This book offers a refreshing new analysis of the role of workers both in Tito’s Yugoslavia and in the subsequent Serbian revolution against Miloševic in October 2000. The authors argue that Tito and the Communist leadership of Yugoslavia saw self-management as a modernising project to compete with the West, and as a disciplining tool for workers in the enterprise. The socialist ideals of self-management were subsequently corrupted by Yugoslavia’s turn to the market. The authors then move on to examining the central role of ordinary workers in overthrowing the nationalist regime of Miloševic and present an account which runs contrary to many descriptions of 'labour weakness' in post-Communist states. Organised labour should be studied as a movement in and of itself rather than as a passive object of external forces. Two labour movement waves have emerged under post-Communism, the first an expression of desire for democracy, the second as a collaboration and clientelism. A third wave, against the ravages of neoliberalism, is only just emerging.

Workers' self-management was one of the unique features of communist Yugoslavia. Goran Musić has investigated the changing ways in which blue-collar workers perceived the recurring crises of the regime. Two self-managed metal enterprises, one in Serbia another in Slovenia, provide the frame of the analysis in the time span between 1945 and 1989. These two factories became famous for strikes in 1988 that evoked echoes in popular discourses in former Yugoslavia. Drawing on interviews, factory publications and other media, local archives, and secondary literature, Musić analyzes the two cases, going beyond the clichés of political manipulation from the top and workers' intrinsic attraction to nationalism. The author explains how, in the later phase of communist Yugoslavia, growing social inequalities among the workers and undemocratic practices inside the self-managed enterprises facilitated the spread of a nationalist and pro-market ideology on the shop floors. Yet rather than being a mass taken advantage of by populist leaders, the working class Musić presents is one with agency and voice, a force that played an important role in shaping the fate of the country. The book thus seeks to open a debate on the social processes leading up to the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

The antibureaucratic revolution was the most crucial episode of Yugoslav conflicts after Tito. Drawing on primary sources and cutting-edge research, this book explains how popular unrest contributed to the fall of communism and the rise of a new form of authoritarianism, competing nationalisms and the break-up of Yugoslavia.

'Workers and Revolution in Serbia' offers a refreshing new analysis of the role of workers both in Tito's Yugoslavia and in the subsequent Serbian revolution against Milošević in October 2000.

This book offers a refreshing new analysis of the role of workers both in Tito's Yugoslavia and in the subsequent Serbian revolution against Miloševic in October 2000. The authors argue that Tito and the Communist leadership of Yugoslavia saw self-management as a modernising project to compete with the West, and as a disciplining tool for workers in the enterprise. The socialist ideals of self-management were subsequently corrupted by Yugoslavia's turn to the market. The authors then move on to examine the central role of ordinary workers in overthrowing the nationalist regime of Miloševic and present an account which runs contrary to many descriptions of 'labour weakness' in post Communist states. Organised labour should be studied as a movement in and for itself rather than as a passive object of external forces. Two labour movement waves have emerged under post Communism, the first an expression of desire for democracy, the second as a collaboration and clientelism. A third wave, against the ravages of neoliberalism, is only just emerging.

Challenging the claim that workers supported Stalin's revolution "from above" as well as the assumption that working-class opposition to a workers' state was impossible, Jeffrey Rossman shows how a crucial segment of the Soviet population opposed the authorities during the critical industrializing period of the First Five-Year Plan.

The Mexican Revolution has long been considered a revolution of peasants. But Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato’s investigation of the mill towns of the Orizaba Valley reveals that industrial workers played a neglected but essential role in shaping the Revolution. By tracing the introduction of mechanized industry into the valley, she connects the social and economic upheaval unleashed by new communication, transportation, and production technologies to the political unrest of the revolutionary decade. Industry and Revolution makes a convincing argument that the Mexican Revolution cannot be understood apart from the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, and thus provides a fresh perspective on both transformations. By organizing collectively on a wide scale, the spinners and weavers of the Orizaba Valley, along with other factory workers throughout Mexico, substantially improved their living and working conditions and fought to secure social and civil rights and reforms. Their campaigns fed the imaginations of the masses. The Constitution of 1917, which embodied the core ideals of the Mexican Revolution, bore the stamp of the industrial workers’ influence. Their organizations grew powerful enough to recast the relationship between labor and capital, not only in the towns of the valley, but throughout the entire nation. The story of the Orizaba Valley offers insight into the interconnections between the social, political, and economic history of modern Mexico. The forces unleashed by the Mexican and the Industrial revolutions remade the face of the nation and, as Gómez-Galvarriato shows, their consequences proved to be enduring.