This book discusses one of the most politically significant and yet underreported developments in the contemporary Balkans: the re-birth of the Left. Our focus is on the new Balkan Left that has formed throughout the last decade (after initial signs of its reawakening appeared in the 2000s) as an anti-systemic and counter-hegemonic movement. Thus, it is not surprising that it has been usually only marginally acknowledged by the existing political and economic system and by mass media. This publication is intended to illustrate the diversity of struggles associated with the new Left in the post-socialist Balkans, especially in post-Yugoslav states.
Igor Štiks is a professor in the Faculty of Media and Communications in Belgrade and a research fellow in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana. He has previously taught at universities in Edinburgh, Sarajevo, Ljubljana, and Graz, after earning his PhD at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris and Northwestern University (Chicago). Štiks has published the monograph, Nations and Citizens in Yugoslavia and the Post-Yugoslav States: One Hundred Years of Citizenship (Bloomsbury, 2015); and together with Jo Shaw, edited the collections Citizenship after Yugoslavia (Routledge, 2013) and Citizenship Rights (Ashgate, 2013), and with Srećko Horvat, Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism (Verso, 2015). With Horvat, he also published The Right to Rebellion (Fraktura, 2010), on the student movement. Štiks’ novels A Castle in Romagna and The Judgment of Richard Richter (originally published as Elijah’s Chair) have won numerous awards and have so far been translated into 15 languages. His most recent novel W (Fraktura, 2019) is dedicated to a century of revolutionary struggles in Europe.
Krunoslav Stojaković is a historian and head of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung offices in Belgrade (Serbia) and Tuzla (Bosnia-Herzegovina). His main areas of interest are the history of the labour movement, fascism, and anti-fascist resistance, especially in Yugoslavia, as well as left-wing movements and parties in Southeastern Europe. His publications include «für eminent kommunistische Grundsätze». Die politisch-kulturelle Avantgarde in Jugoslawien, 1960-1970 (Mandelbaum, forthcoming in 2022); and he has collaborated with Elfriede Müller and Titus Engelschall on Revolutionäre Gewalt. Ein Dilemma (Mandelbaum, 2019); and with Boris Kanzleiter on 1968 in Jugoslawien. Studentenproteste und kulturelle Avantgarde zwischen 1960 und 1975. Gespräche und Dokumente (Dietz, 2006).
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