Transcribing the Past

  START TO FIGHT SERBIANS.  Montenegrins said to have declared a Holy War. LONDON, Feb, 22, A wireless message from Berlin today says that, according to Swiss reports, the Montenegrins have declared a holy war against the Serbians. Two Serbian regiments have occupied Cettinje[sic], Montenegro, and the situation is grave, the message says.    Published 23rd of February 1921 in the New York Times.  Thus reads the above news clipping. I was not familiar with this period before reading this news snippet. In the aftermath of the First World War it was decided to build a Kingdom in the Balkans uniting Croats, Serbs and Slovenes, which in 1929 would become known as Yugoslavia. The Montenegrins independent before the war were also absorbed into the Union. It was not a peaceful union, as this report from the New York Times makes clear.  In 1919, tensions between the pro Serb union and the federalist Montenegrins laid to a failed uprising in Christmas 1919 with ...

  An account of the student protests in Belgrade in 1968 by one of the participants. Transcript of the above video. Program Announcer: We begin with another set of student protests from 50 years ago. 1968 was a turbulent year in much of Europe and the U.S, a new found sense of free expression had led to demonstrations against the old elites, against the inequalities of capitalism, and against the Vietnam war. That’s certainly what was happening in the West, but there was also unrest in the Eastern bloc and that’s where we’re going now as we take you back to June 1968 and a student revolt in Communist Yugoslavia which exposed deep discontent at the country’s unique system of market socialism. Dina Newman has been speaking to one of the leaders of that protest Sonia Licht. [Music- Yugoslavian National Anthem Hej Sloveni] Dina Newman: Yugoslavia was formed after World War II as a one-party communist state, by its wartime anti-fascist leader Josip Broz Tito...