One could not say that little has been written on the subject of ethnos and nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. On the contrary, books on Bosnia-Herzegovina fill several meters of shelves in libraries worldwide. This is not surprising, given the experience of violence and war in the 1990s, which hardly anyone would have thought possible at the time. Instead of initial consternation and helplessness, the past twenty-five years have seen attempts to explain whether, roughly speaking, ethnicity was the cause of the violence or, conversely, whether violence created ethnicized perpetrator and victim collectives. In connection with this, the precondition, the societal contextualization of ethnicity within Yugoslav socialism is often neglected.

The author, Sevan Pearson, has set himself the task of placing this era of socialist Yugoslavia at the center of his work. The author's aim is therefore to deal with the “complex nationality policy of the Bosnian communists and its effects in the period between 1943 and 1974.” The focus is on the question of how the League of Communists of BiH (Savez Kommunista BiH) dealt with “national diversity and the position of Bosnia itself in the Yugoslav Federation” (19). Pearson is interested in what strategies the Communists developed to “guarantee the national right of self-determination of Serbs, Muslims and Croats without endangering the delicate balance in inter-ethnic relations” (19). Concretely, the author examines this practice in the fields of language policy, religion policy, and the party's relationship to articulations of nationalism that went beyond what was permitted (35). This analysis of the nationality policy of the communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina is conducted in five steps. First, with a (very extensive) overview of the history of Bosnia from pre-Ottoman times to socialist Yugoslavia. Second, the description of the Yugoslav communists’ relationship to the so-called “national question” between 1943 and 1959, after which the author turns to the 1960s, at which point the actual topic of this work begins. This part concentrates on the decisive turning points in the understanding of nation within the socialist order. First, the definitive departure from a “Yugoslavism” that was never properly proclaimed, and then the affirmation of the individual nations in Yugoslavia. This intensified political practice of the recognition of ethnicity as a basic social unit, and the encouragement of the articulation of ethnic affiliation had its concrete consequence in Bosnia in the recognition of the (South Slavic—Bosnian-speaking) Muslims there as a national group, equal to the established Serbian and Croatian affiliations. Fourth, the focus is on the second half of the 1960s in times of social upheaval and new nationalist dynamics, such as the impact of the so-called Croatian Spring on interethnic relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Fifth, the author focuses on the policy of the League of Communists in Bosnia with regard to the process of strengthening the distinct profile of the individual republics initiated throughout Yugoslavia, which then manifested itself in the new constitution in 1974. Descriptions of the efforts to develop a Bosnian self-understanding in the Bosnian political public, under the keyword “Zajedništvo” (community, commonality) and to “affirm” Bosnia as a republic with a distinct profile within the framework of the federation are among the most interesting of this work.

The discussion of the nationality policy of the Bosnian Communist League is based on an impressive amount of archival sources. The author conveys to the reader the debates and controversies with regard to this segment of political practice, and thus also the openness of these processes. It becomes clear how much the party, or rather the regional Bosnian cadres, constantly improvised in their search for a balance between the affirmation of ethnicity and their initial universalist principles.

In fact, this work offers new source material, but especially against the background of the intensive discussion in recent decades about the relationship between ethnos and society, about groupisms (Rogers Brubaker), it is too descriptive a way of dealing with the sources. The contradictions inherent in political practice are not explicitly elaborated, such as those between the party's fundamental endeavor to overcome ethnic classifications, and at the same time to be a key protagonist in the “production” of ethnicity. The author mentions the interrelation between authoritarian rule and the affirmation of national affiliation (435), which was intended to compensate for the absence of democratic participation. But this connection between national plurality and authoritarian rule is not systematically developed at the sources. Pearson does postulate that he wants to overcome the ethnicized view of Bosnia. But by constantly talking about “the Serbs,” “the Croats,” “the Muslims,” they appear as seemingly stable groups, thus reproducing ethnicized categories. It is not systematically asked when and why these categories become societally important and relevant and when they are not.

At least in this way it becomes clear that Bosnian comrades did not have an easy time trying to force social emancipation through the eye of the needle of ethnicity.