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(the unresolved national issue, the political regime, etc. - TN) should not be equated with this
great historical act. That is why the work from the fourth book onwards was also to be
renamed "Zgodovina Jugoslavije in njenih narodov in narodnosti [History of Yugoslavia and
its Nations and Nationalities]."23
In 1963 Pregled zgodovine zveze komunistov Jugoslavije [Review of the History of the
League of Communists of Yugoslavia] was published in a single book, with the ambition of
the Yugoslav historians to prepare in the years to come a history of the ZKJ in several parts.
The new work began to take shape at the initiative of the Central Committee of the League of
Communists of Yugoslavia at the end of the seventies. The work was set out very broadly,
with the establishment of scientific groups for individual periods and a network of
collaborators across all the republics. The work was coordinated by special commissions for
history at the republican central committees and a history commission at the Central
Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. In the end, in 1986 only one book
was issued and not even a very voluminous book (416 pages in the Slovene edition) in the
languages of all the nations of Yugoslavia, entitled Zgodovina zveze komunistov Jugoslavije
[History of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia]. In the preparation of the book
ideological and international disputes emerged; there was a strong influence of politics on the
creation and content of the book (the text was commented on by more than 250 former and
active politicians, while the extent of the notes exceeded the extent of the authorial text by
several times). The book that the public received as the "official" history of the Yugoslav
Communist Party was barely fit for release, since the views on history were already so diverse
that strong political pressure, as well as "bargaining" regarding the content, was necessary to
reach a consensus. Hence certain historians characterized it as a "Party manual which...even
lags behind the individual parts."24 The planned multi-part history of the League of
Communists of Yugoslavia, naturally, never came out, and neither had the monographs on the
history of the communist parties by republics. The only one to research the history of
Yugoslavia as a whole in the eighties (but only the period of the National Liberation Struggle)
was Vojno-historijski institut JNA [Military History Institute of the Yugoslav People’s
Army]. The institute had been created in the time of the Information Bureau with the ambition
23 Branko Petranović, a discussion at the meeting of the presidency of the Federal Conference of the Socialist
Alliance of the Working People, January 15, 1987, JIČ, year XXII No. 3 , Beograd 1987 p. 217.
24 Dr. Zlatko Čepo: Opake besjede gospode akademika, Danas 14.10. 1986 p. 25
33
of showing the truth about the National Liberation Struggle in Yugoslavia, and issued over
140 volumes of documents in the next few decades.
Among the larger, at least partially realized projects, apart from certain collections of sources
(volumes of the historical archive of the KPJ with Party documents, for instance, began being
published already in 1949), the publication of the collected works by Josip Broz – Tito is also
worth mentioning. These were published in the Serbo-Croatian edition in twenty books, while
the collection covered the period until June 1944, although it was also supposed to include the
post-war period. The publication of the collected works as well – similarly to the history of
the League of Communists of Yugoslavia – began with a political initiative.25 Of similar
projects only the collection of the collected works by Boris Kidrič was realized, while the
preparation of the collected works by Edvard Kardelj was cancelled in the beginning phase.
The Yugoslav Historians' Association from 1955 onwards issued a comprehensive
bibliography for every other world congress of historians; at first in the English and French
languages, and afterwards only in English. For the world congress in Stuttgart in 1985 the
Association no longer prepared a bibliography, formally due to lack of money, thus only
issuing three volumes in their entirety (the last and most voluminous one, in 1975). The
Yugoslav historians participated in various bilateral commissions; the work of Slovene
historians in the Austrian-Yugoslav and Italian-Yugoslav commission should be pointed out,
since they appeared in a professionally qualified manner and completely equal to their Italian
and Austrian colleagues.
Historiographical Schools and Methodological Differences
Yugoslav historiography was too heterogeneous, too small and underdeveloped to be able to
create its own "historical school" (analogous to German, French or Anglo-Saxon
historiography). Although a multitude of round tables and discussions in the entire post-war
period, and particularly in the eighties, at first glance gives the impression that Yugoslav
historians had dealt greatly with the theoretical questions of historiography, there are,
however, few in-depth studies that would withstand a critical analysis. Individuals or groups
of historians that were in the minority, leaned towards this or that of the "great" European
25 The decision to publish Tito's collected works was adopted by the Presidency of the League of Communists
of Yugoslavia on May 1972, on Tito's seventieth year.
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