Making Yugoslavs: Identity in King Aleksandar's Yugoslavia

by Christian Axboe Nielsen

When Yugoslavia was created in 1918, the new state was a patchwork of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and other ethnic groups. It still was in January 1929, when King Aleksandar suspended the Yugoslav constitution and began an ambitious program to impose a new Yugoslav national identity on his subjects. By the time Aleksandar was killed by an assassin's bullet five years later, he not only had failed to create a unified Yugoslav nation but his dictatorship had also contributed to an increase in interethnic tensions. In Making Yugoslavs , Christian Axboe Nielsen uses extensive archival research to explain the failure of the dictatorship's program of forced nationalization. Focusing on how ordinary Yugoslavs responded to Aleksandar's nationalization project, the book illuminates an often-ignored era of Yugoslav history whose lessons remain relevant not just for the study of Balkan history but for many multiethnic societies today.

Genres: History

400 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 2014

About the author

Christian Axboe Nielsen is Associate Professor of History and Human Security at Aarhus University, Denmark. He has worked as an analyst at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and has appeared as an expert witness in international and domestic criminal and civil cases.