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A Utopian in the Balkans

Catherine Samary on Darko Suvin, Splendour, Misery and Possibilities: An X-Ray of Socialist Yugoslavia. Bloch’s utopian horizon as measure for the achievements and inversions of the SFRY.

How Ethnic is Ethnic Cleansing?

How ethnic is ‘ethnic cleansing’? From Cyprus to Andalusia, Ireland to Bosnia, Pakistan to Palestine, Jack Goody finds religion—inherently threatened by apostasy or conversion—a stronger marker of communal conflict and mass expulsion than an ill-defined ethnicity.

'International Justice'

Every military expedition by the West now dons the mantle of human rights. What happens to international law when justice is the name of power? The charade of NATO’s tribunal in The Hague.

Kosovo: The War of NATO Expansion

“nato has established a Kosovo protectorate at the cost of great suffering for its people, and in a manner calculated to store up future problems. The bombing by nato generalized and greatly intensified the persecution of the Kosovans and destroyed infrastructure throughout Yugoslavia. There were . . .” read more

The Bosnian Protectorate and the Implications for Kosovo

“The international Contact Group proposals for the future of Kosovo, put forward at the Paris/Rambouillet talks, in February 1999—advocating an international Implementations Mission in Kosovo—were based on the provisions of the Dayton Peace Agreement of November 1995, which ended the Bosnian conflict. If nato gets its way, . . .” read more

Protecting the Kosovars?

“Once again, and led by the United States as usual, a war is being conducted—this time in Europe—against an unprincipled and racist dictator who will almost certainly survive the onslaught, even though thousands of innocents will pay the actual price. The pretext this time is, of course, the . . .” read more

The NATO Powers and the Balkan Tragedy

“Western powers usually legitimize military interventions in terms of a proclaimed commitment to some universalist norm or to some goal embodying such a norm. These declared goals can oscillate, but they are important because a central element of their foreign policy, particularly when it involves starting a war, . . .” read more

Against the Double Blackmail

“The prize-winner in the contest for the greatest blunder of 1998 was a Latin American patriotic terrorist who sent a letter-bomb to a us consulate in order to protest against the Americans interfering in local politics. As a conscientious citizen, he wrote on the envelope his return . . .” read more

Springtime for NATO

“When Western leaders assemble in Washington, later this year, to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of nato, how will they assess the Balkan campaign of Spring 1999? The aim of the summit is a new mission statement for nato, transforming it from a defensive alliance into a . . .” read more

The Confiscation of Memory

“Shto by stalo vse ponjatno Nado nachat’ zhit’ obratno” read more

Bosnia and the Revival of US Hegemony

“The primary concern of us policy-makers, Democrats and Republicans, since the Second World War has been ‘world leadership’. Where necessary and possible domestic issues have been subordinated to the overarching goal of constructing and sustaining us hegemony over allies, confrontation with adversaries and domination of clients. . . .” read more

The Return of the Great Powers

“On the surface, the situation in the Balkans may look rather optimistic at the moment: the Croats and Muslims have ceased fighting; some sense of normality has been restored to Sarajevo; and the crisis around Gorazde has been defused. In a broader context of European security, however, it . . .” read more

The Break-up of Yugoslavia and the Fate of Bosnia

“The collapse of Yugoslavia, and the resulting bloody civil war, has become the worst conflict to afflict any part of Europe for four decades. Neither the governments of the West nor the parties and movements of the Left have found it easy to orient themselves as the tragedy . . .” read more

Yugoslavia and the New Nationalism

“A grotesque war is taking place in the middle of the European continent. It is an attack on lives, livelihoods, homes, villages, historic and religious buildings, and also on fundamental human values. A year ago, few people had heard of ‘ethnic cleansing’. Now it is clear that we . . .” read more

The Destruction of Bosnia-Herzegovina

“The year 1992, scheduled to be a milestone on the road to European unity, has seen Sarajevo and other Bosnian cities slowly bombarded to pieces and their inhabitants starved before the television eyes of the world. It has seen two million Bosnian Moslems threatened with Europe’s first genocide . . .” read more

Yugoslavia: The Spectre of Balkanization

“No amount of anti-communist propaganda can obscure the fact that, since 1945, Yugoslavia has by and large been governed with the consent of its peoples. Equally, no amount of official piety can hide the fact that the League of Communists (lcy) has held power only by virtue . . .” read more

The Slovene Spring

“How would you characterize the evolution of cultural and political life in Slovenia over the past few years?” read more

Introduction to Kovac Interview

“When, in August 1988, the League of Communists of Serbia refused to accept the authority of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (which had instructed it to halt nationalist street demonstrations), it drew a line under a whole historical period that had started in 1945. In this multinational . . .” read more

Final Statement

“The main question posed by the case of the ‘Belgrade Six’, ever since its inception on 20 April 1984, is: Why? Who needs this show trial? Now that all the evidence has been presented to the court, that question is more burning than ever. For it has become . . .” read more

Introduction to Nikolic

“In August 1984, six Yugoslav intellectuals—Pavle Imširović, Gordan Jovanović, Vladimir Mijanović, Miodrag Milić, Milan Nikolić and Dragomir Olujić—were charged jointly with forming a ‘counter-revolutionary organization aimed at the overthrow of the constitutional order’. In reality, all the six had in common was that they had taken part in . . .” read more

Kosovo Between Yugoslavia and Albania

“On 2 April 1981, massive demonstrations took place in the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo, an area of Yugoslavia inhabited mainly by ethnic Albanians, to demand republican status within the Yugoslav federation. By the end of the next day, the army had moved in with tanks and armoured . . .” read more

Introduction to Vuskovic

“The mass popular resistance to fascist occupation in Yugoslavia and Albania and the fact that capitalism was overthrown in these countries as the culmination of an authentic, indigenous revolutionary mobilization of their populations, has meant that they have always stood somewhat apart from the rest of East Europe, . . .” read more

Social Inequality in Yugoslavia

“A special and permanent concern about social inequalities is deeply rooted in communist theory and practice, because the communist movement, born as a critique of the working and living conditions of broad social masses under capitalism, is necessarily a movement towards creation of a society in which deep . . .” read more

The Belgrade Student Insurrection

“The Explosion: A troop of actors was scheduled to perform free of charge on the second of June before an audience of ‘Youth-Action’ workers camped near a large complex of student dormitories in New Belgrade, a suburb of Belgrade. Student representatives had requested that the performance be held . . .” read more

Yugoslav Self-Management

“In this article, we are concerned with a social system which seeks to interpret democracy in terms of the participation of the whole working population of a country in the processes of decision-taking at all levels of the social organization. This concept starts from a different basic assumption . . .” read more

Workers Control in a Planned Society (Jugoslavia--Part II)

“The second of two articles on Jugoslavia” read more

Jugoslavia Revisited (Part I)

“Early this year the New Reasoner was invited by the Jugoslav Press Attache in London to send a member of the Editorial Board to visit Jugoslavia this summer as a guest of the Government. Michael Barratt Brown, who was selected to go, spent nearly three years in the . . .” read more