Constantin Iordachi and Goran Miljan, “Radicalization and Fascism in the Ustaša: From Terrorism to Mass Violence in the Western Balkans”
This book explores the radicalization and fascistization of the Ustaša–The Croatian Revolutionary Organization within the interwar Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and later Yugoslavia, whose tumultuous rise led to terrorism and racial cleansing throughout the western Balkans.
Using an interdisciplinary and socio-cultural approach, Constantin Iordachi and Goran Miljan trace the Ustaša’s political trajectory from its ideological and organizational roots in the 1920s, to its guerrilla struggle and terrorist activities in the 1930s, to its genocidal rule, violent downfall, and post-1945 metamorphosis in exile.
By considering the paramount role played by prejudice, economic deprivation, and the breakdown of social institutions in fueling grievances against an existing socio-political system, the authors place the emergence of the Ustaša in the context of the interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia but also in the wider perspective of the emergence of fascist movements and regimes in interwar and wartime Europe.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction – Radicalization, Terrorism and Fascistization: The Case of the Ustaša
1. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, A Hothouse of Political Radicalization
2. The Way of the Gun: Path to Political Violence, 1918-1929
3. The Fascistization of the Ustaša: International Terrorism and Guerrilla Violence, 1930-1941
4. Ustaša in Power: State Genocide and the Cult of the Martyrs, 1941-1945
Conclusion
Appendices
Minutes of the hearing of Mijo Babic
Minutes of the hearing of Zvonimir Pospišil
Zvonimir Pospišil, “My Experience in Belgrade”
Mijo Babic and Zvonimir Pospišil, “Why I am in a Foreign Land Today”
Bibliography
Index
Constantin Iordachi is Professor in the History Department at Central European University, Hungary. He is the editor of Comparative Fascist Studies (2009).
Goran Miljan is a comparative historian and a researcher at the Hugo Valentin Centre, Uppsala University, Sweden. His research interest is in comparative history of fascism, Holocaust, and social memory in Central and South Eastern Europe. He is the author of Croatia and the Rise of Fascism: The Youth Movement and the Ustasha During WWII (I.B. Tauris, 2018) and Revolucionari i ubojice: Iz povijesti hrvatske nacionalisticke emigracije [Revolutionaries and Murderers: From the History of the Croatian Political Emigration] (with Ivica Šute). Miljan is currently heading a major research project on the aryanisation of Jewish property in Romania and the Independent State of Croatia during World War II.
Product details
Published 19 Feb 2026
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 256
ISBN 9781350596085
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations 20 bw illus
Dimensions 234 x 156 mm
Series A Modern History of Politics and Violence
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/radicalization-and-fascism-in-the-usta%C5%A1a-9781350596085