Nations and citizens in Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav states: one hundred years of citizenship

Abstract

the 1960s moved into the 1970s, Greek student activists found a parallel between their struggle against the US-backed Greek junta and another: the one in Chile, against the terrifying and cruel right-wing dictator Pinochet. The Cold War took many casualties, far from the White House and the Kremlin. Those who are interested in the psychology of trauma will find something in this book to further their studies. One example would be the rape of women activists by the military. These women were often raised under traditional notions of sexual modesty. More research could certainly be done on this topic, and perhaps better to be accomplished by women scholars. The women Kornetis interviewed did not refer directly to their experiences of rape, although the implications were clear enough. For an introduction to what is truly meant by the now-popular term “transnational,” Children of the Dictatorship would make an excellent contribution. Readers from The First World or The North or The West – however we wish to denominate privileged political status and wealth – can easily see how no nation is an island, and that those who live in small countries really do have histories and cultures worth defending. Of course, readers from small countries can bypass that lesson for many others. How specific cultures might persist under the current form of voracious capitalism and technological innovation remains a question for us all. Accessible though it is, the scholarship of Children of the Dictatorship is hardly introductory. Kornetis’ affinity for theory allows him to employ it without showiness or verbal tangle. My only criticism of the book is that its emphasis on description and explication robs the Polytechnic occupation of its inherent drama. The penultimate, and culminating, chapter is dubbed “Ten Months that Shook Greece.” The prose belies the title. But perhaps the relationship between the social sciences and the humanities ought not to be too easily settled.