Serbs and Croats: The Struggle in Yugoslavia - Softcover

Dragnich, Alex N.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156806630 ISBN 13: 9780156806633

Publisher: Mariner Books, 1993

Synopsis

The triumph of independent statehood after World War I became a tragedy for Yugoslavia seventy years later. Dragnich discusses the ideals and hopes of the South Slavs, their tortured attempt to create a workable political system, and the reasons behind the recent chaos and violence in the region. Index; maps.

About this title

About the Author:

Alex N. Dragnich received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.  He is the author of "Serbs and Croats", "Serbia, Nikola Pasic, and Yugoslavia", "The First Yugoslavia: Search for a Viable Political System". and "The Saga of Kosovo: Focus on Serbian-Albanian Relations".

From Publishers Weekly:

This concise, lucid history throws a floodlight on the tragic drama unfolding in Yugoslavia. Dragnich, a political scientist and former officer in the American embassy in Belgrade, charges that the European powers, notably Germany and Austria, contributed to Yugoslavia's destruction in their rush to recognize an independent Slovenia and Croatia even before the substantive negotiations had taken place. Moreover, he writes, Western efforts to find a solution were undercut by an erroneous assumption that the Soviet-style federalist boundaries imposed by Yugoslav president Josip Tito were sacrosant. Tito, who purportedly hated Serbs, ruled through secret police and divided the country into six republics, leaving one-third of the Serbs in territories not their own. After the Nazi invasion in WW II, fascist Croatia was ruled by a terrorist organization, the Ustashi, which slaughtered more than half a million Serbs, Jews and Gypsies--a holocaust that has poisoned Serb-Croat relations, notes Dragnich. He skillfully unravels the longstanding differences that tear asunder South Slavs, Croats, Slovenes, Serbs and Bosnian Muslims in a land whose unification was initially conceived by 19th-century intellectuals aloof from the peasantry who made up the vast majority of the population.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0156806630
• ISBN 13: 9780156806633
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224