The Iconoclast: Three Essays of Kosta Novaković on Albania and the National Question (Excerpts)

Kosta Novaković (1886–1938) was one of the most influential figures in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) during the interwar period. From the early 1920s onwards, he was a fierce critic of the colonisation of Kosovo and Macedonia by the Yugoslav monarchic regime. He wrote extensively on the national question from the perspective of the KPJ. Throughout the 1920s, he was arrested and imprisoned several times. In the late 1920s, he emigrated to the USSR, where he continued his political activities. He was executed during the Stalinist purges in 1938.

In collaboration with Pykë-Presje, Limestone Books is pleased to present an excerpt from the first ever English translation of selected writings by Kosta Novaković on the national question in Yugoslavia. The excerpts of three texts presented here are taken from Four Months in Northern Albania (1914), which provides a first-hand account of the Serbian army’s atrocities in Albania during the Balkan Wars; Macedonia to the Macedonians, Land to the Peasants (1924), which addresses the national question in southern Yugoslavia; and Novaković’s 1935 autobiography.