The Fall of Yugoslavia: Why Communism Failed

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This book represents the fruit of six years of work with the research project "Social Change in Yugoslavia at the Crossroads of Two Centuries" at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory of the University of Belgrade. The greatest social change of all, however, came unexpectedly in the course of this work in the form of the tragic destruction of the Yugoslav state. Professor Svetozar Stojanovic emphasizes the causes of the implosion of communism as well as the obstacles to a postcommunist transition to democracy and a free-market economy. He examines in detail the structural weaknesses of communism, the victorious "capitalist encirclement," the ideological decay of communism and its loss of legitimacy, the Gorbachev and Yeltsin factors, and postcommunism's mix of communism, precommunism, democracy, capitalism, and nationalism.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Stojanovic (Perestroika, Prometheus, 1988), teaches at both the University of Kansas and the University of Belgrade. He was first a dissident under Tito and then an adviser to Yugoslav President Cosic; now he's out of favor with the Milosevic regime. Most of the present work is a translation of a 1994 title published in Serbo-Croatian. The focus here is on three issues: Stalinism's transition to Titoism, the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the nature of the collapse of Communist/Marxist systems. The author's eyewitness accounts of the breakup are probably of the greatest value, but Stojanovic assumes that the reader is quite knowledgeable about Yugoslavia's history. General readers would do better with Misha Glenny's The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War (LJ 1/93). Recommended only for collections with a deep interest in Yugoslavia.Michael Neubert, Library of Congress

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