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Nationality policy of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia during the inter-war period was, among other things, marked by numerous dilemmas and frictions among the Yugoslav communists, inconsistency in implementing decisions of the Party leadership, by frequent changes in treatment of various Yugoslav peoples and national minorities, misunderstanding and diverging from the official Commintern line. In the process of building the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Yugoslav communists first saw national liberation of the single people „with three tribes“, i.e. „with three names“. However, under strong pressure from Moscow in early 1920s the idea of ethnic originality of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was adopted. The Macedonian question was opened in 1922, whereas the right to self-determination was recognized to the Montenegrin population in 1928. The relation of the Yugoslav communists toward the Serbian people and Serbia during the first years of the Popular Front (1935– 1938) was based on the views the Commintern and the CPY had previously adopted that saw the Yugoslav state as the creation of the Versailles Peace Treaty and called for toppling of the „greater Serbian military-fascist dictatorship“. The CPY rhetoric branded the Serbian people the strongest hegemonistic element in the country that oppressed and exploited other peoples and national minorities. Since March 1938, parallel with the enlargement of German borders, the Party leadership worked more actively for preservation of the territorial integrity of the Yugoslav community. At the same time, almost all problems that could further endanger the already chipped state unity were pushed to the back burner. During this period (1938– 1941) somewhat milder attitude toward the Serbs and Serbia prevailed within the CPY. On the other hand, the official Party documents testify that deep ingrained stereotypes of two decades before died hard. The Serbian question was not definitively solved during the inter-war period. Also, the leadership of the CPY tacitly refused to define the territory of Serbia and the rights of the Serbian people.
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The paper deals with economic relations between Yugoslavia and France during the 1950s. It focuses on three predominant factors, namely the inherited Yugoslav debt, the ongoing financial relations and commercial exchanges and investments. The paper aims to show that economic relations were conditioned by the general terms of political and social realities in Europe at the end of the Second World War, by the internal needs of the reconstruction that have strained the finances of both countries, by the stronger relations on the political level than on the commercial one, and that they have also mirrored wider problems of the Yugoslav economy and its connection with the European economic area.
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The article is dealing with the views on Yugoslav internal affairs of the US representatives to the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia during the first half of 1945. Contemporary US policy was not interested in Yugoslavia, and accordingly did not want to interfere in internal affairs in new Yugoslav state. It is not therefore surprising that the activities of the US representatives were actually limited to passive observation of events and processes. Although observers, the US representatives were closely following with considerable interest and critically what was happening before their eyes. Their observations are therefore valuable source of data about the processes and events during the year of 1945 which have transformed new Yugoslav state into a country in which a totalitarian system dominated by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was established.
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Temporary and partial realization of the Albanian national project took place during WWII when Albanian-inhabited Yugoslav territories were united with Albania under Italian auspices. This spurred a large number of Kosovo and Macedonian Albanians to side with the Axis Powers and to try to oppose the reestablishment of the pre-war order at the time these powers faced defeat. Their inclusion into the war effort started with liberation of Albanian-inhabited Kosovo and the Metohija, Western Macedonia and parts of Montenegro. This provoked passive and active resistance. Passive resistance took the form of evasion of military service and desertions, whereas the active one meant overt rebellion. Since a large number of Albanians had been included in some forms of military organization serving the occupiers and since large quantities of weapons were in the hands of the people and because the local Yugoslav authorities encouraged resistance by their actions, the Drenica rebellion flared up. The intensity and scope of the Albanian armed rebellion were a serious challenge to the Yugoslav leadership who was forced to redirect a certain number of military units to Kosovo from other fronts - particularly from the Syrmium-Front where decisive battles were in progress. The situation in 1945 was almost identical to the one in early 1920s as the power of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes had been established at the end of WWI. In 1945 the intensive armed clashes were followed by de-escalation and switching to individual actions and guerilla warfare, but also by transformation in the form of a political action.
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After liberation of Kosovo and Metohija in November 1944 the bulk of the Albanian population greeted the Yugoslav Army with mistrust, refusing at the same time to cooperate with the new Yugoslav authorities. Mass armed rebellion in the winter of 1944/45 organized by Albanian collaborationists and German secret services had an anti-Yugoslav, anti-Serbian and separatist character. The national policy of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in the territory of Kosovo and Metohija was implemented with the aim of deescalating ethnic tensions between the Serbs and the Albanians. Establishing cooperation between the new authorities and the broader masses of Albanian population was seen as crucial for the integration of the Albanians into the Yugoslav community and establishing a durable peace in that region. Political emancipation of the Albanian national minority foresaw securing rights of its representatives to participate in the government. Policy of selecting cadres was harmonized with the ethnic make-up of the Autonomous Kosovo-Metohija Region. Cultural emancipation of the Albanians was pursued through literacy courses, setting up of minority schools, launching journals in Albanian etc. Foreign political orientation of Yugoslavia that was, among other things, aimed at developing friendly relations with Albania, tended to downplay the scale of Kosovo-Albanians’ collaboration with the occupiers during the war 1941-1944 and the responsibility for crimes against Serbian civilians.
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The entry of the Yugoslav Army troops into Trieste on May 1, 1945 escalated the crisis in the relations between Yugoslavia and Western Allies. The bone of contention was the status of the territory of Venezia Giulia and the city of Trieste. The Yugoslav government justified its territorial aspirations by the fact that the region was Slavic-inhabited. Especially powerful argument was the Anti-Fascist Councils that had been set up in the area. On the other hand, the British and the American governments strove by agreement and through military occupation to create the possibility for annexation of Venezia Giulia to Italy after the peace treaty. During the solving of the crisis in May and June 1945 the British and the American governments kept in mind the possible reaction of the Soviet government - which ushered into the first serious misunderstandings within the Anti-Fascist coalition. The difficult matters of Venezia Giulia’s status and of control of the Trieste harbor were the topics of military expert talks, but lack of consensus threatened to lead to an armed conflict between the Yugoslav and the Allied forces. However, the armed attack on the Yugoslav units was discussed only as a matter of principle. The Allied commander in the Mediterranean, filed-marshal Alexander, warned the British government that the Allied soldiers could protest at having to fight the Yugoslav forces. Apart from the reasons of morale and reluctance to fight the recent ally, the British and the American governments also discussed strategic reasons in favor of refraining from war with Yugoslavia. The assumption that the Soviet government would react to an attack on the Yugoslav forces, led to a diplomatic solution in the form of the Belgrade and the Devin agreements. The stipulations of the latter were in force until the Peace Treaty with Italy went into force. The Yugoslav government didn’t fulfill its territorial ambitions, but the pacification of the crisis enabled it to pursue the diplomatic struggle to define the North-Western borders of Yugoslavia.
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"Bleiburg” and the "Passion" are one of the complex topics of Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian, Bosnian and Herzegovinian and Montenegrin historiographies. It had been passed in silence for a number of years, not only in historiography, but also in public life of Croatia and former Yugoslavia. Despite public silence in Yugoslavia, there were writings about "Bleiburg" mostly in Croatian, Slovenian and Serbian emigre circles. Since 1990s "Bleiburg" and the "Passion" were no longer a taboo, so that ample historiographical, publicist and memoir literature deals with the end of WWII, withdrawal of a large number of soldiers and civilians, negotiations and extradition at Bleiburg, as well as the events during the "Passion". Works of Yugoslav (socialist) historiography, as well as of foreign (German, British) historiographies are interesting for a general review. Most data are known through memoirs and statements of survivors of the Bleiburg events. However, one should keep in mind frequent subjective elements in the available narratives. Therefore the goal of this paper is to systematize, review and evaluate the more important texts, articles, collections and monographs on the Bleiburg events from May 1945.
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This article highlights ways in which British military and political personnel acted towards Croatian refugees fleeing the Communist takeover in the final stages of World War II and thereafter. Although events relating to the surrender o f various pro-German and anti-Communist forces at Bleiburg, a town in south Austria near the border with Yugoslavia, and the following quarrel over "war criminals" from Yugoslavia is a complex affair, this contribution examines sources shedding light on British perspectives on the Croatian part, notwithstanding that the developments and problems treated here also affected Serbian, Slovenian and (ethnic) German nationals. As a result of this study, the changes in the intentions of the decision makers in London as well as the principal-agent problem become transparent.
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During the last military operations of WWII some 70,000 members of various Yugoslav collaborationist forces and their families surrendered to the British and American authorities. At first they were allotted the status of “surrendered enemy personal” and later on of “displaced persons” under temporary care of international humanitarian organizations and the British Army and the Screening Commission. The new Yugoslav authorities demanded extradition of almost all Yugoslav citizens under control of the Allied military authorities. As a matter of fact, the number of real war criminals among the DPs (especially among the ustasha, members of the Zbor of Dimitrije Ljotić, Slovenian collaborationists, but also among the chetniks and Croatian home guards) whose guilt could easily be proven, was considerable. However, the way the new Yugoslav regime dealt with both collaborationists and war criminals and with other political and ideological enemies, went beyond the stipulations of the rule of law and of law of nations. Together with the increasing Cold War tensions, this contributed significantly to the siding of the larger part of the public and most political forces of the Western countries with the people who pleaded respect for the law of nations and for basic human rights, demanding protection from forcible repatriation. Conservative political forces and media, as well as various religious organizations strove to depict the collaborationists of yesterday as anticommunists and model Christians, whereas the disproportionate oppression of the new Yugoslav regime during the first months and years after the war provided them with enough material to argue before the world public that no-one extradited to Tito could hope to have a fair trial in Yugoslavia. American and British diplomatic reports confirmed this, so the question of extradition of DPs became, together with the question of Trieste, the main bone of contention in the relations between Tito and Yugoslavia with their former wartime allies. Desirous of solving this unpleasant question as soon as possible, but also of convincing Tito in their good intentions, the British authorities entrusted brigadier Fitzroy McLean with screening Yugoslav collaborationist refugees. After more than a year of work his commission decided that out of several thousand people, some forty were to be extradited: the Cold War atmosphere, infringements of human rights in the socialist Yugoslavia, but also fatigue and pressure of the British public opinion to get the affair off the agenda enabled many collaborationists whose guilt was indisputable, to avoid trial and to acquire permanent status of (political) refugees. Since 1947, as most of the emigre Serbian collaborationists had acquired refugee status, a new phase in the life of the Serbian emigration started. At prodding of Jakov Ljotić, the leader of the Zbor movement, most of his adherents applied for work and stay in Great Britain, from where certain groups moved to the USA, Canada and Australia. Former members of the chetnik units usually settled down in England and in the USA, although some chetniks and members of the Zbor preferred to stay in Western Germany and start a new life there. Although research has so far shown that the Serbian (and Yugoslav) emigration was disunited and often prey to internal strife, it was unquestionably united in an anti-communist front. It comprised a permanent public campaign against Tito and the Yugoslav authorities, diplomatic intriguing aimed at destabilizing the regime in Yugoslavia, and in several cases even terrorist actions. For these reasons the emigrants were often targeted by Yugoslav intelligence and security services and their conflict with these services lasted to all intents until late 1980s and the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia that ensued.
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The Allied Military Government in the Zone A of Venezia Giulia that existed between mid-June 1945 and mid-September 1947 was an occupation formation of the Allied army whose primary aim was to stop the Yugoslav military and political penetration (and annexation) in the territories that formally had belonged to the Kingdom of Italy but that were earmarked to be united with their mother countries (Slovenia and Croatia) in political documents of the Partisan movement, so as to prevent the Peace Conference from facing a fait accompli. Another, no less important goal was social and economic. The Allied Military Government was to prevent the humanitarian catastrophe and to restore the economy at least to some degree and enable it to provide for the population. To be sure, it was also necessary to prevent anarchy and lawlessness immediately after the war. It is questionable to what degree it succeeded in performing these tasks. It did manage to prevent the more violent consequences of political frictions, but not the process of mass emigration, primarily of Italian town population, as well as the change of the town’s geo-political status. The fact that the Allied Military Government was the butt of criticism of both the pro-Yugoslav and the pro-Italian political forces, testifies that it strove to do its job in good faith, to stay neutral and abide by the agreements that had been signed as much as it was possible with regard to the conflict-laden political situation among the former allies.
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By the end of WWII Yugoslavia had suffered huge human and material losses. The Yugoslav communists eyed the West with distrust, deeming that possible economic help from those quarters would be coupled with political pressure. They expected the Soviet Union, of which they had an idealized conception, to aid the renewal. Although it was one of the two super-powers that had come out of the war, the USSR had also suffered major material damages and was not always able to satisfy all Yugoslav demands to the full. Aid was lent in keeping with Soviet capabilities whenever possible. During 1945 possibilities were explored and negotiations led about a goods loan, establishing joint companies, employment of Soviet experts and trade. Foreign trade had the character of aid and was the main form of cooperation during that year. The Soviet Share in Yugoslavia’s foreign trade was 75.1% in exports and 68.3% in imports. Thanks to trade necessary raw materials and goods reached Yugoslavia.
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Based on hitherto unused Hungarian documents the paper depicts relations between Hungary and Yugoslavia 1945-1947. Diplomatic relations between Hungary and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia were severed in April 1941 due to war and dismemberment of Yugoslavia. They were reestablished after the war under drastically changed foreign-political and domestic circumstances. The “power balance" tipped clearly in favor of the new Yugoslavia that had already been recognized. Hungary, as a defeated country, had to answer before the great powers. According to the Peace Treaty of 1947 some 3 Million Hungarians found themselves once again outside of their nation-state. Yugoslavia triumphantly took the place at the side of the victors and successfully reunited the state that had been dismembered in 1941. Between 1945 and 1947 Hungary was under military occupation and under control of the Allied Control Commission and she regained her formal sovereignty only in 1947 with the Paris Peace Treaty. In this relation: the subordinated and the superior, i.e. the vanquished and the victor, were the diplomatic relations between Hungary and Yugoslavia reestablished on March 10, 1945. In 1947 these relations became more cordial than ever, which was crowned in December 1947 by outwardly glamorously prepared visit of Josip Broz Tito to Hungary.
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We may search the genesis of the issue concerning the status of the Orthodox Church in Macedonia in the fight of the Balkan countries and churches for their dominance in Macedonia that was under Ottoman power, in the second half of the XIX and beginning of XX century. In fact, Macedonian Ecclesiastical Issue presents an integral part of the Macedonian national issues. Three factors were of main importance for solving this issue, in the first years after the foundation of Socialistic Yugoslavia, but also during the following two decades. Republic and federal authorities, Serbian Orthodox Church and Macedonian church authorities, organized within the Initiative Board for organizing the Orthodox Church in Macedonia. Priesthood’s demands were reflected in the resolutions that were adopted during the Assembly that was held in May 1945 and during the Conference held in May 1946. In a short period of time, main premises of the resolutions, being influenced by the actual political circumstances evolve from demands for autocephaly to autonomous rights for the Macedonian eparchies. The demands, set in this manner shall have influence on determining the status of the Macedonian Orthodox Church in years 1958 and 1967.
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After liberation of Belgrade in October 1944 the State, Party and University organs launched efforts to renew the Belgrade University, to enroll students and to start lectures. Already in November 1944 the Commission for the Renewal of the University was set up that spearheaded the renewal and preparations for resumption of work until the regular University and faculties’ organs were established in August 1945. The Commission devoted most of its time to establishing material damages the University had suffered during the war, reconstruction of buildings, putting rooms in order and acquisition of accessories and furniture, so as to enable the faculties to resume normal functioning. The teaching staff also took part in the renewal of the University. Some professors made a broader contribution to the fortification of the new government and the development of the state. On the other hand, due to the revolutionary fervor, part of the teaching staff was punished for their behavior during the enemy occupation: by the end of 1944 four were shot, whereas 37 were dismissed from the University by the decision of the Court of Honor in May 1945. In summer of 1945 the revision of the exams passed and diplomas acquired during the war was undertaken, as well as the strict control of the future students, so as to prevent the enrollment of the “politically undesirable” ones. After the enrollment had taken place, eight faculties started lectures in December 1945. This was the end of the one-year long initial renewal of the University. Among other things, ideological and political aims and the place and the role of the University in the dawning “New Age” were defined in this period.
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At the end of WWI as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and the Kingdom of Romania were founded, some 40.000 Serbs became the Serbian national minority in Romania. They were compactly settled in the border regions, partly in the Banat and partly in the Banatska Klisura, alongside the left bank of the Danube. During the inter-war period the situation of the Serbian minority wasn’t particularly good and it deteriorated during WWII and the Fascist regime of marshal Antonescu when Serbs deserted en masse from the Romanian army, not wishing to fight against „Russia”, even though it might be Communist. Almost 1.000 people, partly deserters from the Romanian army, crossed over to Yugoslavia in the last phase of the war, and joined Tito’s partisans with whom they took part in battles against Germans. After they had returned to their villages they became advocates of the idea of unification with Yugoslavia. The appearance of the Red Army on the Romanian bank of the Danube where Serbs lived in compact communities additionally strengthened that idea among the local Serbs. The participation of some Soviet officers and soldiers in the revengeful actions of Serbs and their detraction of the authority of the Romanian government, although probably isolated cases, helped the conviction to spring up among part of the minority population that they would enjoy Soviet support for such a step, the Soviets being the masters of the situation in Romania. The liberation of Belgrade and the organization of the new Yugoslav government were the signal for the beginning of the propaganda action in which some Red Army soldiers also took part and which would eventually provoke the armed counter-action of the Romanian authorities. However, the attempt to organize the Antifascist Front of Slavs (SAF) in early May 1945 showed that the attitude of the Yugoslav and Soviet authorities had changed in the meantime – most probably during the visit of Josip Broz Tito to Moscow between April 5 and 17, and in connection with the founding of the government of Dr Petru Grozda in Romania to which USSR guaranteed territorial integrity. Although the congress didn’t take place and although it foresaw no action in connection with unification of the Romanian part of the Banat with Yugoslavia, the bill for toying with this idea was footed by Serbs in Romania at the time of conflict with the Informbuerau. They were subjected to mass deportations to the deserts of Baragan, as a kind of revenge by the Romanian authorities.
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There is no doubt about the help USSR lent to the People’s Liberation Movement in the struggle for international recognition of changes which came about in Yugoslavia during WWII. USSR and its leader Stalin were not willing to side unreservedly with the Communist movement in Yugoslavia since they didn’t want to spoil their relations with the Western Allies. They were directing the Yugoslav Communists to reach a compromise with the royal Yugoslav government. As shown by the partisan military diplomacy, it was through a compromise that the common government (the National Committee of Liberation of Yugoslavia and the royal Yugoslav government) was built at the end of the war. However, one shouldn’t forget the independence of the Yugoslav movement and its leader J.B. Tito. The autochthonous Yugoslav military power which developed during the war in Yugoslavia, deserves special mention. The Yugoslav leader J.B. Tito learned exactly at that time what the interests of the world politics were. He would prove his self–assuredness later on by clashing with Stalin and USSR and by putting into question the unity of the Communist East.
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Although ideologically opposed and seeing the future social system in Yugoslavia differently, both the Royal Yugoslav Government and the National Committee of Liberation of Yugoslavia shared the interest in enlarging the Yugoslav state, putting overtly forward territorial claims against neighboring countries. The wartime coalition of USSA and Western Powers showed its nonviability in the matter of the future state appurtenance of Venezia Giulia. The territorial dispute wasn’t definitively solved by the Belgrade and Devin agreements and the territorial status of Venezia Giulia remained a bone of contention in the relations between great powers. After WWI through the activity of the League of nations an attempt was made to repudiate the concept of power equilibrium and to implement the concept of collective security. This concept proved its nonviability at the outbreak of WWII. With the beginning of the Trieste crisis at the end of WWII the power equilibrium became the dominant concept in the relations between great powers once again.
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Apart from military and political, economic, cultural and educational cooperation, academic ties of the new Yugoslav authorities with state and scholarly institutions of the Soviet union developed already by the end of 1944. Above all, it was the matter of great expectations and certain aid from the Soviet Union in cadres, material and in organizing of scientific work and of basing of Party and state scientific policy completely on the Soviet scholarly and research model and the achievements of Soviet science. Ideological and political propinquity and the need to develop the backward science and to apply it to the needs of the country and the people, made it necessary to rely on the experiences, achievements and aid of the first country of socialism. This trend found its underpinning in the Treaty on Friendship, Mutual Aid and Afterwar Cooperation between Yugoslavia and USSR from April 1945. Ties between scholarly institutions and scientists were realized through the highest educational organs of the state, and above all through the Society for Cultural Cooperation of Yugoslavia and USSR, founded in 1945. Already from the first afterwar school year Soviet curricula, plans and Russian language were introduced on all levels of education, and it was tried to base the instruction on dialectical materialism. Soviet schoolbooks were translated and Russian-language literature recommended, methodology and results of certain scholarly disciplines were taken over from Soviet science (psychology, pedagogy, history, literary theory, biology etc.) Through exchange and grants primarily Russian-language books and scholarly journals came into libraries of faculties and scientific institutions. Apart from its practical application, Soviet science was strongly advertised and praised as the „most progressive” in the press and in public statements of scientific and public workers, as opposed to the „bourgeois reactionary science” of Western countries. Aid in application and advertising of achievements of Soviet science were lent also by scientists from the Soviet Union, who, apart from lectures at universities and in public, often had the task of organizing scientific research work and of helping with the set-up, organization and work of scholarly institutions. Furthermore, a large number of students and specializing experts, as well as scientists was sent to the Soviet Union. During their stay there they came to know the organization and achievements of Soviet science and they propagated it in public and applied it in their institutions. All forms of scientific cooperation were limited by material resources and possibilities and imbedded in the general cultural and propaganda atmosphere based on ideological and political situation and the relations between Yugoslavia and USSR. After the Resolution of the Informbuerau in 1948 and the conflict between Yugoslavia and USSR scientific ties between the two countries were abruptly severed and the propaganda image of Soviet science was gradually revised.
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The renewed emergence in public of the question of respecting the tradition of the Anti-Fascist struggle and recognition of the allied (Soviet) contribution to the liberation of Belgrade in 1944 spurred the interest in reconsidering the practice of naming and renaming of streets which testify about that part of our common history. Although marking of monuments and maintenance of wartime graveyards, and even naming of streets after prominent personages are only part of the promotion of history of remembrance – since in our days it can be much more and stronger reflected in the media presence or in the form of schoolbook interpretations and attractive films or TV serials – we addressed this matter in capacity of a historian and an eyewitness. From a comparative survey of how marking of something which should represent lasting values was approached in various periods of history of Yugoslavia and now of Serbia, we glean that in our territory there was more ideology and „political correctness” than desire to measure with equal measure that which should always be esteemed – shedding of blood for the liberty of the country and the people, as well as the extended friendly hand in the hour of the direst necessity. Following the need of the moment, the town authorities in the time of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia named a street after the King’s general Petar Živković, in the very year the King imposed his dictatorship. It was renamed by his former oponent Milan Nedić in 1943. Overshadowed by Živković remained many fallen heroes or those whom he condamned or with whom he did away at the trial of Thessaloniki. Thus, the city did injustice to its defender colonel Tufegdžić and took away his name from a street in 1940. During the war, under occupation, streets were deprived of the names of former Serbian wartime and political allies. After the war ideological purges of „incorrect” or „uninteresting” local and allied names followed. In only few cases names deleted by the occupying and collaborationist administration were given back. Streetnames after Russian or Soviet wartime allies were no exception, only perhaps a more dramatic illustration of the change of „remembrance” in keeping with the changed political circumstances. After 1948 the names of streets and boulevards given after Russian great men, the Red Army and toponyms made famous during WWII started to disappear. After less than ten years, they started to return, as a sign of goodwill within the framework of improvement of bilateral relations. After the tragic incident in which a Soviet marshal and several generals, liberators of Belgrade were killed at Avala, the city renamed streets which had once born their names, after them again, and even added some new ones. During the transition of 1990, there was rush to repair all former „iniquities”. However, not even the newly proclaimed criteria were observed. Generals and marshals and the Red Army were once again the target of the reform. In accordance with our own insight and engagement we showed the history behind the scene, how the personality of marshal Biryuzov and the street bearing his name was saved from oblivion in 2004.
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