Introduction

The concept of (Yugo) Slavism or Slavdom (Yugoslavism or Yugoslavdom) is a neologism of German origin (Slawentum) which points to the - by origin and meaning - comparable German concept of Deutschtum, Germanness, created around 1770 within the Sturm und Drang, (Storm and Stress) movement, that is, during the formative period of modern German nationalism. It was Johann Gottfried Herder (born in Mohrungen on August 25, 1744– died in Weimar on December 18, 1803), who in thinking about the relationship between thought and language, developed the concepts of ‘national genius’ and ‘national language’, thus laying the groundwork for the Romantic concept of the nation. In his philosophical history of mankind, he highly valued the future of Slavdom, and as he was one of the leading German/European thinkers who developed the concept of Kulturnation, that is, the model of thinking about nationhood in terms of philological-literary concepts (e.g. “national rebirth”), he is unavoidable in any attempt to understand the process of the national integration of the majority of (south) Slavic nations. He is all the more relevant in so far as he anticipated the later much developed principles of Slavic interconnectedness and Pan-Slavism. Jan Kollar (Mosovce, July 29, 1793, – Vienna, January 24, 1852), then developed these principles which, in the entire Slavic world – but particularly in the South Slavic – wielded enormous influence (On the Literary Reciprocity of Different Tribes and Dialects of the Slavic Nation, 1837 / Über die literarische Wechselseitigkeit zwischen den verschiedenen Stämmen und Mundarten der slawischen Nation).

However, nations, understood primarily as a sovereign people, had in the „long 19th century“,already after the French Revolution of 1789, become historical subjects that had appropriated the experience of the national past, the national present and future, so that (Yugo) Slavism, too, originally a phenomenon of South Slavic interconnectedness, had conceptually changed its meanings dramatically in different national traditions. From that standpoint, (Yugo) Slavism cannot be an analytical concept, but nevertheless can be the subject of analysis, including in all its distinct, particular historical manifestations, meaning also as an ideologeme.

Even though Duden now interprets Slavdom/Slavism/Slawentum as “the character and culture of the Slavs ( Wesen und Kultur der Slawen)”, while taking Germanness / Deutschtum to mean: “1.the totality of Germanic manifestations of life; German character / Gesamtheit der für die Deutschen typischen Lebensäußerungen; deutsche Wesenart; 2. belonging to the German people / Zugehörigkeit zum deutschen Volk;3. the totality of German national groups abroad Gesamtheit der deutschen Volksgruppen im Ausland)“, for an historian these definitions are merely „archeological“, since, in a reductionist way, they merely follow the shifts in meaning of both concepts from the 18th to the 20th century.The duty of the historian is to deduce meanings from both text and context. In this regard, something should first be said about the South Slavic context of Yugoslavism from the perspective of long-term history.

I

Even though the topic of early Slavic „ethnogenesis“ is being innovatively debated today (for example, F. Curta, D. Dzino, V. Sokol), the South Slavs are the only Slavs who, at the crossroads of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, were to be found within the borders (limes) of the Roman Empire, settling in the regions between the Mediterranean and the Danube basin. They inhabited regions that by sea and/or land connected and/or separated its western from its eastern parts – the one predominantly Romanized, the other predominantly Hellenized, that is, regions that seperated Rome from „New Rome“ (Constantinopole). Nevertheless, this is a unique and contiguous space in which, according to epigraphic findings, Greek and Latin parts can be found within the same text or, in other instances, Latin texts written with Greek letters can be found. At the same time, this was the only European area that was, after the Slavic migrations and by the end of the first millennium, settled by the last migratory waves of peoples from Eurasian regions (Bulgarians and Hungarians), but also a unique area in which the Romanization of Late Antiquity endured, even where it was weak and relatively the furthest away from its Roman epicenter (Romanians). Furthermore, it was the only European region where, side by side, “Greeks” and “Barbarians”, and “Romans” and “Barbarians” endured simultaneously. It was also unique by the fact that Christianization began very early and ended very late, with numerous jurisdictional, ritual, confessional and ecclesiastical controversies characterizing the shifting borders of the Christian West and the Christian East, which was also marked by deeply rooted paganism, heresy and, from the 15th century onward, its own autochthonic version of Islam. There is in fact no European monotheistic religion that did not become autochthonic in this region. This was a unique European region that spawned and maintained Glagolitic, Cyrillic, Roman and even Arabic Slavic literacy, parallel with Greek and Latin language culture.

And there is another aspect, perhaps the most important. This was the only European region in which, first, the epicenters of hegemonic power always lay elsewhere, outside of the region itself; and second, from Late Antiquity onwards it was never controlled by only one empire. There was no European or global power in the “long” 19th and the “short” 20th centuries that did not try its hand out in the region, precisely during the era of South Slavic and Balkan national integrations. To all empires this region was peripheral, but also, in different ways and at different times, it was the be all and end all of everything! Between circa 1500 and 1800 the socio-demographic, ethno-demographic and confessional-demographic circumstances in the entire region changed so much and became so complex that the already belated European processes of modernization and national integration among the South Slavs faced challenges that were rarely as great elsewhere in Europe. In a multitude of different versions, already by the 19th century Yugoslavism had far surpassed the limits of concepts, linguistic and cultural practices implied by “Slavic interconnectedness.” However, it became a realistic, but still equally diverse, political option only - in circumstances initiated by World War I - after the empires of the European “ancient regime” had disintegrated (the Habsburg Monarchy, the Ottoman Empire, together with the Russian Empire).

There is no South Slavic nation, or for that matter any other nation in the region, that, from the perspective of the 19th and 20th centuries, did not in their medieval epoch have their own “golden age”. For modern Slovenes it was (the Duchy of) Carantania(626 – 745 CE), for the Croats it was the era of national lords [end of 8th century to 1102 – King Tomislav (925?), King Peter Krešimir IV], for the Montenegrins, but also the Serbs, in different ways, the era of the Vojislavljevic dynasty [1168-1371 – King Mihajlo Vojislavljevic (10770], for the Serbs again in the era of the Nemanjic dynasty [1168-1371 – King Stefan Prvovenčani (the ‘First-Crowned‘ King, in 1217) and Stefan Dušan (emperor in1346)], for the Macedonians and Bulgarians (also in different ways) Samuel’s Empire(976-1014), for the Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, again in different ways, the Kotormanić dynasty [cca. 1250-1463 – duke and king Tvrtko I (1353-1377 and 1377-1391)]. On the other hand, there is no South Slavic nation that does not nurture the tradition of various historical defeats (paradigmatic example – “Kosovo”) and that, during the 19th and 20th centuries, did not aspire towards the national renewal of its erstwhile “greatness”, with the protection and support of one or more of the European or global powers, secular and/or spiritual. At the same time, the mutual borders between the South Slavic peoples always more or less overlapped (and still do), and as far as tradition goes, everything was or could become contentious (ethnicity, language, culture etc.). Furthermore, in contra-distinction to the Middle Ages, the modern South Slavic nations of the 19th and 20th centuries, as soon as they were constituted as territorial nation-states – founded on the principle of inviolable sovereignty – were inevitably faced with the harsh and complex realities of their own societies and cultures. There is hardly any boundary within them – of whatever nature – that coincides with the state boundary! Additionally, precisely because of this complexity, there is no South Slavic nation-state that does not have a polycentric geographical, social, economic and cultural morphology that from the “inside” resists national hegemony tailored to the interests of the epicenter of state and national power.

Yugoslavism was essentially the only attempt among the South Slavs in mid-south-eastern Europe to use endogenic processes from “below” to go beyond the (sub) regional logic of survival at the periphery of imperial regimes, to secure a better future for all by constituting a multifaceted complex state union according to the measure of its own needs. However, such an ideal type of Yugoslavism never, in fact, existed. It could not have existed anyway, since the dynamics of interconnected changes “externally” and “internally” prevented all nations individually in their development in central and south-eastern Europe. They were forced to earmark large portions of their potential for the armed forces or police units because of the disputes and conflicts within their own borders or with their neighbors, in peace or in war. Once again, Yugoslavism as an alternative saw its first opportunity only when, in the course of World War I, the empires that had previously enjoyed hegemonic status during an extended period of time in the region disintegrated. Nevertheless, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes received its international legitimacy from the powers victorious in the war that had no borders with it (the United States, Great Britain, France), while the one power that had – Italy – was at the same time the single biggest external threat to the international survival of the Yugoslav state. At the same time, with the partial exception of Greece, there was not a single neighboring state with which the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes did not have open or potential territorial disputes. In conclusion, the Yugoslav alternative in mid-south-eastern Europe in its end result could not escape peripheralizing effects – precisely of the kind it was conceived to prevent.

II

With the proclamation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on December 1, 1918 – through the hasty unification of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs with the Kingdom of Serbia – the majority of Serbs and Croats, but also, at the time, the majority of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Sandžak Muslims, found themselves within the borders of the same, South Slavic state, for the first time in history. The same was true of the Montenegrins, who, by the unification of the Kingdom of Montenegro with the Kingdom of Serbia at the Podgorica Assembly on November 24 and 29, 1918, entered into the new state deeply divided as a nation. The Slovenes, who were constitutionally recognized – and who were also, like the Croats, vitally short-changed victims of the 1915 Treaty of London – and the constitutionally unrecognized Macedonians, became citizens of the new state only in part. Basically, the Slovenes became citizens through the principle of self-determination, and the Macedonians by the logic of international recognition of the borders of the Kingdom of Serbia in 1913. Macedonians and other residents of Macedonia were denied the right of self-determination, not only by the Serbian side, but also by the Bulgarian and Greek sides. Bearing in mind that the members of the largest national minorities – Albanian, Hungarian, German and Turkish – also became residents of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes without having any say in it, a crucial question - still open for debate even today - is what Yugoslavism meant to each mentioned nationality and to what degree their historical expectations were fulfilled or denied on December 1, 1918?

This question is all the more pertinent also because the so-called Habsburg Monarchy South Slavs (Slovenes, Croats and, to a degree, Bosnians – trans.) were deeply involved in the war against Serbia and Montenegro and also played an important role in the occupation regime in these two countries.On the other hand, there were also many Austro-Hungarian South Slavs who participated as volunteers on the Serbian or (Triple) Entente side – something that also needs to be taken into consideration. South Slavic political émigrés from the Habsburg Monarchy from 1914 to 1918, along with the Yugoslav Committee as the key player, but also with the Yugoslav movement among the South Slavic émigrés from Austria-Hungary abroad, essentially modified the picture of World War I as a fratricidal war between the peoples and the nations that in 1918 had opted to live in a common state. Without this it would have been very difficult to legitimize internationally the character of World War I among the South Slavs as anything but fratricidal.

III

By December 1, 1918, the Croats and Serbs were already old European peoples. All the other, Slavic and non-Slavic peoples within the borders of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes were also deeply rooted in the regions of central, south-eastern and Mediterranean Europe, regardless of how and when they were given ethnic attributes or to what degree they were constituted as modern nations at the time of Yugoslavia’s establishment. Regardless of their enormous mutual differences, they all held in common the fact that in 1918 they were at the periphery of modernization processes that had in the “long 19th century” transformed the civilizational morphology of Europe and the world. Therefore, the question of history before the establishment of Yugoslavia had, in each individual case, been posed – in the terminology of Koselleck – on the one hand, as a question of cultivating the experience with which each nation joined the new, common state (‘experience’, Erfahrungsraum) and, on the other, as a question of their expectations from the newly-proclaimed state at the time of joining it (‘expectation horizon’, Erwartungshorizont).

From this standpoint, the problem of Yugoslavism before the creation of Yugoslavia is, above all, a problem of the epoch of constituting the modern South Slavic nations – something that took place from the late 18th century onwards. Yet it is also a problem of the epoch of transformations in Europe and the world through modernization, in the end result, even independently of how and to what extent individual South Slavic communities participated in these processes. Both the cultivated experience and the horizon of expectation are phenomena and processes that demand concrete historical analysis. They are thus subject to both endurance and change and so the history of Yugoslavism before the creation of Yugoslavia was also subject to change and re-creation in every historical situation, if and when Yugoslavism was at all historically relevant. Therefore, Yugoslavism, in all its different manifestations, was always somewhere in between the experiences of the conceived and the unattained in the historically open-ended South Slavic national-integrative and modernization processes. Just as societies in the Slavic south modernized in a convulsive way, equally so the South Slavic nations went through the process of national integration burdened by a multitude of “delays” when compared to different European models and patterns of integration, at the same time going through various forms of contradictory (self) recognition, inclusion and exclusion, different territorial logic etc. All these phenomena and processes were likewise reflected in the experience and practice of Yugoslavism before the creation of Yugoslavia.

At the same time, it is important to bear in mind that the developmental logic of both the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire from the second half of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century could in different ways accelerate and/or delay the processes of modernization and national integration among the individual South Slavic nations – and frequently in contradictory ways [the Ottoman Patriarchate of Peć, 1557-1766, and the Habsburg Metropolitanate of Karlovci versus. the trans-regional dispersion of Serbian Orthodoxy; the Habsburg imperial Illyrian Movement vs.. the ideology of the Illyrian Movement of the Croatian National Revival; the Habsburg-Ottoman trade relations after 1718 vs. the trade and communications networking of the South Slavic countries etc.].

From this viewpoint, the modernization and national integration processes of the Croats and Serbs were more complex as they were the subjects of both empires – of course, much more complex among the Serbs than the Croats, because proportionally there were many more Serbs on the Habsburg side than Croats on the Ottoman side and because the two autonomous states, and later kingdoms – Serbia and, irrespective of certain reservations, Montenegro – were the main spearheads of national integration. Both were internationally recognized at the Berlin Congress in 1878, Serbia becoming a kingdom in 1882 and Montenegro in 1910. Both had autochthonic dynasties, which in south-eastern Europe of the 19th and 20th centuries was more the exception than the rule (the Petrović, Obrenović and Karadjordjević dynasties). None of these dynasties had noble ancestry, which was truly a special case without precedent in the Europe of the time. On the other hand, the Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia (i.e. Triune Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia – trans.) was the only entity among the South Slavs that had maintained intact legal-state continuity for practically a millennium, regardless of the fact that after 1102 it was not a recognized international entity and that territorially it was not integrated under the authority of the Habsburgs (1527-1918).

IV

A special research problem is Yugoslavism avant la lettre, that is, Yugoslavism before Yugoslavism as it is being discussed in this paper. What are involved here are the phenomena and processes that anticipated (South) Slavic reciprocity/mutuality or (South) Slavic inter-connectedness. It is sufficient for the moment to confine ourselves to several examples.

In 1768, Jovan Rajić (Sremski Karlovci, 11 November 1726 – Kovilj Monastery, 11 December 1801), a theologian, philosopher and, above all, historian educated in Europe, concluded the manuscript of his long, four-volume work with a title without precedent: “A History of Different Slavic Peoples,especially Bulgarians, Croatians and Serbians” (История разныхъ славенскиъ народовъ наипаче Болгаровъ, Хорватов и Сербовъ …). After much delay it was finally published in Vienna in 1794 and 1795, through the perseverance of the Metropolitan of the Karlovac Archbishopric Stevan Stratimirović. Realizing that he could not write about Serbian history if he followed the territorial principle, Rajić opted for a history of the nation – an approach that had already gained legitimacy in European historiography. Having simultaneously in mind the Slavic – but not in the confessional (religious) sense – framework of Serbian history, he joined Serbian history to the history of its neighbors, the Bulgarians and the Croats: “At first, Rajić wanted to connect the history of the Serbs to the history of all Slavic peoples, especially the Russians, but soon had to desist from this plan, confining his narrative to the South Slavs. He went on, in the introduction, to give an overview of knowledge about the Slavic peoples in general, their beginnings and their homeland, their name, language, customs and beliefs,and then moved to present the history of the Bulgarians from the beginning to the fall of the Second Bulgarian Empire, also briefly outlining the history of the Croats. The remainder of the work (three out of four volumes) was devoted to Serbian history…” (Ćirković – Mihaljčić 1997: 614). The secular approach of the work, laid out in the, albeit limited, South Slavic context, was ahead of its time in Serbian culture and Serbian historiography, in terms of a working model and there was no viable alternative to his work for a long time afterwards.It was a Serbian history in a South Slavic context.

When Josip Sipus (Karlovac, circa 1770 - ?), in his Basis of the Wheat Trade (Temely xitne tergovine polag narave y dogacsajev), published in Zagreb in 1796 – a work otherwise dedicated to Zagreb bishop Maksimilian Vrhovec – opened up the issue of the modern standardization of the Croatian language, he did not confine himself to Croatian linguistic traditions: “Many are familiar with the different ways of speaking (German) by residents in Upper and Lower Saxony, and again how both speak differently from Swabians, Austrians, residents of the Lower Rhine region (Niederrhein) and the Swiss – they speak differently to such a degree that they can barely understand each other. Nevertheless, their scholars and writers everywhere speak a uniformly pure, compatible and comprehensible language, unified by rules and pronunciation. Our glorious nation, I think, still has a long way to go to such concord. If it were not so dispersed and huge, it would already have disappeared a long time ago, given how forces from every side impede it, and in some cases even destroy it.” (Sipus 1993: 8, translated by Dr. Mijo Lončarić). Referring to the German linguistic situation and talking about “our…dispersed and huge…glorious nation”, Sipus was obviously appealing to his readers not to turn a deaf ear – when considering a modern Croatian linguistic standard – to the Slavic incentives that were already coming from people like Josef Dobrovsky (Gyarmat, July 17, 1753 – Brno, January 6, 1829), the Czech philologist, Slavic scholar and key figure of the early Czech National Revival.

With its petition of May 19, 1790, addressed to the Croatian Assembly, the Zagreb Royal Academy of Sciences requested the “powerful protection” of the upper classes and ecclesiastical orders in an appeal to be given university privilege (Sidak 1969: 317-319). The faculty initiated this after the breakdown of the regime of Joseph II and the renewal of constitutionality in the Habsburg Monarchy, as well as in the face of tectonic changes in the European “ancien régime” after the French Revolution of 1789. It did so at a time when it was expected that the Habsburg Army would continue its anti-Ottoman push towards Bosnia and Serbia, which had begun in 1788 and continued through October 8, 1789 when it managed to take Belgrade. In asking for university privileges (extended teaching rights, status for faculty, funds for the university etc. – trans.), the Royal Academy argued its case thus: “…if we bear in mind the present circumstances, when serious thought is being given not only to the removal of impediments to science but also to the appointment of citizens of our homeland to all offices in these kingdoms, and if we also take into consideration future circumstances in which not only those parts of Croatia that still suffer under the Turkish yoke, but also the kingdoms of Bosnia and Serbia – as favorable omens so far seem to indicate – will be liberated and thus that these glorious kingdoms will even be expanded, we consider that it is not only right and useful, but also absolutely necessary to have in our midst a university in which – once impediments to scientific work are removed and once proper funds are secured for its development – our domestic youth will gather in great numbers and acquire an education in all sciences and noble skills enabling them to work in different fields in our homeland” (Sidak 1969: 318). At a time when the nationalism of the Hungarian upper classes was in full swing, and when the preservation of the status quo ante was of tantamount importance to the Croatian upper classes, the professors’ faculty of the Royal Academy made its voice heard stating “we are of the view that, with this humble proposal to the upper classes and ecclesiastical orders, we have in part fulfilled our duty as citizens respectfully concerned about the greater good of all”! This was anticipation of the modern Croatian national revival, but in a context that was not exclusively Croatian because it also included the kingdoms of Bosnia and Serbia.

The leading Vienna Slavic scholars of Slovenian and Croatian origin [Jernej Kopitar (Repanj, August 21, 1780 – Vienna, August 11, 1844), Franc Miklošič (Ljutomer, November 29, 1813 – Vienna, March 7, 1891), Vatroslav Jagić (Varaždin, July 6, 1838 – Vienna, August 5, 1923) and Milan Rešetar (Dubrovnik, February 1, 1860 – Florence, January 14, 1942)] exerted great influence on the processes of standardization in the South Slavic languages and especially on the linguistic convergence of Croats and Serbs. In that regard the greatest success was achieved through Jernej Kopitar’s influence on the ingenious autodidact Vuk Stefanović Karadžic (Tršić, November 6, 1787 – Vienna, February 7, 1864) who lived in Vienna from 1813 until his death in 1864. Karadžić’s linguistic reform of the Serbian language, based on the neo-Shtokavian Ijekavian dialect (the eastern Herzegovina dialect of Serbian which Karadžic spoke – trans.), radically separated the Serbian language and its Cyrillic alphabet from its Slavic-Serbian tradition, that is, from its organic connection with the Russian language. The much more complex development of the Croatian language in its threefold literary traditions (Chakavian, Kajkavian and Shtokavian), which were more or less interconnected in the early modern period, following the period from 1780 to 1815, was increasingly directed towards standardization based on its own Shtokavian tradition. This opened up the process which, in the period from 1835 to 1850, laid the foundations for the Vienna Literary Agreement between the principal Croatian and Serbian linguists – this being the key initiative in the process of linguistic convergence between Croats and Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins.

V

In the above examples, the implicit ‘(South) Slavic common horizon’ is the precondition for the modern approach to one’s own national issues and aspirations, that is, Yugoslavism is the in statu nascendi (nascent state) for the period of early nationalism. Still, Yugoslavism cannot be understood only from the perspective of modernization. In the history of South Slavic nations, both in the early modern period and in the “long 19th century”, tradition and innovation keep up in equal pace – something that is typical of European fringe countries. ‘Common Slavic horizons’ coexisted in the Middle Ages in the experience of various Slavic peoples – mainly due to Old Slavic linguistic and cultural traditions, largely immune even to confessional boundaries – only to gain in importance through European influences - which remained strong all the way up to and including the 20th century - in the epochs of humanistic and then baroque Slavic studies.

The Protestant fringe in the history of South Slavs exerted both in the linguistic and also in the cultural sense a crucial influence on the national formation of the Slovenes, the South Slavic nation that in a long historical period maintained itself at the crossroads of European Slavic, Romance and German cultures. Primož Trubar (Rascica, June 9, 1508 – Derendingen, June 28, 1586) – coming of age and maturing in the Slavic, Romance and German worlds at the time of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, in the time of the “Ottoman scare” and, more broadly, the time of the shifting European world view – was not only a Protestant thinker and preacher, but also a humanist who left such an indelible mark on Slovenian culture that it could not be called into question even by the comprehensive re-Catholicization of the Slovenes. However, his work was projected along South Slavic lines and was ultimately the most influential among the Croats.

The Slovenes, as subjects of the Habsburg Hereditary Lands, and the Croats in the ‘Reliquiae reliquiarum’ (the ‘leftovers of the leftovers’) of the Croatian Kingdom of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia after the Ottoman conquest of Slavonia in the late 16th century – trans.), were never as close as they were in the period from 1526-27 to 1606, between the enthronement of Ferdinand I as the Croatian King and the Treaty of Zsitvatorok (of 1606), and before and after the Bruce Treaty of 1578 (both treaties were between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans – trans.). Intellectual exchange between individuals on both sides of the Croatian-Slovenian border were far-reaching and stimulating, while the South Slavic Protestant imagination barely had limits at a time when everyone all the way down to Constantinople was fair game for conversion, regardless of their faith. Many a strong individual, from both the Croatian and the Slovenian sides, took part in these exchanges. Although they probably would not have existed if there had been no Reformation, one should also not overlook the numerous cultural transfers from both Italy and Germany that had made their way into Croatia by way of Slovenian mediation before and after the Reformation. Even though the meaning of such mediation changed after the Battle of Vienna (1683-1699), when the borders of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia shifted eastward to Zemun, they were important at least until the Berlin Congress in 1815.

Mavro Orbini (Dubrovnik, mid-16th century – Dubrovnik, 1611)– even though he was not the first in the early modern era to write about the Slavs – is the founder of the modern understanding of Slavism. In his work “Kingdom of the Slavs” (Il Regno degli Slavi, Pesaro, 1601), the spirit of Catholic renewal and erudite culture are amalgamated in a way that far surpasses the boundaries of his initial inspiration by Dubrovnik culture. He set forth a work that in different ways became a point of reference in the culture of all Slavic, especially South Slavic nations. Orbini’s Slavs originate in Old Testament times: “…the father of Japhet, namely, knowing that necessarily there must be three stages of human life and granting each of his sons a profession that would fit the given character of each, made his decision known thus: ‘You, Shem, as a priest will conduct the service of God. You, Ham, will work the land and devote yourself to crafts. You,Japhet,, will rule and defend the country as king and be skilled in arms as a soldier’ (…) Thus the Slavs, having descended from Japhet, had always been courageous in arms and had conquered many peoples” (Orbini 1999: 76). Orbini also names all the peoples of his time of Slavic origin: “These peoples of Slavic ethnicity and language are not only those inhabiting Dalmatia, Illyria, Istria and Carpathia, but also other famous and powerful nations like the Bulgarians, the Ras or Rasani (old, medieval Serbs – trans.), Serbs, Bosnians, Croats, the inhabitants of the five surrounding mountains (Petogorci, “the Five-Mountain people”), the Russians, Ukrainians (Podolans), Muscovites (a variation of Russians – trans.), the Circassians (close to the Macedonians – trans.), the Pomeranians (living in southwestern, central Europe near the Baltic Sea – trans.) and those living in the Bay of Veneti (in the Baltic Sea – possibly precursors of the Slovenes - trans.) and all the way to the river Laba (present-day Russia – trans.). Those that have descended from these nations are called by the Germans, to this day, call the Slavs or the Vendi or the Vindi (Slovenes): ultimately these consist of Lusatian Serbs, the Kasubi (Polish Serbs), Moravians, the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Silesians (inhabiting what is mostly present-day Poland – trans.) and the Czechs. In brief, Slavic languages extend from the Caspian Sea to Saxony and from the Adriatic to the North (German) Sea where all throughout Slavic peoples are to be found” (Orbini 1999: 77). Orbini’s baroque Slavic imagology, published at the time of the exhausting Habsburg-Ottoman Long Turkish War (1593-1606), had its South Slavic epicenters as they could be perceived from Orbini’s broad Dubrovnik-based view, which compiled many literary sources from Antiquity and the Middle Ages. It suggests an essentially different understanding of a nation from that suggested by (Johann Gottfried) Herder and as such has remained a lasting fountain of South Slavic inspiration.

The Jesuit Juraj Križanić (Obrh near Ozalj in Croatia, 1617 or 1618 – Vienna, September 12, 1683) undoubtedly contributed the most to the early modern understanding of Slavism as something beyond confessional boundaries (‘trans-confessional’). From an early age in his homeland Croatia, he gained first-hand experience of the scope and consequences of Catholic-Orthodox in-fighting. Educated in Ljubljana, Graz, Bologna and Rome, Križanić dedicated his life to the ecclesiastical and cultural unity of the Slavic West and East, and to the support of Russia which he saw, once Europeanized, as the leader of the Slavic nations’ renewal. His huge intellectual output, which did not falter even in the time of his Siberian exile, was overwhelmingly dedicated to his chosen calling. The tragic episodes of his life – the utter misunderstanding which followed him from Rome to Moscow, his Siberian exile, and, finally, his death in Vienna on the very day on which the Ottoman siege ended – are all a testimony to the fact that he was at odds with his time. Irrespective of just how differently he was perceived by different individuals at different times, he was either the misguided dreamer or the herald of possible different futures. There never would have been Yugoslavism in the “long 19th century” without its dreamers or visionaries.

In contrast to Križanić, his contemporary, the Pauline monk Ivan Belostenec (Joannis Bellosztenecz; Varaždin, circa 1594 – Lepoglava, 1675), spent most of his life laboring on his voluminous “Treasury – A Latin-Illyrian (i.e. Slavic) Dictionary” (Gazophylacium, seuLatino-Illyricorum onomatum aerarium; vol. I-II, Zagreb 1740), the first Croatian dictionary to include words in the Kajkavian, Chakavian and Shtokavian dialects – with an emphasis on the Kajkavian dialect. In spite of his seminal role in Croatian culture, Belostenec’s South Slavic vision was constrained by the erudite constructs that came out of the Pax Ottomanica Ottoman Peace) in central south-eastern Europe of the 17th century.

In Belostenec’s dictionary there is even no clear distinction between “Slav” and “Slovene”! Sclavus (Slav)isSzlovenecz (Slovene - I, 1092), but also Sclavonia (Slavonia) is Szlovenʃzki orʃzag (Slovenian country, state), while Sclavonicus (Slavic) is szlovenʃzki (Slovenian as inszlovenʃki jezik, Slovenian language - I, 1092). A Szlovènecz (Slovene) is, on the other hand, Illyrius, Illyricus, Sclavus (an Illyrian, a Slav). A Szlovènka (a female Slovene) is Illyrica mulier (female Illyrian), Szlovenſki Orſag (Slovenian country) is Illyrica, Illyris, Illyrium, Illyricum, Sclavonia (Illyria, Slavonia). Finally, Szlovenſzki (Slovenian) is Illyricus, Illyricanus, Sclavonicus (Illyrian, Slavic - II, 507).

Additionally, Croata (Croat) is Horvath, Hervat, „(a)ntiquitùs nominabantur Curetes“ ( “the ancient legendary tribal name” - I, 379). Croatia, olim Crobatia (Croatia, formerly Crobatia) is Horvatʃzki orʃzak, horvatʃzka zemlya (Croatian state, Croatian country), y Kralyevʃztvo (the Kingdom - I, 379). Horvatſkiorpo horvatſki (Croatian) is Croaticè, Illyricè (Croatian, Illyrian - II, 129). In Belostenec’s dictionary, the meanings for Illyrian, Slav and Croat overlap, but it is highly questionable when he is talking about Slovenes as Slovenes, and when Slovenes become Slavonians and even simply Slavs.

Furthermore, Dalmata (Dalmatian male) and Dalmatius (Dalmatian female) is Dalmatin, Dalmatinka (Slavic versions of the same), while Dalmatia (Dalmatia) is Dalmaczia, Dalmatinʃzki orʃzag (Dalmatian country - I, 400). As distinct from the mutually overlapping Croats and Slovenes, in Belostenec’s dictionary Dalmatians are uniform (‘one-dimensional’) from Antiquity onwards. Even though his Dalmatia is not a kingdom but a country, he fails to describe its relationshipwith Croatia proper!

A similar constructivist approach, with its serious, ‘epochal’ limitations, was also applied in the case of the Bosniaks, Serbs and Bulgarians:

Bosnya Orſzag (Bosnian country, state) is Bosna zemlya (Bosnian country), Bosnia, Misia, Regnum Bosniae (kingdom of Bosnia). Bosnyak (a Bosniak)…is koi je iz Bosnye… (“he who comes from Bosnia - II, 26).

Raʃtia (Rastia or Rascia – the country of the Ras, ‘Old Serbs’) is Thracia (Thrace - the ancient name given to the south-eastern Balkan region, the land inhabited by the Thracians -I, 1020), while Thraca, Thracia (Thrace) is Rasci (Rasia) or Valachia magna (Great Valachia or Walachia -a historical region of south-east Romania between the Transylvanian Alps and the Danube River – trans.) or Vlaski orʃzag (Walachian country - 1210). Szërblyanin is Rascianus (Serbia is Rascia), while Szërbſka zemlya (Serbian country, land) is Rascia, Servia (Rascia, Serbia - II, 498) Ulàh (Vlach) is Valachus, Rascianus, Trax, Tracus, Thracis (Walachian, Rascian, Thracian - II, 569).

Bùlgarin (Bulgarian) is Bugarin, Bùgar, Bulgarus, Maesus (Moesia), while Bulgárſki zemlya (Bulgarian country, land) is Bulgaria, Maesia Superior (Greater Moesia – Moesia was an ancient region and later Roman province situated in the Balkans along the south bank of the Danube river. It included most of the territory of modern-day Serbia (without Vojvodina) and the northern parts of the modern Macedonia (Moesia Superior), as well as Northern Bulgaria and Romanian Dobrudja (Moesia Inferior) – trans.), Triball (Triballi) - an ancient tribe whose dominion was around the plains of modern southern Serbia and western Bulgaria, roughly centered where Serbia and Bulgaria are joined – trans. - (II, 34)].

The common denominator of Belostenec’s “etymologizing” is the implicit belief that the (South) Slavs are an autochthonic people in south-eastern Europe. Whether it is viable to connect the ethno-genesis of the South Slavic peoples to their predecessors from Antiquity is still an open question and it certainly did not interest Belostenec as a question in cultural anthropology but rather as an issue of legitimacy in the historical sense. In this he was consistent, and one could say that Belostenec belonged to those scholars who anticipated one of the great issues of Croatian and other South Slavic national integrations in the 19th century – that is, to what degree as a nation they are historically rooted in (the territory of) their own countries. Namely, following the logic of Romantic “primordialism,” those who in the past were firmly rooted (in their territory) could also with greater confidence believe that they would sustain themselves there in the future too.

The interweaving of different types of identity in Belostenec’s work is fascinating because it enables multiple constructs, but also because it opens up the possibility for alternative solutions which could become the binding tissue for all of them. With his pan-Croatianism, formulated in his work Croatia rediviva (Croatia revisited), published in Vienna in 1701, Pavao Ritter Vitezović (Senj, February 7, 1652 – Vienna, January 20, 1713) dissolved the dilemmas of scholars like Belostenec and extended the name Croatian to all South Slavs and, in that respect, completed the work on the first modern history of Serbia, Serbiae illustrate libri octo (Eight illustrated books of Serbia).

From 1701, to 1835 – when Ljudevit Gaj (Krapina, July 8, 1809 – Zagreb, April 20, 1872)in Zagreb launched the Novine horvatzke (Croatian News) and the Daniczu horvatzku, slavonzku y dalmatinzku (Croatian, Slavonic and Dalmatian Morning Star), which, the following year, he had already renamed as Ilirske narodne novine (Illyrian National News) and the Danicu ilirsku ( Illyrian Morning Star) – the process of Croatian national integration explicitly shifted to a program of South Slavic, “Illyrian” linguistic and cultural linking and integration, whilst at the same time not abandoning the class political program of the state and legal unification of Croatian lands: “ The ideology of the Illyrian Movement contained and expressed two levels of integrationist impulses, the Croatian and the South Slavic. The latter was most strongly felt on Croatian territory, which was at the core of the dynamic, northern part of South Slavic territory, partly adjoining Slovenian territory and partly overlapping with Serbian territory. The South Slavic idea neutralized strong specific provincialisms… and played an important role in forming the Croatian nation. At the same time, it facilitated the cooperation of Croats and Serbs in Croatia in achieving common interests – the building of institutions needed by a society in its transition from a feudal to a bourgeois society and maintaining the special political position of the “Triune Kingdom” as a bulwark against Hungarian political and national expansionism” (Stančić 1990: 133). In this sense, the Illyrian Movement played both a Croatian international and a South Slavic international role. Irrespective of the fact that its results were contradictory, both amongst the Croats, and amongst the other South Slavs, especially the Serbs and Slovenes, there is no doubt that the Illyrian Movement opened up, in a concrete historical way, the issue of what should and could be the processes leading to the establishment of modern South Slavic nations and the development of modern societies in general. In different ways, this issue was of vital importance to all South Slavic nations. The practical, political effects of this movement were visible in the spring of 1848. Even though the idea of “Austro-Slavism”- a South Slavic synonym for Yugoslavism – as a liberally based project of the (con) federal, constitutional reform of the Habsburg Monarchy, remained only at the level of political aspirations of the South Slavic national elites, (Yugo) Slavism, which conceptually soon marginalized the concept of Illyrism, achieved legitimacy in circles in favor of South Slavic integration, especially in Croatia. Not even the many controversies associated with this concept would question this all the way up to 1918.

The name Illyrian was contentious both amongst Serbs and amongst Slovenes, and Teodor Pavlović (Karlovo – today Novo Miloševo – February 14, 1804 – Karlovo, August 12, 1854), the editor of Serbskoga narodnog lista (Serbian National Paper) – as much as he supported “pan-Slavic literary interconnectedness” – also emphasized: “Let the Krajnci (Slovenians) be the Krajnci; the Horvats (Croats) the Horvats, and the Srblji (Serbs) individually; but when we talk about all of them together, let us call ourselves as we by nature do and must call ourselves: of one tribe born, dear brother Yugoslavians and Yugoslavs!” (Novak 1930: 78-79).

The experience of the simultaneous Serbian coming-of-age in respect to national integration both as Habsburg and Ottoman subjects – which, on the one hand, implied dynastic/monarchic loyalty, and on the other, an agrarian revolution reduced to a bureaucratic nation-state – is reflected in the critical questioning of the socialist Svetozar Marković. He was a decisive advocate of the federalist resolution of the Serbian national issue and the national issue of every other nation that overlaps and intermingles with the Serbs: “The Serbian people are so positioned as to intermingle with the Bulgarians, Croats and Romanians, while two of these nations, the Bulgarians and the Croats, are their closest relatives by blood and language. Where are the frontiers of ‘the united Serbs’, of the new Serbian state? This is difficult to achieve, if we do not wish to get into conflict with all these peoples. (…) The Serbian people have no geographic or ethnographic boundaries which would set it apart as a unique whole. In order to create a state of five to five and a half million Serbs, the Serbian people would have to make enemies out of the Bulgarians, Croats and Romanians. They would have to take on the role of conqueror, as the Hungarians are doing today.”

When the Croatian national elite accepted the Yugoslav name, it accepted it more consistently than any other South Slavic national elite, but it should also be emphasized that it did so with the support of many influential Serbs, mainly from Croatia, but also – and not too rarely – with the support of the Slovenes, and in other parts as well. From the Society for Yugoslav History (Družtva za povjestnicu jugoslavensku, 1850), and the Archive of Yugoslav History (Arkiva za povjestnicu jugoslavensku, 1851), via the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, 1866) – established in great part by the donation of Djakovo bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer (Osijek, February 4, 1815 – Djakovo, March 8, 1905) – all the way up to the Yugoslav Committee (Jugoslavenski odbor, 1915-1919), which was made up of influential Croats, Serbs and Slovenes, war refugees from the Habsburg Monarchy including Frano Supilo (Cavtat, November 30, 1870 – London, September 25, 1917) and Ante Trumbić (Split, May 15, 1864 – Zagreb, November 17, 1938), Yugoslavism as a concept, a cultural and/or political program, a practice and above all a vision realized itself in many contradictory forms amongst primarily Croats but also other South Slavs in the Habsburg Monarchy, as well as outside its borders, above all in Serbia and Montenegro. However, the short-lived State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (October 29 – December 1, 1918) did not choose the Yugoslav name as its own, nor did it become the name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (December 1, 1918), up until the royal ‘octroyed’ (or ‘granted’) acts of October 3, 1929, when the dictatorship of King Alexander I invalidated the project of the common Yugoslav state. The true motive for evading the Yugoslav name in 1918 was to formally disguise what was in reality a unitaristic project, while in 1929, by conceding the Yugoslav name, the intention was to formalize a deception which no longer had any real bearing on the national interests of the Yugoslav peoples.

VI

As far as the geographic aspects of South Slavic national integration in the “long 19th century” are concerned, Yugoslav studies and ideologies were particularly focused on – what we would call today – economic geography and ecology. Here it is important to bear in mind that at the time autochthonic ideas about the South Slavic world were already taking shape on the margins of the Dinaric-Pannonian basins, also in large part on the boundaries between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire and were strictly monitored by the “sanitary cordons” (Sanitatscordon) of the Military-Krajina buffer regions, practically until the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878. Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade are cities along the Sava River and whatever separates them, they had in common that they mutually recognized each other by way of urbanity and by way of ethnicity – at least from 1840 onwards –as the epicenters of events in the South Slavic north and south, along the Danubian and the Adriatic routes. Ljudevit Gaj was the first who programmatically, linguistically and culturally integrated the area from the Julian Alps to the Black Sea, from the west to the east, endowing the Croatian national renewal (i.e. Illyrian Movement) with a Yugoslav meaning. (1835-1848). However, it was only in the latter part of the 19th century that the conservative national élites, confronted with the great challenges of European-wide modernization, would begin to realize that less than a third of the mostly northern South Slavic territories were agriculturally fertile flatlands, while two thirds consisted of mountainous terrain, significantly less agriculturally productive, with limited lines of communication and very few natural throughways from the plains to the Adriatic Sea, and without waterways that led into this sea. In these areas, there was not enough drinking water to sustain concentrated populations and larger livestock funds. These were problems confronting all South Slavic peoples except for the Macedonians integrated into the Vardar-Aegean plains, who, in any case, were not capable, during the better part of the 19th century, of developing larger urban areas or huge livestock funds – especially since, as Ottoman subjects up until 1912-13, they were also confronted by various challenges from the Bulgarian and Serbian, but also Greek and Albanian sides. If there was a geographic basis to the South Slavic/Yugoslav issue, it could only be concerned with the pro-modernizing and pro-national-integration transversal and longitudinal networking of territories to the north and south of the Middle-European-Adriatic basins, between the sub-Danubian and Adriatic regions, predominantly in the mountainous areas of the Balkan Peninsula.

The ideologues of South Slavic/Yugoslav cooperation sought the economic basis of Yugoslavism primarily in agrarian economics, and even if they had anticipated industrial economics, they were more focused on the development of the state rather than on the development of entrepreneurship, driven more by the fear of mass pauperization than by the transitional processes leading to capitalist economics. Agrarian economics and rural culture were dominant in South Slavic societies up until the socialist modernization and industrialization in the second half of the 20th century, but the social and economic types were very different, from the Habsburg Hereditary Lands in the north-west to the tribal communities in the south-east, and from classic Ottoman serf-like relations to the agrarian economics and rural culture of the free farmers in traditional communities in autonomous/independent Serbia. It was very difficult to project any kind of common, stable South Slavic state on that basis. Therefore, the ideologues of South Slavic/ Yugoslav cooperation advocated a different approach. The German Drang nach Sudosten (lit. “thrust towards the south-east” i.e. the former German policy of eastward expansion – trans.), Italian irredentism, as well as all the other grand national programs of the South Slavic neighbors, provided more than sufficient reason for the South Slavs to defend their vital, common interest, crucial for their future, together, in a common Yugoslav state, within or outside of the borders of the Habsburg Monarchy. After the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, that began in part as a reaction to Italy’s war against the Ottoman Empire, this issue came to a head and its resolution depended on the great powers which were ready for such an outcome because of their numerous other interests.

On the eve of 1914, Jovan Skerlić (Belgrade, August 20, 1877 – Belgrade, May 15, 1914) was one of the Serbian ideologues of integral Yugoslavism as the South Slavic response to the challenges of the “age of empires”, but also as the guarantee of successful Westernization, advocating – among other things – a compromise in linguistic unification (neo-Shtokavian Ekavian plus Roman script). As a huge authority in Serbian culture, he was also a leading influence on the political beliefs of many, especially the young generation.

In contrast to Skerlić, his contemporary Dimitrije Tucović (Gostilje at Zlatibor, May 13, 1881 – Vrače Brdo near Lazarevac, September 20, 1914), a Marxist and social-democrat, was consistently against all trans-national projects that legitimize the hegemony of one nation over another. In his work “Serbia and Albania: A Contribution to the Critique of the Serbian Bourgeoisie’s Policy of Conquest” (Srbija i Arbanija. Jedan prilog kritici zavojevačke politike srpske buržoazije, Beograd 1914), he wrote things which today seem like prophecy: “We dealt here in detail with the Albanian issue driven more by practical needs than theoretical interests. The Albanian policy of our government ended in defeat which cost us many lives. In that respect, even greater sacrifices await us in the future. The policy of conquest pursued by the Serbian government towards the Albanian people has created such relations on the western border of Serbia that peace and a normal state of affairs can hardly be expected anytime in the near future. At the same time, this policy has pushed Albania into the hands of two major powers that have the greatest interest in the Western Balkans - and every consolidation of any outside capitalist state in the Balkan Peninsula represents a serious danger to Serbia and the normal development of all the Balkan nations.” He was also deeply convinced that relations between the South Slavic and Balkan nations must develop along (con) federal lines and, in the long term, be secured through the socialist transformation of all of them. However, the outcome of World War I was such that the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes became a problem the moment it was established, both within its borders, but also outside them.

None of the states established by Versailles after 1918 was a (con) federation. Even though the key players in this order were liberal democracies (the United States, Great Britain and France), practically none of the newly- established states – with the possible exception of the Czecho-Slovak Republic – was a liberal democracy. Although all of them emerged from the experience of life in multi-national empires, none of them consistently respected the imperatives of multi-nationality. Moreover, Weimar Germany was, with respect to its constitution, incomparably more centralized than the Deutsches Reich (one army, centralized fiscal authority etc.): “The German Republic from 1919 was thus potentially much stronger than the Reich from 1871 ever was” (Simms 2016: 287). Thus all who participated in the establishment of the Yugoslav state as a state based on Woodrow Wilson’s principles were obviously mistaken, since the only formula that in the civic sense could have been sustainable was a federal one, one that the victorious side did not recommend even to vanquished Germany. Bearing in mind that World War II was in many respects a continuation of World War I, the Yugoslav state was an anomaly. Its reconstruction was possible based only on radically different assumptions.

In 1996, John Lampe published a book of synthetic analysis called Yugoslavia as History. Twice There Was a Country (1996), reminding readers that the Yugoslav state had disappeared in 1941, only to be re-established, after the hell of war from 1941 to 1945, and then, in 1991/1992, only to disappear again in the whirlpool of war and violence from 1991 to 1995. Therefore the question that for all researchers is all the more intriguing is how it was possible, after everything that had burdened relations between the peoples and nations of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes / Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1941, and the terrible human degradation and deprivation of the occupied Yugoslav territories from 1941 to 1945, to renew Yugoslavia as a federal state with a political monopoly by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia/ League of Communists of Yugoslavia?

The paradox was all the greater since the Yugoslav communists were the only ones, after the capitulation of the Yugoslav Royal Army in April 1941, in the process of the establishment of occupational and collaborationist régimes, to declare a willingness to universally lead the resistance against occupation and collaboration and for the renewal of Yugoslavia as a community of nations. Namely, they were banned and literally outlawed in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1920/1921, subject to state terror and proscribed in dominantly anti-communist public opinion, including the opposition. In 1941, in terms of strength, they were a barely discernible force. No one who knew anything about them could doubt that their determination to lead armed resistance was not motivated by restorational but by revolutionary inspiration. “Never a return to the old!” was the message to all who were invited to join them. This was ultimately a message to all those who in the previous Yugoslavia felt deceived and betrayed and who did not rule out the possibility of a better, more just world. The second message, “brotherhood and unity”, was directed at all who, for whatever reason, felt marginalized and denied in their human, civic and national rights and who did not exclude the same rights for others. This alternative was so radical that the national-liberation resistance to occupation and collaboration could not avoid being burdened on its margins by civil war. However inclusive this communist- inspired, national-front mobilization, it had to be selective in order not to lose its credibility. The brakes failed seriously for the first time at the moment of “victory”. Revanchism against the vanquished, however limited, had far-reaching consequences, as did every other repressive campaign, with loss of human life or without it, which ensued all the way up to the dissolution of the SFR Yugoslavia in war. Even though in terms of modernization and level of civilization, socialist Yugoslavia did achieve results and values that were without precedent in the history of South Slavic nations, it did not manage to create a political culture and a political system capable of withstanding the pressures of internal and external crisis.

To Lampe’s insights we could add a post scriptum, namely, the year 1999, as well as numerous other phenomena in the “Western Balkans” and in the “region” that still confront us with disturbing uncertainties. Tragedies and traumas are everyday occurrences for millions of people, former citizens of the SFR of Yugoslavia and the many and varied transitions from the proscribed (socialist) “uniform thinking” seem endless. While Slovenia and Croatia have managed to become members of the European Union, it is still a huge open question whether any other state that emerged from the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia will manage to enter into its full membership, even though the majority of the population in all of them wants this. Simultaneously, the recognizable contours of a repeated transformation of the “Western Balkans” into a global field of imperial confrontation are increasingly visible. There is nothing new under the sun in the Balkans.

* Given that in the literature devoted to the Yugoslav heritage of the different nations that made up Yugoslavia at the time of its dissolution there is considerable discussion about the history of Yugoslavism before the creation of Yugoslavia, the author of this paper – written after the above- mentioned works – decided upon a textbook-like, individually-profiled review of the “big topics”.