The Utopia of Terror: Life and Death in Wartime Croatia

Description

The essays in The Utopia of Terror provide new perspectives on the relationship between the politics of construction and destruction in the wartime Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945) ruled by the fascist Ustasha movement. Bringing together established historians of the Ustasha regime and an emerging generation of younger historians, The Utopia of Terror explores various aspects of everyday life and death in the Ustasha state that untilnow have received peripheral attention from historians. The contributors argue for a more complex consideration of the relationship of mass terror and utopianism in which the two are seen as part of the same process rather than asdiscrete phenomena. They aim to bring new perspectives, generate original thinking, and provide enhanced understanding of both the Ustasha regime's attempts to remake Croatian society and its campaign to destroy unwanted populations. Rory Yeomans is a fellow in history at the Wiener Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Vienna, Austria. A fellowship from the Cantemir Institute at the University of Oxford in 2013 supported the research for and the writing and editing of this book. Table of Contents Abbreviations Introduction: Utopia, Terror, and Everyday Experience in the Ustasha State - Rory Yeomans Anti-Semitism and Economic Regeneration: The Ustasha Regime and the Nationalization of Jewish Property and Business in Sarajevo - Dallas Michelbacher Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times: Everyday Life in Karlovac under Ustasha Rule - Filip Erdeljac The Engine Room of a New Ustasha Consciousness: Cinema, Terror, and Ideological Refashioning - Rory Yeomans Honor, Shame, and Warrior Values: The Anthropology of Ustasha Violence - Radu Harald Dinu Apostles, Saints' Days, and Mass Mobilization: The Sacralization of Politics in the Ustasha State - Stipe Kljaic Between the Racial State and the Christian Rampart: Ustasha Ideology, Catholic Values, and National Purification - Irina Ognyanova Envisioning the "Other" East: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Muslims, and Modernization in the Ustasha State - Nada Kisic-Kolanovic "To Be Eternally Young Means to Be an Ustasha": Youth Organizations as Incubators of a New Youth and New Future - Goran Miljan Forging Brotherhood and Unity: War Propaganda and Transitional Justice in Yugoslavia, 1941-48 - Tomislav Dulic Recontextualizing the Facist Precedent: The Ustasha Movement and the Transnational Dynamics of Interwar Facism - Aristotle Kallis Epilogue: Ordinary People between the National Community and Everyday Terror - Rory Yeomans Appendix: The Origins and Ideology of the Ustasha Movement List of Contributors Index Contents Abbreviations Introduction Part One Terror as Everyday Experience, Economic System, and Social Practice 1 Anti-Semitism and Economic Regeneration 2 Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times 3 The Engine Room of a New Ustasha Consciousness 4 Honor, Shame, and Warrior Values Part Two Incarnating a New Religion, National Values, and Youth 5 Apostles, Saints’ Days, and Mass Mobilization 6 Between the Racial State and the Christian Rampart 7 Envisioning the “Other” East 8 “To Be Eternally Young Means to Be an Ustasha” Part Three error, Utopia, and the Ustasha State in Comparative Perspective 9 Forging Brotherhood and Unity 10 Recontextualizing the Fascist Precedent Epilogue Appendix Contributors Index