Authors

Helena Stolnik Trenkić¹;  ¹ University of Cambridge, UK

Discussion

Claims to self-determination legitimised both the creation of the socialist state of Yugoslavia in 1945, and its dissolution in 1991. Very little has been written on how the idea was used inbetween these two juncture points. My PhD thesis, due for submission in the summer following this conference, researches the development of self-determination claims by various groups within socialist Yugoslavia. 

My PhD first charts the official socialist interpretation of self-determination as championed by the Yugoslav delegation to the UN Human Rights Committee, and then assesses how certain open questions attached to the formulation of the right, which remained only loosely defined, played out in the Yugoslav context. Who claimed self-determination - the individual, a class, Yugoslavs, or constituent nations? If nations, then how was self-determination achieved through the federation? What role were nations supposed play as part of the story of socialist liberation? How was this right seen to intersect with other human rights?

My PhD project shows that what was initially a state-approved discourse to defend Yugoslav interests also became a discourse used to disrupt and undermine it. In doing so, Chapter 3 in particular disrupts traditional histories of the 'Yugoslav National Question', setting questions of nationhood and federalism into a broader, socialist and global conversation on the right of peoples to self-determination. The third chapter studies intellectuals' proposals regarding the Yugoslav federation following the death of central theorist Edvard Kardelj. I open up new ground by assessing proposals which sought a radical change to the status quo, but without seeking secession; and by highlighting comparative approaches by Yugoslav intellectuals, and the influence of the European federal project on perceptions of the utility of the Yugoslav federation. With a similar approach to that taken by Adom Getachew, my lens of analysis allows us to discard ill-fitting categories of 'nationalists' or 'centralists' in telling the history, and allows for better comparison with other contemporary socialist or federal contexts. Overall, my project uses self-determination to tell a new history of Yugoslavia; and uses Yugoslavia to explore the uses and contradictions of our right of peoples to self-determination.