Paramilitarism in the Balkans: the Cases of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania, 1917–1924

Paramilitarism in the Balkans analyses the origins and manifestations of
paramilitary violence in three neighbouring Balkan countries – Yugoslavia, Bulgaria,
and Albania – after the First World War. It shows the role of paramilitarism in internal
and external policies in all three states, focusing on the main actors and perpetrators
of paramilitary violence, their social backgrounds, motivations, and future career
trajectories. Dmitar Tasic places the region into the broader European context of booming
paramilitarism that came as the result of the first global conflict, dissolution of old empires,
the creation of nation-states, and simultaneous revolutions. While paramilitarism in most
post-Great War European states was the product of violence of the First World War and
brutalization which societies of both victorious and defeated countries went through,
paramilitarism in the Balkans was closely connected with the already existing traditions
originating from the period of armed struggle against Ottoman rule, and state and nation
building projects of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Paramilitary
traditions were so strong that in all subsequent crises and military conflicts in
the Balkans the legacy of paramilitarism remained alive and present.

(taken from Robert Gerwarth, General Editor of the The Great War series)

You can see the content of the book by clicking here.

edited by Srđan Mićić and Nataša Milićević
Belgrade: Istorijski arhiv Beograda; Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2020

Aleksandar Lukić
Beograd: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2020.

Može se zaključiti da je kolega Aleksandar Lukić, obavivši iscrpno istraživanje, detaljno proučio istoriju Jugoslovenske republikanske stranke, tragajući za prvim pojavama republikanskih ideja u srpskoj državi i utvrđujući veoma širok društveni i politički kontekst u kome su ispoljavane. Pokazao je pritom da je republikanizam u Srbiji daleko starijeg datuma od osnivanja stranke koja ga je kao ključno programsko načelo istakla već u svom imenu. Proučavajući rad republikanske partije, pak, otvorio je važno pitanje postojanja srpske građanske levice, koja se tokom nekoliko decenija uporno i principijelno zalagala za parlamentarnu demokratiju i socijalno pravedno društvo. Analizirajući ove i druge probleme, kolega Lukić napisao je prvu celovitu studiju o Jugoslovenskoj republikanskoj stranci u periodu između dva svetska rata, tumačeći njenu delatnost u okviru složenih političkih problema i nacionalnih odnosa.

(iz recenzije prof. dr Mire Radojević)

The new Editorial Board of the journal Currents of History has been selected.

Following the decision made by the Research Council of the Institute for Recent History of Serbia on 12 November 2020, the journal’s Editor-in-Chief during the next four years will be Dr. Vladan Jovanović, senior research associate at the Institute for Recent History of
Serbia.

Dr. Aleksandar Raković and Dr. Vesna Đikanović will remain members of the journal’s editorial team, whereas the new Editorial Secretary will be Natalija Dimić.

Members of the Editorial Board from other institutions and from abroad include

Dr. Ivana Dobrivojević Tomić (Serbia),
Dr. Dragan Bakić (Serbia),
Prof. Dr. Catherine Horel (France),
Prof. Dr. Bojan Balkovec (Slovenia),
Dr. Sabine Rutar (Germany),
Prof. Dr. Yaroslav V. Vishnyakov (Russia),
Prof. Dr. Arpad Hornjak (Hungary), and
Prof. Dr. Ondřej Vojtěchovský (Czech Republic).

Online-lecture by Professor Dr. Marie-Janinne Calic, from the Ludwig Maximilian
University, Munich
"Tito and the German Question"
Based on her latest book "Tito: the Eternal Partisan" (München 2020)

26. November 2020
6 PM
Please register by mail by November 24, 2020 and give your name. The number of
participants is limited.
The lecture will be in English via Zoom.

E-Mail Institut: tribinainis@gmail.com

Instruction

After November 24, 2020 you will receive the mail with the password and other
relevant information. Please check also the Spam folder.

Research associate of the Institute for Recent History of Serbia, PhD Milana Zivanovic
published a book "Both the Cross and the Five-Pointed Star. Russian Burial
Complexes in Yugoslavia in the 20th Century". The monograph deals with the history of Russian graves
complexes - cemeteries, plots, ossuaries, tombs, monuments, memorials and
tombstones of Russians on the territory of Yugoslavia, the evolution of the memory of the deceased and
killed Russians, as well as using their deaths for political purposes. It is based on
material from Serbian and Russian archives, periodicals and relevant domestic and foreign
literature.

 content.

KOSTA SOFRONIJEVIĆ BERLIN RECORDS FROM TWO WORLD WARS

Little is known about the Serbian Diaspora until the departure of the great wave of “guest workers”
in the 1960s.
Notes by Kosta Sofronijević, a skilled hatter, prove that Serbian and South Slavic emigration in general,
to Berlin was comparatively large even before the First World War. It comprised not
only manual laborers, but also  skilled craftsmen who
often had their own shops, coffee-house owners, and even some factory owners. His notes
acquaint us with an important social phenomenon we usually associate with more recent times - mixed
marriages with the Germans.
Kosta Sofronijević's notes from the First World War contain an account of the life of an
"enemy national" among the Germans during the Great War and the subsequent revolution
and provide an excellent insight into the behavior and thinking of both the ordinary people and
the officials.
For the Second World War, the author left us a very detailed record of the German capital
under bombs that destroyed entire city blocks.


the content of the book can be downloaded here

whole content you can download here

The latest book by PhD Božica Slavković Mirić entitled "Yugoslavia and Albania 1945-1948: Economic Relations" has been just published by INIS. The book is written in Serbian and it is dedicated to Yugoslav-Albanian relations in the first post-war years with an emphasis on economic relations. The work is a product of original research work on archival material, with a reference to the latest relevant literature.

you can see the content of the book here

All editions of INIS, which are not sold out, can be purchased at the institute's office.

You order publication or ask aditional questions via email racunovodstvo@inis.bg.ac.rs

or by phone 00 381 11 3398-941

You cam contact us every working day from 10 am to 2 pm

Best regards,

INIS

 After a complex evaluation process, our journal Tokovi istorije has been accepted into Scopus, the largest digital database of abstracts and citations of peer-reviewed literature (scientific journals, books and conference proceedings).

Within the next three months, the Scopus Source Collection Management Department will initiate the indexing process of our journal.

Dr. Alexander Silkin, historian and senior research associate at the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, has published a scientific interview with Dr. Mile Bjlejac, principal research fellow and director of the Institute for Recent History of Serbia, in the scientific journal Историческая экспертиза.

The interview, which was conducted in Serbian and translated into Russian by Dr Silkin, addresses a number of topics from Serbian history in the last two centuries which directly reflect on the present problems of the Serbian state in international relations, as well as Serbia's perceptions in diplomatic circles.

 

You can read the full interview in Russian here.

One of the primary activities of the Institute for Recent History of Serbia is reflected not only through scientific activity, but also through cooperation with renowned institutions in the field of science, culture and education. For several years members of INIS had successful and fruitful cooperation with the history department of the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad as guest lecturers. 

The solemn act of signing took place on March 6, 2020 in the ceremonial hall of the Faculty of Philosophy. The protocol on cooperation was signed by the Dean Prof. Ivana Živančević-Sekeruš PhD,  Mile Bjelajac PhD,  Senior fellow and Director of the Institute for Recent History of Serbia and Head of the Department of History Prof. Ivan Jordovic PhD. The protocol defines lecturing by Instute staff at the Faculty, use of Faculty library, joint publications, conferencess, etc.

The project "Yugoslavia’s Comparative Historical Experience with the Policies of Alliance- making and Neutrality/Non-Alignment", submitted by the team of researchers from the Institute for Recent History of Serbia, was awarded funding within the Program for excellent projects of young researchers (PROMIS) funded by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia.

The Principal Investigator of the project during the following two years will be PhD Srđan Mićić, research fellow at the Institute for Recent History of Serbia. Other team members include research fellow PhD Jovan Čavoški, research fellow PhD Aleksandar V. Miletić, researcher Natalija Dimić, and PhD Aleksandar Životić, Associate Professor at the Faculty of  Philosophyin Belgrade.

It is important to outline some facts. Kolleagues won the funds in the competition with of 585 projects where only 59 were awarded funding.
From the approved projects, only 6 come from the field of humanities and social sciences, among them being the project "Yugoslavia’s Comparative Historical Experience with the Policies of Alliance-making and Neutrality/Non-Alignment".

CONGRATULATION!

http://fondzanauku.gov.rs/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/PROMIS-List-of-projects-accepted-for-funding-1.pdf

Yugoslavia set the pace of political developments inside the Non-Aligned Movement and around the Third World during the Cold War era. And unlike other non-aligned countries during this period, Yugoslavia’s non-alignment was neither a product of anti-colonial revolution nor of post-colonial defiance to former masters. It was a direct outcome of inter-bloc dynamics, where a country performing an authentic communist revolution – striving for independence and equality from both blocs – had completed an arduous political journey from the fringes of European bloc politics to the forefront of world politics where it was shaping a new ideological and foreign policy response to the existing dominant currents in international relations.

Jovan Čavoški, an expert on the history of Yugoslavia’s international position, will discuss the forces that provoked Yugoslavia’s gradual transition from a staunch ally of the Soviet bloc to a fully-fledged non-aligned country principally allied with Asian and African countries in their struggle for political and economic independence and equality.

Focusing on Marshal Tito’s visits to India and Burma in 1954-55 and his subsequent meetings with key non-aligned leaders like Nehru, U Nu, and Nasser, and drawing on research in Serbian, Indian, Burmese, Chinese, Russian, and American sources, Cavoski will show the origins of a political phenomenon that would eventually become better known as global non-alignment.

Dr. Jovan Čavoški is a researcher at the Institute for Recent History of Serbia in Belgrade. In 2014 he completed his PhD in diplomacy/diplomatic history at the Peking University, School of International Studies. His thesis, written and defended in Chinese, dealt with China’s policies towards the rising strategy of nonalignment in the 1950s and 1960s. His research focuses on the Cold War in the Third World, comparisons between the foreign policies of China, Yugoslavia, India, Myanmar, and Indonesia towards that region. He is also interested in superpower influences in the Third World and the rise and evolution of the concept of neutralism and nonalignment in world affairs. Thirty of his articles have been published or are in the process of publication in leading journals and volumes in Serbia, China, Russia, Britain, Germany, Indonesia, Myanmar, Algeria, and the United States. In 2009, he published his first book “Yugoslavia and the Sino-Indian Conflict, 1959-1962” (Belgrade: Institute for Recent History of Serbia), while his second book “Distant Countries, Closest Allies: Josip Broz Tito, Jawaharlal Nehru and the Rise of Global Nonalignment” was published by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in 2015.