Filip Erdeljac
Junior Fellow (04/2016 - 08/2016)
Political Mobilisation and National Incoherence in World War II Croatia. Everyday Nationalism in the Yugoslav Kingdom, the Ustasha State and Communist Yugoslavia 1934-1948
By exploring how non-elites in Croatia during the interwar period, the Second World War and the immediate post-war years interpreted the national and political ideologies promoted by different movements, this project complicates our conventional understanding of the relationship between mass violence, collaboration and resistance in World War II Europe. Peasants and workers in Yugoslavia violently participated in mass politics and political violence while often lacking a clear understanding of the political ideologies they claimed to represent. My analysis of the politically and nationally incoherent behaviours that ordinary people frequently displayed provides new insights into the history of World War II Europe and re-evaluates the utility of classifying people from the period as either fascists or anti-fascists, collaborators or resistors, communists or anti-communists, victims or perpetrators.
Filip Erdeljac is a Ph.D. candidate at New York University working on “Political Mobilisation and National Incoherence in World War II Croatia: Everyday Nationalism in the Yugoslav Kingdom, the Ustasha State and Communist Yugoslavia, 1934-1948.” He has received support for his research and writing from the American Council of Learned Societies and the MacCracken Fellowship, in addition to several smaller grants.