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Positioned at the interface between historical sociology, anthropology, and social movement studies, We Were Gasping for Air goes beyond the widely exploited paradigms of nationalism and civil society to track the (post-)Yugoslav anti-war protest cycle which unfolded throughout the 1990s. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork in the region, the author argues that (post-)Yugoslav anti-war activism cannot be recovered without appreciating both the inter- and intra-republican cooperations and contestations in socialist Yugoslavia. (Post-)Yugoslav anti-war undertakings appropriated and developed the already existing social networks and were instrumental for the establishment of present-day organisations devoted to human rights protection, transitional justice, and peace education across the ex-Yugoslav space.