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• Published: 06 December 2023

Yugoslav science during the Cold War (1945–1960): socio-economic and ideological impacts of a geopolitical shift

• Maja Korolija   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7714-4761 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  913 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Two ideological views on science dominated the Cold War era: one of a free and apolitical science, and the other emphasizing partisanship in science, associated with the Western and Eastern Blocs, respectively. This study offers a specific perspective of important elements belonging to these scientific positions, as it reveals their entanglement with geopolitical and socio-economic processes of the (semi)peripheral Yugoslav socialist system during the Cold War period. After the Second World War, and before its break with the USSR in 1948, Yugoslavia tended to emulate Soviet ideology in all aspects of society, including science. In the period following this break, the Yugoslav socialist regime, at least initially, leaned heavily toward the Western Bloc. By comparing Yugoslav science before and after the break with the USSR, this study provides insight into the consequences of the geopolitical shift and socio-economic transition of the Yugoslav socialist system, primarily in terms of the model of scientific organization, financing, and scientific discourse. Exposed to the dynamics of decentralization and, to a larger extent than before, market forces, Yugoslav socialism after the break with the USSR adopted a specific form, namely Socialist Self-Management. Herein, I show that this led to the emergence of novel organizational and discursive tendencies in Yugoslav science, which were compatible with certain aspects of the perspective of science as ‘pure’, autonomous, and apolitical.

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During the Cold War period of intense geopolitical and ideological conflict between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR), science held an immensely important position in both blocs (Graham, 1993 ; Leslie, 1993 ; Pollock, 2006 ; Wolfe, 2013 ). In accordance with the Manichean approach that dominated international relations, science in the Cold War was characterized by two dominant ideological views.

One involved the concepts of autonomous, value-neutral and apolitical scientific endeavors (e.g., Polanyi, [1962] 2000 ; Merton, [1938] 1973 ), prevalent in the US and among its allies. Mutually different philosophical positions, diverse regarding certain questions about the nature and role of science in society, as well as not always necessarily directly connected with Cold War (e.g., Merton), nevertheless found their place in the Cold War ideological struggle for the soul of science and its representation (see e.g., Wolfe, 2018 ; Aronova, 2012 ). In this struggle it was asserted, and not only by philosophers and scientists (see e.g., Kartman, 1945 ), that the only way of preserving the integrity of science is the exclusion of “communist science”, as well as the negation of its scientific character, which was more than often denoted as ideological, and consequently as pseudo-scientific (see e.g., Popper, [1945] 2011 ; Kartman, 1945 ).

The other was that of the Soviet Bloc, which emphasized “partisanship” in science, or class-conscious science (e.g., Lenin, [1909] 1977 ; Rubinstein, [1931] 1971 ). According to this perspective, the idea that science can and should be independent in relation to society whose part it itself is—is not sustainable. In a capitalist society which is intertwined with opposed class interests, the science is essentially in the service of the particular interest of “the ruling class“—“the bourgeoisie“, whose final goal is the preservation of the existing order of inequality. In order for this to be changed one needs the class-conscious science: science that is, according to this view, in service of the working class (e.g., Lenin, [1909] 1977 ). According to Marx, if the working class is led by its own objective interest, it strives for classless society (Marx, [1848] 1986 ). Therefore, it is necessary, for the science to correspond with general social interest, that it is in the service of the interests of working class (e.g., Lukacs, 1971 ).

In reality, both blocs, however, deviated significantly from their stated viewpoints on the nature and role of science. Science in the USSR, for example, was frequently influenced by the Bolshevik state apparatus (Krementsov, 1997 ; Gerowitch, 2002 ; Pollock, 2006 ), which failed to adequately articulate working-class interests in the USSR (e.g., Bettelheim, 1976 ; 1978 ; 1996 ). Moreover, owing to research on the nature and role of science in the West, attention is now increasingly being called to the ideological function of the discourse on free and apolitical scientific research, as well as the use of science by the Western Bloc during the Cold War (Greenberg, 1999 ; Reich ( 2005 ); Krige, 2006 ; Wolfe, 2018 ).

The nature and role of science in the context of the transition of the Yugoslav regime following its break with the USSR provide fertile ground for research on the two ideological perspectives during the Cold War. In this analysis, I will not address the concept of ideology solely through an ideology-critique prism, which views ideology as false consciousness, but rather in conjunction with an ideology-theoretical approach, which provides an analysis of the mechanisms, processes, and structures that enable the hegemony of certain ideas (Gramši, 1980 ; Rehmann, 2015 ).

In this regard, I present basic ideological insights regarding science in Yugoslavia before and after its break with the USSR Footnote 1 , with particular focus on the developments in the Yugoslav socialist system following its separation from the USSR. These insights allow us to trace the emergence of specific elements in line with the autonomous science perspective and their impact on the dominant scientific discourse, scientific organization, and financing in socialist Yugoslavia. In this way, I hope to create space for further consideration and contextualization of Yugoslav “socialist science” during the Cold War, as well as to investigate a different—(semi)peripheral—perspective on the nature and role of both “autonomous” and “partisan” ideological positions on science during the Cold War.

At the end of the Second World War in Southeast Europe, after the anti-fascist partisan movement led by the communists, with Josip Broz Tito at the helm and alongside allied forces, defeated the Nazis and abolished the monarchy, Yugoslavia initiated the construction of a new, socialist, system. This system was built on the foundations laid by the Popular front with the general support and assistance of the USSR, whose socio-political model was emulated by Yugoslavia (Petranović, 1980 , pp. 376–398; Životić, 2015 , pp. 11–17). Unlike other satellite states in the Eastern bloc, Yugoslavia was positioned as an independent center of communist power, much to the displeasure of Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union’s at that time. In 1948, an international crisis caused Yugoslavia to leave the Eastern bloc after the USSR accused it, among other things, of reintroducing capitalism and nationalist tendencies (Bakić, 2011 , p. 25; Čalić, 2013 ; IB Resolution Footnote 2 ).

The West viewed “Tito as the greatest dissident of the new era”, assessing that he “made a dent in the monolith of the communist unity by standing up to Stalin” (Bogdanović, 2013 , pp. 147-148). Therefore, despite the ruling socialist ideology in Yugoslavia, the US decided to aid the war-ravaged and devastated country under the threat of attack by the USSR (Jakovina, 2002 , p. 32; Čalić, 2013 , pp. 228, 236). These circumstances led to Yugoslavia opening up to the Western Bloc (Bogetić, 2000 ; Jakovina, 2003 ). To maintain its socialist ideology oriented toward workers’ control while exposed to the dynamics of decentralization and, to a greater degree than before, market forces, the Yugoslav socialist system evolved into a specific form—that of Socialist Self-Management (Čalić, 2013 , p. 238).

This situation introduced novel approaches to the organization and financing of science in Yugoslavia, altering official views on the nature and role of science and scientists. I explore the effects of the geopolitical shift of socialist Yugoslavia, after its break with the Eastern Bloc, toward the Western Bloc. I analyze the impacts of socio-economic changes that followed on Yugoslav science, caused by Yugoslavia’s shift from a planned to a (controlled and incomplete) market economy, in terms of the scientific organization model, financing, and official scientific discourse. Through the comparison of science perspectives in Yugoslavia prior to the Tito-Stalin split in 1948 and after, I show that novel elements in Yugoslav “socialist science” were compatible with certain aspects of the perspective representing science as ‘pure’, autonomous, or apolitical. Considering the context of the Cold War struggle for hegemony and the dominant ideological perspectives of science during this period, I find the case of Yugoslav science useful as an additional, (semi)peripheral example of these viewpoints, entangled with the international position, as well as structural and political changes of the Yugoslav socialist system.

Through mapping the ideological changes in Yugoslav science after the break with USSR, blurred lines and merging between “autonomous” and “partisanship” representations of science are emphasized in this article, despite their proclaimed sharp opposition during the Cold War. Thus the space for research of the nature of these concepts within specificities of geopolitical and socio-economic context of Yugoslavia is opened. Although it is doubtlessly connected with relation of main actors in this period—USA and USSR—the ideological framework of Yugoslav science is, first of all, a consequence of the specific way of adaptation of Yugoslav state to Cold War, as well as of the need for a greater independence in this turbulent time. Through analysis of the dynamics of relation between science and ideology in the case of Yugoslavia, the elements of state or party intervention are imposed as a key factor in formation, but also limitation of both scientific freedom and scientific partisanship. On the basis of insights during research, I try to answer the question regarding the existence of the need for additional and deeper investigation of the relation between science, ideology and state in various socio-political contexts during the period of the Cold War.

Yugoslav science prior to the Tito-Stalin split

I begin with an analysis of the aspiring organizational and financial model, as well as the official stand on the nature and role of science in Yugoslavia before its break with the USSR. The period in question is one in which the ideology of Soviet science held hegemony. Nominally, the Soviet perspective insisted on the importance of political and economic conditions for scientific development, planning principles, the unity of theory and practice, as well as the class-conscious character of science, specifically its partisanship (e.g., Lenin, [1909] 1977 ; Bukharin, [1931] 1971 ; Graham, 1967 ). Only after science is openly placed in the service of the working class (proletariat) can its social function be associated with “universality”. For Marxists in general, the interests of the proletariat correspond to “universality”, i.e., the general interest of society, to which science cannot fully contribute as long as it serves the capital under the guise of “autonomy” (Marx, [1856] 1969 ; Marx, [1848] 1986 ). In the USSR, partisanship in science, on a practical level, implied the influence of party politics on scientific activity (Krementsov, 1997 ; Gerovitch, 2002 ; Pollock, 2006 ). However, several critics on the left argued that certain Bolshevik party decisions, in reality, were not always aligned with the objective interests of the working class (e.g., Cliff, 1963 ; Goldman, 1996 ), which was also shown by academic researchers (e.g., Bettelheim, 1976 , 1978 , 1996 ; Graham, 1996 ).

Soviet model of scientific organization for a war-ravaged country

After the Second World War, Yugoslavia was an economically and culturally underdeveloped, war-ravaged, and poverty-stricken country with a weak foundation for industrialization. Thus, industrialization, as well as educating the population became “the people’s task” (Bilandžić, 1985 , pp. 112-114; Čalić, 2013 , pp. 227-233). “The inherited backwardness was best illustrated by the number of illiterate inhabitants, which was 44.6 % before the war, and 56.4% among the female population, according to the 1931 census” (Bondžić, 2018 , p. 201). The insistence on modernization in society also had an ideological dimension; it was a crucial requirement for building and further developing socialist relationships in Yugoslav society, which the country was striving for at the time. The first five-year plan reflected the Communist Party of Yugoslavia’s (CPY) attempt to reinforce the concept of communist modernization (Obradović, 1994 , p. 41), with science playing an important role in general social development (Ristić, 2013 : 342, 349, 350). The task of scientific institutions was to “produce Marxist scientific youth who would master the knowledge and technological and technical procedures for the achievement of the plan for early industrialization and electrification of the country, in addition to other plans” (Bondžić, 2018 , p. 203). The ruling system’s political ideology dictated a dominant perspective in society in terms of the nature, role, and desired model for organizing and financing science.

Up until the break with the USSR, authorities and scientists in Yugoslavia propagated the Soviet approach to scientific Footnote 3 and socio-political issues, opposing “various deficiencies” inherent in what they deemed to be “bourgeois science”. This view was reflected in Tito’s speech delivered in 1947, on the occasion of him being named an honorary member of Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb, Croatia (JAZU). Among other things, Tito noted that scientists in the past were oftentimes exploited, just like other workers. As an example, he mentioned Yugoslav-American inventor Nikola Tesla “whose scientific findings enriched many American and other capitalists enormously, [but who] died as a poor man without any means” (Tito, 1959 , p. 209). He stated that in a socialist society, scientists enjoy “limitless possibilities” for their work, as well as respect and care from the people, who hold power and thus the means of production in such a system (Tito, 1959 , p. 209). Tito concluded that in Yugoslavia, “as it has already been accomplished in the USSR, science […] is becoming the people’s property because the people benefit from its results” (Tito, 1959 , p. 210).

Before Yugoslavia ceased political and scientific cooperation Footnote 4 with the USSR, its preferred model of scientific organization was that of the USSR. This was evident in early 1948 at the founding meeting of the Yugoslav Council of Academies, where the Council was tasked with “leading and supervising scientific and artistic institutions across the country. To coordinate this work, a Council of Academies should be formed as part of the federal government.” The Council was “the advisory organ of the federal government regarding scientific and artistic work of federal importance, a coordinating structure for scientific and artistic work of all three academies (Serbian, Slovenian, and Croatian), a body that represents our country in international scientific and artistic organizations.” It was also decided that “[t]he Council would communicate directly with the Presidency of the Government, and that its budget would be part of the Government’s budget…” (Korolija, 2017 , pp. 1162-1163; Meeting of the delegates of Yugoslav republics’ academies, 1948 ; CIA Report, 1954 ).

The institution to assume such a role in the USSR was the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. From a hierarchical point of view, the Academy was a key scientific institution under the direct jurisdiction of the Council of People’s Commissars (effectively the Soviet government). Universities and other institutions served as mediators between the Academy of Sciences and social life, while scientific work was mostly planned and supervised by the Academy. Such a centralized and planned organization aimed to coordinate scientific institutions and enhance the compatibility and cooperation of ‘pure’ science and praxis (Guins, 1953 ; Graham, 1967 ; Korolija, 2017 , p. 1163). Therefore, it is not surprising that publications such as The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union (1945), which promoted the Soviet model of scientific organization and partisanship in science, were translated, published, and distributed in Yugoslavia at the time. During this period, scientific activity in Yugoslavia was “funded directly from the federal and budgets of federal republics” (Blagojević, 1982 , p. 316).

The Soviet approach to scientific issues in Yugoslavia during this period was also evident in the discourse that dominated public discussions on the topic, especially in journals of scientific and propagandist nature (see e.g., Miloradović, 2012 ; Duančić, 2019 ; Bondžić, 2010 ).

Promoting the concept of Soviet science

After the war and before the break with the USSR, the Journal of the Society for Cultural Cooperation of Yugoslavia and the USSR Footnote 5 (Yugoslavia-USSR) was published in Yugoslavia, as an important tool for the establishment of Soviet ideological hegemony. (Miloradović, 2012 , pp. 201–217). This journal represented “the most effective and most permanent” product of the work of the Society for Cultural Cooperation of Yugoslavia and the USSR . It was issued from November 1945 to June 1949 (Miloradović, 2012 , p. 208). The journal featured propaganda articles glorifying the achievements and ideas of the Soviet way of life, including its military, economy, science, and culture. As this study also examines scientific changes in the context of dominant economic tendencies, I present the prevailing economic perspective at the time, which was also propagated through this journal.

In line with its ideological role, the journal presented the Soviet economic model, specifically the principle of planning , as one of the “most important economic laws in the development of the socialist mode of production” (Nikolin, 1948 , p. 8). A clear example of the glorification of planned economy is an article Footnote 6 criticizing, one might even say mocking, the discovery of “free planning” by the then-ruling Labor Party in Great Britain (Strumilin, 1947 , p. 4). The topic this text deals with is the decision of the UK Labor government to nationalize only hard coal mines and English banks, while as for the rest of economy it chose to focus itself on studying of it, making of “the prognosis for the future” and creating of economy plans, as well as appealing the employers to fulfill them. From the standpoint of Marxist-Leninist view on the economy this was evaluated as a naive political idea, because it is based on the presumption that capitalists shall act against their own objective private interest for the sake of the general interest of the society and the workers. According to Marxism-Leninism the interests of workers and capitalists are economically opposed. That is why those who advocate the interests of the working class, according to this perspective, require nationalization and state planning within the economy (see Lenin, 1918 ). In accordance with this position Vlajko Begović, a prominent Yugoslav political figure and president of the Federal Planning Commission of Yugoslavia, presented the view that a “[s]tate economic plan is the basic element for managing the economy” (Begović, 1946 , p. 14).

When it comes to the concept of a planned economy, it is important to note that at this time, it was given substantial consideration in the context of scientific activity in Yugoslavia and its connection with the economy. Accordingly, the documents of the Committee for Schools and Science within the Government of Yugoslavia from 1947 state the following:

“The ever-increasing demand and necessity of planned management raises the issue of planning in the field of scientific work, planning scientific institutions, coordinating their work, closer connection with the tasks of the economy and building the country, as well as planning of cadres.” [Establishment of the Committee for Scientific Institutions, 1947 ]

Moreover, based on the Decree of the Committee for Scientific Institutions, Universities, and Higher Education Institutions passed in 1947, the Committee was established “for the purpose of planning scientific work, as well as establishing a unified management of scientific institutions, universities, and higher education institutions and planned education of senior professional cadres…” (Decree of the Committee for Scientific Institutions, Universities, and Higher Education Institutions, 1947 ).

Returning to the journal Yugoslavia-USSR (1946), I refer to an article Footnote 7 by Yugoslav professor Đurđe Bošković about Soviet scientists, who had spent some time in the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (FPRY), and whose work “demonstrated how far science had progressed in the USSR”, compared to the science that was “independent of society.” Bošković saw this as one more reason for Yugoslav science to become “the most reliable instrument in the service of life, society, man – science in which theory and practice merge into a condensed and indivisible whole…” (Bošković, 1946 , p. 40). The stance was clear: Yugoslavia must emulate the USSR’s “Leninist-Stalinist” model of science. The model’s stated objective was to blur the line between theory and practice, specifically “pure” and “applied” science, and bring about its synthesis in the general interest – that of the working class. The Marxists (see e.g., Bernal, [ 1954 ]1971), who linked this division within science to Western view on its nature and role in society, most often have seen it as artificial, especially from the standpoint of history of science; which is not an attitude reserved only for the theory of Marxist orientation (see e.g., Gooday, 2012 ). From the way how dynamics of the relation between science and society in socialist society was understood, within the scope of applied sciences, there emerges an idea about the need of planning the research of scientific topics relevant for concrete needs of the existing society, and not “only” the focusing on application of already existing “pure” science in practice (see e.g., Graham, 1964 ).

The extent to which Yugoslavia attempted to emulate this model and the position of science it aspired to achieve is evidenced by the position presented by communist thinker and chairman of the Committee for Science and Education of the FPRY Government Boris Ziherl, likewise published in the journal Yugoslavia-USSR ( 1948 ). In his praise for Lenin, Ziherl emphasized his enormous contribution to social sciences, as his “teachings and works erased” the division between exact (natural) sciences and inexact (social) sciences, “demonstrating” that social phenomena can also be studied with exactness, with revolutionary social practice serving as “the scientific criterion that confirms or rejects the propositions of social science” (Ziherl, 1948 , p. 4). More precisely, Marxism, according to this perspective, is a social science

“whose objectivity stems from its class character; it is the science of the most revolutionary class in history, a class that is not only not interested in maintaining itself as a class but one that is fighting for the abolition of itself as a class, for the abolition of classes and class differences as such, and the establishment of a classless communist society.” [Ziherl, 1948 , p. 6]

In this context, Ziherl points out that Lenin “indicated that in a class society, where hostile classes with different interests and different worldviews stand against each other, science cannot stand above classes, and that thus there is no such thing as a classless, impartial, nonpartisan, ‘objective’ science” (Ziherl, 1948 , p. 4).

Thereby, partisanship in science represents the basic conceptual difference between the class-positioned perspective and the so called autonomous, value-neutral scientific elements that dominated through the ideology of science perspective associated with the Western bloc in that period. Emphasizing the impossibility of apolitical science in a society (and about a society) marked by conflicting class interests implies that, from a Marxist standpoint, the discourse on independent science was more of a false consciousness than a genuine desire for true objectivity. (Bernal, 1939 ; Lukacs, 1971 ; Korolija, 2020 )

However, the Marxist perspective didn’t negate the possibility of scientific objectivity. Marx alone “seems to claim something like scientific objectivity for his own theory” (Railton, 1984 , p. 813). Marxist critique of science in bourgeois societies is based on the premise that ruling ideas in class organized capitalist society are always the ideas of the ruling class. Thus, the function of dominant ideas within the system of social inequality is reflected in the fact that the interest of the ruling class which, from the Marxist point of view, is always a particular interest, is represented as common interest. That is why the ideas of a ruling class are seen as universal, rational and valid. According to Marx “modern industry […] makes science a productive force distinct from labor and presses it into the service of capital” (Marx, [1867] 1967 , p. 361). In bourgeois society, in the final instance, the science also reflects dominant material relationships (see e.g., Marx, [1846] 1974 ). In this way it represents particular interests – only the interests of the ruling class, which implies that it cannot entirely be in the service of true objectivity, which for Marxists is always universal, that is in relation with general interest of society (e.g., Marx, ([1848] 1986 ); Lukacs, 1971 ).

This means that the class oriented science is in the service of the interests of the largest part of the society—the working class. According to this perspective, true objectivity is achieved not only by examination, but also by placing science at the service of working-class interest, i.e., the class which strives to destroy class established social relations and to abolish itself, all with the goal of creating a classless society, which according to Marxist theory represents the general social interest. In this way, through connecting with social universality, and not to particularity, the universal character of science and the scientific objectivity, according to Marxists, become possible (e.g., Marx, ([1848] 1986 ); Lenin, ([1909] 1977 ); Bernal, 1952 ; Bernal, 1953 ; Lukacs, 1971 ).

Researchers noted that in the USSR “[t]he special connection […] between Marxist philosophy and science […] allowed for the expansion of Marxism into the natural sciences, both theoretically and institutionally” (Aronova, 2011 , p. 179). A similar connection is observed in Yugoslav natural science journals published before the break with the USSR. Accordingly, the first two issues of the Yugoslav popular science journal Priroda ( Nature ) (February 1945 ), re-launched after the war by the Steering Committee of the Croatian Natural History Society, were clearly critical of the notion of “science for science’s sake”. The journal’s ideological character was described as being close to the “People’s Government”, while the journal’s founders (“our anti-fascist-natural-scientist”) advocated for the connection between science and social practice.

The journal Nauka i priroda ( Science and Nature ) was founded by natural science societies and researchers and was aimed at “all those” who wanted “to complete and enlighten their knowledge of the natural sciences with a materialistic understanding and interpretation” (Editorial staff, 1950 , p. 713). Apart from presenting achievements in the natural sciences, the journal made it known that its task was to clarify the role that “ science plays in the construction of socialism and the achievement of the five-year plan” (Editorial staff, 1950 , p. 713). An article Footnote 8 in this journal discusses Lenin’s criticism of “idealistic deviations” in the interpretation of recent scientific findings (seemingly incompatible with materialism), warning the reader that a “good natural scientist” does not necessarily make a “good philosopher”. In addition, there were warnings about “relativism” and the “traps of anti-scientific tendencies” that lie in wait for “inconsistent materialists” (i.e., those who are not dialectical materialists) (Maksimov, 1949 , pp. 243–244).

There was furthermore a tendency to shape humanities and social sciences following the Marxist-Leninist paradigm. This is evidenced by brochures from the Science and Society series, which were published in Yugoslavia in 1946 and promoted a Marxist-Leninist outlook on social science and philosophy, as well as their role in society. Accordingly, in there one finds criticism of the attempt by “some scholastics or mechanists to turn philosophy into empty, detached reasoning, with nothing in common with human practice…” (Pavlov, 1946 , p. 64).

Despite Yugoslavia’s relative autonomy in comparison to other countries of the Soviet Bloc, it nevertheless aspired to follow the Soviet model of scientific organization, financing, and views on nature and the role of science in society. This was viewed as a sharp criticism of autonomous science and the continuous emphasis of the necessity and advantages of the principles of planning, partisanship, unity of theory and practice, and a highly centralized organization—which Yugoslav officials, as well as some scientists, saw as important traits of Soviet science. Nevertheless, as Tito and Stalin ceased cooperation in 1948, the Yugoslav scientific sphere also faced significant consequences.

Although, if looked at formally, the process of implementation of the socialist system according to Soviet principles lasted during a relatively short period, the mechanisms and effects of this process were rather noticeable in Yugoslav society in a longer period, even after 1952, when a different socio-political system was officially established—the Socialist Self-Management (see e.g., Kuljić, 1998 ).

Structural and ideological shifts in Yugoslav science after the break with the USSR

Following the sudden, bitter, and tumultuous break with the USSR, resulting in an exceedingly hostile relationship with the entire Eastern Bloc, Yugoslav foreign policy underwent critical changes, notably, an opening to the West (Bogetić, 2000 ; Jakovina, 2003 ). Despite this shift, Yugoslavia maintained its own socialist ideology (which differed from that of the USSR) (Jović, 2003 , pp. 130–131; Bakić, 2011 , p. 26; Čalić, 2013 , pp. 234–252), and accordingly, science in Yugoslavia remained under the dominant influence of socialist ideas (e.g., Najbar-Agičić, 2013 ). Despite the fact that Yugoslavia never abandoned socialist ideology, the geopolitical shift towards West contributed, to a certain extent, to the strengthening of “the pragmatic course of Yugoslav foreign politics” (Kuljić, 1998 : 258), which was reflected in internal socio-political and cultural circumstances in the country. Herein, I analyze the emergence of novel scientific tendencies in Yugoslavia as well as their certain compatibility with concepts as ‘pure’ science, autonomous science, or apolitical science, associated with the representation of the Western ideological perspective during the Cold War. The intention of this work is not to exclusively point out the changes and imply their (in)congruence with Marxist-Leninist ideological assumptions regarding science, but also to discuss the importance of certain geopolitical and socio-political dynamics when these changes are at issue.

To better comprehend changes in the official ideas governing Yugoslav science and its organization and financing in the Cold War context, I begin with a summary of the basic assumptions of ideas of ‘pure’, autonomous, or apolitical science. This view holds that science should be independent of society, because the pursuit of knowledge is its most fundamental value and goal, whereas the insistence on planning and centralization subordinates science to the state (e.g., Polanyi, [1962] 2000 ; Merton, [1938] 1973 ). According to sociologist Robert Merton, the scientific ethos, autonomy, and validity of scientific knowledge are all interconnected in such a way that “freer scientific communities who have institutionalized ideals of ‘pure’ science are more likely to produce true knowledge” (Panofsky, 2010 , p. 142). In other words, a scientist must be “free to do good science” (Krige, 2006 , p. 146). This is not how the West viewed scientists in the USSR, which was characterized as a totalitarian system in the western Cold War discourse. This ideological demarcation was often used, ostensibly for professional reasons, to discriminate against scientists of communist affiliation in the West (see Krige, 2006 , pp. 115–153). The concept of a “party line” was presented as a “key factor that distinguished Western from totalitarian science” (Wolfe, 2018 , p. 32). Because political demarcation was transferred to the level of ‘pure’ professionalism, the idea that intellectual merit, rather than political preferences, was the deciding factor in selecting scientific projects – this could have been considered a determinant of American science during the Cold War, although reality was somewhat different (Wang, 2002 ; Krige, 2006 ; Aronova, 2012 ; Wolfe, 2018 ).

The split with Stalin in 1948 initiated the process of ideological transformation in Yugoslavia, whose important developments occurred in the early 1950s with the inauguration of the new ruling paradigm – that of Socialist Self-Management (Jović, 2003 , pp. 130–131; Čalić, 2013 , pp. 238–242). After the break, the USSR went from being a socialist ideal (celebrated in all social spheres as the opposing force to the capitalist West) to an example of “state capitalism”, under which the working class was “far worse off than in most backward capitalist countries” (Tito according to Rajak, 2011 , p. 25). Footnote 9

Weakening of the Soviet organization model in Yugoslav science

The novel tendencies that emerged after the break with Stalin brought about structural changes in Yugoslav society, but also problems on multiple levels. Importantly, changes at the economic level had a significant impact on science. Decentralization of the economy began even before the formal introduction of “workers’ self-management” (Šetinc, 1978 , p. 25). As early as 1952, at the Sixth Congress of the CPY, Footnote 10 there were open appeals to weaken the state influence on Yugoslavia’s economic system in favor of a freer market. The involvement of Boris Kidrič, the President of the Economic Council of the Government of Yugoslavia and member of the Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Central Committee of the LCY, is particularly noteworthy in this sense. According to him, “the new economic system should be based on objective economic laws and avoid administrative suppression of those laws to the greatest extent possible” (Kidrič, 1952 , p. 130). Socialist Self-Management in Yugoslavia was closely intertwined with calls for less state interference in the economy, in contrast to an important element of Marxist economic theory – the planned economy. The Yugoslav leader, Josip Broz Tito, speaking of workers’ self-management at the Sixth Congress of the CPY in 1952, stated that “true democratic management begins where state control over economic affairs through its apparatus ends” (Tito according to Šetinc, 1978 , p. 25).

The extent to which market reform in Yugoslavia was pursued, even though “it supported dynamics that generated social inequalities” (Lebowitz, 2012 , p. 165) is evident in Tito’s later criticism of the reform: “certain forces and exaggerated idealization of the effect of the law of value and free supply and demand” (Tito, 1958 , p. 56) are to blame for the population’s lack of supplies: “Here, one forgets that planned socialist production necessitates more or less planned distribution of products, greater control of the market and prices” (Tito, 1958 , p. 56). According to Leon Geršković, a prominent Yugoslav jurist and participant in the drafting of all of Yugoslavia’s constitutions from 1946 to 1974, the contradiction between “planned economic management and the unrestrained market mechanism characterizes the whole economic mechanism in Yugoslavia” (Geršković, 1958 , p. 20).

This socio-economic transformation of the Yugoslav system brought about changes in the financing of scientific research. “[F]ollowing the enactment of the Federal Law on the Organization of Scientific Work in 1957 and the establishment of the Federal, Republic, and Provincial Funds for Scientific Work, the process of establishing a more direct relationship between science and the users of its services began” (Blagojević, 1982 , p. 316). Although scientific activity was still government-funded, science began to be supported “through special social funds or direct contracting with economic actors and other users” (Blagojević, 1982 , p. 316). In other words, novel socio-economic tendencies arose within Yugoslavia, with further integration into the market economy, which influenced science, bringing about changes in terms of financing that were in line with the economic turn.

Moreover, these tendencies led to the weakening of centralization in the very model of scientific organization. A good example of this was the substantially reduced role of the Council of the Academy of Sciences in the management and supervision of scientific activity. At the meeting of the delegates of Yugoslav Academies in 1959 , it was decided that the Yugoslav Council of Academies would terminate its role as the leader and supervisor of scientific and artistic work in the country, and cease being the advisor to the federal government regarding scientific issues. This meant that the Council lost its position Footnote 11 defined by the above-mentioned founding meeting. Thus, the Council was left with the role of a representative at international events and loose coordination between the Yugoslav republics’ Academies. They were also, to an overwhelming degree, responsible for their own funding. At this meeting, it was decided that for the financing of scientific activities, the Council must address the federal council in charge of scientific work. Hence, the federal budget would cease to directly finance scientific activities (a reversal of the decision previously made at the founding meeting of the Council in 1948), shifting the financial burden to the republics’ Academies (Korolija, 2017 , p. 1167-1168; Meeting of the delegates of Yugoslav republics’ academies, 1959 ).

On the basis of the effects of socio-economic changes in scientific sphere, in terms of organization, which to a great extent (still) remained in accord with Soviet principles of centralization and planning, one may notice that in the case of Yugoslav science the process of decentralization in organizational sphere have matched the new impulses of deregulation in economic sphere. Decentralization, which in itself is not necessarily opposed to socialist theoretical principles (see e.g., Supek, 1971 ), but also not opposed to ideological representation of the values of Western science, here is related to introduction of economic deregulation. In this way the science in Yugoslavia, in structural sense, due to geopolitical shift of Yugoslavia in 1948, demonstrate the socialist adaptation to geopolitical and socio-economic, socio-political processes, which in the given period of Cold War is more in accord with proclaimed values of the Western bloc.

Change in the official discourse of Yugoslav science

Geopolitical and societal dynamics after the break with the USSR likewise influenced the nature of the dominant scientific discourse in Yugoslavia, which was mainly defined by the Cold War context. On a theoretical level, the concept of more autonomous science was propagated (Ristić, 2013 ), which marked certain deviation from the thereto dominant view that science must be in a close bond with the realities of society. Structural changes in Yugoslavia’s economy were brought about by request from the West (Bogetić, 2000 , pp. 14, 15, 90, italics added ), Footnote 12 in the context of weakening the planned economy and introducing a market economy, which in ideal-typical sense is linked to liberal ideology (Hunt, 1981 ). These correlated with changes in certain aspects of science. At first, these changes were structurally relatively subtle and occurred at a slower pace. However, in the speeches of Yugoslav party officials and ideologues, these changes were considerably more explicit and could be detected shortly after the break with the USSR. This was evidenced by the party’s dissatisfaction with Yugoslav (scientific) publications, due to the inclusion of translations of articles authored in Russian, etc. In accordance with some new political changes that took place in 1948, journals had to be directed toward a more local perspective (Duančić, 2019 , p. 69).

At the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of CPY held at the end of 1949, the Party’s leadership demanded that in ideological and scientific activity focus be placed on the study of the so-called Yugoslav experience. This was accompanied by a softer stance on the part of the Party leadership toward academic workers, subjects of “bourgeois” ideology, who, before the break with the USSR, were seen as a major problem and obstacle to the construction of socialism. Such an approach now became “sectarian”. (Petranović, 1988 , p. 319) In this context, Milovan Đilas, Footnote 13 an important party official and ideologist, in 1949 asserted that it was “necessary to vigorously suppress the wrong, sectarian attitude toward old experts and old scientific and teaching staff” (Đilas, 1985 , p. 312). At issue is a certain weakening of the idea of philosophical struggle understood necessarily as class struggle in theory by Marxists-Leninists see e.g., Lenin, ([1909] 1977 ). In the same speech, Đilas criticized the USSR’s administrative apparatus, as well as the exaggerated planning in education and science (Đilas, 1985 , pp. 288-289).

The insistence on weakening of centralization and other elements of the Marxist-Leninist ideological line in science is likewise reflected in Đilas’s view of the role of the Ministry of Science and Culture (MSC) Footnote 14 and the Committees for Science and Culture, asserted also in 1949. According to him, “[t]he MSC should limit its activities to solely federal educational, cultural, and scientific matters and the appropriate federal institutions” (Đilas, 1985 : 308), as well as general supervision of republics’ institutions, convening conferences, etc, while “[e]verything else should be left to the republics” (Đilas, 1985 , p. 308). In other words, Đilas was in favor of ridding the MSC of the role of “administrative and bureaucratic leadership.” Đilas believed that this would help the development of science and culture by “reducing bureaucratization.” The Third Plenum of the Central Committee of CPY marked an undeniable formal ideological break with the cultural model of the USSR (Dimić, 1988 , pp. 241-245). Thus, in the eyes of Yugoslav authorities, the organizational model of the USSR went from being the most efficient organizational model to the most ineffective one shortly after the break.

That same year (1949), a party official and key Yugoslav ideologist Edvard Kardelj Footnote 15 (in his acceptance speech to the Slovenian Academy of Sciences) talked about the “anti-scientific” tendencies of the USSR, which “turned science into bureaucracy lackeys” (Kardelj, 1950 , p. 4). Such criticism of Soviet bureaucracy (and its attitude towards science) was characteristic not only of the opposing camp during the Cold War (e.g., Polanyi’s criticism) but also of political organizations whose criticism of Stalin’s regime remained affirmative of Lenin’s teachings (e.g., Trotskyist organizations). In accordance with this it seems that changes within socialist Yugoslav science, especially in the context of the critique of USSR, represent an attempt of overcoming what was often emphasized as one of the main negative aspects of Soviet science, which prevents its scientific development—the extremely bureaucratic system of USSR.

Bošković ( 1981 ) noted that Kardelj declared science to be autonomous from the state apparatus. This is particularly evident in Kardelj’s words that “true science in our country cannot serve anybody or anything other than truth and progress, and such a role of science is especially useful for our people’s, socialist state” (Kardelj, 1950 , p. 6). Kardelj’s speech represents a negation of Soviet science in stating that:

“we can talk about partisanship in science only in the sense of its social, class determination of human knowledge. In contrast to that, however, the creators of the pragmatist concept of ‘partisanship’ declare as truth all that in their short-sightedness they consider useful for a certain political tactic and socio-economic practice, while in reality confusing their desires and needs for objective truth.” [Kardelj, 1950 , p. 4]

In other words, Kardelj ( 1950 ) rejected partisanship in science as a perspective in which science is part of the “state apparatus”. Accordingly, Bošković ( 1981 ) wondered whether Kardelj “ generally rejected the concept of partisanship by specifying the conditionality of knowledge in this way” (Bošković, 1981 , p. 3).

Kardelj criticized the cult of Soviet science (in the first place Soviet social science), which he referred to in his speech as the “theory of Soviet science’s leading role”. In this regard, he stated as early as 1949 that “recently, some people have crossed the threshold of ridiculous trying to justify that role” (Kardelj, 1950 , p. 5). Kardelj went on to elaborate (1950) on his remark by claiming that the authors of this theory do not present concrete results of Soviet (social) science, but only refer to “some kind of right of inheritance”, by which he means “that only the leading cadres of the USSR are able to provide for the whole world the final and conclusive determinations of certain social phenomena, anywhere on the globe” (Kardelj, 1950 , p. 5).

At the same time, Kardelj’s speech declared that the road to freedom of intellectual creativity was paved in Yugoslavia:

“We feel that our scientific workers must be free in their work. Particularly because without differing opinions, scientific discussion, critique, and verification of theoretical positions in practice, there will be no progress, nor will there be a successful struggle against reactionary concepts and dogmatism in science. Our scientists must address scientific issues courageously and without awe in the face of petrified dogmas.” [Kardelj, 1950 , p. 6]

This marked the beginning of a new relationship between science and creativity in Yugoslavia in general (Dimić, 1988 , p. 255; Kašić, 1989 , p. 210).

The freedom of scientific creativity in Yugoslavia, conditionally speaking, proclaimed after the break with the USSR, was a result of the country’s political choices and decisions. Similar observations were made on American scientific freedom during the Cold War, which “had to be constructed and maintained through a series of political choices” (Wolfe, 2018 , p. 2). In this sense, when analyzing the nature of science in Yugoslavia, it is necessary, at least roughly, to contextualize the aforementioned processes of shaping Yugoslav science towards greater autonomy after the break with the USSR. This should be done while keeping in mind that the entanglement of politics and science is a feature of the Cold War in general (see Solovey, 2001 ; Oreskes and Krige, 2014 (eds), Aronova, Turchetti ( 2016 )), and not unique to socialist systems.

The proclaimed change in the social position of science that Kardelj announced is Titoist, i.e., an ideological break in the sphere where a political showdown between Yugoslav leadership and the USSR was taking place. The “official line” character of this anti-Soviet speech was evident, as it was published in multiple places, including the scientific journal Science and Nature in 1950.

Đilas ( 1951 ) continued to criticize the ideology of the USSR while advocating for “socialist democracy”, which he primarily opposed to “bureaucratism”. He compared Soviet ideology to dogmatism, emphasizing its lack of scientific and dialectical rigor, and argued that its subjects are “those who learned Marxism from Stalin rather than [learning about] the process of transforming reality from Marx himself…” (Đilas, 1951 , p. 6). Moreover, he appeared to believe that scientists in Yugoslavia do not need to be Marxists, because science is a progressive social force in and of itself thanks to the unrestrained materialism, even when scientists

“know nothing about Marx, nothing about dialectics, nor are they even willing to completely abide by quotations as such. Moreover, in the fight against religion, mysticism, idealism, vulgarity, non-science […] they are our allies in action! But not allies in the usual, political sense. For, we will win even without these allies. It’s not about that! It is simply about an easier or a more difficult victory, and essentially: about the development of science, breaking down all of those barriers that impede or may impede its development, which for us in a concrete situation is identical to inhibiting the development of socialism.” [Đilas, 1951 , pp. 14 -15]

Marx and Engels, as well as Lenin, criticized this particular view of scientists and science as inconsistently materialistic and non-dialectical, claiming that such a position eventually leads to a politically reactionary, i.e., idealist philosophical camp (Marx, [1846] 1969 ; Engels, [1877] 1947 ; Lenin, [1909] 1977 ). Prior to the Second World War, it was precisely the CPY that criticized heterodox scientists and philosophers who considered themselves Marxist-Leninists and expressed views in a similar spirit, deeming them to be revisionists (Kovačević, 1989 ).

Issue no. 10 of the journal Science and Nature (1949) featured a speech by renowned Yugoslav communist and the Minister of Science, Rodoljub Čolaković, delivered at the first Congress of Yugoslav mathematicians and physicists, at the time when the break with the USSR began to be felt in all areas. In contrast to its former unity with the USSR, socialist Yugoslavia now displayed a distinctively unique interest in “our way of building of socialism” (Čolaković, 1949 , p. 574). Despite Čolaković’s emphasis on the role of science in building a socialist society and his insistence on the connection between science and practice, his views on science, such as the one that “major scientific and cultural issues cannot be solved by any administrative measures” (Čolaković, 1949 , p. 573), demonstrate the abandoning of the idea of Soviet science and orientation toward greater autonomy in science. As for the journal Science and Nature , one could clearly see in the letter by the editorial staff to readers in 1954 that it was subject to certain ideological change. In the address, the role of science in building society is no longer stressed, with the propagation and popularization of natural sciences becoming the journal’s only task. In the same year, the journal became an organ of various scientific societies, “independently published and distributed…”, while the new editorial board was made up of these societies’ members (Editorial staff, 1954 , p. 50).

However, in an announcement made in 1959 (multi-issue volume 1–10), the journal’s editorial board informed its readers and subscribers (from whom the publication partially funded itself) that the journal, “due to the reduction of subsidies after 1956 and their subsequent complete removal, had to be published irregularly at first, before temporarily ceasing publishing…” (Editorial board, 1959 ) This occurred precisely during the aforementioned processes of decentralization in the model of scientific organization and increased autonomy in financing, and after the state loosened control over the economy. These types of difficulties often revealed systemic problems with Yugoslav form of Socialist Self-Management. According to Rudi Supek ( 1971 ), a Yugoslav Praxis Footnote 16 theorist, the issue was not decentralization as such, but rather an unrestrained market economy, which only intensified class tensions in society, created an insufficiently functional economy, etc. In other words, according to Supek ( 1971 ), not only was there a weakening of the “centralized administrative planned economy in Yugoslavia, but also of every development planning concept (regardless of whether it was implemented “from above” or “from below”)” (Supek, 1971 , p. 354).

Novel Yugoslav approach to science

In 1952, the journal Pogledi ( Views ) was launched “to meet the need to address issues in social and natural sciences, particularly those that affect the creation of a complete scientific worldview and the building of socialist culture more directly” (Editorial staff, 1952 , p. 1). The journal incorporated and promoted a Marxist humanist approach to scientific and philosophical issues. Criticizing the “phenomenological and positivist interpretation of reality” as well as the “purely pragmatist attitude to truth, morality, and individual freedom,” the editorial staff concluded that these were negative tendencies, corresponding only to “undemocratic and inhumane social practices” and appearing not only in the context of “decadent bourgeois philosophy but also in Soviet revisionism of Marxism” (Editorial staff, 1952 , pp. 1–2).

In contrast to the “authoritarian” and “ideologically discriminatory” approach, the journal’s editorial staff promoted “open dialog” and “battle of ideas”. The fact that this approach to scientific issues was essentially consistent with the new official state line was demonstrated by the Resolution of the Sixth Congress of CPY, which was also reported on in Views , owing to its relevance for schools and scientific institutions: “The Congress also points out that preventing a clash of opinions could only hinder the development of science and culture” (Editorial staff, 1952 : 65). Another issue of the journal confirmed that “there is no doubt that our entire social development, and thus activities at the highest scientific research and teaching institutions, is heading toward greater autonomy…” (Editorial staff, 1953 , p. 285).

An example of the continuation of this process in Yugoslavia in social sciences was the establishment of the Sociology Group at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade in 1959, as this department was frequently marked by tensions with “dogmatic Marxism”, for which sociology was often viewed as a “bourgeois” and reactionary discipline (Bogdanović, 1990 , p. 23). Another similar case was that of sociology in the USSR, where the situation began to change after Stalin’s death (Weinberg, 1974 ; Osipov, 2009 ).

In accordance with these ideological conditions in scientific and cultural spheres it is useful to consider the case of psychoanalysis too, which “generally speaking […] did not fare well in most of the Marxist-Leninist world” for historical as well as ideological reasons (Savelli, 2013 , p. 262). “Western radical and politically engaged psychoanalysis generally existed on the social and political margins” (Antic, 2022 , pp. 7–8). Savelli ( 2013 ) points out that psychoanalysis in Yugoslavia, in which there was greater intellectual freedom than in the rest of Eastern Europe, despite all obstacles that it encountered, nevertheless managed to inform the psychiatric practice to a larger extent (for example in relation to social problems of alcoholism and suicide). Regarding the examination of the specificity of Yugoslav psychiatry as related to East-West division, it is worth mentioning that it was the profession which incorporated the influence of Marxism, that is of Communist ideology. But, a partial Westernization of the discipline occurred too, and in following years there were also some anti-colonial tendencies - as such it also had an active role in these processes (Antic, 2022 ). On the other hand, an important aspect of it, which was also very noticeable, was the aspiration to actively participate in modernization processes both of its own profession and of society in general, with the aim of revolutionizing the consciousness of individuals, but also of the family and social relationships in general within Yugoslav society, and in a wider sense to act in the direction of progressive, humanistic, creative values (Antic, 2022 ).

The specificity of Yugoslav science, initiated by the break-up with USSR and by the initial firm turn towards the West, is also well attested by the case of Yugoslav biology. Before the break-up, Yugoslav biology, following its role model – USSR, had a tendency to conform itself with Michurin’s biology and the Lisenko’s doctrine. However, due to the change of geopolitical circumstances in 1948, the process of de-Stalinization in Yugoslav biology begun. The particularity of this process may be seen in the fact that Yugoslav michurinists had opted not for rejection of Michurinst biology, labeling it as Stalinist deviation, but “carefully weighed its political and ideological implications, trying to negotiate the Stalinist origins of Michurinist biology with political and ideological reconfiguration in post-Stalinist Yugoslavia.” (Duančić, 2020 , p. 159). As for this topic there was no Party directive from above, but there were, besides “negotiations within a scientific community”, also “negotiations of the scientific community with the party”, which didn’t show any particular interest for that situation (Duančić, 2020 ). During the 1950s an intensification of scientific research appeared in Yugoslavia, as well as greater possibilities for cooperation and visits of young scientists in institutes in the West. This “proved to be more important for the withering of Michurinist biology than the Yugoslav political and ideological distancing from the Soviet Union” (Duančić, 2020 , p. 187). In this way, within the socialist system with more freedom than in the Eastern bloc, the popularization of Michurinist biology in Yugoslavia, which during Cold War represents the first socialist state renegade from USSR, was finished only around 1956 (Duančić, 2020 ).

After Stalin’s death, there were some improvements in the relationship between the USSR and Yugoslavia, albeit this relationship was subject to numerous changes in the years and decades to follow. However, despite the USSR’s desire to return Yugoslavia to the “socialist camp”, this did not happen (Dimić, 2014 , pp.10–19). This initial short-term normalization of the relationship between the USSR and Yugoslavia had no significant ideological consequences for the official scientific discourse in Yugoslavia, as evidenced by Tito’s speech, delivered at the Seventh Congress of the LCY, in which he once again emphasized the positive effects that reduced bureaucratic interference had on scientific work.

“The gradual liquidation of bureaucratic interference in anything and everything has liberated our scientists, artists, cultural workers, and pedagogues from former bureaucratic impediments and provided them with an opportunity for unhindered creative work.” [Tito, 1958 , p. 80]

A good indicator that dominantly socialist science in Yugoslavia continued to open to the West was the fact that, during that time, the US Information Agency of the American Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, published the journal Nauka i tehnika (Science and Technology ) ( 1957 – 1958 ) in Serbo-Croatian language. This monthly publication covered advances in American science, medicine, technology, and economy. An important factor in Yugoslavia’s ideological positioning at the time was the development of the policy of non-alignment , in which Yugoslav president Tito played a key role (Rajak, 2011 , pp. 107–108).

Milentije Popović ( 1960 ), a prominent Yugoslav official, once Minister of Foreign Trade and Finance and President of the Federal Council for Scientific Research, confirmed Yugoslavia’s official deviation from Soviet scientific principles, claiming the impossibility of Soviet-style planning in science. Providing an example of using science to solve problems related to corn production, Popović stated:

“Therefore, we can - and we must - use a program to direct scientific and research efforts towards solving the corn problem , but we cannot plan what we will, what we should (and whether we should) discover” [Popović, 1960 , p. 8].

Popović goes on to state that he aims to overcome one-sidedness and find a middle way between “free science” and “planned science” - viewpoints he believed only seem to be opposed (see Popović, 1960 , pp. 9–16). He undoubtedly introduced the elements of “free science” into the Yugoslav scientific discourse, which clashed with certain aspects of the perspective of Soviet scientific activity, particularly in his emphasis on the importance of freedom of scientific work and his understanding of the nature of “pure science” (see Popović, 1960 , pp. 8–9). Popović further deviated from the idea of Soviet “planned science” later in the text, when he tackled the specific problems of organizing scientific work in manufacturing, agriculture, etc., in Yugoslavia at that time, claiming that these organizational forms “cannot be predefined” (Popović, 1960 , p. 54). Popović distinguished between two ways of financing in Yugoslavia: the first phase, characterized by full budget financing of scientific institutions, “which lasted for several years after the liberation” (Popović, 1960 , p. 56) and coincided with the period of the highly centralized model of scientific organization in Yugoslavia; and the second phase, which began after the break with the USSR and aligned the organization of science in Yugoslavia with market logic.

“In this regard, it is planned that, in principle, scientific and research organizations be as independent in their work as economic organizations, and that the method of distribution of scientific institutions’ income be aligned with the system of economic organizations, with the exception that scientific institutions will return the entire amount of contributions to their funds.” [Popović, 1960 , p. 59] Footnote 17

In Kardelj’s acceptance speech to the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts given on February 22nd, 1960, in which he talks about social sciences and their importance for the continuing development of a “self-managed socialist society”, he stressed at the very beginning that science

“should not be a servant to a certain political practice or certain ruling ideological notion. It sets its own tasks and goals, based on the needs and tasks generated by living social praxis, current human realities, and the development of science itself.” [Kardelj, 1981 , p. 7]

Kardelj’s entire speech was riddled with references supporting the idea of free science, independent of political influences, but also a science that “must not become a mere abstraction”, which is a real threat if one “loses sight of people’s praxis”, because “the end result of the multifaceted process of scientific research finds application in people’s praxis” (Kardelj, 1981 , p. 10). One gains the impression that Kardelj attempted to connect the perspectives of an autonomous and socially engaged science in his address. Looking into this connection, however, it appears that it comes down to the role of science in society being to encourage certain institutions to carry out socially relevant research (Kardelj, 1981 , p. 10), which is a practice that is also present (with some differences) in “bourgeois” societies.

The connection between US’s economic demands and the change of the discourse about the nature and the role of science in Yugoslavia refers to the context of Cold War struggle for ideological hegemony i.e., the soul of socialist science. In this case the process, created through geopolitical shift towards West goes in the direction of an attempt of “limitation” of socialism in science, which points out to instrumental function of ideal-typical Cold War representation of Western science when semi-peripheral country such as Yugoslavia is at issue. However, the fact that Yugoslav system nevertheless retains socialist ideology not only mitigated this process, but these changes, with the help of Party control and its officials, are articulated in such a way (as far as it was possible) to remain in accordance with basic Marxist postulates, understood in a much broader sense than in USSR. Bearing in mind Savelli’s ( 2018 ) analytical categories of ideology “by design”, “where professional knowledge was theoretically guided by ideological considerations” (Savelli, 2018 , p. 2) and ideology “by default”, that is, “events and knowledge” shaped “by the fact that they unfolded” in a certain ideological context, “but were not necessarily guided by that ideology” (Savelli, 2018 , p. 2), it is necessary to investigate what does their use tells about the process of establishing the ideological frame of Yugoslav science. In the context of geopolitical shift, Yugoslavia, alongside with its socialist science, found itself in Western, ideologically hostile bloc, thus facing its socio-economic demands. The changes concerning the view on nature and the role of science in Yugoslav society can be seen, in this context, as partially informed through liberal-democratic ideology “by default”. Nevertheless, regarding these scientific changes, the internal control and the tendency toward socialist articulation of the discourse implemented by Yugoslav Communist Party, as a conductor of the process, at least nominally, imposed socialism “by design”.

The discussion about the position and the role of Yugoslav science in the context of relation between the science and the state, can be seen also as a confirmation of Forman’s ( 1987 ) and Kevles’ ( 1990 ) insight of how the changes of science-state relationships during the Cold War weren’t “just” intellectual in their nature, but were also political. In practice, in both of the blocs proclaimed model of science, either “autonomous” or “partisan”, did not exist. Nevertheless, socio-economic demands and pressures for the purpose of the domination of bloc’s ideologies were in fact Yugoslav reality. In this way, the specificity of the ideology of Yugoslav science was to a great extent the result of the process of formation and adaptation of Yugoslav state to Cold War, its effects on politics and culture, as well as the Yugoslav need for bigger independence, which was framed by a specific variant of socialist ideology.

Through the combination of critical approach to ideology and theoretical-ideological approach, and in the context of Cold War struggle for hegemony, the instrumental character of these different representations of the role and nature of science in society in the service of spreading of proclaimed ideological principles of politically opposed blocs is implied in this work. Through consideration of “autonomous” and “partisan” ideological scientific perspectives, as well as their mutual interaction, in the context of Yugoslav geopolitical and socio-economic dynamics one can also notice the tension between mentioned scientific Cold War views on science, which, in Yugoslav case, was resolved though certain deviations from Soviet idea of science. Although differences, it is unquestionable, within scientific practice in the context of the Cold War were overemphasized, especially if bearing in mind obvious bloc deviations from discursive principles in practice, the case of science in Yugoslavia points out to certain real i.e., practical differences, expressed foremost on the level of financing and organization of science, but also articulated within official discourse about nature and role of science in society. Through researching Cold War ideology of science in Yugoslavia, this work points out to the fact that dominant differences, in their core, between Soviet and Western idea about science are, in case of Yugoslavia, basically in direct connection with various economic dynamics, that is, the Soviet idea of planned, centralized economy as opposed to the idea of market economy. In this sense, if (in)compatibility of these two views on science in the context of one society is considered, it seems that it is necessary to start from more fundamental dealing with socio-economic dynamics within concrete social conditions. In other words, the case of science in Yugoslavia that we have discussed in this work shows us that we have to take into consideration, in a greater extent, the possibility that in relations between these two scientific perspectives there are not only philosophical questions, but also socio-economic processes.

It is necessary to pose the question of what does the relationship between science and state, on the example of science in (semi)peripheral Yugoslavia during Cold War also tells about the nature and role of science in this ideological context in general? The confirmation of the extent in which the Cold War science was related to the state can be also seen on the example of socialist Yugoslav science. However, for its specificity in relation to bloc science one is supposed to look firstly in ideological dissidence from USSR, as well as in a rather distinct geopolitical shift towards Western bloc by ruling Yugoslav party and state structures, immediately after the break with Stalin. The very fact that changes in ideological understanding of the nature and role of science in Yugoslav society were initiated by Party officials, and essentially carried out through the principle “from above downwards” informed the ideological framework of Yugoslav science even when it implied advocating larger autonomy of science in socialist Yugoslav society. This does not mean that scientists had no freedom at all in their work (e.g., Duančic, 2020 ), but that this scientific freedom, just as the scientific partisanship, was formed and limited essentially by state projects and needs regarding the nature and role of science in a concrete society, which was formed, just as the science itself, in the Cold War climate. The state, and not the society (or working class) and its fundamental needs, is the one which in final instance created the ideological framework of the science during Cold War, its “autonomy” as well as its “partisanship”. Consequently, socio-economic and ideological impacts of a geopolitical shift of Yugoslav science makes it necessary to enter more deeply and in a more interdisciplinary way into attempts of examining and defining what Forman ( 1987 ) would call “true path” of science, as well as noticing of the importance of historical dynamics regarding the changes in relation to the nature and role of science in society (e.g., Kevles, 1990 ). At issue here is a need for differentiating the elements of system and separating the concrete structure, which in the final instance limits (most often led by its own interests) the freedom and social engagement of science. While taking this into account, it is necessary to analyze reasons for (dis)agreement and (im)possibility of applying the concepts of “autonomous” and “partisan” science in practice, (according to their basic proclaimed principles), and to derive them from broader and more clearly differentiated historical, sociological and philosophical analysis of the relationship between state, science and society during Cold War.

Conclusion and outlook

In the context of two dominant ideological views on science during the Cold War, I examined changes in Yugoslav science after its break with the USSR, in terms of the organization model, financing, and scientific discourse. Through comparison of the governing standpoints on science in Yugoslavia prior to the Tito-Stalin split in 1948 and after it, I show the compatibility of these changes with certain aspects of the perspective of science as autonomous and apolitical. Market forces and their control, as well as (de)centralization, (de)bureaucratization, and changes in the international position of Yugoslavia in the Cold War context proved to be elements of particular importance in this analysis. Understanding their relation to Yugoslav science allows us not only to position it more clearly during the Cold War, but also to better comprehend the nature of the ideological framework that supported various dynamics of de-Stalinization of specific scientific issues in Yugoslavia. Footnote 18 These elements are still structurally and politically relevant to date. They underline science as an activity woven into social processes. In accordance, these insights could be useful for a better understanding of today’s dynamics between science and society.

By contextualizing the nature of these changes in Yugoslav science, while presenting the dominant ideological views on science during the Cold War and considering how both sides deviated from their proclaimed principles, the question arises as to what these changes can tell us about the nature and role of “autonomous” and “partisan” perspectives of science during this period? Bearing in mind the importance of the Yugoslav geopolitical shift for the issues dealt with in this study, it seems that for a more complete insight into the nature and roles of these views it is necessary to approach them in the context of the struggle for ideological hegemony during the Cold War. Judging by the examples provided by Yugoslav science in this era, the analysis is incomplete without considering the socio-economic changes and contradictions of the society in question. For Yugoslavia, this was embedded in the case of a socialist country that after 1948 turned to the Western Bloc. These unusual Cold War circumstances made Yugoslav science in this period an interesting case for research.

It is evident that the earlier simplified ideas of science in the West and the East are mostly mundane today (Kojevnikov, 2004 , p. 46; Aronova, 2011 , pp. 198–199), and that science in both blocs was politicized. However, this study suggests, though Yugoslav science was socialist, that it is possible to observe some objective changes in terms of the scientific organization model and financing, as well as in the official and dominant discourse of Yugoslav science. Those changes were in accordance with the ideas associated with Western science and occurred after the geopolitical shift towards the West. Perhaps a more thorough analysis of the practical and cultural factors that influenced certain aspects of science in Yugoslavia would allow us to draw a broader picture of the relationship between science and ideology in the Cold War? This would require expanding this research with additional and more detailed examples of concrete scientific practice. In this regard, in the future, I see the need for further research into the roles and positions of science that are not limited to the Cold War’s major actors. I believe that the specificities of certain (semi)peripheral societies’ experiences during this period would be fruitful to gain novel insight into this subject.

When dealing with the USSR in this study, the reference framework involves the USSR up until Stalin’s death (1953).

The Resolution of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties concerning the state of affairs in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, passed on June 28th, 1948 .

A good example of a Soviet view of science, propagated by scientist, is the publication of Yugoslav biologist Vojin Gligić: Borci za bolju berbu i žetvu (Fighters for a better harvest, 1945 ).

For scientific cooperation of Yugoslavia and the USSR see Bondžić 2010 .

Časopis društva za kulturnu saradnju Jugoslavije i SSSR-a (Journal of the Society for Cultural Cooperation of Yugoslavia and the USSR)

O uslovima socijalističkog planiranja (On the conditions of socialist planning)

Sovjetska nauka kroz sovjetske naučnike (Soviet Science through the lens of Soviet scientists)

Lenjin i prirodne nauke (Lenin and natural sciences)

For criticism of the USSR see also The Congress of the Union of Communists of Yugoslavia, 1952 , pp. 260–273.

At the Sixth Congress, Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) changed its name to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY). It modified its role to adapt the Party to new conditions in society – “Socialist Self-Management” (for more on this see Šetinc 1978), sometimes referred to as “workers’ self-management”.

Position that was established following the model of the Academy of Sciences in the Soviet Union.

For more detail about the effects of the Yugoslav economic reform after the break with the USSR from a Western perspective see: CIA Report The Fiat-Soviet Auto Plant and Communist Economic Reforms, The Yugoslav Economic Reform, pp. 43–47, (March 4th 1967 ).

Milovan Đilas (1911–1995) is probably most famous for his dissident Cold War engagement and the book The New Class (1957). However, during the period described in this segment, Đilas occupied very high positions in the party, including the ideologically immensely important position at the helm of AGITPROP (Party organ in charge of agitation and propaganda) (Dimić, 1988; Bogdanović, 2013).

For more on the MSC see Bondžić, 2004 : 144–148.

The pre-war Slovenian communist Edvard Kardelj (1910-1979) evolved into a key ideologue of the Titoist system of Socialist Self-Management after Yugoslavia’s break with the USSR. Through his political and ideological work, Kardelj critically shaped the new socio-political system of Yugoslavia (Jović, 2003).

Praxis was a Marxist humanist journal (1964–1974) and dissident circle of philosophers and social scientists in Yugoslavia.

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This manuscript has undergone several revisions, and I appreciate all the valuable and constructive feedback that has contributed to its improvement. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia (Contract No. 451-03-68/2020-14/200053).

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Korolija, M. Yugoslav science during the Cold War (1945–1960): socio-economic and ideological impacts of a geopolitical shift. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10 , 913 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02414-2

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Kosovo in the 1980s – Yugoslav Perspectives and Interpretations

Robert Pichler is a senior post-doc at the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. A historical anthropologist, his main research areas are migration and visual studies as well as social transformation and nation-building in Southeastern Europe. As a photographer, he works at the interface of art and documentary photography.

Hannes Grandits is professor of Southeast European History at the Humboldt University of Berlin. From 2014 to 2020, he was project leader of a DAAD-funded network involving the universities of Belgrade, Berlin (HU), Koper, Pula, Sarajevo, Skopje, and Zagreb, which cooperated on various topics related to the history of socialist Yugoslavia. His recent books on the history of socialist Yugoslavia include Reprezentacije socijalističke Jugoslavije: preispitivanja i perspektive , ed. with V. Ivanović and B. Janković (2019), and Jugoslawien in den 1960er Jahren. Auf dem Weg zu einem (a)normalen Staat? ed. with H. Sundhaussen (2013).

Ruža Fotiadis is a post-doctoral researcher at the Chair of Southeast European History at the Humboldt University of Berlin. She is a historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Southeastern Europe, and her research interests include Greek-Serbian relations, the history of Yugoslavia, and food studies. Her current work focusses on the history of human–animal interactions in Southeastern Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The introductory article in this issue argues for greater consideration of the impact of the Kosovo crisis on political developments in other Yugoslav republics and on the entire federal state structure of Yugoslavia after Tito’s death. It also calls for a closer examination of alternative paths that were considered by various actors to resolve the conflict but were not or could not be pursued. Such a discussion of developments in Kosovo in the 1980s in a broader Yugoslav perspective would, it is argued, also have the potential to contribute to a more complex understanding of the Kosovo crisis itself.

Introduction

Central to any understanding of the dynamics of political change in Serbia, Slobodan Milošević’s rise to power, and the nature of the nationalist upsurge within Yugoslavia is a grasp of developments during late socialism in Kosovo. These developments have been thoroughly and variously studied. Most often, however, the focus of what transpired in Kosovo during the 1980s has predominantly concentrated on the political relations between Belgrade and Pristina, or on “intra-Serbian” dynamics, or on the complex evolution of the political climate and hierarchies within autonomous Kosovo. By contrast, Kosovo’s role in the “Yugoslav 1980s”, or the way Kosovo was discussed and understood in the other Yugoslav republics, has received far less scholarly attention. Kosovo was an integral part of the fabric of the six republics and two autonomous provinces comprising the organisational framework of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Given the scarcity of scholarly studies on this subject, a reconsideration of how the Kosovo crisis reverberated across the other Yugoslav republics and the difficulty of finding a “Yugoslav” answer to the problem seems highly relevant.

All too often, developments following the Kosovo demonstrations in 1981 have been viewed solely in terms of rising nationalism and the “inevitability” of Yugoslavia’s disintegration. A teleology of failure, and the idea that Kosovo epitomised a condition of unbridgeable disputes, are inherent in this reasoning. Scholars, however, often ignore paths not taken and opportunities missed, which could have led to other outcomes. To examine alternative roads does not mean that nationalism was not a decisive factor here; rather, it stresses the necessity of shedding light on various scenarios the crisis gave rise to and of determining which actors were considering which particular solutions to the conflicts.

The idea of treating this question in greater detail emerged out of a network partnership initiated by the Chair of Southeast European History at the Humboldt University Berlin and funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), within which colleagues from various historical institutes in the successor countries of Yugoslavia cooperated from 2013 to 2020. In 2019, several initiatives involving this network took up matters related to 1989 in Yugoslavia. The 2019 doctoral school of the Centre for Cultural and Historical Research of Socialism in Pula, Croatia, dealt with, among other things, major late socialist economic and political trends in Yugoslavia (see https://www.unipu.hr/ckpis/doktorska_radionica/2019 ). The History Fest 2019 in Sarajevo was dedicated to the significance of the changes in Yugoslavia within the context of an ever-deepening crisis of socialism in Europe in 1989 (see https://issuu.com/umhis/docs/program_hfs_2019_bez_prepusta_2_ ). In both of these events, scholars took a closer look at the linkages (often insufficiently problematised up until now) connecting the changes in Yugoslavia with the looming collapse of socialism in other countries in East Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.

In the wake of a series of failed attempts to find a solution to the crisis of Yugoslav socialism, 1989 is associated in public discourse and particularly in the historiography with three turning points: the looming disintegration of the League of Communists, the emergence of the first opposition parties, and escalating nationalism in politics and everyday life. However, 1989 also witnessed comprehensive attempts once again to implement a state-wide reform programme. After a “leaden” period of ideological rigidity in the 1970s, there were a wide variety of efforts throughout the 1980s to address through reform a massive economic crisis that began to emerge not too long after Tito’s death in 1980. In the late 1980s, especially with the advent of Ante Marković’s government, these efforts also involved an unprecedented reorganisation of the economic system of socialist Yugoslavia. Increasingly, these efforts were also aimed at preventing not only advancing economic disintegration, but even a political disintegration of the federation that suddenly no longer seemed unrealistic.

The intellectual background of prosocialist or decidedly pro-Yugoslav currents was hardly irrelevant at that time. It consisted of the remnants of humanist Marxism, defenders of a socialist civil society, supporters of market socialism, and above all the camp of the “communist renovators”. These turbulent times—and this has been quickly forgotten—yielded diverse discussions, within the party and its mass organisations and within dissident circles but most often in a grey zone between the (political-ideological) establishment and the institutions and forums undergoing major changes or in the process of emerging.

In a workshop entitled “Kosovo 1989 – Intra-Yugoslav Perspectives and Interpretations”, held at the Humboldt University in Berlin on 7–8 November 2019, experts from the region and beyond explored how the developments in Kosovo in the 1980s reverberated across Yugoslavia. The workshop quickly made it evident that a similar sort of joint “Yugoslav” or Serbian-Kosovar historiographical discussion on Kosovo in the 1980s is not yet possible in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. In Serbia or Kosovo, such discussions would probably meet with strong resistance—including from colleagues institutionally located there. Even in Bosnia-Herzegovina, such an event would have encountered great difficulties. For this reason, the conference in Berlin was one of the first events at which Serbian and Kosovar historians and social scientists discussed the late 1980s together. And they did so, as mentioned, with special reference to intra-Yugoslav perspectives.

Kosovo in the 1980s

In March 1981, student protests erupted in Pristina, the capital of the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo, and spread in the weeks that followed, leading to violent demonstrations in several cities. Hardly anyone had expected the vehemence of this revolt. Only seven years earlier, in February 1974, Kosovo had gained the status of a Socialist Autonomous Province within Serbia and was given far-reaching autonomy rights. Kosovo, under the provisions of the 1974 constitution, was defined as an autonomous territorial political unit and as a constitutive element of federalism; it had its own constitution and internal organization and was a partner equal to other federal units in the procedure of issuing the federal constitution, including the right to vote ( Rajović 1985 ; Cvetković-Sander 2011 ; Nimani et al. 2018 ). Furthermore, Kosovo had been receiving substantial financial support from the Federal Fund for the Crediting of the Development of the Less-Developed Regions. Consequently, the demands of Kosovo’s Albanians met with little understanding and less sympathy ( Tromp-Vrkić 1996 , 49).

The province’s difficult economic situation was a major concern voiced in the protests. Its impressive economic growth since its integration into socialist Yugoslavia notwithstanding, Kosovo was economically drifting ever further from the rest of Yugoslavia, the northern republics in particular. This divergence was due in part to rapid population growth but was also a result of misguided investments in the province. Overall, socialist modernisation policies had brought about tremendous socioeconomic change. A region that until the 1950s had been characterised by “traditional” social structures had undergone profound evolutions in education, the economy (the mechanisation of agriculture, industrialisation, and mining) and in infrastructure (roads, telephone lines, factories, power plants, etc.) ( Gaber and Kuzmanič 1989 ; Schmitt 2008 , 237–96; Ströhle 2016a , 83–92). These processes were accompanied by a particularly high natural growth rate of the population and rapid urbanisation. From 1961 to 1981, the Albanian population in Kosovo almost doubled (from 646,805 to 1,226,736). During the same period, the Serbian population decreased from 227,016 to 209,498, its share of the total population plummeting from 23.7 to 13.2% ( Horvat 1988 , 181). The change in Kosovo’s ethnic structure, which from the 1960s onwards was also stimulated by a large outflow of Serbs (and Montenegrins), became a topic of heated and controversial debate ( Blagojević and Petrović 1989 ; Islami 1994 , 30–1; Blagojević 1996 , 212–43; Popović et al. 1990 , 22; Clewing 2000 , 17–63) and an issue subject to increasing nationalist instrumentalisation by representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church, as well as writers, intellectuals, and academics over the course of the 1980s ( Sundhaussen 2012 , 234–44, Dragović-Soso 2002 , 125–7).

Rapid population growth meant that Kosovo lacked the economic capacity to absorb the marked increase of young people now seeking employment in the socialist economy. The situation yielded growing unemployment and also steered many young people to enrol at the University of Pristina (established in 1970) in numbers that soon far exceeded the university’s capacity to instruct them properly ( Canaj 2021 ). The lack of prospects for many young people contributed decisively to widespread discontent, which was interpreted not rarely as an indicator of social misery but also, by many, as political discrimination against Kosovo Albanians within socialist Yugoslavia ( Mertus 1999 , 24–8; Pula 2004 , 801–3). Isabel Ströhle argues that economic crisis and inflation hit Yugoslavia at the exact moment when those segments of society who were locked into structural unemployment (the “Kosovo underclass”) began catching up with the rest of Yugoslav society ( Ströhle 2016b , 112–31). Slogans were directed against the mismanagement and corruption within their own ranks, but protesters also criticized structural economic injustices and demanded, as they had in 1968, that Kosovo be elevated to the status of a republic ( Mišović 1987 ).

Swift and decisive action was taken against the demonstrations, legitimised by the infiltration of radical segments into the movement who demanded that the “Albanian territories” of Yugoslavia be annexed to Albania and that Yugoslavia’s Kardeljian self-managing socialism be replaced by Albanian Marxist-Leninist Hoxhaism. Classified as “revisionist and counterrevolutionary”, the demonstrations were violently put down with the unanimous approval of the federal, republican and provincial authorities, and a state of emergency was imposed on the province ( Hetemi 2020 , 171–81; Petritsch and Pichler 2005 , 81–6).

The events in Kosovo as discussed thus far had revealed the fault lines that became characteristic of the 1980s. By the late 1970s, leading political representatives of the Serbian republic in Belgrade were voicing the criticism that decentralisation had brought greater autonomy for the other republics within Yugoslavia, while Serbia was increasingly losing control of its own republic. Since Serbia was the only republic with two autonomous provinces in its territory, which were given additional self-governing rights under the 1974 constitution, political representatives were particularly alarmed by the demonstrations and the demands to elevate the province to republic status. What was initially negotiated as a matter of Serbian internal politics became an all-Yugoslav dispute over the constitution and the relationship of the constituent units, the republics and autonomous provinces, to the federation. Various Serbian politicians expressed the criticism that progressive decentralisation did not lead, as many claimed, to the strengthening of the Yugoslav working class as intended but rather to increasing particularism, which was reinforced by the attitude of the republics (dubbed “bureaucratic statism”) ( Jović 2009 , 192–5). In this situation, new actors increasingly stepped in; disappointed with the political leadership and concerned about the rapid economic decline, they critically questioned existing dogmas of socialist self-representation and formulated alternative solutions to the crisis. The reappraisal of the past that permeated all levels of Yugoslav scholarship, culture, and media during the 1980s was particularly pronounced in Serbia due to the more powerful impact there of the economic crisis and the disintegrative processes within the republic ( Dragović-Soso 2002 , 77–8; Sundhaussen 2012 , 234–43; Djokić 2022 ).

The Albanian political leadership in Kosovo also came under massive pressure; they were suspected of not having taken decisive action against opponents of the regime—including “counterrevolutionary forces” obviously under influence from neighbouring Albania—and had to enforce draconian measures against members in their own ranks as well as intellectuals, academics, and all those suspected of supporting the protests ( Clark 2000 , 43–4). The fact that around 80% of the political prisoners in Yugoslavia in the 1980s were Albanians illustrates the scale of the persecution against them ( Dragović-Soso 2002 , 117). Many Albanians, including political activists, left the country for western and northern Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Scandinavia) or the United States, where a powerful diaspora emerged over the course of the 1980s, especially in the wake of Milošević’s rise to power in 1987. The diaspora subsequently played an important role in financing the parallel structures the Albanians established after Kosovo’s autonomy was revoked in 1989 ( Clark 2000 , 95–121; Pula 2004 , 797–826). The political pressure exerted a powerful impact on the population as a whole. The measures designed to inhibit Albanian nationalism further alienated Albanians from their political leadership and contributed to the consolidation of Albanian nationalism. At the same time, interethnic relations in Kosovo suffered a dramatic deterioration ( Mertus 1999 , 41–4).

The political leadership all over the country agreed that the events in Kosovo were of a constitutional nature. The debates sparked in the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) and in the republics and autonomous provinces reignited already existing conflicts over the state’s constitution. These conflicts essentially revolved around the question of whether to continue the path taken towards decentralisation or whether the constitution should be reformed so as to eliminate the inequality between the republics complained about by Serbia. For a significant strand of the Serbian leadership, the events in Kosovo had resulted from increasing particularism, which not only paralysed relations within their own republic but was symptomatic of the situation of the federation. The system of workers’ self-management was not questioned during this phase of the dispute, but the way it was implemented was. Political leaders in particular in Serbia observed critically that the republics and provinces increasingly tended towards internal centralisation, which led to closure, excessive bureaucratisation, and ultimately the politicisation of the economy. Outside Serbia, especially in Slovenia but also in the other republics, the political leadership resisted any moves towards recentralisation and called instead for a more consistent implementation of workers’ self-management. The roots of the conflict in Kosovo, it was argued, lay precisely in the undeveloped mode of self-management that was considered the basis for democratic solutions to national conflicts ( Jović 2009 , 176–215). Seen from this angle, the main danger confronting Yugoslavia was not separatism but centralism, which was equated with a resurgent Serbian desire to be dominant within the federation. Thus Kosovo was regarded primarily as a Serbian issue ( Gagnon 2004 , 52–74). Moreover, Tito, who had always been the main decision-maker and arbiter in political disputes, had died one year before the demonstrations arose in Kosovo; his absence was also a decisive factor behind the deadlock in federal decision-making ( Halder 2013 , 297–308).

Against the backdrop of this impasse, the events in Kosovo increasingly served to mobilise new political forces and approaches within the Serbian leadership. Parts of the Serbian political elite turned their backs on the party leadership and sought new ways out of the crisis. These political circles were primarily concerned with strengthening Serbian interest vis-à-vis the “others”. They imposed an orthodox ideological line on the local level and raised the issue of threats to Serbs. They directed attention towards Albanian nationalism and an alleged ongoing (demographic) “genocide” against Serbs in Kosovo. Much has been written about Slobodan Milošević’s rise to power: how he misused the Kosovo issue to mobilise the masses, how he toppled Serbian president Ivan Stambolić, eliminated the opposition within the party, streamlined the media, and became the dominant politician within Serbia (see among others Popov 1996 ; Cohen 2001 ; Vladisavljević 2008 ). Milošević’s political rise would not, however, have been possible without the support of relevant Serbian intellectuals, scholars, and artists. Some of the articles in this special issue provide detailed insights in this regard. The Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) also played a decisive role in this process. As early as 1982, some Church representatives in Kosovo called for the protection of the Serbian people and their sacred monuments in Kosovo, invoking the moral obligation to defend “the spiritual, cultural, and historical identity of the Serbian nation” ( Dragović-Soso 2002 , 125). The events in Kosovo provided an opportunity for the SOC to assert itself as a key defender of political, social and human rights for Serbs in Kosovo and to break out of its decades-long marginalisation. Although the SOC, in the early 1980s, confronted the political leadership for its alleged inertia and its lack of will to deal with the issue of the Kosovo Serbs, there was a visible convergence of Party and Church at the height of the nationalist mobilisation in Kosovo on the occasion of the celebration of the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo ( Anzulović 1999 ; Duijzings 2000 , 176–202; Sundhaussen 2000 , 65–88; Bieber 2005 , 216–20). In the mid-1980s, these nationalist discourses were increasingly taken up in academic circles. By revitalising historical myths such as the Battle of Kosovo, by pointing to Serbian experiences during World War II under the Ustaše, and by referring to recent stories of Serbs being oppressed in Kosovo, the recrudescent nationalist discourses created an ever more politically complicated atmosphere throughout the Yugoslav Federation ( Agani 1989 , 111–35; Djokić 2002 , 127–40).

This Serbian quest for hegemony over Kosovo clashed with Albanian claims to the region, which derived their legitimacy from theories based on autochthony, Illyrian origins, and continuity of settlement. Among Albanians, a strong sense of national identity had developed only from the 1960s onwards. The founding of Pristina University in 1970 and other important institutions of knowledge in particular marked the emergence of a consistent historical master narrative. Many Albanians learned for the first time about theories that “proved” their Illyrian origins and recounted the heroic deeds of Skanderbeg, their national hero. A major topic of Albanian historiography was the unjust division of the “Albanian territories”. The “trauma of the incomplete nation” became a powerful trope that incited opposition to Yugoslavia. The crackdown on the University of Pristina following the 1981 demonstrations pushed ideological restrictions into the background, and Serbs and Albanians faced each other with equal confidence in the symbolic contents of their nationhood ( Kostovicova 2005 , 5–7; cf. Canaj 2021 ). However, the balance of power shifted increasingly toward Belgrade. The abolition of the autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina and the transfer of power to Belgrade marked the revocation of the constitution of 1974 and altered the power structure within the federation.

The experience of Kosovo in the 1980s had serious repercussions on various levels: within Kosovo, within Serbia, and within and between the other republics as well as the federation. The riots and the measures taken to curb Albanian nationalism contributed to a lasting deterioration of interethnic relations, not only in Kosovo but everywhere Albanians lived in Yugoslavia. Developments in Kosovo immediately triggered new debates about the country’s constitution, the degree of decentralisation, and Serbia’s peculiar position within the federal system. Moreover, the way decisions were taken revealed, for the first time, the consequences of Tito’s absence, since it was he who—precisely in such delicate situations—had possessed the power to make binding decisions. Instead, the government focussed almost exclusively on ideological orientations and nationalist motives, and neglected the complex causes of the conflict. The severe economic crisis that gripped the country further contributed to disunity. The Kosovo crisis exposed the limits and constraints of socialist modernisation and brought to light divergent understandings of republican and federal interests. The ongoing power struggle between the political leadership of Serbia and the two autonomous provinces (Vojvodina included, see Tomić 2015 ) and the lack of consensus on the federal level stimulated intensive cultural activities and a nationalist upsurge. Kosovo provided fertile ground for a reappraisal of the past, for revisionism, discourses of historical victimisation, and irredentist claims. All these developments were part of the—in many regards contradictory—political dynamics of the 1980s. At the time it was not easy to assess the direction in which things were moving, with regard both to the situation in Kosovo and to the Yugoslav context as a whole—which became ever more intertwined. The contributions in this thematic issue shed light on these closely interwoven processes and provide insight into the hitherto scarcely researched dimensions and implications of the Kosovo crises.

The Contributions to the Thematic Issue

The question of Kosovo within the context of the Yugoslav 1980s pervades this thematic issue: each of the 10 research articles, as well as both of the personal accounts (“Living Memories”), contribute to answering how the escalating situation in this part of Yugoslavia during late socialism affected political developments, public opinion, and knowledge production within the Yugoslav state, including, of course, personal life trajectories. As a prism that reflects and refracts social, political, and economic conflicts in late socialist Yugoslavia, “Kosovo in the Yugoslav 1980s” offers insights and empirical research by reconsidering the developments of that era from a Yugoslav perspective.

Mrika Limani Myrtaj explores the role of the Kosovar Albanian Marxist groups in the 1981 protests in Kosovo. She traces their formation as dissident groups that supported anti-Yugoslav Hoxhaism and interprets the reaction of the Yugoslav state as an act of coercive violence. Jure Ramšak takes up the 1981 protests and examines how the Kosovo crisis became a catalyst for political repositioning and public controversy in Slovenia in the 1980s and early 1990s. He shows, on the one hand, the attempts to establish a civil society initiative in search of a pan-Yugoslav solution. On the other hand, he explores how the crisis in Kosovo was used to pave the way for Slovenian independence. Radina Vučetić directs her focus towards Serbia and analyses how media and popular culture, along with leading Serbian institutions and intellectuals, joined in with Milošević’s propaganda by reviving the Kosovo myth. Using the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo on 28 June 1989 as an example, she examines the shaping of anti-Albanian stereotypes in the creation of public opinion in Serbia during the late 1980s. Likewise, based on an analysis of Serbian media, Husnija Kamberović explores the negative images employed to accuse the political leaders of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Islamic Community (with its seat in Sarajevo) of fomenting unrest and spreading Islamic fundamentalism in Kosovo. He examines the reactions to these accusations and investigates how the Bosnian-Herzegovinian leadership perceived and responded to the escalating situation in Kosovo. The Kosovo crisis resonated strongly in the Croatian media and the field of knowledge production, as Branimir Janković shows, in contrast to the quite cautious reaction of the Croatian leadership. Janković analyses several books about Kosovo written by Croatian/Yugoslav authors in order to examine how they shaped dominant discourses and the media coverage in Croatia. Robert Pichler, adopting a comparative and entangled perspective on the Macedonian and Albanian nation-building processes, traces the roots of Albanian nationalism in socialist Macedonia. He shows how, against the background of rising tensions in neighbouring Kosovo, Macedonian officials failed to counter Albanian nationalism, which in the end only exacerbated social divisions between ethnic Macedonians and Albanians in the southernmost Yugoslav republic. Elife Krasniqi sheds light on the political engagement of Kosovar Albanian women from the mid-1970s up through the 1990s. She explores different forms of oppression and activism by focussing on gender, class, and national dimensions, thus giving a fresh account of a neglected topic.

Three additional research articles all investigate how leading Yugoslav cultural institutions confronted the developments in Kosovo in the 1980s. Casting an eye on the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Nenad Stefanov analyses its 1986 Memorandum on societal issues as a manifestation of a newly emerged ethnonationalism. He critically examines how the Academy, its authority grounded in its status as the country’s leading scientific institution, legitimised the political measures of the authoritarian Milošević regime. Arban Mehmeti explores the relationship between the Writers’ Association of Kosovo and its counterpart in Serbia during the late 1980s. He analyses how the escalating situation in Kosovo led to heated debates between both institutions in which, literally and figuratively, no common language could be found. Dino Mujadžević and Christian Voß draw attention to the Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia as a flagship project in the fields of culture and knowledge production during socialist times. They trace its transformation from a platform advocating Yugoslav federalism to a project reflecting decentralisation and nation-building, using the two articles on “Albanians” and “Albanian-Yugoslav relations” in different versions of the Encyclopedia as examples and thus elaborating on political struggles in Yugoslav academia.

The section “Living memories” brings together two personal accounts whose authors reflect on their experience of the late 1980s and 1990s within the context of the Kosovo crisis and consider how these developments influenced their life trajectories. Dubravka Stojanović recalls being a newly hired trainee historian at the Institute for the History of the Serbian Labour Movement in 1989. She witnessed many historians engaging in historical revisionism, while a few became active in the antiwar movement. Adriatik Kelmendi’s account of the 1990s in Kosovo recalls how he witnessed, as a 12-year-old, the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1990, and thereafter was educated in Kosovo’s parallel school system. Working as a journalist in Pristina during the 1999 NATO intervention, he experienced first-hand the loss of family members, friends, and property, and he goes on to recount how his family slowly rebuilt their lives after the war.

About the authors

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Vrbetic, Marta. "The delusion of coercive peacemaking in identity disputes : the case of the former Yugoslavia /." Thesis, Connect to Dissertations & Theses @ Tufts University, 2004.

Rajsic, Navarrete Laura. "Yugoslavia : un sistema diferente." Tesis, Universidad de Chile, 1988. http://repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/142752.

Devic, Ana. "The forging of socialist nationalism and its alternatives : social and political context and intellectual criticism in Yugoslavia between the mid-1960s and 1992 /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC IP addresses, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p9975880.

Raković, Milica. "The economic disintegration of Yugoslavia." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1998. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/251662.

Nylund, Jukka. "Yugoslavia: from Space to Utopia : Negotiating national and ethnic identity amongst Serbian migrants from former Yugoslavia." Thesis, Linköping University, Department of Religion and Culture, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-5638.

In the 60’s and 70’s a large group of Yugoslav migrants came to Sweden in search for jobs. These people mostly belonged to the generation born after the Second World War, a generation brought up in the official discourse of “Brotherhood and Unity”. A discourse downplaying ethnic differences in favour of a national identification. With the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s their Yugoslav national identity was beginning to be contested. The Serb migrants had to redefine themselves due to the changing situation and to replace or redefine their Yugoslav identities. This paper presents a case study for three individuals in this group and how they defined themselves before the break-up and how they handled the break-up. It presents how they today look upon Yugoslavia and how that place has changed meaning in their everyday narratives. The question I try to answer is whether someone can call himself Yugoslav when Yugoslavia no longer exists, and how the image of Yugoslavia has changed due to the break-up. I show that the image of Yugoslavia is still very much alive but this image has turned from a place in physical space to a place in their narratives, close to Foucault’s definition of a Utopian place. A place in their minds, perfected in form. They still call themselves Yugoslavs, if the social context allows that, they still use the term to relate to their origin and in discussions of place.

Aderholdt, K. David. "Missional partnership in the former Yugoslavia." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 2006. http://www.tren.com/search.cfm?p068-0609.

Hemans, Frederick P. "Late antique residences at Stobi, Yugoslavia." Thesis, Boston University, 1986. https://hdl.handle.net/2144/26885.

Jones, Christopher. "France and the dissolution of Yugoslavia." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2015. https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/58570/.

BUHIN, Anita. "Yugoslav socialism 'flavoured with sea, flavoured with salt' : Mediterranization of Yugoslav popular culture in the 1950s and 1960s under Italian influence." Doctoral thesis, European University Institute, 2019. https://hdl.handle.net/1814/61564.

Lyon, Philip. "After empire : ethnic Germans and minority nationalism in interwar Yugoslavia /." College Park, Md.: University of Maryland, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1903/8910.

Roussev, Dimiter I. "Bulgaria and NATO's military intervention in Yugoslavia." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 2000. http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA380818.

Chen, Xi Ying. "Actions and constraints of the European Union as an international actor : the case of Former Yugoslav crisis." Thesis, University of Macau, 2011. http://umaclib3.umac.mo/record=b2555595.

au, 29948291@student murdoch edu, and Ivana Pelemis. "Acculturation Differences in Family Units from Former Yugoslavia." Murdoch University, 2006. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20071211.100224.

Heuser, Beatrice. "Yugoslavia in Western Cold War policies, 1948-1953." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1987. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:fabf0ed5-37c7-44ba-8908-863fdc824763.

Andjelic, Neven. "Bosnia-Herzegovina : politics at the end of Yugoslavia." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.311330.

Williams, Heather. "The Special Operations Executive and Yugoslavia, 1941-1945." Thesis, University of Southampton, 1994. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/426649/.

Niebuhr, Robert Edward. "The Search for a Communist Legitimacy: Tito's Yugoslavia." Thesis, Boston College, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/1953.

Carter, David John. "International law and state failure : Somalia and Yugoslavia." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2000. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/193199/.

Pelemis, Ivana. "Acculturation differences in family units from former Yugoslavia." Thesis, Pelemis, Ivana (2006) Acculturation differences in family units from former Yugoslavia. Masters by Research thesis, Murdoch University, 2006. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/253/.

Pelemis, Ivana. "Acculturation differences in family units from former Yugoslavia." Pelemis, Ivana (2006) Acculturation differences in family units from former Yugoslavia. Masters by Research thesis, Murdoch University, 2006. http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/253/.

Pupavac, Vanessa. "From statehood to childhood : a study of self-determination and conflict resolution in Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav States." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.342112.

Miladinović, Ana. "La arquitectura de los museos en Yugoslavia : 1945–1965." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/316587.

Burdelez, Mislav. "The Vietnam Syndrome and the conflict in former Yugoslavia." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 1996. http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA324968.

Zatezalo, Jasmina Nina Vachudová Milada Anna. "Croatia's difficult political trajectory after the disintegration of Yugoslavia." Chapel Hill, N.C. : University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007. http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/etd,1342.

Gershman, Boris M. "Peace operations in the former Yugoslavia a re-evaluation." Thesis, Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10945/4992.

Terrett, Stephen Terence. "The dissolution of Yugoslavia and the Badinter Arbitration Commission." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.367242.

Savelli, Mat. "Confronting the problems of the individual and society : psychiatry and mental illness in Communist Yugoslavia (1945-1991)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669947.

Iheanacho, Vitalis Akujiobi. "Nonalignment: Cuba and Yugoslavia in the Nonaligned Movement 1979-1986." Thesis, North Texas State University, 1987. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc501237/.

La, Rocque Mark Edward. "The political adaptation of recent immigrants from the former Yugoslavia." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0004/MQ30499.pdf.

Mandalenakis, Helene. "Recognizing identity : the creation of new states in former Yugoslavia." Thesis, McGill University, 2006. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=102808.

Pisac, Andrea. "Trusted tales : creating authenticity in literary representations from ex-Yugoslavia." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2010. http://research.gold.ac.uk/4751/.

Williams, John. "The concept of legitimacy in international relations : lessons from Yugoslavia." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1997. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/34673/.

Harmon, Gail. "War in the Former Yugoslavia: Ethnic Conflict or Power Politics?" Thesis, Boston College, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/587.

Cicic, Ana. "Yugoslavia Revisited : Contested Histories through Public Memories of President Tito." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för kulturantropologi och etnologi, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-407908.

Hadzi-Jovancic, Perica. "Economic relations between the Third Reich and Yugoslavia, 1933-1941." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/271132.

Novkovic, Sonja. "Theory of the labor-managed firm : the Yugoslavian case." Thesis, McGill University, 1992. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=39764.

MacDonald, David Bruce. "Balkan holocausts? : comparing genocide myths and historical revisionism in Serbian and Croatian nationalist writing, 1986-1999." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2001. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/1652/.

Becker, Joachim. "In the Yugoslav Mirror: The EU Disintegration Crisis." Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2017.1330984.

Wiese, Linda. "Economic development in ex-Yugoslavia : -Some good advices on the way." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Nationalekonomiska institutionen, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-130872.

Ferguson, Kate. "An investigation into the irregular military dynamics in Yugoslavia, 1992-1995." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2015. https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/59455/.

Pearson, Joseph Sanders. "British press reactions to the onset of war in ex-Yugoslavia." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2001. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/251793.

Fisher, Omer. "The dynamics of violent collapse : centre-periphery elite interaction in Yugoslavia." Thesis, University of Strathclyde, 2006. http://oleg.lib.strath.ac.uk:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=21643.

MacNelly, Julia. "The City and The Stage: Ethics of Performance in Ex-Yugoslavia." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2014. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/495.

Headley, James Henry. "The Russian Federation and the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, 1992-1995." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2000. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1348915/.

Palmer, Peter Joseph. "The Communists and the Roman Catholic Church in Yugoslavia, 1941-1946." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2000. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ea1c5fb1-ae10-47f5-9064-f2deb06d653f.

Brashaw, Nicholas Cripps. "Signals intelligence, the British and the War in Yugoslavia, 1941-1944." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.252043.

IAMAMURA, MARCOS ALEXANDRE DE ARAUJO. "THE DISINTEGRATION OF YUGOSLAVIA: NATIONALISM, MINORITIES, SELF-DETERMINATION AND UTI POSSIDETIS." PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO, 1997. http://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/Busca_etds.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=2654@1.

Drnovsek, Zorko Spela. "'Although it no longer exists' : migration and intergenerational knowledge after Yugoslavia." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2016. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/26498/.

Wynes, Benjamin. "Milovan Djilas and Vladimir Dedijer : power and dissent in communist Yugoslavia." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2017. https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/67704/.

Good, Charles P. "NATO operations in the former Yugoslavia : prototyping the combined Joint Task Force." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 1996. http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA325767.

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Gartner Predicts Worldwide Chip Revenue Will Gain 33% in 2024

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It’s no secret the AI accelerator business is hot today, with semiconductor manufacturers spinning up neural processing units, and the AI PC initiative driving more powerful processors into laptops, desktops and workstations.

Gartner studied the AI chip industry and found that, in 2024, worldwide AI chip revenue is predicted to grow by 33%. Specifically, the Gartner report “Forecast Analysis: AI Semiconductors, Worldwide” detailed competition between hyperscalers (some of whom are developing their own chips and calling on semiconductor vendors), the use cases for AI chips, and the demand for on-chip AI accelerators.

“Longer term, AI-based applications will move out of data centers into PCs, smartphones, edge and endpoint devices,” wrote Gartner analyst Alan Priestley in the report.

Where are all these AI chips going?

Gartner predicted total AI chips revenue in 2024 to be $71.3 billion (up from $53.7 billion in 2023) and increasing to $92 billion in 2025. Of total AI chips revenue, computer electronics will likely account for $33.4 billion in 2024, or 47% of all AI chips revenue. Other sources for AI chips revenue will be automotive electronics ($7.1 billion) and consumer electronics ($1.8 billion).

Of the $71.3 billion in AI semiconductor revenue in 2024, most will come from discrete and integrated application processes, discrete GPUs and microprocessors for compute, as opposed to embedded microprocessors.

In terms of AI semiconductor revenue from applications in 2024, most will come from compute electronics devices, wired communications electronics and automotive electronics.

Gartner noticed a shift in compute needs from initial AI model training to inference, which is the process of refining everything the AI model has learned in training. Gartner predicted more than 80% of workload accelerators deployed in data centers will be used to execute AI inference workloads by 2028, an increase of 40% from 2023.

SEE: Microsoft’s new category of PCs, Copilot+ , will use Qualcomm processors to run AI on-device.

AI and workload accelerators walk hand-in-hand

AI accelerators in servers will be a $21 billion industry in 2024, Gartner predicted.

“Today, generative AI (GenAI) is fueling demand for high-performance AI chips in data centers. In 2024, the value of AI accelerators used in servers, which offload data processing from microprocessors, will total $21 billion, and increase to $33 billion by 2028,” said Priestley in a press release.

AI workloads will require beefing up standard microprocessing units, too, Gartner predicted.

“Many of these AI-enabled applications can be executed on standard microprocessing units (MPUs), and MPU vendors are extending their processor architectures with dedicated on-chip AI accelerators to better handle these processing tasks,” wrote Priestley in a May 4 forecast analysis of AI semiconductors worldwide.

In addition, the rise of AI techniques in data center applications will drive demand for workload accelerators, with 25% of new servers predicted to have workload accelerators in 2028, compared to 10% in 2023.

The dawn of the AI PC?

Gartner is bullish about AI PCs, the push to run large language models locally in the background on laptops, workstations and desktops. Gartner defines AI PCs as having a neural processing unit that lets people use AI for “everyday activities.”

The analyst firm predicted that, by 2026, every enterprise PC purchase will be an AI PC. Whether this turns out to be true is as yet unknown, but hyperscalers are certainly building AI into their next-generation devices .

AI among hyperscalers encourages both competition and collaboration

AWS, Google, Meta and Microsoft are pursuing in-house AI chips today, while also seeking hardware from NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm, IBM, Intel and more. For example, Dell announced a selection of new laptops that use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Series processor to run AI, while both Microsoft and Apple pursue adding OpenAI products to their hardware. Gartner expects the trend of developing custom-designed AI chips to continue.

Hyperscalers are designing their own chips in order to have a better control of their product roadmaps, control cost, reduce their reliance on off-the-shelf chips, leverage IP synergies and optimize performance for their specific workloads, said Gartner analyst Gaurav Gupta.

“Semiconductor chip foundries, such as TSMC and Samsung, have given tech companies access to cutting-edge manufacturing processes,” Gupta said.

At the same time, “Arm and other firms, like Synopsys have provided access to advanced intellectual property that makes custom chip design relatively easy,” he said. Easy access to the cloud and a changing culture of semiconductor assembly and test service (SATS) providers have also made it easier for hyperscalers to get into designing chips.

“While chip development is expensive, using custom designed chips can improve operational efficiencies, reduce the costs of delivering AI-based services to users, and lower costs for users to access new AI-based applications,” Gartner wrote in a press release .

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Writing social history of socialist Yugoslavia: the archival perspective

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It was not until recently that we could talk about a noticeable trend in research focusing on the social components of the 45-year-long history of socialist Yugoslavia (1945–1991). Possible research topics might include the history of social relations, structures, labor, workers’ self-management, industrialization, social stratification, class conflict, housing, mass culture and consumption. In socialist Yugoslavia most of these topics inspired ongoing debates, especially in the fields of sociology and philosophy. Historians participated briefly in those debates during the 1980s, but as the country disintegrated in the brutal conflicts of the 1990s, institutionalized humanities developed a negative stance toward the recent socialist past. In the new millennium, with the revival of social history and the constant state of crisis in the existing system, a new generation of historians began to explore Yugoslav socialist society. This paper argues that if this research movement is to be placed on solid ground through the use of primary sources, the first task for archivists should be to identify these sources. Based on an analysis of records applying social history methodology as a structural approach to the broad spectrum of human experience and social processes, it identifies several major categories of records relating to government, local self-government, judiciary, economic enterprises, political organizations and the trade unions and attempts to determine their current state. It concludes with general observations on some possible solutions for preserving relevant records as well as for the change in the appraisal strategies.

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Vukliš, V. Writing social history of socialist Yugoslavia: the archival perspective. Arch Sci 17 , 55–77 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-016-9269-5

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At the time of the survey in March and early April, Israelis voiced differing views of the war. Reactions to the military response against Hamas were generally mixed, as were attitudes toward the principal decision-makers – the three members of Israel’s war cabinet . However, most Israelis shared concerns that the war could expand across the region and last a long time.

When asked to assess their country’s military response against Hamas in Gaza, about four-in-ten Israelis say it has been about right. Another 34% say it has not gone far enough, while 19% say it has gone too far.

Israeli Arabs are much more critical of the military response, with 74% saying it has gone too far. Only 4% of Israeli Jews agree.

Views of the military response are divided along ideological lines. Roughly half of those who place themselves on the right (52%) say the military response has been insufficient. About a quarter of those in the center (24%) agree and only 9% of Israelis on the left say the same.

On the other hand, a majority of Israelis on the ideological left (55%) say the military response to Hamas has gone too far. Only 15% of those in the center and 5% of those on the right share this view.

Among Israelis who have a favorable view of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, roughly half (49%) say the response to Hamas has been about right, but another 45% say it has not gone far enough. Only 1% of those who favor Netanyahu think the military response has gone too far.

In the days following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the country’s then-governing coalition struck a deal with National Unity, an opposition party, to join an emergency government . The leader of the party, Benny Gantz, together with Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, formed the core of the new war cabinet , which was tasked with navigating the course of the conflict. (The survey was conducted before Gantz threatened to leave the war cabinet .)

Of the cabinet’s three voting members, Gallant enjoys the most public support in our survey: 61% of Israelis say they have a very or somewhat favorable view of him. Around half say the same about Gantz. As for Netanyahu, approximately four-in-ten Israelis have a positive view of the prime minister. 

For more on views of Palestinian leaders, refer to Chapter 3 .

The majority of Israelis (58%) see their prime minister in a negative light. The share of Israelis who have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Netanyahu is the largest it has been since the Center first started asking the question in 2013, up 6 percentage points from last year.

Related: A growing share of Americans have little or no confidence in Netanyahu

Netanyahu’s favorability ratings have fallen among Jews and Arabs alike. However, roughly half of Israeli Jews still see him positively, compared with only 7% of Israeli Arabs.

Favorability among right-leaning Israelis – the mainstay of Netanyahu’s political coalition – has also declined. In this group, 69% have a favorable view of Netanyahu, compared with 85% last year.

Views of the three members of Israel’s war cabinet vary by ethnicity, ideology and levels of religious observance.

• About three-quarters of Israeli Jews have a favorable view of Gallant, but only 9% of Israeli Arabs agree. Of the three war cabinet members, Gantz has the highest share of support among Israeli Arabs (30%).

• Among those on the ideological right, about two-thirds have a favorable view of the prime minister. Only 18% of centrists and 8% of those on the left share this view. Gantz, a centrist party leader, is favored by 71% of Israelis in the center and a smaller majority (56%) of those on the left.
• Most Hiloni (“secular”) Jews in Israel (76%) say they have a favorable view of Gantz – more than double the share of Haredim (“ultra-Orthodox”) and Datiim (“religious”) who say the same (32%). Netanyahu, who relied on religious parties and their voters to build his governing coalition, is seen favorably by 88% of Haredi and Dati Jews, but by only 21% of the Hiloni public.

Most who have a favorable view of the prime minister feel similarly about Gallant, his minister of defense and fellow Likud member (84% have a favorable view of him). Gantz has less appeal among those who express a favorable view of Netanyahu – only about a third in this group also hold a favorable view of his political rival.

Thinking about the course of the war, most Israelis express a great deal of concern about its scope and duration.

Around six-in-ten are extremely or very concerned about the war expanding to other countries in the region, and about seven-in-ten are seriously worried about the war lasting a long time. (The survey was fielded amid escalating conflict along Israel’s border with Lebanon but prior to Iran’s missile attack on Israel in mid-April.)

Jewish and Arab Israelis are equally concerned that the war might expand to other countries (61% in each group voice this concern), though Arabs are slightly more likely than Jews to say they worry about a long war (77% vs. 66%).

Approximately a quarter of Israelis on the ideological left and in the center are extremely concerned about the war expanding across the region – roughly double the share of right-leaning Israelis who express the same level of alarm.

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Researchers discover that a type of childhood leukaemia originates during fetal development

Researchers from the Institute of Oncology of the University of Oviedo (IUOPA), the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, the University of Barcelona and the Centre for Biomedical Research in Cancer Network (CIBERONC) have demonstrated that some childhood leukaemia originate during embryonic development, although they do not manifest after a few months after birth.

Acute myeloid leukaemia is the second most common type of acute leukaemia in childhood and can be diagnosed within a few months of life. The early onset of the disease had led to the suspicion that the tumour could have a prenatal origin. However, proving this theory has been challenging due to the lack of prenatal or birth samples.

'The opportunity to study the origin of this leukaemia arose from the case of a five-month-old baby diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia at the Hospital Niño Jesús in Madrid,' explains Pablo Menéndez, ICREA professor at the University of Barcelona and the Josep Carreras Institute. 'The parents, who had preserved the umbilical cord blood, opened a line of research that until now had not been possible to address,' adds the researcher.

Using precision medicine techniques, researchers analysed the complete genome of the tumour. Unlike tumours in adults, where thousands of mutations are detected, only two chromosomal alterations were identified in this leukaemia. 'Genome analysis allowed us to design a personalised diagnostic method to monitor the disease,' says Xose S. Puente, Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Barcelona. Puente, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Oviedo. 'But these data raise new questions, such as when the tumour arose and in what order these mutations have appeared,' he highlights. These questions are difficult to answer, since such research requires blood samples from the baby before the diagnosis, something that is impossible in the vast majority of cases. However, in this particular case, the existence of a frozen umbilical cord sample allowed researchers to separate different populations of blood cells at birth and to study whether any of the chromosomal alterations detected in the tumour were already present during foetal development.

The study revealed that a translocation between chromosome 7 and 12 was already present in some haematopoietic stem cells in the umbilical cord. In contrast, the other chromosomal alteration, a trisomy of chromosome 19, was not present in the foetus, but was found in all tumour cells, suggesting that it contributes to increasing the malignancy of the leukemic cells. 'These data are highly relevant for understanding the development of a devastating disease, and the existence of this umbilical cord sample was crucial to be able for conducting a study that had been impossible until now in acute myeloid leukaemia', adds Talía Velasco, researcher at the Josep Carreras Institute and the University of Barcelona and co-leader of the study.

In addition to reconstructing the genomic alterations that the cells undergo to generate this leukaemia, the study has also identified a molecular mechanism that had not been observed before in this type of leukaemia and which causes the activation of a gene, called MNX1, which is frequently altered in this type of tumour. Knowledge of these alterations is essential for developing cell and animal models that allow us to understand the disease's evolution and develop new therapies for treating these pathologies.

The study has been led by Xose S. Puente, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Oviedo-IUOPA, Talía Velasco and Pablo Menéndez, from the Josep Carreras Institute and the University of Barcelona, with participation from researchers from four other institutions, including the Hospital Infantil Universitario Niño Jesús, the Hospital Universitario Central de Asturias, the Instituto de Biomedicina y Biotecnología de Cantabria and the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria La Princesa de Madrid.

This research has been made possible thanks to the collaboration of the parents and funding from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, the European Research Council, the AECC Scientific Foundation, the Foundation Unoentrecienmil, the "La Caixa" Foundation, the Government of Catalonia, CIBERONC and the III Health Institute.

• Brain Tumor
• Lung Cancer
• Diseases and Conditions
• Adult stem cell
• Neural development
• Tooth development
• Embryonic stem cell

Story Source:

Materials provided by Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Pablo Bousquets-Muñoz, Oscar Molina, Ignacio Varela, Ángel Álvarez-Eguiluz, Javier Fernández-Mateos, Ana Gómez, Elena G. Sánchez, Milagros Balbín, David Ruano, Manuel Ramírez-Orellana, Xose S. Puente, Pablo Menéndez, Talia Velasco-Hernandez. Backtracking NOM1::ETV6 fusion to neonatal pathogenesis of t(7;12) (q36;p13) infant AML . Leukemia , 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41375-024-02293-9

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