Authors

Helena Stolnik Trenkić¹; Alesia Laçi¹;  ¹ University of Cambridge, UK

Discussion

Students across socialist Yugoslavia followed anti-colonial national liberation movements with great interest; and engaged with the foreign policy of non-alignment, which sought to reshape the world along the principle of self-determination and non-hierarchical relations between big and small states. Yet, as noted by Cyra Choudhury, the 'statist' orientation of the Non-Aligned Movement left its proponents 'philosophically ill-equipped' to deal with intrastate demands for self-determination. This is evident in Yugoslavia, where students in the autonomous province of Kosovo applied the language intended for abroad to their situation at home. 'Self-determination' and 'down with colonialism', they chanted in November 1968 protests. These protests have been interpreted in Albanian literature as patriotic, and in Serbian literature as nationalist; more nuanced scholarship on Kosovo is almost non-existent. This paper, a collaborative work between two young scholars, connects the claims to self-determination with a global outlook. It demonstrates that students saw themselves as part of a worldwide movement against domination, which informed the content of their claims, and evaluates how the local shaped the global, and the global shaped the local.