Milica Prokic

• PhD
• Research Associate at University of Stratchlyde-One Ocean Hub

Goli otok (Barren Island), off Croatia’s Adriatic Coast, was the site of a high security political prison and labour camp during the so-called Cominform years (1949-1956). It has remained a shameful open secret of Tito's Yugoslavia to this day. Thousands of men and women accused of political dissidence underwent brutal corporal abuse including heav...

This chapter contributes to the growing historical scholarship of prison islands and worldwide carceral archipelagos by examining the past of Goli otok (Barren Island). The former master political prison in the carcer�al network of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Goli otok is today abandoned, ruined, largely historically margin...

Goli Otok (Barren Island) was a site of the master political prison and forced labor camp of the socialist Yugoslavia between 1949 and 1956. The imprisoned, accused of siding with Stalin in the Tito–Stalin political rift, were sent to undergo ‘self-managed re-education’ through ‘socially beneficial labor’ in the island’s limestone quarries. The inm...

Through the case study of Goli otok, this chapter engages with the crucial question the historian of islands as places of human incarceration and exile must address: if all islands immanently foster zoo-biological endemism and distinctive communities, can we speak of (prison) islands as shapers of peculiar, site-specific, or, better yet, island-spe...

The study of islands is booming. Small wonder: islands have played a key role in the history of continents, have been crucial locales of state-making, have served dictatorships as sites of prison systems and have acted as frontiers and stepping stones of empires. However, the role that island environments have played in creating and shaping these h...

What defines islands – whether their state of isolation, or their simultaneous discreteness and multiple connections – becomes a crucial question in speaking about their environments. In the face of fundamental uncertainties, fragilities, inequalities and insularities of the current era, how does John Donne’s seemingly timeless verse hold up? Who i...

Governance of the ocean and its biodiversity is deeply entangled within social, political and cultural histories. The evolution of marine science has been subject to similar influences, and we (the authors) consider these factors to create, embed and reinforce knowledge hierarchies in ocean governance processes and associated research that set soci...

The whole book is available open access at https://www.whpress.co.uk/publications/2023/10/13/entire-of-itself/ The study of islands is booming. Small wonder: islands have played a key role in the history of continents, have been crucial locales of state-making, have served dictatorships as sites of prison systems and have acted as frontiers and st...

Goli otok (Barren Island) served as a site of a political prison and labour camp which was founded in 1949, at the peak of the Tito- Stalin political dispute. It was in function until 1956, when its operation as a political prison for Yugoslav pro- Cominformist dissidents was discontinued. During this period, at least 13 000 political prisoners wer...

Human past of Goli Otok (Barren Island) and its political prison years have been touched on by historians, albeit being largely underrepresented. The rich ecosystems and the biodiversity of Dinaric karst, as well as the geology and geomorphology of Croatian Kvarner Bay region, including Goli Otok as its part, have been explored by geologists, ecolo...