Yugoslavia, 1924–1931

Abstract

This chapter discusses the League Health Organization’s attention to human security, and the expectation that an international organization could take positive action to support human security, which came out of a period of eastern European crisis, state-building, and public health internationalism. First there was the growing expectation that an international health organization could aid a state’s practice of a public responsibility for health. Then, rural health projects figuring in eastern European state-building foregrounded human security as part of the public responsibility for health that international health activities might support. The rural health project in Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia was an early start in this direction, but a subsequent initiative in Yugoslavia’s Macedonian region exemplified and influenced rural health in the region and in the League Health Organization. This experiment explored the relationship between social democracy and social medicine. Yugoslavia’s rural health initiative gave state-building and modernization a localized and agrarian identity. The League Health Organization’s program soon mirrored Yugoslavia’s integration of social medicine and social democracy, as well as its particular focus on agrarian society.