Dejan Djokic

The Second World War II: Discourses of reconciliation in Serbia and Croatia in the late 1980s and early 1990s

This article was originally presented as a paper at the ‘Post-Kosovo Balkans: Perspectives on Reconciliation’ workshop, which I co-convened with Stephanie Schwander-Sievers, and which took place at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London on 17 March 2000. I am grateful to Aleksa Djilas, Jasna Dragović-Soso, Claire Moon, Aleksandar Pavković and an anonymous reviewer for many useful comments. Needless to say, I am responsible for any shortcoming of this study. Bećković quoted from: Miodrag PerisVić, Interview with Matija Bećković, KnjizVevne novine (Belgrade), No. 792, 15 February 1990; Aralica and IvancVić: Viktor IvancVić, TocVka na U. SlucVaj SVakić: Anatomija jednog skandala, Feral Tribune, Split, 1998, pp. 133–134 and p. 131, respectively.

Nationalism, Myth and Reinterpretation of History: The Neglected Case of Interwar Yugoslavia

This article discusses and challenges some popular myths and perceptions about interwar Yugoslavia in post-socialist (and post-Yugoslav) Serbia. These include discourses that blame ‘others’ – ‘treacherous’ Croats and other non-Serbs, the ‘perfidious’ west, especially Britain – and that are also self-critical, of Serbs’ ‘naivety’ as exemplified in their choosing to create Yugoslavia at the end of the First World War, and of, later, embracing communism. The article also offers a reassessment of the interwar period, often neglected by scholars of former Yugoslavia.

Britain and Dissent in Tito's Yugoslavia: The Djilas Affair, ca. 1956

This work sheds light on British official and unofficial responses to the ‘Djilas affair’ in its early stages. The analysis is centred around two letters written in April 1956 - by Milovan Djilas to Morgan Phillips, the Labour Party Secretary, and a letter Phillips wrote to the Yugoslav President Tito, expressing his concern for Djilas’ predicament. The article contributes to a better understanding of the Djilas affair in several ways. Djilas’ letter offers a good insight into both his character and the predicament in which he found himself 2 years after the conflict with the Yugoslav leadership began and only 7 months before he was first arrested. Phillips’ action reveals that some leading members of the Labour Party were prepared to act on Djilas’ behalf. The governing Conservative Party, on the other hand, was more concerned with keeping good relations with Belgrade than with the destiny of the first significant dissident in Eastern Europe

Book Review: Yugoslavia and its Historians: Understanding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s

Similarly, both MiloåeviN’s and Tud-man’s speeches are only quoted from secondary sources (and usually English-language ones), which is particularly surprising considering the importance accorded to language in MaleåeviN’s analysis. Finally, there is virtually no mention of the many published analyses of the role of both the media and textbooks as tools of regime legitimation and vectors of ideology in socialist Yugoslavia and its successor states. It is difficult to place an equal emphasis on theory and empirical rigour and MaleåeviN should be lauded for trying to do so. Unfortunately, one is left with the distinct impression that empirical accuracy, nuance and complexity, as well as deeper comparative analysis, were ultimately sacrificed to an only partially successful attempt at theoretical innovation.