Translated by Desmond Maurer and Johannah Maurer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1948, the Cominform, the Soviet-dominated organization that represented communist parties throughout Eastern Europe, expelled its Yugoslav branch, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, for “nationalist” tendencies. The following year, Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavia’s leader, began mass arrests of suspected Stalinists. Prior to the expulsion, everyone in Yugoslavia had been a Stalin supporter\u2014or claimed to be\u2014and the result was a campaign comparable to the Stalinist terror of the 1930s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using previously unexamined archival material and drawing on interviews with the few remaining survivors of Goli Otok, historian Martin Previ\u0161i\u0107 delves into the origins of political repression under Tito and the daily workings of the prison camp island. Over this period, Yugoslav security forces arrested some 13,000 people and imprisoned them on Goli Otok, or “Barren Island,” a desolate prison island off the coast of Croatia, where they were subjected to brutal treatment rivaling that in any Soviet gulag. Originally published in Croatian in 2019, this book is the first in English to fully examine this shocking and revealing episode from the region’s past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n “In his chilling account of Goli Otok, the island to which supporters of Stalin’s Soviet Union were banished, Martin Previ\u0161i\u0107 illuminates the dark side of Yugoslavia’s ‘anti-Stalinist Stalinism.’ What looked to many as a more humane form of state socialism was built on dictatorship and violence. For their faithfulness to the USSR, the Cominformists were beaten, humiliated, ostracized, and reduced to foreigners in their own country.” About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Martin Previ\u0161i\u0107<\/strong> is Associate Professor at the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n October 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n 576 Pages<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014Ronald Suny, University of Michigan
“Previ\u0161i\u0107 shows in detail how Tito’s regime adopted extreme repressive methods in response to Stalin’s intimidations. This is an important book on a poorly known topic that helps us to understand the tragedy of Communist East European experiences in the aftermath of World War II.”
\u2014Silvio Pons, Columbia University<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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