Worker's Education in the Early Yugoslav Communist Party

Worker's Education in the Early Yugoslav Communist Party examines the inventive educational practices developed by Yugoslav communists during the 1920s and 1930s in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, focusing on how ordinary workers received education in music, literature, and art despite the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) being banned in 1920.Employing a history-from-below approach, the book reconstructs communist education in workers' common houses, reading rooms, and seemingly apolitical organizations such as Esperanto societies and anti-alcoholism groups, as well as prisons (Glavnjača, Lepoglava, Sremska Mitrovica), which communists perceived as ideological schools of communism. The analysis reveals how educational materials were smuggled into prisons by couriers, who were predominantly women, using suitcases with false bottoms, concealed in clothing, or hidden in baby carriages. The book explores education as a crucial mechanism in the ideological battle between communists (the "seduced masses") and social democrats (the "pragmatic policies"), demonstrating how communists used education to gain influence over the Yugoslav working class and advance class struggle.This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in modern European history, labor history, communist studies, history of education, and Balkan studies.

About the Author

Ana Rajković Pejić holds a PhD in modern and contemporary history. She is a Research Associate at the Croatian Institute of History in Zagreb. Her research primarily focuses on the labor movement and women's activism in the interwar period. She is the author of the monograph Dugi ženski marš. Položaj radnica i ženski aktivizam u Hrvatskoj između dvaju svjetskih ratova (Long Women March. The position of women workers and women's activism in Croatia between the two world wars, 2021) and Plave kute idu na more. Svakodnevica radnika u Hrvatskoj tijekom druge polovice 20. stoljeća na primjeru radnika "Đuro Đaković" (Blue Coats go to the Sea. Everyday life of workers in Croatia during the second half of the 20th century, based on the example of the "Đuro Đaković" factory, 2024). With Tvrtko Jakovina, she is one of the authors of the study History of Unrealized Opportunities. Social Democracy and the Origin of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1918-1921).

She serves on the board of directors for Women's Studies in Zagreb and is one of the co-directors of the postgraduate seminar Feminism in a Transnational Perspective. Also, she has authored several exhibitions and is a recipient of the "Vjekoslav Klaić" award.