This book represents an attempt to explore the history of the idea of Yugoslav unity and Yugoslavism as a national orientation. The author primarily examines the period between 1919, when Yugoslavia was first constituted as a country, to the early 1950s, the immediate post-WW2 period, when Yugoslavia was re-established as a socialist federation. Had Djilas actually concentrated on this period and its political and ideological developments, this would have been a much more focused and interesting book. Instead, however, Djilas often goes back to the 19th century, but his forays into this crucial period of ideological ferment are often superficial and his interpretations of certain (mainly Croatian) political movements are also sometimes questionable. When he does cover 20th century developments, such as the interwar years, he concentrates mainly on the Yugoslav communists, who were indeed the only consistently pan-Yugoslav political party at the time. However, this neglects other attempts at all-Yugoslav political organization, to say nothing of literary or cultural developments. Djilas offers little that's new in his consideration of the Yugoslav Communist Party's standpoints on the national question, a topic otherwise beaten to death by postwar Yugoslav Marxist scholars as well as non-Yugoslav scholars (most notably Paul Shoup in his still authoritative "Communism and the Yugoslav National Question"). The strongest and most interesting chapters in the book are those that deal with WW2 events in Yugoslavia, with a focus on the Ustasha terror (even though his exploration of the ideological roots of this Croatian quasi-fascist movement leaves much to be desired) and the political problems faced by the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London. The last chapter, which deals with the various attempts by the postwar communist government to forge a supranational Yugoslav patriotism (if not actual national identity) is also quite useful and enlightening.

THIS FASCINATING book is a case study of policies on nation. The League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) consistently, and mistakenly, recognised no less than six South Slav 'nations' as constituting Yugoslavia. These were Serbs, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Slovenes, Muslims and Croats.

Ironically, the LCY failed to recognise Yugoslavs as a nation! Further, Muslims do not constitute a nation: Islam is a religion, and no more. Serbs, Montenegrins, Bosnians and Croats are identical in ethnic and linguistic origins. Macedonians and Slovenes have their own languages, but also have the identical ethnic origin. All are South Slavs ('Yugoslavia' means the land of the South Slavs); they are all members of a nation very different in history and experience from any of its neighbours. But in the 1981 census only five per cent of the population called themselves Yugoslavs.

In 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created, from the ruins of the Habsburg Empire. In 1919, the first Yugoslav Communist Congress called for a unified Yugoslavia, and created a party. But in the mid-1920s, the party decided to recognise the right of the country's nations to self-determination and to support the creation of separate states. This meant opposing the unity of all the country's workers. (Unfortunately, there is no word in the book about the forms of trade union organisation in Yugoslavia, which would have revealed much about the practice and prospects of national unity.)

In 1935, the party demanded separate Parliaments and started to form separate communist parties. Against this, Stalin and the Comintern refused to advocate Yugoslavia's dissolution and said that the party should openly oppose separatism. They argued that only revolution could save Yugoslavia's unity.

During World War Two, the Axis powers divided Yugoslavia and proclaimed their intention never to let it reunite. They made Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina into a puppet state, and gave power to the Croat Ustashas, who massacred hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and gypsies, the worst violence in Yugoslav history. In the war, the party led the all-Yugoslav resistance movement and army, but after the war it created a federal structure for the country, which was a step backward.

The 1953 Constitution described a single Yugoslav working class, but devolution of power to the regions undercut the economic integration so vital to building a united class and nation. This decentralisation strengthened the bourgeois forces pressing first for devolution and then for separation, and hastened Yugoslavia's breakup.

In sum, the LCY was a party committed to its own breakup into separate 'national' parties, and to the nation's breakup into separate nation states. Obviously, it could not hold either itself or the country together for long.

This book illustrates the hard truth that without a nation of its own, the working class has nothing. Britain has been creating itself as a nation, by uniting England, Scotland and Wales, for over 200 years (see Linda Colley's excellent book, Britons: Forging the nation 1707-1837, Yale University Press, 1992). Yugoslavia only became united in 1918, and the LCY's policies failed to keep it so.