Sub-Yugoslav Identity Building in the Enciklopedija Jugoslavije (1955–1990): The Case of the Albanian Question

Abstract

The Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia (Enciklopedija Jugoslavije, EJ) was the flagship project of socialist Yugoslav nation-building in the fields of culture and academic knowledge. The first edition of the EJ was published in one Serbo-Croatian version (1955–1971), but the unfinished second edition of the EJ (1980–90) appeared in Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian in Latin and in Cyrillic script, Macedonian, Hungarian, and Albanian versions. The EJ was transformed from a staunchly federalist Yugoslav cultural platform of the 1950s, which supported Yugoslav unitarism, to one that strongly affirmed the nation-building(s) of the republics and autonomous provinces, thereby reflecting the decentralist remodeling of Yugoslavia from the late 1960s onwards. Using the examples of the two articles on “Albanians” and “Albanian-Yugoslav relations” in the EJ in their 1955, 1980, and 1983 versions, the authors elaborate on the political struggles within the Yugoslav ruling elite and within academia.