Women and Revolution in Yugoslavia

["Michael Hoover" <hoov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

any listers familiar with below title?   Michael Hoover


>    Women and Revolution in Yugoslavia 1941-1945 (Women and Modern
>    Revolution Series), Arden Press, 1990
>    by Barbara Jancar-Webster
>
>    About the Author
>    Dr. Barbara Jancar-Webster is a professor of political science at the
>    State University of New York, Brockport. She is the author of Women
>    Under Communism (Johns Hopkins University Press), Czechoslovakia and
>    the Absolute Monopoly of Power (Praeger), and Environmental Management
>    in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (Duke University Press).
>      _________________________________________________________________
>    Book Description
>    The participation of women in the Yugoslav National Liberation
>    Movement is one of the most significant events in modern history. In
>    no other country in the world have women played such a decisive role
>    in the achievement of victory over an occupying enemy and the creation
>    of a Communist state.
>
>    Women and Revolution In Yugoslavia is the first book in English on
>    women's role in the Yugoslav partisan movement of World War II. It is
>    based on research in primary sources in Yugoslavia and on the author's
>    interviews with Yugoslav women who fought in the war. The book
>    examines the various functions that women performed in the fight
>    against fascism and German occupation--as soldiers, as members of the
>    Yugoslav Communist Party, and as part of the effort to provide support
>    to those on the front lines. It also traces the evolution of the
>    woman's movement and analyzes women's postwar status.
>
>    Many women partisans view their participation in the war as the
>    decisive factor in the liberation of all Yugoslav women, as having
>    opened the door to their equal participation with men in the building
>    of the new Yugoslavia. But at the end of the 1970s, a new generation
>    of Yugoslav women began to challenge these assumptions of
>    emancipation, calling for radical changes in existing social values
>    and institutions and an end to the patriarchal order. Jancar-Webster
>    reconciles these radically different positions into a realistic
>    picture of the gains made by women through their participation in the
>    war.
>
>    From the Back Cover
>    "There was a hierarchy of instruments of torture. The first was the
>    nightstick, then the ball, the stretching out on the bench, and the
>    ultimate instrument was horseradish. I was no longer in a condition to
>    think, because of the pain. At first glance, the torture seemed
>    completely harmless: a paper bag of one kilogram, a grater and a
>    horseradish root--so innocent.
>
>    'Do you want to choke on this horseradish or do you want to confess?'
>    he vainly asked. Then he put my head in the paper bag with the
>    horseradish. The bag was closed and they began to beat the horseradish
>    so that the smell became dangerously irritating. My head pounded and
>    roared. I was suffocating. Instinctively I tried to take the bag off,
>    but an iron hand about my head prevented me. I lost
>    consciousness....They slowly brought me back to reality with a stream
>    of water. I was lying on the floor. They were around me, their boots
>    spread out, the sleeves of their shirts rolled up. They were
>    perspiring from exertion, and their terrible laughter was ringing
>    horribly in my ears.
>
>    'Confess everything....Give up your band of Communists! Milica, you
>    will surely speak,' said Hedjika, 'if not today then tomorrow.'
>    Stubbornly I remained silent. The next morning I went through the
>    beatings in the same order: arms, legs, etc. Then came the bench for
>    'stretching out,' and again the horseradish.
>
>    'Now we will kill you unless you confess,' warned the artist of the
>    nightstick and the wet rod. They thrust me into a truck and took me to
>    the Danube to Rajin Forest in the hope that on the way I would think
>    again and that the sweetness of freedom and life would conquer my
>    Communist conscience and consciousness. Then they would hurry to catch
>    those whom they had sought for so long and for whom they would be
>    richly rewarded by their superiors.
>
>    I asked myself: Am I looking at this tiny piece of sky for the last
>    time? I was 18 years old.
>
>    Rajin Forest. It was a truly idyllic spot. I used to come here with my
>    family before the occupation, and now I was looking at it for the last
>    time. But...no, they cannot kill me near that mud. That bare winter
>    tree. A piece of sky and mud. Hedjika aimed his revolver at me.
>
>    'I will count to three.' "
>
>    --Milica Melkus was a young Yugoslav Communist. She was awarded the
>    partisan's medal for her bravery under torture.
>
>    Chapter 3...Conclusion
>
>    How can the role of women as fighters, and the impact of this role
>    upon the consciousness-raising process, be fairly assessed? The data
>    and interviews indicate that women sought the role of fighter as
>    indicative of higher status, commitment, and adventure. When they were
>    admitted into the partisans, they proved excellent, dedicated
>    fighters, full of courage and daring. For the women active in the
>    prewar Communist underground, admission was nine-tenths of the battle.
>    The prewar programs both of the women's movement and of the Communist
>    Party demanded that women be permitted to perform male roles. The male
>    role par excellence was that of the warrior. Thus, the older
>    generation of urban-born women Communists accepted woman's fighting
>    role as proof that the program had been achieved.
>
>    For the younger generation of peasant women, the wartime warrior role
>    represented both a continuation of a valued patriarchal tradition and
>    an uprooting from this tradition in the Communist leadership's
>    insistence on the equality myth translated into specific norms of
>    conduct. This insistence expanded the women's sense of personal worth,
>    giving them a perception of equality never before experienced. For
>    both generations, then, the role of soldier represented the
>    culmination of the first stage of consciousness-raising in the scheme
>    of Gerda Lerner. For the Party leadership, on the other hand, the
>    woman warrior represented the unique point of women's emancipation in
>    Yugoslavia. The Party's androcentric vision allowed women admission to
>    the most exclusive male role but could extend no further.
>
>    The above analysis is in no way intended to minimize the role of the
>    woman fighter in the National Liberation Struggle or to cast doubt on
>    her contribution. On the contrary, it suggests that perhaps the
>    hierarchical organization of the military and the total demands of
>    obedience on the battlefield may be an ideal arena for women to
>    achieve a sense of self as competitors for male roles, but an
>    inappropriate theater for women to achieve a sense of self as women.
>    Through their participation in the partisan forces, Yugoslav women
>    proved to the world that women could fight as soldiers in a modern war
>    as well as or better than men. The last words of a Montenegrin woman
>    partisan before her death before a German firing squad, as recalled
>    byVladimir Dedijer in his memoirs, encapsulate the partizanka's place
>    in history. "I am proud to follow a man's footsteps. From my blood
>    shall liberty spring."
>
>    Inspiring as these words are, they militate against women thinking and
>    acting in a woman-centered world, where self-realization is not
>    predicated on identification with male roles. It is significant that
>    the legend of the woman partisan, bound up as it is with Yugoslavia's
>    fight for freedom during the Second World War, has been able to
>    dominate the definition of women's liberation in Yugoslavia for over
>    forty years. Only now is a new generation of women beginning to look
>    critically at that legend from a woman-centered perspective to set it
>    in its proper context.
>      _________________________________________________________________