cover image The Destruction of Yugoslavia: Tracking the Break-Up 1980-92

The Destruction of Yugoslavia: Tracking the Break-Up 1980-92

Branka Magas. New York, $0 (366pp) ISBN 978-0-86091-376-4

Magas, a Croatian journalist and historian, offers some pointed, alternative perspectives on the former Yugoslavia in this compilation of her often-prescient articles, written for New Left Review and other journals. Though this is not a comprehensive or narrative history, and some articles are redundant, Magas adds to the literature of Yugoslavia by emphasizing the politics of intellectuals; she identifies the 1981 institution of martial law in the province of Kosovo as a watershed, since Serbian leftist intellectuals did not protest but rallied to nationalism. Magas criticizes intellectuals inside and outside the country for not understanding the link between uenven economic development and nationalist intolerance. Serbian nationalism, she observes, is backed by ``the only structures of the Yugoslav Communist state that managed to escape the process of democratization: the Serbian Communist Party and the Army High Command.'' The book also includes manifestos and letters from Yugoslavian organizations and from Yugoslavians outside the country. Magas's writings show that at least some observers were warning of chaos long before it erupted. (Feb.)