Wednesday, April 15, 20265:00 PM
Bunche Hall, Rm 6275
We are pleased to announce that the next UCLA European History Colloquium will be held on Wednesday, April 15, at 5pm PST, in Bunche 6275 and on Zoom. James Robertson, Associate Professor of History at UC Irvine, will be joining us to speak on “Scales of Slavdom: Race and Geography in Yugoslav Communism, 1941-48.”
About the Talk
During WWII Yugoslav communists led an insurgency against the Axis powers and their local collaborators. Throughout these turbulent years, their struggle was animated by a wider vision of pan-Slavic unity that linked their fight with those across occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Eager to raise the morale of their supporters, communists situated their uprising in the wider struggle of the Slavic peoples against fascist conquest.
Communist pan-Slavism was a fraught project. By rooting political affiliations in imagined ancestral lineages, it introduced a racial logic into communist universalism. This contradictory vision served Yugoslav communists well, providing an ideological foundation for their project of South Slavic federalism and justifying the country's postwar turn to the Soviet Union. At the same time, the racial logic of pan-Slavism undermined broader projects of regional unity among the diverse population of the Balkan Peninsula.
This talk excavates the conceptual foundations of communist pan-Slavism, situating the ideology in the longer intellectual history of supranational thought in the lands of Yugoslavia. It draws out and interrogates the ways this racial imaginary stood in tension with alternative projects of political community in South East Europe.
About The Speaker
James Robertson (PhD. New York University) is Associate Professor of History at the University of California Irvine. His research explores the global history of socialist thought, with a particular emphasis on the political cultures of South Eastern Europe. His book,
Mediating Spaces: Literature, Politics, and the Scales of Yugoslav Socialism, 1870-1995, was released in 2024 by McGill-Queen's University Press. His work has appeared in Modern Intellectual History, Slavic Review, Nationalities Papers, and Jacobin. He is currently working on a second book that explores the transnational history of communist worldbuilding.
Venue
Bunche Hall Room 6725 (6th Floor of Bunche)
Online via Zoom (Please register to participate virtually)