measure of its own needs. However, such an ideal type of Yugoslavism never, in fact, existed. It could not have existed anyway, since the dynamics of interconnected changes “externally” and “internally” prevented all nations individually in their development in central and south-eastern Europe.

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