Those Who Left and Those Who Arrived

In the years after the Second World War, the city of Rijeka found itself caught in the middle of various migratory trajectories. The departure of locals who self-identified as Italians and opted for Italian citizenship occurred simultaneously with other population movements that drained the city of inhabitants and brought in newcomers. Many locals defected and traveled to Italy, which was either their final destination or a country they transited through before being resettled elsewhere. Furthermore, after the war ended, workers from other Yugoslav areas started arriving in the city. A flourishing economy proved capable of attracting migrants with promises of good living standards; however, political reasons also motivated many to move to this Adriatic city. The latter was the case for former economic emigrants who decided to return to join the new socialist homeland and for Italian workers who symbolically sided with the socialist Yugoslavia. Rijeka was not simply a destination for many migrants—it was also a springboard for individuals from all over the Yugoslav Federation to reach the Western Bloc. This article argues that examining these intertwining patterns together rather than separately offers new insight into the challenges the city experienced during its postwar transition.

Migration for Cooperation

Recent studies on labor migration from socialist Yugoslavia have almost exclusively focused on East–West movements and their economic aspects. This paper aims to fill some of this gap in the literature by examining the migration of highly skilled Yugoslav labor to a country in the Global South, namely Algeria. As opposed to previous work that has focused on Yugoslav workers accompanying engineering investment projects in the Global South, this paper examines those who were directly employed by the receiving country. The case of Algeria as a host country deserves attention because Algeria was one of Yugoslavia’s primary partners with whom it cultivated a close political relationship. Drawing on records from the Croatian State Archives, the article will examine Yugoslav technical cooperation experts who were employed by the Algerian government between the early 1960s and the end of the 1980s. The paper will argue that, in pursuit of its political and economic interests in the Global South, the Yugoslav state encouraged and promoted the mobility of highly skilled experts in Algeria to foster cooperation.

Breaching the Alps

The Roman preoccupation with the Alps as the tutamen of Italy owed its epistemic immediacy to a much more recent event—the Cimbric Wars (113-101 BCE). This traumatic episode had reawakened imagery of the northern enemies penetrating the “Wall of Italy,” which in some cases went all the way back to the Mid-Republican narrative traditions of the Gallic Invasions and the much more frequently debated shock of Hannibal’s invasion. The significance of this imagery continued even beyond the Augustan era, so that remnants of the same Roman insecurity about the “Wall of Italy” being breached, especially by northerners, are preserved in narratives about later Julio-Claudians such as Caligula and Nero. This article first looks at the likely origins of the idea of the Alps as the “Wall of Italy” in Middle-Republican perceptions, projected back onto the past and presenting Rome as predestined to dominate Italy and the Gauls in particular as external intruders in the peninsula. Next, the Late Republican and Augustan stages of the motif is reviewed, and the impact of the Cimbric Wars on this imagery is debated. Finally, there will be brief discussion of anecdotes found in Tacitus and Suetonius about later Julio-Claudian episodes in which the fear of a northern invasion breaching the Alps seem to have gripped the Romans.

Revolutionary Migrants of the Early Labor Movement in Croatia-Slavonia, Dalmatia, and Istria in the Late Nineteenth and the Early Twentieth Century

In the late nineteenth century, prompted by uneven industrial development, the predominantly agrarian regions of Croatia-Slavonia, Dalmatia, and Istria were slowly undergoing processes of urbanization and economic transformation. As part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, these regions were subject to dynamic migrations of the labor force from several regions and neighboring countries. Industrialization was the crucial impetus behind the formation of the first working-class organizations and syndicates, but their development, their socio-political goals, and the strategies they employed were heavily influenced by socialist theoreticians and agitators from Austria-Hungary, Serbia, and Italy. This ideologically heterogeneous labor movement depended on cross-border cooperation with different individuals and collectives, ranging from Hungarian Marxists and Austrian social democrats to Italian anarchists. Even though unions and subversive pamphlets were illegal and closely monitored, migratory activists continued to agitate and collaborate with local workers through various underground channels. This paper will analyze various ideological inputs of migratory workers within the area that is now present-day Croatia during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. It will also examine the perception of their presence and activism articulated by political authorities and mainstream newspapers. Due to a lack of similar research, emphasis will be placed, to some extent, on anarchist activities in this area.

Civil War and the Resurgence of Anglo-Scottish Border Mentalities in the British Middle Shires, 1639–1645

For centuries the Anglo-Scottish borderlands were a region of weak government, endemic violence, border fortresses, and periodic full-scale wars. After the 1603 Union of the Crowns joined Scotland with England and Ireland, James VI & I attempted to pacify the “Middle Shires” of his new realm of “Great Britain.” Despite an apparently successful pacification, using the resources of both the Scottish and English states, the outbreak of the British Civil Wars in 1638 resulted in the region once again becoming militarized. This militarization followed many of the characteristics of the pre-1603 border security system: the renovation of border fortresses, cross-border raids, powerful noble magnates with cross-border political alliances, and the theft or attempted theft of cattle as a means of waging war.

Yugocentrism and the Study of the Non-Aligned Movement

There has been a renewed scholarly interest in recent years concerning the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). This text addresses some of the challenges posed by focusing on NAM through a lens of Yugocentrism that is reliant on socialist Yugoslav sources alone. To reinsert socialist Yugoslavia into a global historiography, one needs to perform a double movement: The first part concerns bringing Yugoslavia back into global social relations; the second part concerns decentring its positionality and ensuring that other sites of analysis and struggle, and the relations between them, are taken into consideration. Seeing NAM as a prefigurative, multi-nodal, networked community rather than a traditional international organization suggests that privileging one node at the expense of others will lead to a distorted and incomplete analysis. This paper addresses the complex relationship between the Bandung Afro-Asian conference of April 1955 and the Belgrade NAM summit of September 1961. NAM and the G-77 are also studied as overlapping groupings in terms of membership and objectives. The paper contributes to the development of a critical decolonial historiography of the Cold War period that addresses the need for multi-sited, para-sited, and meta-historiographies by going beyond Yugocentrism whilst still retaining a nuanced concern with global Yugoslavia across different conjunctures.

Women in a Men’s Collective in the 1970s and 1980s

For many years, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra was an exclusively male organization despite the increasing number of women in Czechoslovakia joining the workforce. This paper, which is based on oral history interviews with members of the orchestra, the paper will attempt to identify the reasons why almost no women were employed there during the period of Czechoslovak Socialism and under what kind of conditions the only two female members worked. Through interpretation and depth analysis of the oral history interview with one of the two female musicians employed by the Philharmonic before 1989, the paper will primarily map the issue of how women reconciled work and family life, which was considered one of the main obstacles for female musicians, while also taking into consideration the Philharmonic’s prestige and its frequent tours abroad. The acquired experience of a female musician is interpreted within the context of male narratives and is embedded in the study’s theoretical framework. This framework is defined by the available research on women’s emancipation and transformations of the gender order of the Czechoslovak socialist society, as well as research comparing the career patterns of musicians (both female and male) and the inclusion of women in the world’s leading symphony orchestras.

Border-Crossings and Migration in the Croatian and Slavonian Military Frontiers in the Early Modern Period

Significant geographical discoveries and the emergence of modern cartography, when combined with the concept of a territorial state, brought meaningful changes how borders were conceived during the early modern period. A diffuse image that had prevailed from antiquity to the late Middle Ages was replaced by a clear idea of a fixed border (Baramova, 2010). The role of the Military Frontier as a wider borderland was two-fold: It served as a buffer zone against the Ottoman Empire for the Habsburg hereditary lands and the still unconquered Croatian territories, and it was also an area of intense migration, especially for the Vlach population from the southeastern Dinaric region. After the suppression of the Ottomans and the first international demarcation of the Croatian territories in 1699/1700, migration to the Military Frontier increased, both from the central European area and from the southern and southwestern parts of the Balkan Peninsula. This paper discusses the role and perception of this borderland and especially of Croatia’s Military Frontier. Through interpretation and explanation of several typical examples of border crossings in this area, both before and after the first official demarcation in 1699, the paper will attempt to answer the question of how the migration processes influence the development and strengthening of the early modern state and its institutions.

Inspired by Gandhi

The leader of the Indian independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi, left an invaluable legacy: he proved to the world that it was possible to achieve political aims without the use of violence. He was the first political activist to develop strategies of nonviolent mass resistance based on a solid philosophical and uniquely religious foundation. Since Gandhi’s death in 1948, in many parts of the world, this legacy has been received and continued by others facing oppression, inequality, or a lack of human rights. This article is a tribute to five of the most faithful followers of Gandhi who have acknowledged his inspiration for their political activities and in choosing nonviolence as a political method and way of life: Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Martin Luther King, Louis Massignon, the Dalai Lama, and Malala Yousafzai. This article describes their formative leadership and their significance and impact on regional and global politics and history.

Czechoslovak Seafarers’ Memories of Polish Ports as their “Second Home” during the State Socialism Period (1949–1989)

Czechoslovakia began to develop its ocean fleet after the communist coup d’état in 1948. Prague was designated as the place of registration for these ships. From a practical point of view, however, it was necessary for the Czechoslovak fleet to reach a port located as close as possible to the Czechoslovak border. Szczecin (located 298 km from the border) became the base for the fleet not only due to the political circumstances of the Cold War but also for economic reasons. While Hamburg remained a vital harbor for international trade where “East meets West,” Polish ports were used not only for loading and unloading goods and transporting them to the republic but also to supply ships, change crews, carry out most shipyard maintenance, etc. Consequently, Czechoslovak seafarers themselves called Szczecin their “home port.” Numerous aspects of this perception as “home” will be reflected on in this paper. Specifically, the paper will touch on perceptions of Poles (mainly seafarers and dock workers), some aspects of the relationships among Czechoslovaks and Poles, including a discussion of some important historical issues (1968, the 1980s) in this area. This paper is based on archival sources, oral history interviews with former seafarers, and published memoirs. It should contribute to broader research and understanding of relationships among people living in various parts of the socialist block and show different images of life under socialism(s).