Central European University Press Entangled Paths Toward Modernity: Contextualizing Socialism and Nationalism in the Balkans

This book discusses how socialist ideology emerged as an option of political modernity in the Balkans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and compares three nations sharing similar geopolitical, historical and cultural (religious) background but divided by language and cultural traditions. This book presents three case studies (Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece), dealing with the adaptation of three socialist paradigms in three Balkan countries. It carries studies that aspire to tell a different and complementary story with respect to the issue of modernity and socialism (and Marxism). It presents similarities and differences between the ways and forms as socialist ideology appeared in these three predominantly agricultural countries in the final phase of the Ottoman rule in South-Eastern Europe - including transnational interactions and transfers. This book: analyzes the relations and competition between concepts of liberalism and socialism; and, describes where socialism in the three countries was heading to at the beginning of the 20th century.