34
directions. The influence of French historiography (of analysts and Fernand Braudel) was felt
on Slovene as well as certain other historians, especially the historian Mirjana Gros from
Zagreb, who, from the end of the seventies onwards, occasionally sharply polemicized with
the most notable advocate of the Marxist school of historiography, otherwise from Vojvodina,
Branislav ðurñev.26 However, the labels "Ljubljana", "Zagreb" or "Belgrade" historical
school apply more or less to the historiography that had already begun before World War II
and was then preserved at all three faculties in the first two decades after World War II.27
The post-war period of Yugoslav historiography therefore shows the influence of the so-
called "structural history of the modern French school", then the so-called "traditional
historical school" or "bourgeois historiography" as it was also labeled (that is, of positivist or
"event" history), and – as the strongest one - the Marxist historical school, which basically
insisted on historical determinism, that is, the theory of "the natural laws of social
development." 28 Much weaker, though not entirely unnoticeable, was the influence of the
Anglo-Saxon way of writing, which was introduced among the first by Vladimir Dedijer
(often without a particular feeling for historical sources or for historical truth, which critics
frequently reproached him with).
Of course this division is also simplified, since the directions listed were not uniform even in
the original itself, and, in general, European historiography, at least from the sixties onwards,
was greatly fragmented and moved away from the traditional schools. Even the circumstances
in individual Yugoslav republics differed greatly. Some of the directions listed were also
intertwined in the Yugoslav version, sometimes unusually. Branislav ðurñev, for instance, in
the polemics with the "structuralists", connected Marxist historiography with "event" history,
although in the first post-war years it had been precisely the Marxists that vigorously rejected
the positivists. ðurñev was of the opinion that structural history can only be used for pre-
26 See e.g. Mirjana Gros: Je li historija društvena ili prirodno - historijska nauka, Časopis za suvremenu povijest
I, Zagreb 1978, p. 112; Mirjana Gros: Dva nespojiva svijeta, Prilozi Instituta za istoriju u Sarajevu XVI,, No. 17,
p. 320, Sarajevo 1980; Dubravka Stajić, MA: Metodološki problemi savremene istorije (Saopštenje sa Okruglog
stola održanog 17. i 18. decembra 1985 godine u Beogradu, JIČ year XXII, No. 4, Beograd 1987, pp. 145 - 149).
27 The Belgrade University was characterized by byzantology under the leadership of Georgije Ostrogorski and
by medievalism under the leadership of Jorja Tadić and Mihailo Dinić. In Zagreb the critical medievalist school
was founded by Ferdo Šišić, while Jaroslav Šidak educated a group of historians for newer Croatian history. The
Ljubljana historical school was represented by Milko Kos and Fran Zwitter. In Ljubljana, already very early on,
in 1947 Metod Mikuž also founded a chair of the history of World War II.
28 Marxist historiography was particularly reproached by its opponents in the eighties as limited and politicized,
since with its work it uncritically glorifies the revolution, thus supporting the League of Communists in its
authoritative position; that it holds on to an outmoded thesis of the avant-gardism of the working class, while
neglecting the role of the other classes; and that it writes the history of winners.
35
capitalist periods, while modern history, and especially the history of Yugoslav nations,
cannot be handled any other way than with Marxist methods and the "event" approach. 29
Even the prevailing Marxist historiographical school was rather heterogeneous and ranged
from the direct servicing of politics and ideology at a very low level, all the way to the high
achievements of historians who were constantly in contact with the processes in the European
and world historiography and who understood Marxism as one of the possible methodological
procedures and not as the absolute and the only real truth. Hence it was not unusual if certain
authors, by referring to Marxist historiography, emphasized primarily the class approach and
defended revolutionary measures and the monopolistic role of the Communist Party, while
others in the same name advocated Serbian hegemonism or the efforts to create one (socialist)
Yugoslav nation, while the third emphasized primarily the national tone in historiography,
while the fourth searched for a symbiosis in the class and state. Despite these paradoxes (or
precisely because of them) the relatively great pluralism and the openness to the world are
two characteristics that fundamentally distinguish Yugoslav historiography (or at least its
parts) from the historiography in the East European countries.
Periods in Yugoslav Post-War Historiography
Considering the different circumstances in the republics and provinces, the periodization of
the individual periods in the development of Yugoslav historiography is rendered very
difficult and can only be characterized roughly. 30
The fundamental characteristic of the first post-war period was the constitution of Marxist
historiography. 31 The first generation of Marxism-oriented historians consisted mostly of
29 This can e.g. be deduced from his article "Na zastarelim stranputicama", JIČ year XXIII, No. 1-2, Beograd
1988, pp. 163-175. A similar viewpoint was represented by Bogumil Hrabak, who, in so doing, referred to the
congress of historians in Frankfurt: "The disillusionment of those who were in favor of the total elimination of
description in history began at the last international congress in Frankfurt (1985), at which Marxists themselves
were in favor of keeping the necessary description in order to provide causal and other required explanations."
(Dubravka Stajić, MA: Metodološki problemi savremene istorije, saopštenje sa Okruglog stola održanog 17. i
18. decembra 1985 godine u Beogradu, JIČ year XXII, No. 4, Beograd 1987, pp. 145 - 149).
30 Macedonian historiography had neither historians nor the appropriate institutions and had to create everything
after the war (in December 1944 there were only some 1000 people in Macedonia with a higher education than
secondary school, of which only 150 had finished college, while three decades later Macedonia already had all
the highest educational and research institutions, including an academy of science, while several valuable
synthetic works on Macedonian history had been published. The situation in Kosovo was even worse and
Albanian historiography only began to form in the seventies, after the University in Priština had been founded at
the end of the sixties and the first local generation of intellectuals quickly educated. Similar was the case with
Montenegrin and Bosnian historiography (with the exception of Balkan studies); while the Croatian, Slovene and
Serbian one had a longer and rather strong tradition.
Dostları ilə paylaş: |