ABSTRACT
By exploring cases in which ordinary people faced legal action for political misconduct, Filip Erdeljac addresses the often paradoxical political stances that peasants and workers took in interwar Yugoslavia. He argues that nationally and politically incoherent peasants and workers expressed a variety of political opinions that combined aspects of national indifference and full national integration. Over time, however, the structural use of force and violence by the Yugoslav state and its Croat nationalist opponents made it nearly impossible for ordinary people to retain alternative, non-national self-understandings. By revealing the complex and often unexpected reasons on which people based their support for certain national and political projects, Erdeljac’s examination of non-elite attitudes enhances our understanding of the rise of an exclusionary Croat nationalism and the fascism of the Ustasha Movement.
