The Goal is Whiteness : Yugoslav-American Communism, Gender, and Race in Postwar Pittsburgh

Abstract

This thesis examines Yugoslav Americans' expressions of gender, whiteness, and patriotism in post-World War II Pittsburgh, as reactionary to the frenzied and anxious atmosphere of potential Soviet invasion and Communist subversion. The example of western Pennsylvania illustrates the anxieties of Communist influence and the struggle for genuine manhood following the war. Pittsburghers perceived Communism as many Americans did at the time: not as a distant foreign threat, but that which presented itself in local life, transforming daily, mundane affairs into potential targets for Communist deception. Among the indicators of communist subversion, degenerative masculinity and whiteness served as traits, which conservative Americans used to distinguish between loyal Americans and un-American, effete, and non-white communist sympathizers. As a military-industrial hub, Pittsburgh attracted South Slavic immigrants in the early twentieth century. By the late 1940s, as self-proclaimed communists and their conservative enemies fought for control over social and economic institutions in western Pennsylvania, Slavs, their culture, and their organizations became intertwined with fears of communist subversion as well as the erosion of proper gender roles and racial categories. This study investigates Yugoslav American reactions to this sociopolitical environment and how Americans of Croatian, Slovenian, and Serbian descent participated in the cultural phenomenon of postwar anxieties.