Советско-югославские отношения в зеркале югославской историографии = Soviet-Yugoslav Relations as Reflected in Yugoslav Historiography

Živanović, Milana (2026) Советско-югославские отношения в зеркале югославской историографии = Soviet-Yugoslav Relations as Reflected in Yugoslav Historiography. RUSSIANSTUDIES.HU, 8 (1). pp. 57-74. ISSN 2677-1640

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Abstract

The article examines Yugoslav historiography on Soviet-Yugoslav relations from the interwar period to the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia. It demonstrates that scholarly interpretations were shaped to a significant extent by ideological premises and by shifts in thecountry’s foreign policy, a dependence particularly evident in assessments of monarchicalYugoslavia’s policies and in representations of the role of the USSR. The study reviewsearly works of the 1950s and 1960s (by M. Kršljanin and others), in which socialist narrativeframeworks predominated, as well as the foundational research of Vuk Vinaver and BogdanKrižman on the reasons behind Yugoslavia’s prolonged non-recognition of the Soviet Unionand on the evolution of diplomatic and economic contacts between 1918 and 1941. A separate section addresses scholarship on the Second World War and on the joint operationsof the Red Army and the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Army, tracing how interpretations oftheir respective contributions shifted from the 1950s to the 1980s. The article shows thatstudies of the post-war political relationship remained extremely limited until the 1980s;against this background, particular attention is given to the works of Branko Petranović,who offered a critical reassessment of the 1948 split, Stalin’s policies, and the distinctcharacter of the Yugoslav revolution. Special emphasis is placed on Nikola Popović’s 1988monograph, the first comprehensive and balanced study of bilateral relations in 1941–1945,which exerted a notable influence on subsequent interpretations of Soviet-Yugoslav relations. The article concludes that Yugoslav historiography on this topic was marked byfragmentation and ideological conditioning, even as some studies sought to develop morenuanced and source-based interpretations. In doing so, the article addresses a historiographical lacuna by systematising the principal directions, achievements, and limitationsof Yugoslav scholarship.

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