Nationalism And Federalism In Yugoslavia 1962-1991

Sabrina P. Ramet’s, Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962 – 1991 is a writer’s attempt to demonstrate that parallels between the patterns of interstate behavior in eighteenth and nineteenth – century Europe and those of inter-republican behavior in 1962 – 1991 Yugoslavia do exist. In the writer’s opinion, the term “balance of power” is an accurate characterization of Yugoslav politics as well. As stated in the preface, the author herself has on various occasions visited Yugoslavia in order to acquire deeper knowledge on the topic. She first visited in 1978, then in 1982 and later made several more visits. She was looking for a better sense of the spirit and mood of the country and therefore decided to interview not only politicians
In 1918, when South Slavs were brought into a common state, they already saw themselves as Slovenes, Croats, Serbs and Montenegrins, all of them basically distinct people. They, together with other non – Slavic people (Hungarians, Albanians, Germans and Italians) helped make the national question a burning issue for the interwar Yugoslavia and later on, a central issue for postwar Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia being relatively new country had various nations who were more loyal to their nationalities than to the state itself. The author thinks that the Yugoslav political system acquired, domestically, the basic features of an international balance-of-power
Cleavage can be economic, cultural, religious, linguistic, racial, or regional. It was argued that Yugoslavia was characterized by the polarization of northern provinces, whose economies were advanced and similar to those of Austria, and southern provinces, whose economies were similar to those of Albania and Southern Italy. Of course, this not only created economic divide but political as well. So-called northerners were more liberal, meaning that they favored decentralization and deepening of federalism, they put emphasis on profitability in investments, wanted a more open society with greater respect for human rights and had pluralism within the party. The southerners, on the other hand, were conservative, by which the writer means someone who favored a strong central government or party and put emphasis on the political goals that can be established through investments. Also, they wanted a less open society with tighter censorship and tight party control of sociopolitical organizations. As someone who is still not enough politically educated to understand the rather complicated structure of Yugoslav politics, I appreciate how easy the writer made it for us to understand. She simplified things and if someone who never heard about Yugoslavia read this book, he would get a pretty good sense of Yugoslavia as a country. One cannot hear about Yugoslavia,