Perović, Lepa, et al, authors; Ismet Mujezinović and Mica Todorović, illustrators.

[FIRST WOMEN’S VOTE IN YUGOSLAVIA – WOMEN'S ANTIFASCIST FRONT] Bosanke i Khertsegovke glasaju za Tita [Bosnian and Herzegovinian women vote for Tito].

Sarajevo: Izdanje glavnog odbora AFŽ-a za B[osne] i H[ertsegovine] (Državna štamparija), 1945. Quarto (25 × 20 cm). Original staple-stitched pictorial wrappers by Mica Todorović; 35, [1] pp. One double page reproducing drawings by Ismet Mujezinović. Light soil and foxing to wrappers, else very good. Item #55437

An illustrated election brochure from Sarajevo promoting Tito, the communist revolutionary and WWII partisan leader, to head Yugoslavia. The volume was published by the Women’s Antifascist Front (AFŽ) in anticipation of the first election with the participation of women voters in 1945. In the opening text of the volume Tito addresses Yugoslav women “On November 11th, you, the women of Yugoslavia, who have earned the right to solve all internal political and economic problems on an equal footing with men, will have your say. And I do not doubt your word. I have no doubt that it will correspond to the heroic struggle, and heroic actions of women during this war.” The brochure includes political agitational speeches by female communist and antifascist political leaders such as Mitra Mitrović (1912–2001), who was the founding member of the Women’s Antifascist Front in 1942, and later the Minister of Education of communist Yugoslavia, as well as by Lepa Perović (1911–2000), a communist activist, partisan leader during WWII, and later a member of the Yugoslav parliament. Perović’s essay is accompanied with photo-illustrations of women taking part in the partisan war effort. Nadžida Hadžić (1906–2001), the president of Women’s Antifascist Front, contributed a longer article on the post-war activities of the AFŽ members in sheltering the homeless, elderly, and orphaned children, in the aftermath of WWII. A double page spread reproducing drawings of war atrocities by Ismet Mujezinović, poems about the victory of the partisans, and a satirical article about Tito’s opposition close the volume.

The wrapper designer, Bosnian Expressionist painter Mica Todorović (1900–1981), is often called the “first lady of Yugoslav art” because she was the first woman to graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (1926), and the first female member of the Bosnian Academy of Science and Arts. Part of the communist-leaning Zagreb Zemlja (1929–1935) artist collective, and a member of the communist party since 1932, she was imprisoned at the Stara Gradiška concentration camp during WWII for her political beliefs. After liberation, she used a cycle of her drawings of the conditions at the camp to testify for the State Commission of War Crimes in Belgrade, becoming the first and only artist whose work was used as evidence by the Commission. The volume seems to have been sent to the AFŽ members by mail in anticipation of this historic election, with the front wrapper indicating that postage has been paid.

As of November 2025, KVK, OCLC show no copies in North America.

Price: €1,500.00

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