Boundaries and Borders in the Post-Yugoslav Space: A European Experience 9783110712766, 9783110712322

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Boundaries and Borders in the Post-Yugoslav Space

Boundaries and Borders in the Post-Yugoslav Space A European Experience Edited by Nenad Stefanov and Srdjan Radović

ISBN 978-3-11-071232-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-071276-6 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-071282-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021939860 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover illustration: Abandoned Bobsled in Sarajevo. Photo Julian Sandhagen Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. © Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Acknowledgements This volume represents a result from an ongoing research of border issues undertaken at the Interdisciplinary Center of the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin “Border Crossings – Crossing Borders. Berlin Center for Transnational Border Research”. We would like to thank the Center for its material support both for the publication of this volume and for facilitating the conference that preceded it. The idea for this volume goes back to the research stay of Dr. Srdjan Radović (Institute of Ethnography SASA) at the Institute of Slavic and Hungarian Studies of the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin funded by the DFG, and a conference organized by the editors in November 2019 entitled “Borders and Spaces in South-East Europe – Historical and Contemporary Imaginations and Practices of B/ordering”, hosted by the “Border Crossings – Crossing Borders” Center. The whole process would have been unthinkable without the constant support in all organizational matters by Julian Sandhagen. Academically, the volume also profited from the discussions with the participants at the conference and particularly from the inspiring keynote by Prof. Sarah Green at the opening. We would also like to thank our colleagues Prof. Regina Römhild, Prof. Dobrinka Parusheva, Prof. Christian Voss and Prof. Hannes Grandits for their suggestions during the conference and beyond. In particular, we would like to single out Prof. Wolfgang Höpken and Prof. Tvrtko Jakovina for their numerous valuable stimulating advice and inputs. Naturally, the contributors to this volume and their innovative and inspiring papers represent the scholarly backbone of this volume. In the preparation of the manuscript, Dr. Philip Jacobs prudently brushed up our language. Finally, our thanks go to Dr. Elise Wintz, Verena Deutsch and Dr. Julia Brauch from the De Gruyter publishing house for their continuous assistance. Berlin Belgrade – 15 April 2021 Nenad Stefanov Srdjan Radović

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110712766-202

Contents Acknowledgements

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(Ex) Yugoslav and (South-East) European borders Nenad Stefanov, Srdjan Radović B/ordering the (post-) Yugoslav space: A European experience

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Milivoj Bešlin “Faded scratches in marble”: Federal b/ordering of socialist Yugoslavia 27 Dana Dolghin Human rights: A b/ordering narrative in Central and Eastern Europe

Making and mapping borders Marko Zajc Borders as reused objects: The case of Slovenia

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Peter Mikša, Matija Zorn Boundary stones: Standing witnesses of World War II borders in present-day Slovenia 99 Vedran Duančić Mapping the uncertain: Difficulties with establishing the ethnic borders in interwar Yugoslavia 125 Srdjan Radović Mapping ethno-politics: Borders and cartographic representation in post-Yugoslav (virtual) space 143

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Living and overcoming borders Petar Todorov Production of territoriality in the Balkans: The border and the Monastery St. Naum 167 Kaja Širok Imagining the borders of a nation: Narratives of remembrance in the Northern Adriatic area 189 Tatjana Sekulić Reshaping the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from the Yugoslav Wars to the European integration 203

Writing and sensing borders Katharina Tyran On word boundaries and blank spaces: Perceptions of orthography and writing reforms in the post-Serbo-Croatian language sphere 225 Stefan Detchev Food, borders, and interactions in South-East Europe (1830s–1870s) Ruža Fotiadis Crossing culinary borders, blurring social boundaries: Balkan Grills in West Berlin 261 Notes on contributors Index

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Nenad Stefanov, Srdjan Radović

B/ordering the (post-) Yugoslav space: A European experience As this introduction is being written (April 2021), exactly thirty years ago the first armed clashes in Croatia escalated into wars over ethnically homogeneous territories which came to encompass almost all of Yugoslavia. As it turned out, these extended over the period of an entire decade: the aforementioned escalation in the summer of 1991 with the war in Slovenia; the intensification of violence in Croatia; the destruction of Bosnia-Herzegovina beginning in the spring of 1992; the war in Kosovo and the NATO bombardment of Serbia in 1999; and finally the attempts to set in motion a spiral of violence in the then Republic of Macedonia in 2001, which, unlike the preceding processes, was able to be contained relatively quickly. Montenegro took part in the armed conflicts in 1991 and 1992, but its territory never came to suffer open warfare. Today, twenty years after the end of the war violence, the post-war period does not necessarily seem to be over. The territory of the former common state of Yugoslavia has been parceled out and is crisscrossed by very different territorial and thus border regimes. Slovenia and Croatia are now part of the EU, and their borders are also the EU’s external borders with the former neighboring republics of Serbia and Montenegro and with Bosnia and Herzegovina, the latter fragmented by so-called “entity” borders. With regard to Kosovo, whose sovereignty is still being challenged by the Republic of Serbia, there were until recently plans for a partition, which met with forceful rejection by parts of the international public. Finally, North Macedonia had long been held back by Greece on its path toward rapprochement and integration into the EU until the 2019 change of its name, but now that path has recently been blocked by EU member and neighboring state Bulgaria. This “Yugoslav experience” of the recent past, the war over ethnically homogeneous territories, often appears as a characteristic of this European region as a whole, to which the attribution “Balkanization” alludes: Splintering into smaller and smaller parts. From such a “balkanizing” perspective of the post-Yugoslav space and the region as a whole, it is a matter of a progressing disintegration with an increasingly short half-life of territorial forms of organization: from the end of imperial rule, through the emergence of nation-states since the 19th century. It is remarkable that in this “balkanizing” scheme what is forgotten is that from a historical perspective, the Balkans hardly knew any borders. This becomes clear especially https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110712766-001

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in comparison to the extremely fragmented territory of Central Europe before the mid-19th century. For a long time, there were only two borders in the Balkans: the Habsburg-Ottoman border and the Venetian-Ottoman border. Even with this, however, it became clear that the principle of the identity of ethnos and territory, which was dominant throughout Europe at the time, could not be realized despite all the violence. This became apparent, for example, in Yugoslavia and Romania after the First World War, and even in Bulgaria and Greece, where confessional and linguistic heterogeneity (in the political terminology of the time, understood as “minority problems”) remained present despite the efforts at homogeneity (expulsions and “population transfers”). Nevertheless, from the perspective of the perceptual filter “Balkanization”, with the disintegration of socialist Yugoslavia into its “component parts”, this process seems to inevitably continue. In such essentializing imaginings of the Balkans, borders, boundaries and demarcations thus appear as an essential feature of this region. But if borders and boundaries are such an important element in this stereotyped perception of the Balkans, can the discussion of borders and boundaries contain any analytical potential at all for the critique of the practice of ethnic segregation outlined above? Formulated in general terms, the question arises whether anything at all can be grasped about the relationship between domination and society by means of the keyword “border”. Nonetheless, one could also argue that the focus on prejudiced reflexes necessarily implies a confrontation with the social realities to which such imaginings refer. It is this interrelation between what actually happened in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and what was perceived, interpreted, and legitimized both by nationalist actors on the ground and within the western societies that now serves as the starting point for this look at the societal significance of borders in the post-Yugoslav space. The motivation for this volume is based precisely on this double experience of the 1990s: the imagining of the Balkans as a terrain crisscrossed by manifold borders and the reality of violent efforts to bring about the realization of ethnically homogeneous communities. At this point, we would like to introduce these constellations in a little more detail, since they form the prerequisites for the discussions in this volume. In a first step, the societal dimension of processes of bordering will be explored on the basis of imaginings and stereotypes that emerged in the 1990s. In this context we will then introduce the individual contributions presented in this volume. Finally, we will document the development of recent research on borders in the post-Yugoslav context. The aim of the volume is therefore not to focus on one partial aspect in the relationship between border demarcations and society. Rather, we are interested

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in presenting how a new generation of researchers from the post-Yugoslav region (and beyond) deals with borders in the broadest sense as a way of analyzing domination and society. For us, the multidisciplinary perspective (history, ethnology, sociology, geography, linguistics, cultural studies) is particularly important, as it can ultimately bring together the many facets of demarcation and border crossing. Discussions of b/ordering processes of course cannot be reduced to state borders alone, which we will discuss in context with the current research presented below. Rather, borders and boundaries relate to all areas of everyday life in society. In terms of content, this volume is thus necessarily heterogeneous. What nearly all the contributions have in common is a shared focus on the category of space, in which forms of territorialization, concepts of order, everyday social life, orientations beyond the national, and the circulation and mobility of people, goods and ideas are all taken into account. Another fundamental commonality of all the contributions here is a critical examination of essentialist conceptions of borders and boundaries.

1 The imagination of borders in the Balkans. Inside and outside It was the stereotype of Balkanization outlined earlier that first disappeared with the division of Europe in the Cold War, and which then reappeared under completely changed circumstances in connection with the wars in Yugoslavia. At the same time, however, there was a remarkable interrelation between the very real experience on the ground, where new dividing lines were to be enforced by means of violence, and the rationalization of this violent process in the Western European public sphere, this “shock of violence”, as Wolfgang Höpken has called it (Höpken 2013). This rationalization took place in parts of the Western European public, more precisely in the German public, by means of a reference to quasiprimordial forces that were purportedly solely specific to Yugoslavia, characteristic of the Balkans, and for which there was no remedy. This reference to (cultural, religious, ethnic, linguistic) borders as a quasiendemic phenomenon in the post-Yugoslav space, which could be heard in the Western media at the beginning of the 1990s, had above all an exculpatory function, through which indifference to the situation could be legitimized and any necessity for political action could be denied. This justification of indifference from “outside” interacted with the concepts and ideas of the protagonists of ethnic homogeneity in a disintegrating Yugoslavia.

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An illustrative example of this was the sudden reference to the ancient border between the Western and Eastern parts of the Roman Empire, which soon began to circulate in the Western media, as a permanently persisting dividing line not only between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but far beyond that as a barrier between civilizations. Thus the Balkans were understood as a space in which, as it were, a fundamental tectonic tension had prevailed for centuries, manifesting itself in regular eruptions of “religious hatred”. Thus, as outlined, any discussion about political responsibility to intervene could be blocked, because the impression was conveyed that there was hardly any remedy against such forces of nature. Likewise, reference was made to the elementary otherness of the Balkans, where universal moral categories based on the Enlightenment would have no validity for the assessment of what was happening, as exemplified in this description: “Two religiously based cultural spheres (Kulturkreise) have thus dominated the Balkan peninsula for one and a half thousand years, and there should be no illusions about their divergence: The schism remains unresolved to this day, despite all the Christian phrases of reconciliation! The antagonisms and animosities lie in deep, mentality-conditioned layers” (Weithmann 1995, 756). In order to literally keep the conflict at bay, the region was simply declared not to belong to “Europe as such” (Willms 1993). However, essentializing attributions could also serve to plead for a division of Yugoslavia precisely on the basis of profound civilizational differences. So conservative publicists also postulated the necessity of political intervention by the West – but based on essentialist categories: the civilized, Central European, indeed Habsburg-cultivated part of the country finally had to be freed from “Byzantine” Balkan barbarism (Reißmüller 1992). Likewise, in the discussion in the 1990s, there were also essentializing references from a liberal direction to alleged deep dividing lines in the Balkans: “on an ancient hate territory” (. . .) “which literally a whole century of enlightenment had passed by” (Michael Naumann, Die Zeit, cited after Höpken 2013, 484). Here, as Wolfgang Höpken puts it, the reference functioned as a justification “for a paternalistic civilizing mission” that was allegedly necessary for the people of the Balkans (Höpken 2013, 484). In the search for this civilizational border, the Drina River, which separates Bosnia and Herzegovina from Serbia,1 was singled out as the ancient dividing line. Also alluded to was that this “cultural border” had over time materialized

1 Currently Frederik Lange is working on his PhD-project: “The River Under the Bridge. The Drina as an Ambivalent Place of Remembrance” at the Graduate School for East- and Southeast European Studies at University of Regensburg.

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into a “fixed” state border, which had previously been the border between the Dual Monarchy and the Kingdom of Serbia. The only “detail” forgotten was that the river served as a border only from 1878 to 1918, and before that both regions had been part of the Ottoman Empire, and in the Middle Ages there could be no question of state borders. It also fails to recognize that in late antiquity the notion of dividing lines had a different meaning and content. The Drina River, as a convenient geographical landmark for delineation and differentiation between “civilizations”, has often been invoked by authors from across the former Yugoslav lands, and thus Croatian geographer Mario Mimica stated in the late 1990s that “one cannot find anywhere in the world such a river, on the edge of the world, or rather between the worlds; a border many millennia old, a border of civilizations, religions, peoples, mentalities, worldviews, social systems” (Goldštajn 2003, 136). It is remarkable that this topos can also be found in the context of the new ethnonationalism in the Serbian context in the early 1990s. In the introduction to an edited volume of the renowned journal of the Institute of Contemporary History, formerly the Institute for the History of the Labor Movement, historian Momčilo Zečević also murmured that at last “the taboo topic for Yugoslav scholarship” had finally been cracked open: the struggle of peoples for “their” borders. In his view, this almost insoluble question in the permanent struggle between the Croatian and Serbian people had deep roots: In the core of this “unsolvable issue”, over which many national minds on both sides [Serbs and Croats] wrote volumes and too many victims fell, lies above everything else, above all ethnic, historical, administrative, ’statal’ and all other delineations, a basic strategic border: between the civilizations of the East and the West, between Catholicism and [Eastern] Orthodoxy. This centuries old and universal boundary of South Slavic delineation, which today in the wake of the 21st century may seem anachronous, represents a basic frontier wall (. . .) where the Vatican and Catholicism hold ground in our areas. (Zečević 1992, 173)

But the accentuation here is somewhat different from that in the German context outlined above, and it is at the same time characteristic of the ethnicizing concept of nation as it was formulated above all by the historian Milorad Ekmečić, who at the time (the late 1980s) was enormously influential in the public sphere (Stefanov 2011). This form of ethnonationalism, with Ekmečić as its protagonist, was still characterized by a claim to secularity, in which religion continued to be viewed, in accordance with the real-socialist ideological framework, as a retrograde, even reactionary phenomenon that prevented the overcoming of confession-based boundaries. Moreover, in this perception, religion (seen as a divisive force) is conceived of as an external actor, epitomized in the destructive work of the a-national Vatican. According to Zečević’s reflections, the Vatican’s permanent efforts to dominate

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and to push Catholicism all the way to the Drina River were what led to religious conflicts in the first place and created this Balkan battleground in Croatia and Bosnia, which would never have existed without Catholic proselytism. In this sense, Ekmečić criticized that the curse for Bosnia-Herzegovina was that religious attribution as a crucial principle of demarcation of groups had not been suppressed (Nikolić 2003, 57). What at first appears to be a rather emancipatory perspective, accompanied by a critique of religion as a generator of prejudices, is revealed at second glance to be an ethnonationally based hierarchy of “peoples”. Inspired by Ekmečić in such a perception, Serbia, and thus the Serbian people, proved its secular orientation through its “state-building power” at the latest in the 19th century; Croats and Muslims in Bosnia could not free themselves from religious and concurrently foreign paternalism. Instead of developing a secular understanding of the nation, which would have made it easier to adopt a pan-Southern Slavic understanding, they remained alienated by the “internationalist” religions of Catholicism and Islam. This set a clear hierarchy; only the Serbian understanding of the nation was secular, modern and thus authentic, while the other two, being pre-modern and heteronomous, cannot even be considered authentic nationalisms. Yet, such secularity is only seemingly enlightened; in reality it is an essentialist and pejorative categorization based on ethnic classification or demarcation. This mental map was also based on the Second World War, in which “the Serbs” were thought to count among the Allies as part of “progressive forces in Europe”, while “the Croats” and “the Bosnian Muslims”, on the other hand, were instruments of fascism and the Vatican. It is important to focus on this secularly connoted criterion of demarcation, as it threatens to fade from view after being increasingly replaced by a religiously connoted one, which today appears as a law of nature, as it were, that the demarcations in the Balkans and Yugoslavia are/were necessarily religiously charged. At least since the mid-1990s this concept began to be replaced by a new mental map in which religion and Russia gradually became dominant as keywords (Stefanov 2011). This dividing line between the West and the East was joined by another line that did in fact function as a border over a long period of time, and which at the same time emphasized the difference between North and South: the HabsburgOttoman military frontier. Here, the difference between two fundamental civilizations was postulated in the western public sphere as follows: here the “Abendland” (Occident), there the Orient. Both were then antagonistically charged, be it presecular with Christian/civilized and Islamic/uncivilized, be it with Western/rational and Oriental/irrational. This resurrected and partly enhanced old Balkanist and Orientalist discourses which flourished in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In this system of coordinates, North and South, East and West were fixed separate zones that overlay the Balkan region.

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Such an imagined fixation on sharply separated spaces, however, contradicts the very functioning of the military frontier. Indeed, two characteristics distinguish these pre-modern borders: firstly, their “mobility”, and secondly, their zonal character, that is, the border area could encompass large geographical spaces. “Mobility” refers in particular to the Ottoman Empire’s policy of expansive conquest over a long period: from the 15th to the 16th century, the course of the border zone changed again and again, especially toward the northwest in relation to the territory of present-day Hungary and Austria. With the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683, a reverse process began. Up until the 19th century, the border between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans shifted towards the southeast. In the process, it was not only a line that moved. On both sides, large areas were given a special legal status (Kaser 1986). In the Austrian context, this was the so-called “military border”; in the Ottoman, such border provinces were called “serhat”. In the serhat, which shifted further and further north with the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, the Christian population was also involved in border protection (Djurdjev 1960, 76–79). However, the status of a territory as a serhat, which also entailed certain tax privileges, was temporary due to the expansion. Only in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which remained a borderland for a long period after the 17th century given to its continued status as a serhat, did a self-image develop among the Muslim South Slavic-speaking elite of their province as having a prominent position in the entire Ottoman Empire (Grandits 2008). On the Habsburg side, a specific space developed along the border with the Ottoman Empire in which special privileges existed. The state, or the court, increasingly took over all the border guard functions that had previously been performed by local noble landowners. The rural population living there received a special status as “free peasants and soldiers” (Kaser 1986). This happened in order to create incentives for settling in the deserted areas that had been devastated by warfare. In return for frontier and military service, the peasants living there were exempt from any dependence on a local feudal ruler, as well as from many levies. The military frontier extended from the Adriatic to Transylvania until the end of the 19th century, when this particular system of law was abolished. In recent decades, research has shown that conditions on this imperial border remained in flux. It often happened, for example, that South Slavic border guards on the Ottoman side moved with their villages to the Austrian side when conditions there were better – after all, the people on this border were quite well informed about the situation on the other side and also spoke the same South Slavic language. The reverse was also true: if the pay on the Ottoman side seemed more attractive, entire detachments and their families crossed back over.

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Since the population in the sparsely populated areas was an important resource for the rulers, both the Habsburgs and the Ottomans literally tried to entice the population on the border to their side. Therefore, there is increasing mention in the research of a wide contact zone, with a focus on the mobility of people proximate to the border, along with trade and communication (Roksandić 2003). In the case of this North-South dividing line, as in the case of the previously mentioned East-West dividing line, it is necessary to ask which needs and which societal changes would have led to the imaginative “revitalization” of the military frontier in the 1990s and to its being charged with new meaning. The network “Phantom Borders in East-Central Europe” investigated how vanished structures and discourses of former imperial border demarcations reappeared at a certain point in time. Situativity was one of the crucial factors of such re-emergence. Hannes Grandits has examined this precisely based on the Krajina, the area in Croatia that was part of the military frontier. His analysis shows that it was especially the change in knowledge systems and previously established interpretations of pasts, in memory politics after 1989, that provided a strong impetus for the search for new orientations. In this context, new discourses were established in which this region was given new attributions and meanings, in which confrontation and demarcation now took center stage (Grandits 2015). Accordingly, it was above all social and political ruptures in which previously irrelevant or dissipated dividing lines were charged with new meaning. Thus, it was not a matter of continuity, the unbroken duration of dividing lines, but rather the opposite, societal discontinuities, in which the meaning of such former dividing lines changed time and again. In this volume, Marko Zajc addresses such ruptures and reinterpretations and reuses of the spatial dividing lines themselves, how they are repeatedly “reused” with new functions, recycled, so to speak. He analyzes this on the basis of the change in function of former village landmarks, borders between administrative units, as they were reused in the course of Slovenia’s affiliation with the two Yugoslavias, either as republic borders or after 1991 as state borders, and what this meant for the local society that lived along these dividing lines. Matija Zorn and Peter Mikša turn quite concretely to the material artifacts of border demarcations, the boundary stones. They vividly show that the boundary stones themselves functioned as palimpsests; the previously marked named divisions were erased and literally over-written. Such an archaeology of the occupation regimes of the Second World War discloses the enormous attention, care and accuracy paid by the occupiers and their quisling regimes (Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the so-called Independent State of Croatia) to having the clearest possible specific visibility at the extremities of the territories they occupied.

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If, as has by now become clear, demarcation processes can be described in general, universally valid terms, what about a determination of what is specific to the Balkans?

2 Specifics of the formation of borders and boundaries in modernity in the Balkans There are two points to be mentioned here in particular, and they are interrelated: First: For the Ottoman Balkans, as Nathalie Clayer has worked out very clearly, confessional or religious demarcations in the pre-national period are not as clear-cut as is often suggested. She has clearly shown for the area of today’s Albania and Macedonia how many subtle shifts, heterodox currents in Islam, numerous nuances of religiosity, cross-confessional saint cults, etc. existed (Clayer 2016). The reports of English Protestant missionaries and other travelers from Ottoman Macedonia in the last quarter of the 19th century show the difficulties they had in dealing with this ambiguity within the different religions. For this reason, the demarcation of the religions from each other was not something that could be done easily. It was not only in the spatial periphery of “European Turkey” that the quite clear dichotomy frayed to a large extent between Islam on the one hand and the other two book religions on the other. Indeed, for the Western European missionaries, the absence of clear confessional demarcation in everyday life was by no means a sign of tolerance. On the contrary, in their view, the clear awareness of the existence of clearly demarcated religious communities was the prerequisite for tolerance between religions in the first place (see, for example, Mackenzie and Irby 1866; Brailsford 1906, 107). Closely connected with such ambiguity was the fact that national demarcation took place in an extremely condensed period, and thus was also linked with massive violence between 1878 and 1920. It was precisely this fine mesh of ambiguity as part of everyday social life that could only be broken through and destroyed by force in order to create clearly delimitable national collectives. At the same time, this effort of the protagonists of national unambiguity was permanently challenged by the modifications, the metamorphoses, of ambiguity. The Balkan Wars of 1912/1913 in particular showed in full the harshness towards those people who supposedly did not “fit” into the new communities for confessional or linguistic reasons and who were then expelled. Since the governments in Athens, Belgrade and Sofia had different criteria for who “fit in”, almost the entire population of the previous Ottoman Macedonia became potential targets of violence and expulsion: Slavic-speaking people were expelled by

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the Greek military; Greek-speaking people by the Bulgarian military; and Muslims by all four warring states (Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece) (Ther 2011). Others were forced into the new communities without any sense that they were part of them. The authority to define who belonged where ultimately lay with the new state powers. Belonging was mostly defined in terms of the idea of a biologically based community of descent, quite independently of the will of the persons concerned. In simplified terms, we can speak of two models of political community that were adopted in the Balkan states: With regard to territorial organization, the French central state was taken as a model. The understanding of nation was more closely oriented to that of the homogeneous cultural nation, as it was widespread in the German-speaking world: the “people” was understood as ethnos (community of descent), and not as demos (political community, polity) (Sundhaussen, 1994). This combination of the goal of a tightly organized central state and the idea of the nation as a homogeneous, ethnically based community of descent encountered a social reality that was characterized by a high degree of ambiguity, for example with regard to culture and confessional classifications. National classification only gradually emerged. From the perspective of the new state elites, who were oriented toward the ideas of the Enlightenment and rationalism, order had to be brought to this tangle of fleeting attributions. The new state was to have unambiguous, clear borderlines and a nationally homogeneous people, in line with the ideas of European modernity. It was the task of modern science to “prove” beyond doubt the existence of homogeneous ethnic communities along “rational” criteria such as language, denomination and history (narratives of descent). This pattern came into being after 1878, then more clearly as a result of the Balkan wars, and it characterized the entire first half of the 20th century. But the implementation of this conception of ethnic homogeneity required military force. For many scholars and political elites, the idea of a homogeneous nation-state was dominant throughout Europe during this period. The consequence that ethnically delimited communities would then necessarily have to have minorities was seen as a lack of homogeneity and something that needed to be remedied. This concept culminated in January 1923 in the Treaty of Lausanne, in which an agreement on the Greek-Turkish population exchange was signed. Religious affiliation was defined as the criterion for who was to become Greek and who was to become Turkish (and, depending on this, who would have to leave their previous homeland). Thus, Turkic-speaking Orthodox were considered “Greeks”, and conversely, Greek-speaking Muslims were considered “Turks”. Thus, after the population exchange, an estimated 1.2 million people from Anatolia ended

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up in Greece, and about 400,000 people, in turn, had to consider Turkey as their new home. Both states were almost homogeneous (nationally) after this “exchange” (Zelepos 2014). The local protagonists of such violent practices knew they were in good company. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, and particularly the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919 and the Congress of Berlin in 1878, were key moments in the demarcation of borders in the Balkans; they clearly manifest the direct involvement of the great powers. Berlin, Paris and also Lausanne were places that represented the power-political centers where border demarcations “for” the Balkans were decided. This new form of territorialization of political power in the 19th century resulted from an interrelation between the hegemonic interests of the great powers and the aspirations of the new nation-states for national and confessional homogeneity. While Austria-Hungary, for example, aimed to contain the influence of the new national movements in order not to jeopardize its position of power in the region, Russia tried to consolidate its influence in the region by supporting these movements. France and the German and British Empires were also involved, something which became particularly clear during the First World War. This influence manifested itself as seen in the details of drawing boundaries, first at the so-called green table and then in the field. Some of the actors were aware of this. For example, the British diplomat Harold Nicholson said: “How fallible one feels here! . . . A map – a pencil – tracing paper. Yet my courage fails at the thought of the people whom our errant lines enclose or exclude, the happiness of several thousands of people” (Nicholson 1964, 31). For many, however, it was just part of their “border-drawing craft”, such as a British officer who had already been entrusted with such tasks in the British colonies and for whom people who did not adhere to classifications were annoying delays in the work. All the nicer when for once things went quickly and uncomplicatedly – which in this case, during the drawing of the new Bulgarian-Yugoslav border in 1920, meant that the hamlets were far enough apart from each other that he need not be further bothered by the wishes of the inhabitants. Thus, Colonel Frank L. Giles, in the new border between the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and Bulgaria saw “a well-defined ridge 6000 feet high with steeply sloping wooded sides and [it] forms an excellent geographical frontier”. On the whole, the British colonel was markedly satisfied with the work of the Boundary Drawing Commission regarding the division of villages: Owing to the mountainous nature of the country no confusion of interpretation ever arose, nor did the division of villages present any difficulty, as the average Balkan village consists of scattered huts spread over as much as 20 square miles of country.

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The border-drawing specialist visibly enjoyed the aesthetic side of his work. It seemed a pleasure to draw a “beautiful”, an “excellent geographical frontier” (Giles 1930, 303). It is essential to recognize the power-political dimension of this interaction, which involved adapting and modifying of ideas from Western and Central Europe with regard to homogeneity of people and territory; without it an account of this process of border demarcation in the Balkans remains incomplete and incomprehensible.

3 Borders and everyday life State borders were supposed to form a precise and sharp dividing line between ethnic communities that were conceived as fundamentally different. But the border as a clear dividing line remained a pipedream. Borders could not be drawn precisely according to “scientifically proven” criteria of language, denomination and ethnos; consequently, after 1920 it was precisely the borders themselves that produced “minority problems”. Moreover, on the one hand the new borders did not fulfill their purpose as an insurmountable barrier. Between 1878 and World War II, the states of Southeastern Europe could afford only limited material resources for border security. The people in the border areas stubbornly clung to their previous everyday practices and crossed, ignored or modified this new obstacle more or less without consequence. Yet, on the other hand, the border delineations of the early 20th century indeed did substantially affect everyday core activities and economies of numerous strata of Balkan populations: e.g., long-lasting trade patterns with their mobility and routes were disrupted with the fragmentation of former markets. Even more so, the pastoral economies were redefined: traditional transhumant pastoralism, which also encompassed far-ranging movement of people and livestock across the Balkan peninsula, and which determined the way of life of many ethnic groups (such as Aromanians, Sarakatsani and Yuruks), was restricted due to political parcellation and thus slowly led to increased sedentarism and an overall decrease of population mobility (Radović 2017, 23). After 1945, borders acquired a quality as barriers that the proponents of a clearly defined territorial state could have only dreamed before then. But this happened under completely changed societal conditions, in which the previous form of rule, as well as its actors, also had to make way for a new order. The catalyst was the global dimension of the “system antagonism”, which since the end of the 1940s had a particular impact on Southeastern Europe and led to a density of borders in a relatively small area, which, like the German-German

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border, were expanded into insurmountable obstacles. It is precisely this problem that Petar Todorov addresses in his contribution, which deals with one of the most closely guarded sections of the borders of Yugoslavia, that between Yugoslavia and Albania. By focusing on the area around the monastery of Saint Naum on the shores of Lake Ohrid, two other important aspects come into play. St. Naum was a cross-ethno-confessional place of worship – as we have indicated with reference to Nathalie Clayer – and thus was doubly and triply charged in times of the formation of new kinds of barriers, such as new state borders in this region. In addition, there is a very important research issue that still receives too little attention: the persistent manner of Ottoman administrative structures in a long-term perspective and their importance in the post-Ottoman period, as a basis for spatial orientation, mobility and networking in social everyday life (Stefanov 2017). Kaja Širok, in turn, takes as a starting point the region around Nova GoricaGorizia – the counterpart, as it were, to the Yugoslav-Albanian border region as far as the hermeticism of borders is concerned. She uses it to examine the positioning of politics of memory in relation to the changes in the constellations on the Italian-Yugoslav border with Slovenia’s independence and Slovenia’s accession to the EU. In doing so, Širok demonstrates how, contrary to the postulated intention of overcoming demarcations, keywords such as the “Cold War” and “1989” ultimately stabilize nationally based communities of remembrance.

4 Borders as a medium of ethnicization of society: From demos to ethnos We have seen that with the beginning of the wars in Yugoslavia their reception also took place in essentialized categories of space and time. At the same time, this meant the disruption of all concrete references to space and time. All epochs were simultaneously present; the battle of Kosovo in 1389 was of a continuous temporal flow with the battles against the “Turks” in Bosnia in 1992, as Ivan Čolović put it under the keyword of a permanent “renewal of the past” (Čolović 1994). This makes it clear that the agents of ethno-nationalism were the protagonists of such a “renewal of the past” and that this renewal was not simply inherent in the societal developments themselves. The contradiction between the appropriation of the images, categories and ideas of order presented here, which originated starting at the end of the 19th century and on up to the interwar period, and the completely changed societal conditions half a century later, must always

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be taken into account. That society, which had just experienced the deep political and economic crisis of real socialism, was completely different from the still almost 90% rural society of the 1920s. The social background of the proponents of the new ethno-nationalism was different from that of their new role models half a century earlier. While the separation of Europe between East and West ended in 1989, developments in Yugoslavia, the state that many observers in the West had long regarded as a comparatively liberal society in a socialist context, took a different direction. There, parts of the political and intellectual elite, in this urbanized, industrially threshold country, were now thinking in 19th century categories, as previously sketched here in the context of the Balkan wars. Often this violent “renewal of the past”, the wars for ethnic demarcation as described above, was taken quite literally, especially in the West, to represent the essence of what was happening – again in sharp contradiction to the previous reception of Yugoslavia as that real-socialist country with its comparatively highest level of openness and the most liberties. Research on the wars in Yugoslavia, however, has shown that the very function of this violence was to create clearly demarcated collectives of ethnic perpetrators as well as victims (Gagnon 2006). As the Sarajevo law scholar Zdravko Grebo once put it, Yugoslavia did not disintegrate because it was multinational, but because it was undemocratic. Ethnic demarcation, which was intended to result in new, ethnically homogeneous territories, emerged from a social, economic and political crisis situation at the end of the 1980s and became the dominant model, a new form of ethnonationalist – or völkisch – populism. Almost all real-socialist states found themselves in a comparable situation of upheaval, where a process of self-assurance began at the same time, in which the focus was on alternatives to the existing real-socialist order. In most countries nationalist imaginings of a “glorious national past” of a supposedly ethnically homogeneous community were mostly in balance with ideas of a future-oriented democratic order with the citizen, the citoyen, as the basic category of social constitutionality. This negotiation between the aforementioned principles of ethnos and demos, which characterized the transformation process in East-Central Europe, was initially out of balance in the Yugoslav context in the Republic of Serbia. While both currents had been equally strong there until the mid-1980s, the pendulum swung in favor of ethnos as the hegemonic principle of social order with the populist demobilization of the public sphere (Gagnon, 2006), which had the primary purpose of prolonging undemocratic forms of rule. At the same time, this meant that the existing social boundaries and demarcations, hierarchies, seemed to disappear behind ethnos as a seemingly overarching collectivity, becoming invisible, at least

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for the moment. This process also took place in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in different forms and with a time lag. It is necessary to make an analytical distinction between the disintegration of the Yugoslav federal state into its constitutionally sovereign components and the subsequent war over ethnically homogeneous territories, as postulated a while back by the sociologist Vesna Pešić (Pešić 1996, 3). This is because it was only with the dominance of ethnos that the question of borders between the republics was posed in a completely different way. For, from the perspective of ethnos as the basis of social order, only the borders of the “Serbian” and “Croatian” people could be natural, true and just. The existing republican borders were, in this völkisch optic, mere “administrative borders”, they were defamed as “artificial” – although every state border is ultimately “artificial” and mostly results from a complex interaction of power-politics and, in the best case, interstate agreements. Milivoj Bešlin shows vividly that the attention of the Yugoslav communists was on the debate about the structure of the federation, with the separation lines being of secondary importance. Bešlin stresses particularly this point. For the Yugoslav communists, the focus was on the constitution of an overarching territorial architecture in which the individual republics, with clearly defined competences, were enclosed in a common federal framework. In the course of this, the formation of the republican borders also took place – and not the other way around. How these ethnonationally based, völkisch, borders were to be determined was ultimately arbitrary. The protagonists of ethnic borders fell back on concepts that were still in vogue throughout Europe at the beginning of the 20th century; according to these, a people was often understood as a comprehensive organism, a view argued for sometimes historically, sometimes ethno-demographically. Thus, with regard to Kosovo, it was said that this was the cradle of Serbian statehood. In Bosnia and Croatia, on the other hand, the argument was based on a Serb majority in the claimed territories. Croatian nationalists, in turn, cited the “thousand-year history” of the Croatian state on the one hand, and a Croatian majority in the territories claimed in Bosnia on the other. These legitimations clothed themselves in the appearance of being results of “strictly scientific” research. The contradiction between these fantasies of unambiguity and an ambiguous social reality sets up a tension that could only be resolved by means of violence. Therefore, only military violence could create these new dividing lines. The use of violence also indicated how great the persistence was of an everyday life in which, for most people, such imagined ethnic boundaries were insignificant. The violent destruction of this previous social reality, as revealed in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, was a precondition for such ethnic borders to be realized. Likewise, this violence was intended to have an inward effect, disciplining and intimidating the people on the

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“home front” (Gagnon 2006, 8). The second step involved conflicts over territorial claims and border demarcations. So-called ethnic cleansing and crimes against the civilian population were inherent moments for these border demarcations. The situation in the war’s aftermath showed that in many instances this forcible delineation effort ultimately was not in vain: despite official and formal (re)integration (albeit often quite slow) of a number of war-torn areas and cities, an interethnic social border between communities persisted for years after the war (naturally, also in large part due to the effort of the nationalist political elites). Instances of this can be seen in the ethnically separated educational and cultural institutions, the competing and belligerent memory cultures, in only random mutual social interactions, etc. (in towns like Vukovar and Mostar, a number of municipalities in Central Bosnia etc.). In her chapter in this volume, Tatjana Sekulić analyzes the consequences of the ethnicization of social space, and particularly the tension between the persistence of such ethnically closed communities and the processes towards integration into the EU that at the same time challenge such hermeticism.

5 Maps: The visualization of the ethnicization of society Since the end of the 19th century, most people – not only in Southeastern Europe – have encountered national borders, initially in school, on the obligatory map next to the blackboard. For the most part, only the clearly delineated territory of “one’s own” state can be seen on it. This visualization of borders, especially their internalization, was and is an important prerequisite for viewing borders as something self-evident, but also as natural: borders, the map suggests, belong to the landscape like town, country, river, and they serve the logic of “the map as logo” of instant recognizability, familiarity and infinite reproduction (Anderson 1991, 175). Combined with historical maps, the impression is created that state as territory is a pulsating, expanding organism. One variant of maps, which was initially located primarily in the sphere of politics, were the so-called ethnic maps, which experienced their first boom around the 1870s in relation to the Balkans. Just as a decade later in Africa, colonial powers defined spaces ethnically on maps in order to formulate and negotiate territorial claims, so it had been with these precursors. Especially here, it is a transfer in both directions that becomes visible. The adaptation of the techniques of cartography, the appropriation of the cartographic visualization of ethnos, was no longer a one-way street, at the latest with the

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Balkan wars. In the beginning, up until the end of the 19th century, scholars from the Balkans were involved in adopting and modifying concepts which were already circulating in Central Europe. Then with the Balkan Wars and during the First World War, the scholars became the protagonists through disseminating so-called ethnic maps which depicted their ideas about borders to the western public. The well-known geographer Jovan Cvijić – who will be discussed in more detail in the contributions by Vedran Duančić and Srdjan Radović – personifies such transfers. As a student of Albrecht Penck, Cvijić became known to an international public with his work on geomorphology, as well as on the human geography of the Balkans. As a “scholar-politician” (Gelehrten-Politiker), Cvijić also turned to the so-called ethnic maps to scientifically prove Serbia’s territorial claims. Particularly his third ethnographic map of the Balkans from 1913 was published simultaneously in England and Germany, in the ‘Proceedings of the Royal Serbian Geographical Society’ and in Petermanns Mitteilungen, where it was sure of a wide circulation. As Wilkinson states: “Its influence on ideas of Balkan ethnography has been probably greater than of any other single map” (Wilkinson 1951, 172). Even more relevance for the international perception of bordering the Balkans is something which particularly the publication of “La Peninsule Balkanique” (1918) has achieved. This was also taken up by the new political elites in the Balkan states to justify their claims to certain territories. The result was a “competition of maps” in which the same area was presented with completely contrasting constellations of ethnic majorities, with everyone always claiming that the maps were based on “strictly scientific” criteria. Ethnic maps massively reduce social complexity to one dimension, which is moreover a highly constructed feature of everyday social life: ethnicity. The ambivalence of such ethnic maps became particularly clear during the wars over ethnically homogeneous territories in Yugoslavia: they not only had the classic function of internalizing the idea of homogeneous territory, but also of conveying borders as plausible and natural in the first place, which until then had been thought by the majority of society to be something impossible to realize. Before the outbreak of the wars in Yugoslavia, the print media were almost flooded with “ethnic” and historical maps. The obvious absurdity of ethnic segregation was countered by means of the “strictly scientific” visualization of such segregation on maps – which one knew from school as something apparently objective. The logic of mapping and visualizing ethnicity and alleged ethnic borders remained more or less unchanged from the beginning of the 20th century until present day, as showcased in contributions in this volume by Vedran Duančić and Srdjan Radović. Maps had and still have a high degree of suggestive reality content, since we also use them for our orientation in space. The

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producers of ethnic maps profited and still profit from this, exploiting this suggestion of objectivity and reality content.

6 Entanglements as an approach to discuss b/ordering practices Boundaries are necessarily to be thought of in terms of relationships: Fredrik Barth’s observation in his famous essay “Ethnic Groups and Boundaries” is that groups do not exist in and for themselves, but constitute themselves more or less strongly, for a shorter or longer period of time, out of the relation to other groups, however defined. The fact that all forms of delimitations and demarcations are necessarily always connected with interaction, and presuppose relations, is an insight that can hardly sound spectacular. Nevertheless, it cannot be repeated often enough in view of the essentialization of borders and boundaries of any kind by the mass media, be it the attributions to distinct civilizations discussed here, be it the discourses of identity in the present (Barth 1969). This borrowing from the ethnological discussion of the 1960s can also be generalized to other relationships. Be it with regard to nationalistic demarcations, which construct an Other; be it with regard to processes of disentanglement, as they occurred after the end of the wars in Yugoslavia. In this way, confrontations, which are otherwise imagined as those between substantially antagonistic, encapsulated collectives, become comprehensible as social conflicts in which the actors are necessarily connected to each other in an interrelation. Moreover, the outcome of such “relationship stories” is always open – as Katharina Tyran shows, for example, with the strategies of demarcation by means of orthography. Here, it is precisely the close relationship between the standard languages that emerged from Serbo-Croatian that drives the need for as much selectivity as possible, even, for example, for blanks as Tyran describes. Here, too, the fantasy of realizing such sharpness of separation is undermined by habits, by the inertia of everyday life, by other traditional systems of language norms. Intertwinement in disentanglement is also paradigmatic in the cultural practice of food preparation and consumption. “Food history” as a field of research is enormously productive both for the Balkans in general and Yugoslavia in particular, as the contributions by Stefan Detchev and Ruža Fotiadis show. While Stefan Detchev shows the process of gradual entanglements between different regional food cultures resulting in the formation of “national cuisines” – which seems paradoxical only at first glance – Ruža Fotiadis focuses on the interrelation between mobility and food culture. Here, an interaction occurs between two fundamentally

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different types of peripheries: a village in the Dalmatian hinterland and the “Mauerstadt” of West Berlin in the 1970s. Mediated through the medium of food, transgressive practices are thematized in this outline.

7 A European experience In the last decade, a convergence between classical border studies, which increasingly discover “society” beyond the border for itself, and an increasing interest of social sciences in the phenomenon of the border has become visible (Paasi 2014). It is precisely this intersection that is of particular interest to us. This can be seen in the concept of Phantom-Borders. The project “PhantomBorders in East Central Europe (2011 to 2017)” focused on the connection between the social space of the present and the presence of past – imperial – spatial orders. The research on Southeastern Europe within this project concentrated on the tension between the imperial heritage (be it Ottoman or Habsburg) of territorial order and nation-state conceptions and new demarcations based on the idea of an ethnically homogeneous space (Grandits 2015; Tomić 2016; Stefanov 2017). Southeast-European borders have been academically scrutinized to various degrees, depending on the particular borderland, historical period or research topic. Paradigmatic for a solidly researched border area could be the Greek-Albanian borderlands in Epirus, flagged by the inquiries of anthropologist Sarah Green (2005), and anthropological research pursued by members of the “Border Crossings Network” (Nitsiakos 2016). Thematically, minorities in Balkan border regions have also ignited significant academic interest, e.g., Aromanians (Kahl 2002) and Pomaks (Steinke and Voß 2007), as well as certain micro and macro border regions (e.g., Radović 2013). Research in this direction has meanwhile intensified in ethnology and cultural studies, especially in an analysis of marginality and minority that moves beyond a fixation on the nation-state (Hastings, Hurd and Leutloff-Grandits 2016; Dimova 2015; Blumi 2012; Trubeta 1999). Exploring the boundaries in the former Yugoslavia is not just relevant in the context of Southeastern Europe, but the sketched phenomena acquire much wider importance, and can be helpful in order to better understand the dynamics of b/ordering societal space which are so characteristic for our present situation. In the last twenty-five years, research of borders and border regions in Europe has mostly been determined by the changing political landscape after 1989, and the consecutive accession of a number of former socialist countries to the EU and NATO, as well as the new defining of “intra-European” borders, and a shifting further eastward of “outer” European (EU) borders. In the 2010s,

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the intensifying migration movements have relocated border research slightly further from the border regions, and closer to the borders themselves, putting the focus on migrating and refugee populations at the “borderlands”. This was also the case in Southeastern Europe with the creation of the so-called “Balkan route” in 2015: the refugee crisis triggered an academic interest in the nature of national and political borders in this part of Europe and the related migrant border regimes (e.g., Lukić-Krstanović and Stojić-Mitrović 2017; Bužinkić and Hameršak 2018). The overall focus on the issue (both public and scholarly) has bluntly discerned the existence of several types of borders and border regimes in a relatively limited geographic region (EU borders, Schengen borders, political borders of European countries outside the EU, etc.), and complex political (and also cultural) delimitation in this part of Europe. Borders in this part of Europe can also function as a social laboratory where international protocols, cross-border projects, and cultural and population flows are practically and visibly enacted. Borders and adjoining regions in this part of Europe have often been transformed into nodes of entrance and transit at the gates of Europe (“fortress Europe”). With decennially prolonged accession to the EU (not close to its completion), many Balkan countries and Turkey are steadily transforming into a liminal European zone, permanent European borderland(s) of transit and entry to the EU, where borders offer conveniently focused points for research of the situation of perpetual liminality and contemporary experiences of social and cultural dynamics in (EU) peripheries. Crucial within this multifaceted field of research is a new focus in the tension between society and power expressed in the term “b/ordering”. This implies that processes of bordering are conceived as simultaneous attempts at imposing a particular order upon a particular space (Van Houtum et. al., 2005). In the early 21st century, we are witnessing as well intensified b/ordering processes in Europe’s core (the EU). Such a redefinition of Europe and of what Europe’s borders are involves numerous oscillations and changing agendas in most recent times, with a politics of inclusion and exclusion shaping the perception of the European Self and the European Other through various ideological, cultural and political means, as showcased as well in the contribution by Dana Dolghin. It is not only the “outer”, but also the “inner” European (EU) borders that elude fixed characters and steady qualities. E.g., the Schengen border protocols can create borderline situations and occasional barriers between EU member states which historically have never been known before (for example, this is sometimes the case with the Slovene-Croat border). At the same time, cross-border cooperation and projects which try to overcome delineations and redefine living and working according to the still existing formal borders, sometimes lack realistic content and a real rationale (which can be the case with some Euroregions), and the dynamics of life by the borderline in

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the EU are still changeable and definitely not a uniform experience. Living on the border, and passing across the border before 1989 was also not a uniform experience in the European West, in the European East, and when it came to transgressing borders between the two. Similar to the novel situation after World War I, currents of everyday life also cracked some holes in the Cold War borders in Southeastern Europe in the local context (cross-border kinship, petty trade and commerce, media consumption etc.). Such processes took on more elaborate forms after 1989 across the board and on an even larger scale –the official production of “new” borders in the Balkan region gave birth as well to a bottom-up unofficial production of new forms of borderland life in domains of trade and economy (both regular and irregular), transport, social and cultural networks and so on. The most recent crisis situation, the Covid pandemic of 2020 and 2021, resurrected what once was thought were long gone times of strictly controlled intra-European borders – the medical, but also political emergency reinstated the old political borders and border regimes within the EU, at least temporarily changing the nature of these borders back to their traditional pre-postmodern state. Indeed, this seems somewhat similar to the transformation of what were only formally sovereign and political borders of the Yugoslav Republics into tightly controlled national borders due to political and military insurgencies of the 1990s. Thus, the previously mentioned Italo-Slovene border, also within the Gorizia / Nova Gorica urban area, has presently also reverted to its old “modern” characteristics from the Cold War era, which includes the control of mobility, surveillance of the liminal zones, and occasionally even barbed wire. However, history never repeats itself, at least not in the same manner; the resurrection of old borders and borderline regimes cannot halt (at least for the time being) the social, cultural and economic currents and individual mobility established in pre-Covid Europe, and any sealing off of borders would clash with now long-standing patterns of life for most Europeans. The new situation of the most recent b/ordering politics cannot simply implement old borderline policies from the past – at least 30 years of cumulative integration and gradual dismantling of borders within the EU prevents a simple roll back to the “old” state of affairs in this respect. Again, this resembles the (post) Yugoslav b/ordering situation too – the creation, often violent, of new national, political and other formal borders during and in the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars. This forceful b/ordering ultimately could not dismantle many lived experiences and social, cultural and economic ties built during decades of a shared Yugoslav past. Current post-Yugoslav borders (to the dismay and sorrow of many), do not and cannot function as impregnable barriers between societies and cultures, both because of the previous long-lasting shared Yugoslav experience, and because of the most recent European integrative experience.

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Stefanov, Nenad. 2011. Wissenschaft als nationaler Beruf. Die Serbische Akademie der Wissenschaften und Künste 1944–1989. Tradierung und Modifizierung nationaler Ideologie. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Steinke, Klaus and Christian Voß. 2007. The Pomaks in Greece and Bulgaria – a model case for borderland minorities in the Balkans. Munich: Südosteuropa-Studien. Sundhaussen, Holm. 1994. “Ethnonationalismus in Aktion: Bemerkungen zum Ende Jugoslawiens.” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 20: 402–423. Ther, Philipp. 2011. Die dunkle Seite der Nationalstaaten. ‘Ethnische Säuberungen’ im modernen Europa. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. Tomić, Đorđe. 2016. Phantomgrenzen und regionale Autonomie im postsozialistischen Südosteuropa. Die Vojvodina und das Banat im Vergleich. Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag. Trubeta, Sevasti. 1999. Die Konstitution von Minderheiten und die Ethnisierung sozialer und politischer Konflikte. Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel der im griechischen Thrakien ansässigen Moslemischen Minderheit. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag. Weithmann, Michael W. 1995. “Renaissance der Religion auf dem Balkan.” Gewerkschaftliche Monatshefte 12/95: 753–768. Willms, Johannes. 1993. “Alte Frontlinien, neue Bruchstellen.” In Süddeutsche Zeitung 6/7 February 1993. Wilkinson, Henry. 1951. Maps and Politics. A Review of the Ethnographic Cartography of Macedonia. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press. Zečević. Momčilo. 1992. “Ideološke osnove jugoslovenskih unutrašnjih razgraničenja.” Istorija 20. veka, 1–2: 171 – 181. Zelepos, Ioannis. 2014. Kleine Geschichte Griechenlands. Von der Staatsgründung bis heute. München: Verlag C.H. Beck.

Milivoj Bešlin

“Faded scratches in marble”: Federal b/ordering of socialist Yugoslavia Founded as a fait accompli on 1 December 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929) was constituted, on the one hand, too late for the elites of the already largely formed ethnic identities of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians to adopt the idea of a unified people, yet also too soon for three related but distinct nations to find equality in a single country. This initial founding contradiction was to a large degree the reason the new country was driven by rival nationalisms from the beginning: Serbian imperial ambition expressed itself as the intention to establish hegemony within the south Slav community; this only fed resistance, best expressed by the Croatian striving for national emancipation, and then statehood as well. From its beginnings, the notion that the Yugoslav idea was the result of “rationally developed historical consciousness” clashed with both xenophobic ethnophilia and national ideologies (Milosavljević 1996, 173; Bakić 2004). The nationalist politics of Serbian Yugoslavism conducted by the Prime Minister, Nikola Pašić, is revealed in the building of a “Yugoslav project as the official state program of the Serbian nation”. And it imposed upon the new monarchy a centralized constitutional framework (in 1921), disregarding the positions of non-Serbian peoples and indeed failing to take the complexity of the newly created union into account. (Stanković 2006, 48). By teleologically directing all political action towards one goal – the national liberation and integral “unification of all Serbs into a single state” – Nikola Pašić and the Serbian elite could not accept any federalist solution with well-defined internal borders that would fracture the compactness of “the Serbian national being” and thus blunt Serbian dominance (Stanković 2006, 345). If the first decade of the Kingdom’s existence was marked by measured repression, once the Dictatorship of 6 January came about (in 1929), any need for federalization was rendered moot – all issues were resolved by government terror, forcible denationalization, and denial of all particular national rights except the Yugoslav. The attempt to impose unitary Yugoslavism by force collapsed in the late 1930’s, bringing centralism down with it. The failure of centralism resulted in the 1939 creation of the Banovina of Croatia, a

Note: Translated by Edward Djordjevic This study was conducted with the help of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110712766-002

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corpus separatum within the country, which was produced by the Cvetković-Maček Agreement (between the Yugoslav Prime Minister and the leader of the Croatian opposition [Boban 1965]). The adoption of this agreement was the final nail in the coffin of unitarism and centralism; it also raised the Serbian national question anew, with demands for a Serbian territorial unit that would encompass “all Serbs in Yugoslavia, to the last” (Dimić 2005, 76). The most prominent advocate of this idea was the influential Serbian Cultural Club (Srpski kulturni klub, SKK/SCC), which was led by the historian and jurist Slobodan Jovanović and went far beyond the mere cultural field into an activist nationalism. The SCC spoke openly of several intentions: a partitioning of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a violent solution to the “Muslim problem” in that region, an ethnic cleansing of Albanians, an assimilation of Macedonia, and more (Jovičić 1991; Dimić 1993, 858‒903). Serbian nationalism and racism fit comfortably into the dominant political tendencies of the 1930s. The accomplishment of some of SCC’s goals was prevented quite simply by the attack of the Axis Powers, and the subsequent occupation and breakup of Yugoslavia.

1 Establishing a federative Yugoslavia during World War II Among the bourgeoisie of the centralized Yugoslav monarchy, federalist ideas were held by only a very few individuals; however, in addition to calling for equality among nations, federalism enjoyed a more prominent role in the ideology and organizational structure of the outlawed Communist Party of Yugoslavia (Komunistička Partija Jugoslavije, KPJ, Perović 1984). The organizational structure of CPY in the interwar period anticipated the contours of the future federative Yugoslav state (grounded in a communist victory). A unified and monolithic party, run by a Central Committee, was organized into seven regions: Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Vojvodina. The structure was retained even with the World War II partition of the country in April 1941 (Pleterski et al. 1985, 147‒282; Čulinović 1970). At the breakout of the Second World War in Yugoslavia (in 1941), a complex system of institutions of Partisan and antifascist People’s Liberation Movement (Narodnooslobodilački pokret, NOP) drew on the historical provinces comprising Yugoslavia. The process of establishing a new Yugoslavia began as early as the first uprisings in 1941, in part through territorial-political units that had held onto a certain tradition of statehood. Such areas had the status of occupied provinces and there were six: Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia. They were intended to guarantee certain rights and provide

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a necessary emancipatory framework for each of the five constitutive south Slavic peoples: Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, Macedonians and Montenegrins, with a sixth province meant to include three Yugoslav peoples, Muslims, Serbs and Croats. Muslims at the time comprised a significant portion of the demographic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Sandžak, and were therefore thought of as possessing characteristics of an ethno-confessional group or a national category in the making. Further, exceptional and specific territorial-political units were established through PLM’s institutional system during the war, but they did not have the capacities and predispositions of statehood, which was the case for the seventh occupied province, Vojvodina. For their part, Sandžak and Kosovo were considered regions that would after the war become part of Serbia (Petrović 1988a, 101). As early as the famous leadership meeting of the Partisan movement in Stolice (liberated territory in western Serbia) on 26 September 1941, there was rather direct anticipation of a federative organization of the future Yugoslav state. The main conclusion of the meeting was the renaming of the leadership into the High Command of the People’s Liberation Partisan Army of Yugoslavia, and establishing commands for Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. At a time when Yugoslavia had no institutional governmental structure, the military organization of the Partisan movement – structured by province – indirectly hinted at the contours of a new Yugoslav state in its infancy (Petranović 1992, 239). At the turn of 1942, after the collapse of the liberated Republic of Užice, the Partisan struggle shifted its focus from western Serbia to the country’s central areas. The movement was strongest in Bosnia and Herzegovina and had the most developed governmental institutional network (in the form of People’s Liberation Committees). Thus, it was not a coincidence that the Antifascist Council for the People’s Liberation of Yugoslavia (Antifašističko veće narodnog oslobođenja Jugoslavije, AVNOJ), a representative political body for the entire country, was founded in Bosnia and Herzegovina on 26–27 November 1942. At this point Yugoslavia still bore few characteristics of a federation, but with the ACPLY as the top political body commanding the institutions of the Partisan movement (PLM), each part of the country was represented. ACPLY’s founding documents speak of Yugoslav “lands”, meaning the territorial-political units comprising Yugoslavia. The documents name council members as representatives of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Sandžak, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Vojvodina, with no representatives for Macedonia (Nešović and Petranović 1983, 263–282). In addition to the founding meeting of ACPLY, myriad calls, directives and similar documents by the CPY and other institutions within the PLM refer to all Yugoslav peoples: Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, and always include Muslims (Nešović and Petranović 1983, 271–272).

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From the uprising’s outset there was a view among the leadership of the CPY that Bosnia and Herzegovina ought to be autonomous, although there was little elaboration of the form this solution would take. There were two suggestions: to constitute B&H as an autonomous province within one of the federal units, and also to bind the province’s autonomy directly to the larger Yugoslav framework. An entirely different solution to the first two was to constitute Bosnia and Herzegovina as a federal state itself, that is, an equal member of a federative Yugoslavia from the beginning. The Provincial Committee of the CP from B&H, however, backed by Tito personally, successfully lobbied for the province to be considered as a historically grounded geographic and economic unit, with its own specific national and confessional structure, and it should therefore be included as an equal member of a federative Yugoslavia (Hurem 2016, 345‒352; Končar 1983, 20–21). Once the fundamental question of B&H statehood and its place within the federative country in the making was settled by the leadership of the CPY, the State Antifascist Council for the Liberation of B&H could meet, only days before the Second Session of ACPLY. The session which was constitutive of B&H was held in Mrkonjić Grad on 26–27 November 1943. The central document of this historic meeting states that Bosnia and Herzegovina “is neither Serbian, nor Croat, nor Muslim particularly, but Serbian, and Muslim, and Croatian together”, and that these three “brethren” peoples comprise a free B&H that guarantees “full equality to all Serbs, Muslims, and Croats”. A Bosnia and Herzegovina constituted by three peoples would “participate equally with our other peoples in building the People’s Democratic Federative Yugoslavia” (Nešović and Petranović 1983, 434). With the resolution of the question of the number of federal units, the last obstacle to the Second Session of ACPLY was removed, and the meeting took place 29–30 November 1943 in the Bosnian town of Jajce. Crucial among the decisions adopted there was to build Yugoslavia on “democratic federative principles”. Calling on the unalienable right of any people to self-determination, “including the right to secession and unification with other peoples”, and in accordance with the true will of all the peoples of Yugoslavia, the highest legislative body of the new Yugoslavia stated that: “Yugoslavia is founded and will be built on federative principles, which ensures the full equality of Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, Macedonians, and Montenegrins, that is, the peoples of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina” (Nešović and Petranović 1983, 452–453; Petranović and Zečević 1987, 791–796, 800–801; Pleterski 1985, 461). The picture that emerges from documents of the Second Session of ACPLY, together with the rest of the PLM corpus, represents the crucial new characteristic of Yugoslavia so as to ensure national equality: a federative solution. The (emancipatory) slogan “one nation, one federal republic” became reality with the establishment of five

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national “states”, while B&H was constituted in accordance with its historical trinationhood (of Muslims, Serbs, and Croats). Carrying the force of constitutional norms, the decisions adopted at the Second Session of ACPLY meant the abolishment of Yugoslavia as a centralist state. The overall framework of the Yugoslav state community determined the identity and guaranteed the equality of its six constitutive parts – the federal republics – comprising six constitutive peoples. This meant that the borders between the federal republics were considered state borders, albeit not internationally recognized. Given the level of development of the Partisan movement, the acts by which the Council became the highest sovereign institution and adopted a federative state model are considered in history and jurisprudence as the acts that constituted a new Yugoslav state. PLM documents routinely cite Muslims as the sixth Yugoslav nation. However, as it had not yet been constituted as a nation, in the official decision of the federative model for the country, the Council only named five recognized and existing Yugoslav nations. As the initial formulation listed five constitutive peoples, each with its own federal republic within Yugoslavia, it was felt to be discriminatory against B&H, specifically in leaving the Muslim community without formal recognition in the crucial act of founding the new state. Therefore, an amendment was proposed to list all the peoples of all the units comprising Yugoslavia. In this way, Muslims were added to the foundation of Yugoslav federalism, and Bosnia and Herzegovina had its statehood and equal status confirmed (Hoare 2019, 245; Kamberović 2009). Also not mentioned at the ACPLY meeting was Vojvodina, as it did not, according to the CPY leadership, have the capacity to become a federal unit, since it did not have its “own” nation. Without the necessary condition for statehood, its future status in the new Yugoslavia was not mentioned at ACPLY, and the matter was left for a more exact determination at a later time. Still, in contrast to the Kosovo Metohija region, Vojvodina had both a regional-identity and historical capacities, as well as a long tradition of autonomy. This was reflected in the evolution of regional PLM bodies: namely, there were Vojvodina branches of the military command, the People’s Liberation Committee, as well as a Provincial Committee of CPY, all of which were in direct communication with allYugoslav institutions. This provided a basis for a federal resolution of the status of Vojvodina (Končar 2013, 22–23). The decision to include it specifically into the territory of Serbia was only taken on 31 July 1945 at the Representative Assembly of the Peoples of Vojvodina (Bešlin 2017a, 279‒324). Following the Second Session of ACPLY, the process of development of Yugoslavia moved apace in 1944. In March, the new country was named Democratic Federative Yugoslavia (Demokratska federativna Jugoslavija, DFJ). The “Declaration

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of the Basic Rights of Nations and Citizens of DFY” of 11 April 1944 states that it was a “federative, democratic state, a democratic federation unifying Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, Macedonians, and Montenegrins, comprising six democratic federal states: Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro. The people in Vojvodina and Sandžak have the complete freedom to decide their relation and status within the Federation”. DFY is “a federation that guarantees the full equality of its five nations, that is, the national states of the peoples of Serbia, Vojvodina, Sandžak, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro, and excludes any possibility of dominance, privilege, or majoritarianism of one people at the expense of another, or one federal state over another”. It further states that “each people has the right to leave the Federation if it is in disagreement with the form of government” (Petranović and Zečević 1987, 514‒519). Nevertheless, despite the major changes in the structure and organization of Yugoslavia, the emerging country was not entirely new; rather, an existing country was being federalized, essentially reorganized in the middle of an antifascist war of liberation. In general, the establishment of Yugoslavia as a federation at the Second Session of ACPLY was followed by a determining of its constitutive federal units. To that end, the regional Antifascist Councils were successively transformed into government bodies. State building motions were adopted in all federal units: the Slovenian People’s Liberation Council at their first session on 19 February 1944 in Črnomelj; the Croatian Antifascist Council at their third session on 9 May 1944 in Topusko; the Bosnian and Herzegovinian Antifascist Council for the People’s Liberation at the second session in Sanski Most 30 June–2 July 1944; the Montenegrin and Boka Kotorska Antifascist Council at the second session 1 July 1944 in Kolašin; the Antifascist Assembly of People’s Liberation of Macedonia on 2 August 1944 at their inaugural session in the Prohor Pčinjski monastery; the Great Serbian Antifascist Assembly at its first session on 9 November 1944 in liberated Belgrade (Petrović 1988b; Končar 1983, 38). As a complex federal state, Serbia was the most challenging to constitute. Its constitution was only completed at the Third Session of ACPLY, which also completed the constitution of Yugoslavia as a federative community of equal peoples. On the first day, 7 August 1945, the all-Yugoslav Council adopted the Presidency’s resolutions that Sandžak and the autonomous region of Kosovo Metohija become part of Serbia. Although the Representative Assembly of the Peoples of Vojvodina had passed a resolution on 30–31 July 1945 establishing an Autonomous Province and its accession to Serbia, this decision was only adopted after the ACPLY meeting ended on 10 August (Bešlin 2017a, 298‒300). A good portion of the agenda of the Third Session of ACPLY, which grew into the Interim National Assembly, involved a radical new organization of the state, transfigured by the

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revolution. Its federal organization was supposed to be established through a new constitutional act, which was indeed confirmed with the first post-war constitution of 31 January 1946. The federative policy was meant to establish mechanisms of governance that would ensure full political representation and thus national equality to all Yugoslav peoples.

2 Centralist paradigm and its deconstruction Unlike inter-war integral Yugoslavism, which rested on the idea of a single nation, the national policy of CPY and Tito drew on internationalist principles and state unity derived from a unified, monolithic political party. The result was a balanced federation without a dominant people and an inbuilt idea of national pluralism (Kuljić 2005, 184–185). Founded on the right to self-determination, six Yugoslav peoples constituted the federation comprising six national states – republics. Bosnia and Herzegovina was an exception in that its constitutive nationality was tripartite (Muslims, Serbs, and Croats), taking as its raison d’être a historical (rather than ethnic) criterion and a long tradition of statehood reaching back to the Middle Ages (Babić and Babić 1968, 226). The whole federation was grounded in national pluralism, without a single dominant nation, but with a sustainable ethnically balanced formula as the guiding principle for arriving at equality of the constitutive peoples across the Yugoslav lands (Bešlin 2017b). Rejecting the Soviet paradigm of constructing socialism in nearly all other segments of social and political life, in a speech given in Skopje in 1949, Tito stated that “we reject theories of a dominant nation, regardless of the fact that one of our peoples might be larger than those in smaller republics” (Broz 1977, 148). The way Yugoslav communists understood the essential characteristics of the country’s federalism was expressed perhaps most succinctly in late 1944 by Moša Pijade, the Vice Chair of ACPLY and the leading ideologue of the national question in Yugoslavia at the time. Namely, his text, “The Equality of Serbs and Croats in Croatia” notes that, although the moment had not yet come for drawing internal borders, they would have to be drawn such that “federal Croatia cannot include all Croats, just as a federal Serbia cannot include all Serbs, whatever their borders . . . It is not possible to find a solution in which all Serbs would be in their federal unit and all Croats in theirs” (Pijade 1944, 4). Hence, the national question could be posed and understood only from the perspective of state unity, for only unity “includes within its borders the entirety of the Serbian, as well as the entirety of the Croatian nation” (Pijade 1944, 5–7). At a mass gathering in Zagreb, in May 1945, Tito spoke in the same spirit of developing a platform

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for resolving the national question and its closely related issue of Yugoslavia’s federative organization. He compared the borders between the republics with “faded scratches on a marble pillar”: this did not mean “drawing a border between this or that federal unit, you do what you will on your side, I’ll do as I can here. No!” The borders of federal states (units) of federative Yugoslavia, according to him, “are not borders of separation, but borders of unification” (Broz 1977, 83; Bilandžić 1999, 228). When the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (PLAY) (Narodnooslobodilačka vojska Jugoslavije, NOVJ) was renamed the Yugoslav Army (Jugoslovenska armija, JA) on 1 March 1945, the commands of federal units that had crucially doubled as elements of federal (republic) statehood since 1941, were also abolished (Bilandžić 1999, 215). All the individual PLAY commands were placed under the general command of the YA. The defense of individual states’ statehood was transferred to the civil institutions of the new country. Nevertheless, in the immediate aftermath of the war, in the midst of bellicose anxiety surrounding the Trieste crisis, and certainly around the imminent threat of attack from Stalin in 1948, the Yugoslav federation really functioned as a pseudo-federation (Petranović 1993, 86–92; Petranović and Zečević 1991, 216–217). Power was entirely concentrated in the Politburo of the CPY, and the party’s monolithic structure a priori prevented any movement toward a more serious practice of federalism. To be real, federalism needs a substantive degree of decentralization and redistribution of political and economic power and influence across multiple centers. The codification of political orientation and the state-socialist model of reconstruction in the post-war period was expressed in the 1946 Constitution (Đorđević 1977; Jovanović 2008, 280–289). This document defined the new Yugoslavia as a “federative state of a specific type”, as it officially declared the equality of all nations, unified under their own volition into a common country, and achieved through the “sovereign rights and statehoods of the national republics as constitutive parts of a federative state”, to quote the crucial writer of the constitution, Edvard Kardelj (Petranović and Zečević 1987, 211–244; Dimić 2001, 329–337). In the first phase upon adoption of the constitution, socialist Yugoslavia existed in “the spirit of Partisan Yugoslavism”, as well as an “absolute centralization of power”. Despite the right to their own institutions – constitutions, names, borders, crests, flags and other formal state symbols – the republics still had to coordinate their decisions with the federal Constitution and laws that held supremacy over those of the republics (Dimić 2001, 333–337; Petranović and Zečević 1987, 234–244). The federative state thus dominated the individual federal authorities of the republics. Due to its composite nature, this was not sustainable in the long run. Tensions appeared already in the early fifties between growing “republican particularism”

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(called “republicanism”) and the highest echelons of the federal government. The federative political center was at the time not understood as a simple compilation of federal (republic) representatives (which would later be the case), rather, it was taken to be a “supra-republic, and thus exceptional, center of power, opposed to the interests of the republics”. Even in Yugoslav federalism’s first decade, there was a clear understanding of the necessity of an “institutionalization of the system that would allow for a controlled decentralization, after which the scaffolding of the centralized system could be removed entirely without the dissolution of the federation” (Milosavljević 1992, 365–367, 369). Although “democratic centralism” was declaratively emphasized as the intra-party organizational principle, and thus of state integration, in practice, it was constantly violated through “national particularisms” arising in all the republics. However, the domination of federative institutions organized centrally in fact prevented any attempt at strengthening the power of the republics, and thus any real federalism (Bešlin 2011, 58‒61). There was thus growing awareness that a greater degree of decentralization was necessary for a more harmonious life of all the parts and nations within the Yugoslav framework. Internal and quiet, there was nevertheless clear friction in the Party and state leadership, with a high degree of ambivalence on the part of the Yugoslav president. Even as the internal dispute between the “republicans” and the “centralists” rose to the fore at an expanded session of the Party leadership, held 14 March 1962, Tito still sided more with the old practice of centralism. The very top of the Party warned of the depth of social crisis, wondering “whether our country is truly able to cling on and not fall apart? (. . .) The question presents itself: is this community mature enough for its own life or not? There are separatist tendencies. (. . .) There are those of us for whom decentralization resembles disintegration” (Zečević 1998, 31–32). Tito characterized disintegration processes in both the Yugoslav state and broader society as very dangerous, and therefore “none of us can be faulted for always being fiercely opposed to such tendencies” (Zečević 1998, 258). Aleksandar Ranković, who, save for Tito, was at the very top of Yugoslav power, criticized decentralist practice as “each caring only for their narrow interests, their sector or republic . . . ”, strongly condemning the “watering-down” of the role of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (Savez komunista Jugoslavije, SKJ), including some among the leadership of republics and provinces who would turn the LCY into a “coalition of communists” (Zečević 1998, 104–108). Edvard Kardelj, by contrast, emphasized the danger of “state overreach and hegemony, and a dissolution of the principle of people’s self-management”. According to him, Yugoslavia could not advance without unity, but only one that would fully respect “the national policies and autonomies of the republics” (Zečević 1998, 192–196). Significantly, just as Kardelj never questioned the unity of the Yugoslav community, so too Ranković never took issue with the

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existence of the republics; nevertheless, there were conspicuous differences in their approaches to the practice of federalism. Finally, concluding a three-day meeting, Tito cited Ranković’s argument and, idealizing the post-war experience of the federation’s functioning, clearly came down on one side, saying that the Party must be oriented towards a “Yugoslavism” that respects national particularities (Zečević 1998, 252–261). By both strongly condemning increased particularistic tendencies, a “disintegration and breaking up of our Socialist community”, and stating the need not to return to the way things had been, the Yugoslav president displayed his ambivalence and contributed to a maintaining of the status quo for the following several years. Still, what Kardelj and Ranković could not say was written by intellectuals close to them. A prominent case of difference of opinion regarding Yugoslav federalism was a year-long polemic between the Serbian and Slovenian novelists Dobrica Ćosić and Dušan Pirjevec. The Slovenian reacted strongly to statements made by Ćosić in a January 1961 interview with the Zagreb journal Telegram, in which he defended centralism and unitarism, questioning the very existence of federal states in Yugoslavia. Pirjevec attempted to show that the republics would indeed survive and preserve “all their natural functions”, since they represent “clearly formed national bodies, making them sacrosanct . . . just like the will of the people that produced them”. While Ćosić saw the greatest danger in the nationalist particularisms of the republics, Pirjevec felt more threatened by the unitary and centralist demands. Although the polemic took place entirely between the two men, it was not difficult to recognize that behind the positions held by the Serb and Slovene intellectuals lay two incompatible conceptions of Yugoslavia and its future, “refracted” through a debate about the minutia of the new constitution (Perović 2005, 189–209; Ćosić 2000, 185–260; Đukić 1989, 121–137, 145–147; Ćosić 2001, 215–218; Dragović Soso 2004, 70). The political, social, and legal structures put in place in the fifties within the narrow framework of the 1946 Constitution did not fit the everyday reality of the Yugoslav community in the early sixties, and the 1962 meeting of the Party leadership showed as much. Since the principle of federalism undoubtedly represented “one of the pillars and characteristics not only of the government, but the political and social structure of Yugoslavia”, (to quote the leading constitutional expert, Jovan Đorđević), a change as essential as the deconstruction of the dominant centralist paradigm for the sake of better Yugoslav federalism would prove a challenging task indeed (Đorđević 1977, 132). This historic process unfolded slowly: important moments within this reform period were the 1963 Constitution, the Eighth Congress of LCY (1964), the Brijuni Plenary (1966), the Constitutional Amendments from 1967 and 1968, with a more fundamental

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break coming with the adoption of a third set of Constitutional Amendments in 1971, and then the final Yugoslav Constitution of 1974. In both content and nature, the 1963 Constitution was the result of a compromise between the existing centralism and a truly sought-after federalism, making it representative of its time and the transitional processes in which it was written. A complete break with the theory and practice of Soviet constitutionality, it was a legal act sui generis, bearing not only a set of state norms, but also a “social codex”. Its function was not exhausted with the establishment of a political system; rather, it went further, setting up self-management as the fundamental framework of values for Yugoslav integration (Đorđević 1977, 338; Nicović 2007, 420–421). In it, Yugoslavia was defined as a “federative state of freely united and equal peoples”, as well as a “community based on the rule of the working people and their self-management”. Article Two named all the republics comprising SFRY, and for the first time in Yugoslav constitutional theory and practice, it determined the nature of the federal units – the republics: they were “socialist democratic state units based on the rule of the working people and their self-management” (SFRY Constitution 1971, 52, 95). The amended nature of Yugoslav federalism can be gleaned from the fact that the spirit of the Constitution advanced the principle that the federation had only those rights explicitly prescribed by the highest legal act, seeking, in other words, to strengthen the competences of individual republics. On the eve of its adoption, in early 1963, Josip Broz Tito still advocated for a middle path, which is what the constitutional structure stood for. Warning that the terms “state” and “nation” ought not be conflated, Tito advanced the position that integration must not be in opposition to or to the detriment of the interests of individual republics or ethnicities, but nor could the republics hold all the properties of statehood proper (Broz 1977, 240–242). The adoption of the new Constitution in 1963 was not the end of the reshaping and transformation of the Yugoslav federation; on the contrary, it was the introduction of a new, more intense phase of this complex process. The Eighth Congress of the LCY, held in December 1964, presented more forcefully than ever before the national question as a way to quash unitarist consciousness: this was the condition for a serious and substantive breaking down of the centralist system. These designs would lead to fundamental reforms of Yugoslav federalism, carried out through the interpolation of amendments to the 1963 Constitution. At the Congress, President Tito indicated the danger of deforming LCY policy on the national question, in particular emphasizing the dangerous idea of the nation as a vestigial category, and the need for overcoming it. In his report to the Congress, Edvard Kardelj traced the directions for further development of the federalist structure and insisted on Yugoslavia’s character as a

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“multinational community”, in which each people had the right and possibility to “live and thrive in accordance with the fruit of its labor”, meaning that “no force beyond itself” can influence its development (Eighth Congress of LCY 1965, 343, 411‒413). Despite resistance, the reformist tendency, announced at the Eighth Congress and begun with the first set of economic reforms in 1965, acquired strong political backing in July of 1966 with the removal of the conservative Vice President of Yugoslavia, Aleksandar Ranković. Although the political conditions had been ripe for a long time (present already at the Brijuni Plenary debate), there could be no more hiding the ideological and conceptual divergence: by the early sixties, the Party had within it parallel views on all its major political points. Despite this, the true motives for Ranković’s removal became visible only months later. The nationalism-motivated repression in Kosovo, open national discrimination, centralist impulses, opposition to deeper reform of both the federation and the party, attempts at suspending the autonomy of Provinces, the deployment of secret police in political rivalries – there was a long list of reasons for the removal of the second most powerful man in the state. His departure cleared the path to thorough reform and further “federalization of the federation” (Popović 1999, 201‒335). Thus, the Brijuni Plenary, Ranković’s removal, and constitutional reforms all made sense in this context. The Eighth Congress was the starting point of a ten-year period of struggle for the reform of the federation (Bilandžić 1999, 473; Bilandžić 1985, 304). Starting with the inter-Party discussions of 1961–1963, then taking off with the Eighth Congress in 1964 and the Brijuni Plenary, and continuing an entire decade, until the adoption of Yugoslavia’s last Constitution in 1974, the question of the nature and substance of Yugoslav federalism, that is, the degree of decentralization, would remain a pressing topic, indeed the very spiritus movens of Yugoslavia’s political life (Bešlin 2011, 61‒67).

3 Reform of the federation: Substantive decentralization The content and spirit of the change to Yugoslav federalism was accomplished through an altered conception of the constitution. Three sets of constitutional amendments were adopted by the National Assembly between 1967 and 1971. According to his Chief of Cabinet, Tito was convinced that their adoption would entirely “liquidate nationalism”, and should therefore be supported (Vrhunec 2001, 256). The first group of constitutional amendments adopted in the Assembly

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on 18 April 1967 were less concerned with the constitutional position of the republics and autonomous provinces. Of the six amendments, three referred to competencies of the federation. The legal authority of the People’s Council of the Assembly of SFRY was expanded, which strengthened the federative character of the union; the power of the federation to finance investments was reduced; and, as a direct result of the Brijuni Plenary, the Fourth Amendment removed the “protection of Constitutional order” (the state security) from the exclusive domain of the federal government, transferring some authority to the republics (SFRY Constitution 1971, 161–164; Fira 2007, 125‒126). The National Assembly adopted the second set of amendments to the Constitution on 26 December 1968, which contained more thorough changes to Yugoslavia’s federalism. Centering specifically around the complex structure of the Republic of Serbia, these modifications dealt with the problem of the Autonomous Provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo. Still, of the thirteen amendments, most sought to strengthen the “statehood of the republics” (Nicović 2007, 453). The intention of the constitution writers can best be seen in the Seventh Amendment, which lists all the republics, thus underscoring their statehood. The two autonomous provinces were explicitly mentioned in the Eighteenth Amendment, meaning that they were also thought of as constituting Yugoslav federalism. This was meant to underscore their ties to the federation, giving them a double expression: provinces within the Republic of Serbia, and as elements of Yugoslav federalism (SFRY Constitution 1971, 169, 177–178). The third and most sweeping set of constitutional amendments came in 1971. The drive behind them can be understood with reference to the anxiety expressed by Edvard Kardelj regarding the future of Yugoslavia: what would happen, he wondered, with the passing of the wartime, revolutionary generation of the country’s statesmen, who had up to that point served as the ultimate arbiter of Yugoslav society? Rather than drawing legitimacy from past battles, younger generations would have to turn their lives toward solving contemporary problems. Such circumstances could “impose certain unitarist, centralist tendencies”, which would call into question the unity of Yugoslavia. For Kardelj, the crucial goal of constitutional reform was “the creation of a system of relations that would provide full guarantees that no nation could under any conditions impose itself on another”. Thinking about the inter-ethnic relations in Yugoslavia, Kardelj considered the key mistake in treating the situation as something exceptional, “as if relations among Yugoslav peoples were different than relations of peoples in other nations. There is nothing exceptional in these relations, other than that history has placed us together and that we are in an ethnic sense quite close. However, relations like this exist in many other nations. Thus, we should not seek solutions to these problems in some exceptional

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relations, but as routine cases . . . ” (Archive of Yugoslavia, fonds 507 – CC LCY, Executive Committee, 1965, III/113, annex 1, stenographic records of meeting, 12–13 November 1965). Kardelj noted that writing the second constitution in 1963 entailed “rather large compromises”, which were “justified and necessary”, but had become an obstacle to progress. The explicit necessity for continuous harmonization of legislation issued (according to him) from the fact that Yugoslavia was a multinational society and state; this meant that the highest legislative body in the country, the National Assembly, would have to continuously harmonize its legislation with the assemblies from each federal unit. In his view, this would nurture a democratic climate in a country in which national pluralism often took the place of missing political pluralism. Responding to a question of whether these constitutional reforms turned Yugoslavia into a confederation, Kardelj said that SFRY could not be compared to existing forms of federalism or confederalism; rather, it was a “particular socialist state and self-management community”. As key elements of Yugoslav federalism, affirmed in the constitutional amendments, Kardelj cited the right of each people to self-determination, including secession, which underscored the voluntary character of the Yugoslav community; the statehood of the republics and the sovereignty of their constitutive people; the guarantee for each people’s capacity to independently manage its entire economic output, that is, maintain control over a mechanism of protection from exploitation. This allowed the possibility of a comprehensive “national affirmation” for each people, which was ensured by the republics’ role as federal units (Archive of Yugoslavia, National Assembly – 160, Joint Meeting of Bodies for Constitutional Issues; Vol.3932, stenographic records of 4 March 1971). Counterbalancing these measures, President Tito often spoke of the need for unity, distinguishing between unitarism as a process of national unification, reminiscent of the monarchist period of Yugoslav history, and centralism as a form of state structure. Tito never advocated any form of national unification, always pointing to the negative experience of the interwar period. On the other hand, he insisted on the notion of “Yugoslavism”, by which he meant belonging to a single and socialist Yugoslav state. It always came with the comment that “the feeling of belonging to the country does not mean the negation of Yugoslav nations” (Milosavljević 2003, 179–180). His acceptance of the strengthening of the republics at the expense of the federation in the late sixties had its flipside in frequent calls for consolidating the monolithic nature of the Party, as well as the preservation of Yugoslav state unity. Supporting the third set of constitutional amendments in 1971, Tito stated that “they mean the strengthening of our socialist community, not its weakening and disintegration”, because the new constitutive concept will remove “the

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causes of misunderstanding among the republics, as well as between the federation and the republics”. The constitutional amendments would, he thought, solve many of the “contradictions in the daily life of our multinational socialist community” (Martinović 1971, 13). They would “ensure the complete freedom of all peoples and nationalities in all six republics”. There was no question of disintegration, he claimed, but “integration on another basis”, as the amendments must lead to “complete national equality” (Pоlitikа, 6 April 1971). Still, as in nearly all addresses to the public, profoundly conscious of his own integrative role, he warned even then that “we must look out for the interest of the whole, our unity, and not just ourselves, but one another . . . ” (Archive of Yugoslavia, fonds 507 – CC LCY, IV/134, annex 1, tape records, 72nd expanded meeting of the Executive Office of the Presidency of LCY, 23 November 1971). Tito located the guarantor of unity for a country undergoing decentralization in a strong and unified Party. His message to the leaders within the Party was that the League of Communists of Yugoslavia “knew no borders, either of the republics, municipalities, or any other . . . the ideological-political role of the League must be unified for the entire country” (Archive of Yugoslavia, CC LCY – 507, Presidency of CC LCY, III/152, tape records, 16th meeting of Presidency of LCY, 2 March 1971). At a meeting of the highest level, the Yugoslav President underlined that “we communists have no borders in Yugoslavia. I believe that we have none. We have successfully conducted a revolution; we struggled, we have no borders” (Archive of Yugoslavia, fonds 507 – CC LCY, IV/ 134, annex 1, tape records, 72nd expanded meeting of the Executive Office of the Presidency of LCY, 23 January 1971). Towards the end of 1971, he noted that the LCY was “the only factor” with the right to “conduct ideological-political work on a pan-Yugoslav basis” (Borba, 5 December 1971). Tito’s position was not only as the guarantor of the country’s unity coming from the highest position, but as one who relativizes the decentralizing solutions of the new constitutional conception that might have appeared too radical to some. Nevertheless, the most radical, third set of constitutional amendments adopted in the National Assembly on 30 June 1971 led to significant and farreaching changes in the theory and practice of Yugoslav federalism. While some amendments dealt with social and economic reality, most of the twentythree amendments were concerned with reform of national relations within the federation. They thus gave a new framework to Yugoslav federalism. According to these solutions, SFRY had a double character: it was a federal state of voluntarily unified peoples and their representative socialist republics and provinces, grounded in the rule and self-management of the working class and all “working people”. And second, Yugoslavia was defined as a “self-managed democratic community of working peoples and citizens of equal peoples and nationalities”.

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A federative community, Yugoslavia comprised republics as “sovereign states of peoples”, which in turn were also defined as “self-managed democratic socialist communities of peoples, nationalities, working people and citizens”. And minorities, aside from being able to fulfill their sovereign rights within the republics and provinces, also held rights at the level of municipalities, as well as through socio-political associations (Borba, 5 December 1971). With the very first amendment adopted in 1971, there is an indication of the essence and spirit of the advanced constitutive concept. Namely, it states that the “working people, the peoples and nationalities fulfill their sovereign rights within socialist republics and socialist autonomous provinces, and on the level of SFR Yugoslavia when in the common interest” (SFRY Constitution 1971, 181).1 The nature of this amendment is watered down by the following article, which states that as “a federal state, [Yugoslavia] is the state community of voluntarily united peoples”, their republics and provinces. The third article of the same amendment defined the republics as “states based on the sovereignty of their people and the rule and self-management of the working class (. . .) and equal peoples and nationalities”. As Tito put it in a speech in April 1971: “the sovereignty of the six republics comprise one general Yugoslav sovereignty” (Politika, 6 April 1971). The Twenty-fifth Amendment guaranteed the unity of the Yugoslav market, while the Thirty-fourth abolished the right of the federal government to make investments, that is, use funds or accept financial responsibilities unless it has the approval of the assemblies of all six republics and both autonomous provinces (SFRY Constitution 1971, 196–198, 215–216). The only function and competence of the federation with regard to economic relations was give aid to underdeveloped republics and the province of Kosovo. According to the Twenty-seventh Amendment, the National Bank was governed by the Council of Governors comprising representatives of the federal, republic, and provincial national banks (SFRY Constitution 1971, 199–200). In addition to the existing federative bodies – the National Assembly, the Federal Executive Council, and President – the Thirty-sixth Amendment established one further institution, insisted upon by Tito. This was the collective Presidency of SFRY, which was supposed to “coordinate collective interests of

1 That the conditions and political climate had shifted significantly can be gleaned from the fact that the discussions within the very top of the Party leadership regarding the 1953 Constitution clearly yielded the notion that “sovereignty belongs to the federation alone”. Thus, Article 9 of the Constitutional Law Proposal contained the phrase in which “the federation defends the sovereignty of the peoples’ republics”, which was unequivocally rejected by both legislative councils of the National Assembly, arguing that “sovereignty belongs to the federation alone” (Milosavljević 1992, 368).

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the republics and autonomous provinces in fulfilling the rights and duties of the Federation” (SFRY Constitution 1971, 217). It was to be an equal-representation body that would consensually pass decisions regarding the whole state community, designed to collectively take over the function of the head of state. The intention behind it was to ensure political continuity, since Tito wanted to be able to “retire one day” (Martinović 1971, 14–15). In addition to the Presidency, the Federal Executive Council (the ministerial cabinet) and the Constitutional Court also had to be formed through equal-representation, that is, there had to be “an equal number [of representatives] from each republic” (SFRY Constitution 1971, 227–230). Across nearly all federative bodies (Presidency, Executive, Assembly, Court), there was a constitutional duty of “coordinating positions”, for the decisions to have legal force. The legal expert Jovan Đorđević called such constitutionally conditional unison, a “backdoor veto” (Lempi 2004, 276). The form and methodology of “coordinating positions” was regulated by the Thirty-third Amendment. It states that the Federation can only pass a law “based on the consensus of the appropriate legislative bodies of the Republics and Provinces” (SFRY Constitution 1971, 211–212). Any joint decision of the federation would be preceded, according to this Amendment, by an initiative of the Executive, whose responsibility was “ensuring that there is consensus” with the republic and provincial executives (SFRY Constitution 1971, 216). De facto, the republics and provinces determined their policies, coordinated them across inter-republic committees, while the federation would confirm the already passed and coordinated decisions made at the republic and province level. Finally, the Constitution could be amended by the decision of the National Assembly, with the consent of the assemblies of the Republics and Provinces, that is, by consensus This meant that the Constitution belonged among so-called hard constitutions (SFRY Constitution 1971, 210‒211). This type of federalism, in which its very foundation included the primacy of the nations and their historically-constituted political expression (the individual federal units, that is, republics), was explicitly given in the third set of amendments to the 1971 Constitution and then confirmed with the 1974 Constitution. The Yugoslav constitutional expert and writer Jovan Đorđević claimed that this new concept, however, did not change the theoretically grounded and ideologically unaltered nature of Yugoslav constitutional law: the “working man” as the bearer of political sovereignty. According to Đorđević, the idea of an “undivided sovereignty” was preserved, but the focus now was that the republics and provinces were where the subjects of sovereignty (“the working people, peoples and nationalities”) fulfilled their sovereign, constitutional rights (Đorđević 1977, 136). With these constitutional amendments, Yugoslavia became both de iure and de facto a consensual community of the peoples who created it: the country

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was essentially and completely federalized, and the ground was laid for the last modifications that would be made through the 1974 Constitution.2 Edvard Kardelj designated all three sets of amendments to the 1963 Constitution as “phase one” of changes that “would restructure the relation between the Federation and the republics”, meaning that there would be a new role and reduced competences of the Federation. Finally, the 1974 Constitution put forward no major novelties with regard to the nature and function of the federation and the competences of the republics and provinces, since the 1971 amendments provided “a comprehensive solution”, and were simply built into Yugoslavia’s last constitution “with no substantive change” (Kardelj 1973, 104).

4 Drawing lines, limits, and delimiting territory World War II in Yugoslavia (1941–1945) included both a struggle against occupation and a socialist revolution. The country underwent a process of constituting a federation, that is, a complex community of equal peoples. The crucial events in this regard took place in late 1943 and the summer of 1945, at the Second and Third Sessions of ACPLY. Later state-constituting acts, fully elaborated in the first Constitution of this new Yugoslavia, and adopted on 31 January 1946, only more fully regulated and more closely defined this specific south-Slavic community of peoples. The newly formed state acquired a federative structure to reflect its complex ethnic makeup. Despite inevitably drawing on experiences and paradigms of other federal systems, Yugoslav federalism – complex and porous in form, conditioned by historical developments, regional particularity, ethnic and confessional differences – was both de facto and de iure an original and authentic historical phenomenon. All subsequent changes to the constitutional framework (in 1953, 1963, 1967–1971, 1974) only further elaborated, but did not essentially alter the emancipatory federalist structures first expressed during World War II (Bešlin 2011, 58–85).

2 The federalization of the League of Communists ran parallel to the substantive federalization of the state via the three sets of constitutional amendments. The Ninth Congress of LCY (1969) was the first in the Party’s history to be held after the completed meetings in the individual republics. Those congresses were held in succession in late 1968 and elected all the federal bodies, even the members of the LCY Presidency, meaning that the Yugoslav congress merely nominally confirmed them (Deveti kongres 1970, 133–143; Petranović and Zečević 1987, 433–437).

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It is important to note that at the constitutive session of ACPLY in November 1943, there was no discussion of borders. The military structure of the Partisan, antifascist movement, mirroring the Party structure, gave an early indication of the future internal borders of Yugoslavia. Having decided upon a federalist solution for Yugoslavia, the CPY had begun gradually to constitute autonomous party chapters along the lines of the future federal units. Thus, the Communist Parties of Slovenia and Croatia were formed in 1937, while the Serbian Communist Party was formed last, in 1945, due precisely to the difficulties of determining the borders and territorial reach of Yugoslavia’s largest federal unit (Pleterski et al. 1985, 152‒153, 327; Kasaš, Popov and Tabački 1988). The process of federalization and internal structuring of the CPY was simultaneously the process of an internal demarcation of Yugoslavia. The criteria used were the national structure and borders of historic provinces. The most controversial of these was the border between Croatia and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (within Serbia). To avoid confrontation, in June of 1945 the Politburo of the CPY Central Committee set up a five-member committee headed by Milovan Đilas, to establish the border between Vojvodina and Croatia. Officially, the ACPLY Presidency named the committee on 19 June, giving it a clear mandate. The committee conducted field work, studied the population censuses, investigated the national structure, spoke to representatives of local governments and political organizations – finally submitting its report along with demarcation proposals. The report was debated at the CPY Politburo meeting of 26 June 1945, after which the committee also submitted its report on 1 July to the Presidency of ACPLY. On 10 July 1945, it was forwarded to the Executive Government of the Democratic Federation of Yugoslavia (Boban 1995, 52–57). Through the decisions made based on this report, Vojvodina maintained the entire region of Bačka within its borders; Baranja, on the other hand, was annexed to Croatia, although it had historically not been considered part of Croatian lands. The region of Srem was divided, its western part fell on the Croatian side, while Vojvodina took the eastern portion, even though discounting the brief period of the Serbian Uprising and the post-revolutionary principality (Vojvodstvo) in 1848–1861, it had not been considered part of Vojvodina. In its report, the Committee noted that this was a temporary solution, until the “establishment of bodies with competence of definitive demarcation”. As the issue of borders between federal units in Yugoslavia was not brought up again, this “temporary” solution of the Committee for Demarcation proved to be permanent (Boban 1995, 54–57). The exact same thing was true for other, less contentious internal demarcations, as they were to a great extent determined by historical and demographic circumstances. Milovan Đilas later claimed that “there were no other places with issues of demarcation”, and that borders were drawn based on “how the Party’s chapters

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covered certain territories” (Aćin 2016). Shortly thereafter, the federal units inscribed into their constitutions that the borders could not be changed without authorization of the highest representative body of the affected republic. Smaller corrections among the republics in internal borders continued until the mid 1950’s (Zečević and Lekić 1991). After the thorough constitutional reforms in the late sixties and early seventies, Yugoslavia functioned with a considerably strengthened statehood of the republics and complex federalist solutions. As they were the result of compromise, far-reaching consultations, and to a great extent an open public debate, these solutions were believed to have delivered a permanent, sustainable, and modern solution for the national issues. The constitutional reforms of 1971 meant that Yugoslavia became a voluntary community of peoples who created it, an essentially federalized state with confederal elements. The crucial characteristics of the significantly altered Yugoslav constitutional structure, above all, matched the political conceptions of the reform-minded leadership in the two largest Communist Parties, the Serbian and Croatian. Rather than abandonment, this was a return to the federalist principles used by the Partisans to recruit fighters into their ranks from the various nationally and socially deprived Yugoslav peoples. The concept of Yugoslav federalism paid much more attention to the nature of interior borders, rather than their establishment or the process of demarcation. It was the degree of decentralization that was debated and transformed, while the existence of borders was sacrosanct, protected by constitutional articles. When the federation was finally constituted, the issue on which most political energy was expended was the relation between the political bodies of the republics and the federation, and the degree of statehood held by the republics (compared to the federation, Bilandžić 1999, 214). By the late sixties, however, the focus in Serbia specifically would shift evermore from the nature of federalism and the “hardness” of the borders themselves to demands of their alterations and “redrawing”. In the course of adopting constitutional reforms in the early seventies that would strengthen the statehood of the Yugoslav republics, oppositional Serbian nationalism emerged into the public sphere, and brought up for the first time in the country’s history (what right-wing and revanchist émigré circles had been saying since the end of the war) the question of the justification of the interior borders, as well as the criteria applied in their drawing. There were even calls for their violent overthrow; and in an effort to relativize the significance of interior borders in Yugoslav federalism, they were termed “administrative”, “conditional”, “imposed”, “temporary”, “approximate”, “unjust”, “ahistorical”, “unethical” – and therefore subject to being redrawn in altered historical conditions (Bešlin 2008, 178).

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A widely accepted definition of nationalism comes from one of the most influential representatives of the modernist or constructivist school of thought, Ernest Gellner. According to him, it is a “political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent” (Gellner 1983, 1). It is a theory of political legitimacy that emphasizes the idea that “ethnic borders should not cut across political ones, and in particular, that ethnic boundaries within a given state [. . .] should not separate the power-holders” from those who see themselves as a hegemonic and state-building people (Gellner 1983, 1). In the last two decades of the existence of the Yugoslav state, there was tremendous effort in Serbia to deny the constitutional principle that interior borders had the nature of state borders, that is, that each of the constituent states (except for Bosnia and Herzegovina) were defined as national, with the right of its constitutive people to self-determination and secession, but without the capacity to change interior borders without the consent of all the republics. Issuing from this was that violence could be the primary method to achieve a radical change of borders or new demarcation. Therefore, the interpretations of international subjects (Badinter Arbitration Committee and the Hague Conference) that the dissolution and “disunion” of Yugoslavia should happen strictly according to its internal borders can be considered as the only authentic political, historical, and legal understanding of the nature and character of Yugoslav federalism (Biserko 2002). This type of federalism, with its real and symbolic borders as the basis of the state and social structure of Socialist Yugoslavia, had been established in the course of World War II and elaborated in the myriad constitutional amendments, including the final Constitution of 1974. Nationalist – above all Serbian – probing of Yugoslav federalism and reopening of the national issue – not as a democratic question, but by claiming the territorial principle as absolute – directly led to the tragic epilogue of the Yugoslav idea of a plural, complex community of equal peoples.

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Jovičić, Miodrag. 1991. “Jako srpstvo – jaka Jugoslavija.” Izbor članaka iz Srpskog glasa, organa Srpskog kulturnog kluba, objavljenih 1939–1940. Belgrade: Naučna knjiga. Kamberović, Husnija, ed. 2009. Rasprave o nacionalnom identitetu Bošnjaka. Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju. Kardelj, Edvard. 1973. Osnovni uzroci i pravci ustavnih promena. Belgrade: Komunist. Kasaš, Aleksandar, Jelena Popov and Ljubomir Tabački, eds. 1988. Osnivački kongres Komunističke partije Srbije. Novi Sad, Belgrade, and Priština: Istorijski institut Vojvodine, Zavod za udžbenike i nastavna sredstva, and Istorijski institut Kosova. Končar, Ranko. 2013. “Autonomija Vojvodine – istorijska geneza i njeno konstituisanje.” In Antifašizam, AVNOJ, Autonomija, edited by Stanko Šušnjar, 15‒27. Novi Sad: Udruženje antifašista Novog Sada. Končar, Ranko. 1983. Stvaranje federacije. Novi Sad: Centar za političke studije i marksističko obrazovanje. Kuljić, Todor. 2005. Tito, sociološko-istorijska studija. Zrenjanin: Gradska biblioteka “Žarko Zrenjanin.” Lempi, Džon R. 2004. Jugoslavija kao istorija – bila dvaput jedna zemlja. Belgrade: DanGraf. Martinović, Savo, ed. 1971. Ustavne promene. Belgrade: Komunist. Milosavljević, Olivera. 1992. “Centralizam i republikanizam – nacionalizam u Jugoslaviji 1945–1955.” Sociologija 3: 359–370. Milosavljević, Olivera. 1996. “Jugoslovenstvo, velikodržavlje i demokratija.” Tokovi istorije 1–2: 169‒181. Milosavljević, Olivera, 2003. “Titov Jugosloven – nacionalni ili državni identitet.“ In Dijalog povjesničara/istoričara, edited by Hans-Georg Fleck and Igor Gaovac, 175–192. Zagreb: Zaklada Friedrich Naumann. Nešović, Slobodan, and Branko Petranović, eds. 1983. AVNOJ i revolucija. Tematska zbirka dokumenata 1941–1945. Belgrade: Narodna knjiga. Nicоvić, Јаnkо. 2007. Ustаvni rаzvој Srbiје 1804–2006. Belgrade: Sezam medico. Osmi Kongres Saveza komunista Jugoslavije: Održan u Beogradu od 7–13. decembra 1964. 1965. Beograd: Komunist. Perović, Latinka. 2005. “Kako su se izražavali različiti politički interesi u Jugoslaviji? Polemika između Dobrice Ćosića i Dušana Pirjevca 1961/1962. godine.” In Dijalog povjesničara/ istoričara, edited by Hans-Georg Fleck and Igor Gaovac, 189–209. Zagreb: Zaklada Friedrich Naumann. Perović, Latinka. 1984. Od centralizma do federalizma. KPJ u nacionalnom pitanju. Zagreb: Globus. Petranović, Branko, and Momčilo Zečević, eds. 1987. Jugoslovenski federalizam – ideje i stvarnost. Belgrade: Prosveta – BIGZ. Petranović, Branko, and Momčilo Zečević. 1991. Agonija dve Jugoslavije. Šabac: Zaslon. Petranović, Branko. 1992. Srbija u Drugom svetskom ratu 1939–1945. Belgrade: Vojnoizdavački i novinski centar. Pеtrаnоvić, Brаnkо. 1993. Јugоslоvеnskо iskustvо srpskе nаciоnаlnе intеgrаciје. Belgrade: Službeni list SRJ. Petrović, Dragoljub. 1988a. “Konstituisanje federativne Jugoslavije 1941–1945.” Jugoslovenski istorijski časopis 3–4: 101‒134. Petrović, Dragoljub. 1988b. Konstituisanje federalne Srbije. Belgrade: Institut za istoriju radničkog pokreta Srbije.

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Pijade, Moša. 1944. Ravnopravnost Srba i Hrvata u Hrvatskoj. Zagreb: Izvršni odbor Narodooslobodilačke fronte. Pleterski, Janko, et al., eds. 1985. Istorija Saveza komunista Jugoslavije. Belgrade: Komunist, Narodna knjiga, and Rad. Pleterski, Janko. 1985. Nacije, Jugoslavija, revolucija. Belgrade: Komunist and BIGZ. Politika. 1971. Belgrade. Popović, Jovan. 1999. Četvrta sednica CK SKJ – Brionski plenum. Belgrade: Arhiv Jugoslavije. Stanković, Đorđe. 2006. Nikola Pašić – Prilozi za biografiju. Belgrade: Plato. Ustav Socijalističke Federativne Republike Jugoslavije; Ustavni amandmani od I do XLII (iz 1967, 1968. i 1971. godine). 1971. Belgrade: Književne novine. Vrhunec, Marko. 2001. Šest godina s Titom (1967–1973). Zagreb: Globus. Zečević, Miodrag, and Bogdan Lekić. 1991. Državne granice i unutrašnja teritorijalna podela Jugoslavije. Beograd: Građevinska knjiga. Zеčеvić, Miоdrаg, ed. 1998. Pоčеtаk krаја SFRЈ – Stеnоgrаm i drugi prаtеći dоkumеnti prоširеnе sеdnicе Izvršnоg kоmitеtа CK SKЈ оdržаnе 14–16. mаrtа 1962. gоdinе. Belgrade: Arhiv Jugoslavije.

Dana Dolghin

Human rights: A b/ordering narrative in Central and Eastern Europe 1 Introduction In 2018, faced with international criticism concerning Hungary’s practices of refugee asylum, the Hungarian Foreign Affairs minister Peter Szijjártó belittled the universal obligation of respecting human rights norms. Specifically, he argued refugees were not exempt from practices of b/ordering and argued immigration is: “not a human right . . . My question is how you can be a refugee and violate the borders of five or six safe countries” (Szijjártó 2018). Szijjártó was not alone when arguing that norms of human rights were dangerously overruling questions of border (and national) sovereignty. Indeed, former Czech president and dissident Václav Havel questioned whether the opposition to an abusive regime of those seeking asylum in Europe was reason enough to ignore the borders’ social and political importance and concluded that “it would be impossible for Europe to shelter everyone who is opposed to their government” (Zantovsky 2015). In Slovakia, politicians also revisited the discourses about human rights and characterized them as an artificial liberal political narrative of the 1990s, testifying to the political context that had led to the break-up of Czechoslovakia. These opinions questioned the applicability (that is the feasibility) of human rights as a contemporary political norm and showed that the “refugee crisis” prompted perhaps the most multifaceted and complex re-questioning of the liberal tenet of human rights in European politics and with that of the very notion of “European”. The prospect of accepting new citizens into Europe, debated since 2013, occasioned a far-reaching campaign to overhaul the very operating on the basis of basic “norms” of global liberal democracy. For instance, the Fidesz Hungarian and the PiS Polish governments contest the 1990s consensus over the ascent of global liberal democracy as an unequal and illegitimate process which fell short of its promise in Central and Eastern Europe (Kopeček 2018; Ther 2019). From this perspective, the current conservative politics from Fidesz and PiS present the Polish and Hungarian societies as the “victims” of that consensus of the early 1990s (Trencsényi 2018). At the core of these issues has been a particular re-politicization of some political narratives which had looked distinctly apolitical in the “long 1990s”. This “populist” turn that has also challenged the democratic process proposes “a conjunction of political authoritarianism and economic liberalism in opposition to democracy and especially in opposition to democratic https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110712766-003

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constituent power” (Wilkinson 2019). Similarly, nor should the “illiberal” alternative be considered as exclusively anti-Europeanist. Indeed, illiberals appropriate the political narrative of Europeanization which had been long synonymous to democracy in the region. Yet, the anti-EU stance is still Europeanist in the discourse coming from Fidesz and PiS, as these parties stress the identitarian elements (the East has always been European) and its sovereigntist beliefs (a national sovereignty which the West has curtailed). A “strong state” has been One narrative that has grounded such re-politicization of democratic norms such as human rights, in contrast to their enthusiastic acceptance in the 1990s by many members of the same, now rebellious parties. This has operated in conjunction with the general re-structuring of the liberal order into a neoliberal order which subsumes principles of democracy and social rights to economics and the market (Wilkinson 2019; Muller 2016a). Neoliberal politics merge with authoritarian politics, where “path towards accumulation of power encapsulated by the ordonationalist politician is to accumulate power by displaying unswerving loyalty to the party and state leader, to eschew the neoliberal orthodoxy represented by institutions like the IMF, the ECB, and the World Bank” (Geva 2021). In fact, the authoritarian streak in the “illiberal” version continues much of the neoliberal impetus of the 1990s and 2000s, under a cloak of protectionism (Ther 2019; Seongcheol 2020). The idea that a strong state is essential also shapes the politicization of economics. This logic of the “strong state” has also impacted on in the way human rights have operated in this “illiberal” turn, as collateral damage from the dedemocratization of the political space in the general consensus of the 1990s. Adding to this perspective is Szijjártó’s strategy of redefining b/ordering as a necessary strategy of the “illiberal” project which relies on relativising the norms of human rights and appropriating them for new narratives of discrimination, exclusion, and biases. The new conservative right invokes human rights to strengthen the legitimacy of one government or another and thus replaces the traditional role of human rights as a safeguard for citizens against state power (Valentini 2017; Fregoso 2014). In this sense, illiberals contest human rights as a universal norm by which a society “articulates standards for respecting the status dignity of the subjects of sovereign authority” (Valentini 2017). Whereas human rights have operated as a political-economic ecosystem meant to transcend ideological or political divisions, in new “illiberal” discourses they are framed as biased (liberal) norms challenging an “organic” form of the state, that is its territory and ethnic homogeneity (Kopeček 2018). Proponents underline how this norm should be politicised, that it should be looked at in its historical and political context, rather than a neutral liberal obligation. Thus, they emphasize human rights should be “conditional” and not a universal political space of

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containment of politics (Langlois 2003; Krastev 2017 17–23). In these new perspectives, human rights are explicitly invoked and referred to as an instrument that can be relativised and ought to be reinterpreted to defend a strong state. They are also denied a substantial history in the local political culture, by arguing these were notions attached to the “global” liberalism that dominated the 1990s, specifically in Eastern Europe, and were a cultural imposition that happened during the “transition” years. Sociologist Rogers Brubaker, among others, makes this point with relation to Hungary, namely, that “illiberalism” can be interpreted as a form of “externalisation” of liberalism, which is a rejection of any roots of the liberal idea within the fabric of the nation (Brubaker 2017). These contestations of human rights are an eloquent example of how selfdetermination principles and b/ordering infer the idea of human rights as a “foreign” norm (van Houtum 2005) to political culture. For instance, in this conservative wave, new perspectives on human rights provided support for the notion that European borders were too porous to ensure the safety and comfort of “insider” Europeans. A “security” paradigm ends up reinforcing the idea that rights are reserved to some, primarily to “Europeans” and not to the others, the “outsiders” to Europe, to whom statements such as those of Walesa seem to imply. Human rights, specifically in Szijjártó’s perspective, were attributed to those who already belonged to the European community and operated as an “othering” strategy, as a way to differentiate between insiders and outsiders of Europe, and consequently could be used at the discretion of a political regime. There is growing evidence of the fact that the ideas of human rights carry overtones of the invocations of a superior “Europeanism”, at the expense of a truly universal relevance of human rights (Moyn 2014). It is however important to emphasize that this idea is not only proposed by radical “illiberals” in Central and Eastern Europe. Similarly, across the increasingly stronger far-right in Europe, human rights have been recently juxtaposed to a national character. In the Netherlands, for instance, a right-wing party, the Forum voor Democratie (FvD), argued that such norms (of human rights, humanitarianism and solidarity) were not “natural” to the local political culture (Kešić, Duyvendak 2019). Nevertheless, human rights were still held as a measure of the superiority of the West, a moral framework with a potential to protect the competitive market (Havertz 2019; Whyte 2017). Neoliberal in essence, the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) argues, for instance, that belonging to the German society is determined by the possibility of succeeding in the competitive market (Klikauer 2018). The quality of becoming European is here synonymous with a form of “ordoliberalism” (Havertz 2019). In these new alternatives, human rights are not denied, but instrumentalised as a way to re-affirm a purported civilised family of (European) nations, which needs to protect itself against others to

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maintain their own supremacy (Duranti 2016). Indeed, emerging Christian oriented identity parties (which are against the EU but pro-Western) operate with notions of “civilisationism” that can also be considered an opposition to the globalist model that human rights has presented (Muller 2016c, 53–54). This article focuses on the strategies by which political actors have been revisiting human rights based on the two strands already outlined: the transactional feature of human rights and its employment as an “othering” strategy, and I will do so by looking at the usage of collective memory. Narratives about history have driven much of the normalisation of these human rights challenges. For instance, the history of the events of 1956 and 1968, represent moments of broken sovereignty in Hungary and Poland (Ost 2019). Both these events have been interpreted so as to showcase opposition (against the USSR), political will (solidarity under a dictatorship) and self-reliance (independence from Western Cold War thought). These kinds of histories shaped Viktor Orbán’s political discourse about a victimized Hungarian society during the European refugee crisis after 2014. The Hungarian television news channels that were pro-Viktor Orbán broadcasted similar images of Romanians crossing the border into Hungary in 1989 and multiple historical reports on refugees who due to the Soviet intervention in Budapest in 1956 (Harms 2017; Pfeifer 2017) had to “flee the oppressing forces of totalitarianism” (Staudenmaier 2018; Jorgensen 2017). Arguably, these images strengthened the sentiment of anti-communism making it a backbone of the “illiberal” turn, from political discourses to memory politics (Lipinski, Artur, Stepinska 2018). Remembering the past, and especially violent histories, such as the Shoah and other genocides, such as the massacres in Rwanda, Armenia and the crimes of dictatorship, such as in Latin America and Eastern Europe have been consistently invoked in relation to norms of liberal democracy, especially human rights. Keeping these memories present ensures that the principles of tolerance or democracy are not being trespassed again. Yet, a growing corpus of more recent literature has challenged this normative perspective on human rights and memory as restrictive. It avoids or simplifies debates about agency, such as collaboration or perpetratorship, for instance, or the social-economic conditions that have given rise to the political context of the time (David 2020). Indeed, by employing human rights as a narrative, specific political and social histories, for instance, economic exploitation, are being overshadowed rather than investigated critically. Human rights have also been often employed in the “anti-totalitarian” remembrance which equates victims of National Socialism with that of communism and underscores a common European tragedy. In the two decades of European integration, the “totalitarian” narrative has risen to a veritable “European” heritage, whereby commemorations, policies and broader EU narratives rely on

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an image of a shared victimhood caused by two regimes. European declarations and acts of policy emphasise how human rights were the central “lesson” learned from these two regimes’ abuses and authoritarian realities (Stone 2012, 1–22; Manucci 2019; Wæhrens 2011 1–24). In the cases outlined above, the images of past refugees constructed a particular selective narrative of human rights because they reinforced the anti-communist angle and confirmed that the “totalitarian” historical perspective increasingly defined the shared past of the European Union (Sierp 2017; Ghodsee 2014).

2 Human rights and Europe The usage of human rights as a transactional notion can be readily associated with the “illiberal” vision of politics that has been circulating in Europe since the 2010s, yet there are older histories worth considering in order to understand why these appropriations of human rights have come to be. One of them was the locus of human rights in defining the European community after the Second World War. The “reconstruction” entailed not only economic and political measures but also setting a boundary between the post-war (Western) world and the Nazi “barbarities”. Human rights were a “shared moral code to a civilisational crisis” post- Second World War. Political theorist Jack Donnely argues human rights are a new form of a “standard of civilization”, in that they define those who abide by norms of human rights and those who do not (Donnely 1998). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the institutional and political system it inaugurated also represented a symbolic re-affirmation of the constitutional ambitions that had regressed during the Second World War. As a project speaking about the culture and identity of Europe, rather than about justice, human rights was associated with the prestige of post-war (Christian) democracy and the reconstructive political efforts (Kaiser 2007, 163–67; Forlenza 2016). More recent scholarship has shown the way “Europe”, in either its potential future form as a “union” or as a political concept which had been protected by the Allies in the Second World War, shaped the ideas of human rights. The work of historian Marco Duranti points to the project’s conservative roots, connected primarily with a civilisational prestige associated with the project of “Europe”. Ideas of European superiority, for instance, previously represented by the League of Nations and the mandate’s notion of a “standard” of civilisation endured in the aftermath of the Second World War (Linklater 2016). The concept “carried a vision of civilisation defined by the superiority of European law over indigenous legal orders, and capitalist industry, private property and labour discipline over

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cooperative forms of social life” (Whyte 2019, 41). Apart from the discourse of a European superiority itself, it was also an important mechanism for cultivating the values of the market, that is, in the European sphere (Buchanan 2010, 160– 61; Conway 2020, 120–23). The state was defined by its “protection of rights, the rule of law, and a centralised state with a monopoly on the use of violence”, effectively shaping the capacity of the “civilised” community to adhere to principles of European superiority (Bonnet 2015; Linklater 2016). Indeed, the European primacy goes back to the origin of the term at the beginning of the 20th century, when it had to do with a condition of self-governing and sovereignty (Duranti 2016; Donnelly 1998). As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was being drafted, the “values of civilisation” that it inscribed perpetuated a particular correlation between the “West” and human rights. In the early 20th century, influential jurist James Westlake argued that this perspective “made purported European standards the embodiments of civilisation, and European powers the ultimate judges of whether a state had reformed sufficiently to warrant recognition” (Linklater 2016). Consequently, much of the “narrative” about human rights carried a certain Eurocentrism. It was a particularly selective narrative that made this first legal and political act place the issue of human rights at the center of international politics and marked the reconstruction post-war (Conway 2020, 119–24). The document affirmed the basic moral foundations set in place for Europe after the dark moments of the war and, placed a legal obligation on the countries in Western Europe, yet also granted a right to step in and assert these norms for places where they were not respected (Fregoso 2014). This is not to say that such a perspective allowed for political interventions outside Europe. Still, it encouraged a particular image of a “good” state which is synonymous to the (Western) European model. Although the project of human rights provided the legitimacy of the inchoate project at the European Coal and Steel Community in the early 1950s only in passing, this history gradually came to have a discursive importance as the role of Europe was being rethought at the height of the Cold War by politicians and political circles looking for an independent identity from the US or the USSR (Snyder 2013, 14–30). Another correlation, that between human rights ideas and the retributive memory of the Holocaust, has also played a part in this narrative, although the Holocaust has played a less critical role in the early history of the architecture of human rights (Duranti 2012; Kurz 2021). In the negotiations after the Second World War, for instance, the notion of “dignity” which was central to the narrative of human rights at the time did not single out the plight of the Jewish community but instead referred generally to the multitude of groups who suffered turmoil during the Holocaust. The notion of genocide put forward by Raphael

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Lemkin, for instance, was only barely entertained during the negotiations leading up to the 1948 Declaration (Moses 2011b). The base of human rights was less the history of the Holocaust, something testified to as well in the approval of the charter by former conservatives and collaborators of the Nazi regime (Duranti 2012), and more so in the political reconfigurations that were expected in Europe postwar. A vital element in this early narrative was the anti-Soviet dimension of the debates on human rights. Their anti-collectivist aspect, focusing on the individual and individual rights, was valuable because it endorsed “Western” values of individualism. Human rights were a distinct voice for the transnational rise of liberal democracy, values of individuality and identity exclusively tied in with Western Europe and not with the East (Arnesen 2011). The Cold War also continued to shape this perspective on human rights, primarily because it reinforced a Western Europe/Eastern Europe division about “positive” and “negative” human rights, as historian Samuel Moyn suggests. The focus on the “negative” rights that one claims from the state, such as political expression and participation, is different from the positive model represented by the Soviet perspective, namely rights given to a citizen that regulated their economic and political status rather than their individuality (Moyn 2018, 13–18; Kopeček 2019). This perspective associates the human rights dimension of the European project with a particular type of governance, of a social democracy which attends to the political needs of the citizen. This affirms Europeanness as an ontologically anti-communist condition; a political self-definition of the Europeanness within the countries themselves. Indeed, the rise of human rights represented an important part of the Cold War 1970s. It was the focus on the Western coined term “totalitarianism”, the menace of communism, and its being against social democracy, that increasingly brought human rights into the anti-communist dimension of neoliberal thinking (Ther 2019). The rise of human rights as a transnational norm, proper to the political and economic context of liberal politics and economics in the post-war period brought human rights into the discourses against authoritarianism and totalitarianism (Burke, Duranti and Moses 2020). This anti-collectivist perspective was furthered by what political theorist Jessica Whyte sees as an interplay between human rights and the emerging neoliberalism of the 1970s. As the decade was preoccupied with the political identity that represents the ideals of liberal democracy, human rights’ political role played an important part in defining issues of identity in relation to economics. This connotation has only consolidated itself further in the contemporary debates about “belonging” to the EU. Today, human rights underpin the European community according to the European Social Democrat Group (S&D) political

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leader Frans Timmermans passed in 2019. Human rights have been a reference, for instance, in the 2019 act of memory policy. The Importance of European Remembrance for the Future of Europe, where Europe or “being European” is distinctly attached to norms of human rights. More explicitly, it is about the joint remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust and communism. The European memory “regime” of “totalitarianism” at the level of the EU added to the biography of human rights: these were hard-won victories against both these regimes. From this angle, human rights served to replace a potentially disruptive and dangerous past, such as the Holocaust or left-wing authoritarianism, with a clearer (and affirmative) vision of liberal democracy. Human rights are an image of an opposite and show: the accomplishments of the future, how violent and sensitive images of conflict shaped the understandings of justice; and (state) reconstruction and accountability. The central tenet of these perspectives has been the “oppositional identity” that the anti-communist history strengthened, especially since the EU enlargement of 2004. The anti-communist narrative, which has been a strong political feature in Eastern Europe since the 1990s, serves to show the precarity of politics and economics after the system’s demise and the fidelity of this “oppositional” identity to the rise of global democracy after 1989. However, this discourse has consistently entertained nationalist, at times xenophobic public expressions. Anti-communism has ever since tinged irredentist territorial discourses that emphasise losses caused by the communist regimes or ethnic sovereignty on account of past victimhood (Krastev 2017, 63–65). These were often masked by the neoliberal discourses of developmentalism that the memory of communism and anti-communism supported (Kiss 2017). This selectivity was furthered by what has emerged rather recently with the evident rise of the right, namely the poverty of discourses on antifascism (Clímaco et al. 2016, 1–13). This has been the background of the “populist” and illiberal turn, as political genealogies of anti-fascism were ignored after the 1990s and limited in scope during the Cold War. Historian Mark Mazower has made the point that, in general, debates about the right in post-war Europe were dependent, in fact, on the strength or weakness of social democracy, rather than as an independent topic of discussion (Mazower 2016, 384–85). It is not incidental that collective memory emerged as a vehicle of appropriations, because the memory of political violence, and specifically the post-1989 debates, has stood at the core of representations of liberal democracy. Today, numerous museums and memorials identify with and fix the relevance of remembrance through human rights, rather than through a simple historical recollection or exploration. Retelling the past through human rights has been a feature of the Chile Museum on Human Rights, which conveys the 1970s history

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as a dictatorship through the specific perspective of an infringing on personal identity. The Canada Museum of Human Rights has similarly looked at the past from this “presentist” angle of human rights (Moses 2012). Yet, as historian Dirk Moses argues, this perspective triggers numerous issues related to “memory regimes”, which utilise the egalitarian concepts of genocide or crimes against humanity to emphasise the suffering of all. These also vie for official validation with the Holocaust uniqueness agenda and therefore produce conflict over identitarian exposures (Moses 2011b). This has been one of the main debates in discourses originating from Fidesz and PiS, which consistently deny the extent of the suffering of the country’s local Jewish communities, and instead emphasise the outcomes for the “gentiles” (Radonić 2018). The prestige of neoliberal thought has overshadowed the debates about politics and the histories at the centre of the politics of liberal democracy. Historian Dirk Moses has pointed out that the consequence of the constellation of the rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s was that the initial transformative agenda that shaped the 1948 global debate about human rights, namely, the role and dimension of anticolonialism, race, or accountability for colonialism were gradually replaced by conservative discourses (Burke, Duranti, Moses 2020). Influenced by the Cold War context, the rise of the neoliberal mindset of the 1970s focused the attention on the anti-communist issues, rather than anti-colonialism (and capitalism). Not surprisingly, human rights in the 1950s and the 1960s built on older civilisational and humanitarian ideas, since humanitarian politics, with rare exceptions, were deeply overlain with white racial paternalism. These are constructs that historically support the narrative of human rights as European: anti-communism, liberal democracy, and a specific story about the EU.

3 Remembering Cold War refugees The recent remembrance of Cold War refugees has been a case in point for how human rights have been appropriated into the conservative turn of the liberal political paradigm. Indeed, around the time of the refugee crisis, a renewed interest emerged in refugees who had escaped Eastern Europe during the Cold War, at a time when the European political narratives were pointing to a lack of loyalty of both Central and Eastern Europe to European norms. The refugees from communism, Orbán seemed to argue, were a worthier cause. The discourses did not only come from “illiberal” circles. In 2014, Lech Wałęsa, the former head of the dissident Polish Solidarność movement and former leader of the Polish liberal party (Pawk 2019; Melman 2015), an anti-communist icon,

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paradoxically reinforced the politics of exclusion of refugees practiced by the Polish Law and Justice PiS Party. He argued that Poles had also been “immigrants and refugees during communism”, but they had never laid claims or attempted to change the European order to the extent of the new wave of refugees (Radio Poland 2015). Another iconic figure of dissent in prior years and in the 1990s, Václav Havel, suggested that Europe could “hardly squeeze” all of the people who were unhappy with their regimes into Europe (Zantovsky 2015). Such opinions questioned whether any political opposition should deserve humanitarian support. Their memory and personal trajectories were frequently mobilised by those opposing the acceptance of refugees to counter the political claims of acceptance of “others” in Europe and the claims made by Muslim immigrants within European society. Cold War refugees represented a powerful narrative about Europeanness and European belonging. Orbán those who either left furtively by scaling fences and borders or those who chose to remain as “political refugees” in the “West” had been decisive in defining the refugee in the European space. The perspective that this history outlines is that of a compliant and Europe- oriented refugee. The fact that these citizens of Central and Eastern Europe decided to leave to the West represented a success story for the European ideals. They were consequently individuals who were proud to express their own political opposition to their national governments as a form of pro-European, liberal identity. The stories and biographies that the project put forward suggested a particularly compliant refugee, one who accepts the norms and conveniences of the “Western” European political environment. But Cold War refugees fit well into the very idea of the “European” refugee: Christian, white, and liberal minded, and who, as an identitarian position, identified themselves with “Western” Europe. Also, when leaving, these individuals were welcomed by the old exile-communities, in particular those who left immediately after 1948, who continued to be active in the resistance against the regime back home. Refugees from Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe had thus shaped the image of the Eastern European refugee during the Cold War as proWestern liberal subjects (Carruthers 2009, 97–102). The opposition to communism was an important narrative in this discourse (Kovacs 2016). The refugees of 1956, for instance, have been useful histories from the perspective of the narrative of self-determination that the Orbán government has used for legitimation purposes. The 1956 revolution has been one of the defining moments for the anti-communism perpetuated by the Orbán governance: self-reliant, inspired by “national” rather than the international Cold War momentum, and framed as a distinct martyr experience (Szilágy and Bozóki 2015). On the one hand, the Hungarian government operated with this image in order to convey the national history of political opponents transformed

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into refugees, specifically anti-communist refugees. On the other, international media outlets cited the case of 1956 as a humanitarian emergency, where refugees from Hungary were hosted in Western Europe, specifically the United States. It was an example of fully functional norms of human rights operating to support the cases of the refugees. In this reading, the “humanitarian” credentials of illiberal governance could not be denied to Hungary or Poland. On the contrary, both governments play upon their past oppositional perspectives before 1989 to strengthen their own conservative-nationalist positions as governments which abided by human rights and the rule of law. In this sense, the oppositional histories before or during 1989 came to be incorporated and appropriated into the Central and Eastern European liberal democracy of the 1990s. The case of an emerging memory of anti-communist refugees that shaped the debates about human rights is not accidental. Indeed, 1956 refugees have had a central place in the history of humanitarian norms worldwide because these individuals shaped humanitarian history in the early 1950s rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union (Holian 2011, 23–24). Internees in “DP” (displacement persons) camps at the end of the Second World War and the lingering “last million” demanding to stay in “Western Europe” or to emigrate to the United States because of possible oppression if they returned to Eastern Europe, were instrumental in defining the doctrine of humanitarianism in the early 1950s (Glynn and Klesit 2011). Anti-communism, rather than the rights of minorities (for the Jewish minority, in particular), defined the very status of refugee (Haddad 2008, 24). Immigration came, in fact, to be about “fleeing communism” (Holian 2011, 78). Indeed, the International Refugee Organization (IRO) defined the refugee as such: Political opponents had a right to aid and protection . . . .the State was the servant of the individual, whatever his political conviction might be . . . .the community could not withhold its support from human beings simply because they held and expressed opinions differing from those of the authorities in power. (Ismaio 2018)

The 1951 Refugee Convention of the UN became the global instrument for drawing a distinction between refugees and migrants. The document did not make use of the concept of human rights in determining the basis for the refugee claim, but actually would only apply to the “[protection of] persons whose persecution or fear of persecution is due to events in Europe after the outbreak of the Second World War and before July 1, 1950”. During the Cold War, the image of the refugee in Western European countries was based on the image of those fleeing from the Communist East. In his book “The Americans at the Gate”, Bon Tempo suggests that Cold War refugees contributed to the imaginary of a political

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identity of the refugee “that stressed adherence to particular political and ideological traits” (Bon Tempo 2008, 46). According to the UN Refugee Agency, 1956 represented the first significant test of the Refugee Convention when the “exodus of refugees from Hungary after the Soviet suppression of the uprising in 1956” had to be resolved (Prashad 2018). Although the United States and most European governments disagreed over the very definition of a “refugee” as proposed in the refugee convention in consultation with the UN Human Rights Division and the IRO (Glynn and Kleist 2011), lawmakers passed the Hungarian Escape Act of 1958 to grant the Hungarians refugee status after the failed 1956 Revolution (Shawn 2002, 64–75). The US Escapee Program was launched by the government in 1952 to resettle refugees from Eastern Europe (Raska 2018, 45–61). The history of the 1956 refugees, instrumentalised by the Orbán government in order to demonstrate a specific claim to Europeanness, was based on a specific Eurocentric idea of human rights, which furthered these narratives. They carry an exclusionary interpretation of human rights, in this case, as these are limited to Europeans and explicitly articulated against new contenders seeking to make claims to the European human rights order. The use of human rights, in this case, is distinctly civilisational in the sense that this narrative reinforces a view of the superiority of Eurocentrism. These recent debates suggest that b/ordering works together with narratives and invocations of human rights, specifically the ones emerging from the discourses on anti-totalitarianism. In this case, anti-communism narratives strengthen the divisions and exclusionary perspective on human rights, specifically by underscoring the anti-totalitarian logic of the ideas of human rights. By emphasising the anti-communist perspective, it frames human rights as a particular way to exploit the anti-totalitarian narrative. The Europeanizing perspective paradoxically aided these interpretations (Tomczuk 2016) of human rights, because they have underscored collective memory constructions hailing the EU construct (Kopeček 2012). Since 2004 and especially 2008, the past (communism) has been cultivated in the political realm as a new “thickening” narrative of European identity and that anticommunism seems to have been hijacked in contemporary “illiberal” discourses (Radonić 2020). The idea that Europeanism is simply synonymous with liberal democracy as a form of political discourse, in fact, perpetuates the idea that human rights trump the previous two other ideologies, National Socialism or fascism/ communism, but makes little room for older political histories.

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4 Human rights memorials The issues with the anti-communist human rights dimension have been a question of appropriation by the conservative right and, more generally, a question of proposing a “presentist” utility to the collective memory of past political history in Europe. As discussed above, the anti-communist perspective underlies the political construct of the European Union through the “anti-totalitarian” dimension, that is the equating of National Socialism and communism and equally destructive pasts that have been “resolved” by the present political order. This perspective is increasingly perpetuated in forums of European politics, policies of the European Union and political discourse. This memorial perspective about human rights is decidedly oriented towards the “future”, as the histories presented are approached less through their context (and complexities) but through their outcomes, and specifically the political norms they engendered in that future. In this sense, the accent on the result, rather than the genealogy, also puts forward an affirmative understanding and representation of history, albeit selective. In general, remembrance in the future “tense” works with images of the past so these can now focus on healing, reconstruction and accountability, but also with an explicitly political role of affirmation and support for liberal democracy. At the ceremony inaugurating one memorial that operates with these ideas of human rights, the Falstad Memorial in Norway, the Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister Jonas Gahr Store in May 2007 argued “Falstad is a place to be remembered, a place to learn, a place from which to go forward. Wiser, more engaged, better prepared . . . We shall not forget. Others must hear” (Reitan 2007, 1). Falstad stands as a “national centre for the education and documentation of the history of imprisonment in the Second World War, humanitarian international law and human rights” (Reitan 2007, 12). Falstad is just one of the institutions worldwide, such as the Chile Museum of Human Rights or Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen, Belgium, which emphasize the primacy of a duty for the future over the regret of the past in the heritage of mass violence. These associate cultural heritage with the moral, social and political connotations of humanitarianism. Yet, remembering for human rights, through the “never again” perspective, no longer looks at the political and social context of the consequences that led to victims, but at the circumstances that could prevent repetition. Consequently, these strategies of representations share the general criticism about human rights and the narratives associated with it, namely that history is in a perilously de-contextualised position. The usages of narratives of human rights for memory testify to a rhetorical usage of human rights which Jessica Whyte describes as a “legal rule deployed by sovereign states and as a moralising discourse” (Whyte 2019, 13). Michel Barnett’s makes a further distinction when

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arguing “human rights revolves around legal discourse whose purpose is to further human flourishing and humanitarianism around moral sentiments whose purpose is to rescue lives at immediate risk” (Barnett 2013). In a similar vein to the statements of Gahr Store about Falstad, it is expected that “images” of war, violence and past atrocities should instil in contemporary citizens a type of conduct that avoids, for instance, radical political expression. Investigations of past politics can often contest such consensus (Koncewicz 2018). Rather than placing the focus on the memory of victims, this perspective suggests history is already processed and understood and actively informs a type of citizenship based on the shared knowledge of this abuse (Rothberg and Yildiz 2011). With that however, the very history it represents tends to be minimised and emphasised only selectively. These perspectives favour not the historical reality, but rather the lesson learned and the political results of their inferences (David 2020, 13–17). Places like Falstad show how “humanitarianism” endows cultural heritage with a political agency of preventing conflict and war, rather than reflecting on the historical and political causes. Remembering for the future glosses over the political backgrounds of these issues. The anti-totalitarian perspective instrumentalised in debates about collective memory plays upon the anti-communist dimension, rather than the anti-fascist discourse, which has been for a long time de-legitimized in reflections on the past (Howard 2010). Therefore, anti-totalitarianism affected the way liberal narratives of transnationalism have been necessarily set equal to definitions of social justice, just states and equitable belonging to society and citizenship. This perspective explicitly aligns memorialisation and commemoration to an engineering of the democratic citizenry. Collective memory is expected to imprint particular values and behaviours associated with liberal values. The political history of human rights is embedded in the rather triumphal narrative of that which the EU represents today, and is also shaped by these memorial narratives of the EU where anti-totalitarianism relies predominantly on the anti-communist perspective increasingly transcending the issue of victims. This relation leads to a distinctly apolitical notion of human rights, and avoids, for instance, considering the conservative Eurocentric roots of this discourse. This speculative dimension arguably actively generates attitudes that place responsibility on a new type of citizenry with an “involved political subject” at the centre of an imagined future. Those who familiarise themselves with these perspectives are necessarily knowledgeable political actors who benefit from the wisdom passed down by the survivor, rather than the victim. A commendable attitude that is being actively proposed also by European actors that are active in the field of memory politics, it does away with the actual historical context of the

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victims produced by these regimes (Iacob 2019). The perspective switches the attention from the witness, in this case, to the survivor and the ethical implications suggested by it in generating values for the citizen. However, it is a fragmented dimension of the history with no evident representations of the intricate perspectives on perpetratorship during genocide, for instance. The central perspective which collective memory through human rights advances is the image of the individual. Rightfully, the identity of victims who for a long time were ignored or denied a public image has been the focus of memory activism, especially in post-authoritarian contexts. An increasing focus of the current anti-totalitarian dimension in Europe around human rights has been this blind spot, where the politics of memory post-Second World War and post-1989, has focused on transitional justice, for instance, as a political project, rather than retrieving the identity of victims (Zunino 2019, 13–14). Human rights have been an instrument to disentangle those histories from political representations that often do not do justice to the past, yet they have remained, more often than not, in an ideological realm: such memorial perspectives speak about what has been won, rather than the political histories leading to these very outcomes, for instance inter-war conservatism or deeply embedded notions of the right that have permeated the social democracy sphere. When looking at the anti-communist debates around the refugee crisis, similar issues emerge; for instance, the representation and visibility of the debates about the refugees now, as non-Christian, do not seem to fit into the anti-totalitarian agenda. The racialised aspect of the antitotalitarian collective memory conversations has been often neglected, even in relation to human rights. The religious embedding of the narrative of human rights, interwoven with deeply religious and Christian strands, limits possible engagements with the necessary space of acknowledging Islam’s space in the debates about infringements on human rights, citizenship and justice (Moyn 2015, 5–8). Here, the Europeanization of the totalitarian narrative has strengthened the focus on the “internal” categories of victims, rather than the externals. For instance, these exclusions affected the way that debates about the application of human rights in the case of the newcomers in Europe took place. “Totalitarianism” operated as a warning history in the European space, and has explicitly shaped the values of the European space (Kühnhard 2009, 2–4). As a historical narrative, this entails that the perspective has focused exclusively on “internal” European victims, and therefore cannot extend to a political situation that refers, for instance, to the extra-European space. Connecting human rights with totalitarianism, in this case, entails that the common values of Europe build an exclusionary idea according to which these are restrictive and belong to privileged social categories. However, the limitations here also have to do with the way these histories have reached prominence in the last

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two decades. In the totalitarian narrative, anti-communism prevailed for the better half of the 2010s, supported explicitly by Eastern European politics of accession to the EU around 2004. Until the increasing rise of the far-right after 2012, the debates about totalitarianism’s genealogy looked at fascism as a relevant political concept for the contemporary time. The fact that the anti-fascism dimension has disappeared from cultural narratives until recently has perpetuated particular problems leading to the situations where human rights become a form of distinction and separation, rather than the opposite. With the decreasing attention to “antifascist” ideals, so has the extent of the political system’s racialized dimension.

5 Conclusion The article has shown how collective memory narratives in relation to human rights have been actively employed as an exclusionary and “othering” strategy in the current contestations of liberal norms. “Totalitarianism” has been one of the vehicles for this transformation and narratives of the past supported by ideas of human rights, and the bind between this liberal norm and anti-communism has often been visible in representations of the past and political discourse. The article has focused on two ways in which such employment has contributed to selective usage of human rights, that often help isolate one category or another and produce exclusions rather than ideas of tolerance. The connection between this type of memory and liberal democracy has triggered new forms of selective determinations of identity.

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Borders as reused objects: The case of Slovenia 1 Lines, materiality, and time In her seminal (and now revised) contribution about borders, lines, traces, and tidemarks, the anthropologist and superb border studies theoretician Sarah Green establishes that nowadays, borders are understood as processes and conceptions rather than as objects. Modern border studies have developed as a multidisciplinary opposition to the political history and geography of the 20th century, both of which have remained predominantly descriptive, have failed to address the social and political processes involved, and have perceived borders as objects (Paasi 2020; Green 2018). Contemporary border studies, however, underline borders as a belief and imagination that establishes and shapes the social reality: the emphasis is on the people and their practices, strategies, and motives (Wilson and Donnan 2012; Donnan, Hurd and Leutloff-Grandits 2019). The discussion about borders as processes and discourses, as Green underlines, has been a part of the critique of perceiving borders as fixed and relatively obvious objects that the political authorities “place” into the landscape to mark or define territories. For a good reason, the critics of this rigid outlook have cautioned that the idea of borders as lines was a part of a specific political concept of borders and that this linearity was not a natural property of borders. Border researchers have replaced the concept of lines with other metaphors in order to more easily describe the complex, fluid, and shifting reality. Supposedly, borders existed everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The consequence of this approach was, as Green underscores, that in border studies, borders as physical entities (what most people perceive as “borders”) have been relatively neglected, although the research into the architecture of border practices emphasises the hidden power of these objects (Green 2018). Sarah Green, who builds on the conviction that the concept of borders as lines is historically contingent, attempts to bring the material implications of borders closer to contemporary border studies. Primarily, she emphasises the fact that in geometry, lines are not three-dimensional or material: borders are only lines in cartographic representations. An uneasy incongruity exists between the abstract concept of lines and the materiality (and historical contingency) of borders. Fences and walls lining the borders are symbols or representations of the geometric, cartographic, and abstract concepts of borders as lines. On the other

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hand, they are also physical objects that play a certain role in maintaining the border. According to Sarah Green, the physical objects that mark the location of the border could be defined with a metaphor/concept of traces. Unlike lines, traces are material, and they also express a temporal dimension: they are physical remains of the past. As Sarah Green emphasizes, borders perceived as lines “never intended to mark multiple, fluid, networked, rhizomatic, and constantly shifting differences or relations, but precisely to conceal any such messiness”. Borders are lines, yet they are also much more than that. They are also traces, yet they are much more than that, too. To articulate the combination of lines, traces, time, and space, Sarah Green proposes a common metaphor of tidemarks (Green 2012; Green 2018). For my part, I concur with her important insight. In border research, the borders’ metaphorical and material aspects, which are always historically contingent, need to be taken into account. The metaphors of traces and tidemarks are exceedingly important for historiography. Although I do not intend to form here my own theory of borders that would bring in line the material, discursive, metaphorical, and temporal nature of borders, I have an idea based on the case studies of borders in the “Slovenian” territory: to develop the metaphor of borders as objects would be methodologically beneficial for historical research (Zajc 2018b). I agree with the foundations of modern border studies as well as with Sarah Green’s important theoretical contributions. In my opinion, a good conceptualisation of borders as objects does not encourage anachronism, determinism, and essentialism, but is instead in accordance with the multi-layered nature of borders as established by modern border studies. The conceptualisation of borders as objects does not imply that I see borders as static phenomena, but rather encourages the recognition of their historical contingency. As objects, borders constitute a (minor) part of dynamic border processes. Border as an object is merely a part of the border in its broader sense. Borders, defined in such a manner, are human-made objects. Borders are not created and shaped naturally, of their own volition: somebody needs to create them. Every human-made object requires a constructor, designer, and builders or agents who create it. The process of border construction is required as well. Many people attempt to influence the creation of objects as significant as borders. Once a border has been created, it resembles any other object. It can be processed, reconstructed, left to fall in ruins, or restored. It can be broken, bent, smoothed, etc. Metaphorically speaking, the process of constructing a border makes a certain noise, as does its reuse. The representations in the media, administration, as well as in the memory of everyone involved can be defined as reflections of this noise. Just like any product of labour, borders are alienated from their creators. In border studies, emphasising the materiality of borders is often associated with

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a static condition and a disregard for historical contingency. In my opinion, however, to conceptualise borders as objects helps us understand their historical contingency. How might one define borders as objects? In her seminal contribution, Sarah Green validly emphasises that in geometry, lines are one-dimensional abstractions without any three-dimensional or material substance (Green 2018). This is certainly true of the ideal world of mathematics and geometry, yet every representation of a border line (description, record, drawing) has a material dimension. Apart from classic drawings and records on paper, border lines have a material dimension also as a binary electronic record. In the case of a border, it is not only the abstract line that is important, but also where and how it is displayed; what status does the representation of a border line possess? In modern countries, border lines are defined by official, special maps and descriptions at an administrative level and by border stones and other markings in the actual landscape. For example, after World War I the public perceived the process of constructing new borders mostly as a placing of border stones (Mikša and Zorn 2018). Border lines perceived in this manner certainly correspond to the metaphor of borders as traces or tidemarks, even though they are more than that: they are constructed objects. Borders as objects can be defined on two levels: a) borders as objects-lines (borders as objects in the narrow sense) are material representations of border lines contained in the official descriptions/drawings as well as in the landscape (border stones, triangulation points); while b) borders as objectsinfrastructure (borders as objects in the broader sense) include the infrastructure that has, as many studies point out, a symbolic as well as control function: fences, walls, border crossings, watchtowers, zones of control by the borders, as well as the modern infrastructure for biometric border control. Naturally, borders as objects-lines and borders as objects-infrastructure only represent a part of the complex border processes. Without the placement of a border as an object in the wider context of bordering, the above conceptualisation does not have any analytical significance for border studies. The perception of borders as objects (as a part of border processes) provides one of the ways of understanding the temporal dimensions of borders (temporality). Border studies have dealt with the issue of time in various ways. Michiel Baud and Willem Van Schendel constructed a “life course” of borders as a framework for their comparative analysis. The “life cycle” of borderlands is preceded by the “embryonic borderland” (a pre-modern situation where the precisely defined territorial state does not exist; borderlands are still intertwined). The first stage in the life cycle of borderlands is the “infant borderland”, which is established immediately after the border line has been drawn (the old social and economic networks are clearly visible, the national and state identities are

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still undefined and vague). The next stage is the “adolescent borderland”. The border has become an undeniable fact, but people can still quite well remember the time before it existed. Even though the old cross-border economic relations are already confined by the existence of the new border, the old networks have not yet dissolved. This is followed by the “adult borderland” stage. The social networks now unconditionally accept the circumstances defined by the border. Cross-border social and family relations may still exist, but they become rare and are more and more often seen as problematic. The new cross-border networks (for example, established due to smuggling) are based on the acceptance of the border. The border is often seen as “eternal”, as a part of the natural order, a legacy of the earlier generations. The next stage is the “declining borderland”, when a border is losing its political significance. New cross-border and supra-border networks are established, often economic in nature, which are no longer seen as a threat to the state. The declining importance of the border can be a peaceful or violent process. The final stage of the cycle is the “defunct borderland”, when a border is abandoned and the links, caused by the border, are replaced by new networks which do not pay attention to the old divisions. The authors themselves acknowledge that the aforementioned classification is deficient due to its evolutional and deterministic implications (Baud and Van Schendel 1997). The British geographer Nick Megoran started exploring temporality using the historiographical concept of biography. In his opinion, biographical methodology can also be applied in the case of objects, not merely people. As they become “enmeshed in a texture of social and spacial relationships”, objects acquire a “secondary agency”. Megoran is convinced that the study of international borders can be advanced by crafting their biographies. The biographies of borders demonstrate how boundaries materialise, re-materialise, and dematerialise. International boundaries are both produced by and themselves produce social life. According to Megoran, international borders are social processes that are materialised (Megoran 2012). His concepts transcend the deterministic and biological analogies and are more open for the various directions in which the specific borders can develop. Baud, Willem Van Schendel, and Megoran understand time as linear and abstract, flowing only forward regardless of the temporality of the actors in the bordering process. The aforementioned Sarah Green’s metaphor of borders as tidemarks also represents, apart from a revision of the materiality of borders, the starting point for a more complex understanding of the temporality of borders: tidemarks are traces of movement that can be either repetitive or abrupt. They can also either generate long-term consequences or disappear. Basically, the concept of tidemarks does not presuppose the precise location of borders: tidemarks can appear anywhere. Donnan, Hurd, and Leutloff-Grandits,

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the editors of a renowned 2019 collective volume on the temporality of borders, understand time specifically as a category of human perception. The authors do not understand time as linear, progressive, and orderly, but rather as concurrent, parallel, and synchronic. The simultaneity of competing temporalities is emphasised, which may at times diverge, converge, overlap, or collide (Donnan, Hurd and Leutloff-Grandits 2019). Other border researchers underline the significance of memory as a way of understanding the temporality of borders. Alena Pfoser claims that memory can grasp the temporal complexity of borders in three ways: a) it makes it possible to grasp multiple relations between the past and present through the linear perception of time; b) it emphasises the existence of multiple and intersecting temporalities at different scales; c) the perspective of memory makes it possible to understand the way in which memory can contribute to the creation of borders (Pfoser 2020, 3). How can the conceptualisation of borders as objects help us understand their temporal dimensions? Already at first glance it is obvious that the history (or biography) of borders as objects is suitable for exploring the linear and abstract temporal dimension. Borders as objects-lines and objects-infrastructure have their linear history. Borders as objects are time machines, which freeze certain political divides in the landscape/institutions and move it to the future. However, borders as lines and infrastructure tend to play with time in more complicated ways. I strive to understand the temporal dimension of borders as objects through the concept of phantom borders. The phantom border concept was developed for research into the influence of former borders on the then present social reality. The memories and practices related to borders can keep manifesting themselves for a long time after the disappearance of these borders’ political and administrative aspects (von Hirschhausen, Grandits, Kraft and Müller 2015). The phantom dimension of borders as objects-lines can be understood with the concept of administrative legacy. Administrative legacy can be defined as a legacy in the form of documents, kept in the official state registries. It is closely connected to the development of the modern territorial state. The official records regarding the exterior and interior (administrative) borders represent an important part of the modern states’ administrative legacy. Administrative legacy is the phantom past, structured in the official records of the state, and it, as such, represents “the old contained in the new”. Administrative legacy is “hidden phantomness”. It is pure history in the sense of what has been preserved and recorded, something that “never dies” but also never remains the same. Every time it comes to life it acquires a different form and effect. As the political space changes, the parts of the administrative legacy that were once banal, technical, (e.g., cadastral municipality borders), can become very important (Zajc 2018a). What does this mean? The temporality “contained” in borders as objects-lines is not simple and linear.

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A border as an object-line is a “thing” that reflects the simultaneity of competing temporalities. Borders as objects-lines also exist at a lower level, not merely as borders of states or autonomous political units. Modern states are divided into several complete territorial units, delimited by borders as objects-lines. In the 19th century, the late Habsburg Empire established the most important invention for the construction of precise administrative borders: the Land Tax Cadastre (Germ. der Grundsteuerkataster). The Franciscan land cadastre/survey (ordered by the imperial edict of Francis I in 1817) was most important for the construction of administrative borders. It represented the basis for all of the subsequent cadastral measurements to date. The Cadastre divided the state’s territory into precisely delimited territorial units, called cadastral municipalities (in German: Katastralgemeinden) (Ribnikar 1982). From the very start, the cadastral municipalities were much more than a simple accessory of the tax policy. The state invented them in order to control and “exploit” the population. They still represent the smallest integral territorial unit of the state in the successor countries of the former Habsburg Monarchy (Lisec and Navratil 2014). The cadastral municipality borders are basic borders as objects-lines. As a rule, they do not possess any infrastructure and are rarely visible in the landscape. They materialise as official entries in the Land Registry and nowadays also in the electronic version of it. When the states were falling apart and then reconstituted in the 20th century, the new borders – at least in principle – corresponded to the borders of the cadastral municipalities. The conceptualisation of borders as objects (within the modern border studies paradigm) and a sensitivity for the significance of the complex temporality of borders are vital for understanding the phenomenon of the borders’ reuse, which has not been adequately attended to by border studies and historiography. Just like other human-made objects, borders can be reused in a different context. The creation of borders as objects-lines is difficult work that calls for financial resources, technical expertise, and sophisticated technology. Therefore, reusing old borders for new purposes is rational. In principle, all of the current borders of the Republic of Slovenia have been reused: the Republic of Slovenia has inherited its borders from its predecessor, the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. What happens when a specific border as an object-line is reused? Should this be seen as a reused or newly constructed border? How does the reuse of a border as an object-line, which has been constructed as an international border of former states, function, and how is this different from reusing a cadastral border as an international border? What is the role of the administrative legacy and the natural processes taking place in the landscape? In what follows, I will make a

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short presentation about three of sections of the current state border of the Republic of Slovenia, which will offer an opportunity to talk about border reuse. The purpose of these examples is not to make a detailed comparative historical analysis, but rather to demonstrate the diverse ways of reusing borders and the significance of various biographies of border sections for the borders’ current status. The history of a certain border section is inscribed/ingrained in the very structure of the border line as an object-line. The way in which such a border has been constructed and maintained (why, how, when, where it was created, and by whom) contributes to the characteristics of contemporary borders.

2 A section created as a border between entities with various statuses within the Habsburg Monarchy: From Trdinov vrh/Sveta Gera in the North to the river Kolpa in the South The section of the current Slovenian-Croatian border northeast of the city of Metlika appears as a disturbance. Asymmetrical protrusions resemble illegible handwriting rather than a rational border between two independent states. The landscape, which is dotted with the Karst hills, does not call for such a convoluted border. What has caused this anomaly? The true answer lies in the history manifesting itself in its administrative legacy. Most of the border line between Slovenia and Croatia relies on the old Habsburg border between Carniola/Styria (as Austrian provinces) and Croatia (as a part of the Kingdom of Hungary). The border near Metlika is also burdened with local history. Between the 16th and the end of the 19th centuries, the area of Žumberak (today Žumberačka gora / Žumberak Mountains in Croatia) was an enclave of the Military Frontier between Carniola and Croatia, settled by the refugees from Ottoman territory who joined the Habsburg military service (the so-called Uskoki) between the 16th and the 18th centuries. The Orthodox population of Žumberak adopted the Greek Catholic religion (Zajc 2018b). The main complication regarding the border in this area was related to the provincial law. Before the Military Frontier was organised, the Žumberak area had belonged to the province of Carniola. The Carniolan provincial institutions never renounced this region; after the Military Frontier was abolished in 1881, they demanded it back, although by that time the area had been annexed to Croatia and thus to the Hungarian part of the Monarchy. In the first half of the 19th century, several attempts were made to resolve the outstanding border questions

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at the southern border of Carniola. Between 1828 and 1846, several border commissions also dealt with the border in the area of Bela Krajina/Žumberak. The disputes took place at two levels: the provincial legal level (the demands for “ownership” of Žumberak) and the administrative level (which territories belonged to the Military Frontier and which to Carniola). The administrative and right of possession legal problems at the border were closely related to the provincial legal issues. As Žumberak “belonged” to the province of Carniola, even though it was under the military administration, the authorities took the actual property situation as the criterion for demarcation rather than the natural borders. This resulted in an extremely rugged border with a large number of enclaves. Such conditions caused numerous border disputes.

Figure 1: The Franciscan land cadastre (the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia).

The fragmented border from Žumberak to Marindol is already apparent in the military maps of Emperor Joseph II (1763–1787) (Rajšp 1995). In the context of administrative border research, what is particularly interesting is the fact that the modern land surveying methods (triangulation network) and the aspirations

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of the central authorities for comprehensive administrative units during the Enlightenment and absolutism did not contribute to the resolution of the dispute about the affiliation of Žumberak (nor the one regarding the territorial delimitation between Žumberak and Carniola). Quite the reverse: the border dispute eventually acquired new administrative dimensions that the authorities had not focused on in the earlier periods. If the earlier disputes revolved around the questions of which authority had “rights” over the people of Žumberak and the rights of the locals themselves (grazing, forests, etc.), towards the end of the 18th century the attention shifted to the bounded territory that could now even be measured precisely. The Franciscan cadastral measurement (in Carniola in 1823) revealed that the border between the Žumberak enclave and Carniola was completely fragmented and untenable (especially northeast of Metlika), and therefore perfect for inciting border disputes. The records of the early ethnographers reveal that border disputes were indeed constant in this region. The Legend of the Bloody Stone is a story about the wise elders who sacrificed two young men and buried them in the spot where the true border was supposedly located. The stone started bleeding and still does so today (Zajc 2018b). Border disputes did not stop with the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918 and the establishment of the Kingdom of SHS/Yugoslavia. Although the historical rights that the arguments of the Carniolan and the Croatian side had been based on all vanished together with the “old Austria”, the confusion regarding the administrative borders persisted. Carniola no longer existed, and the Croatian autonomy based on the Croatian state law was gone as well. The former Carniolan-Croatian border became merely an administrative line between different administrative units. After the abolishment of the Provincial Government for Slovenia on 12 July 1921, the Slovenian part of the Kingdom of SHS was no longer united in a single administrative unit. The Yugoslav Slovenia was divided into the Ljubljana and Maribor administrative units. After the establishment of the King’s dictatorship in 1929, in October of that year, a decree divided Yugoslavia into nine Banates instead of the previous 33 administrative units. Most of the Slovenian part of the state was merged into a single administrative area: the Drava Banate. The Slovenian districts of Črnomelj and Metlika were annexed to the Sava Banate based in Zagreb. This delimitation remained in place until 31 August 1931, when the King, at the request of the Slovenian People’s Party, signed the legislation to change the border: the districts of Črnomelj and Metlika were annexed to the “Slovenian” Drava Banate. The Žumberak municipality of Radatovići remained in the context of the Drava Banate (the district of Črnomelj) (Šmid 2003). After World War II, the former border between Carniola and Croatia (until 1918) or the border between the Drava and Sava Banate (1931–41) acquired the

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status of the border between two Yugoslav republics. The year 1945 brought the most profound changes to this section of the border. The Radatovići municipality was annexed to Croatia, while 335 hectares of the Sekulići cadastral municipality with the settlement of Drage were excluded from the Croatian municipality of Radatovići and annexed to the district of Metlika. The annexation of this area – 3.35 square kilometres in size – to Slovenia was carried out “at the express wish of the affected people” who depended on the Slovenian side in terms of economy and transport, while in the school, their children kept learning in the Serbo-Croatian language. The border remained completely fragmented, yet this did not cause any major problems for the local population during socialist Yugoslavia (Gabrič 2018). The administrative phantom border as an object-line only revealed its power after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. In 1992, the majority of the population in the Žumberak villages of Radatovići and Dragoševci signed a petition to annex these settlements to Slovenia. Even though their intention was substantiated with practical reasons (the area was surrounded by Slovenia and the people worked in Slovenia) rather than national considerations, the Croatian authorities reacted harshly to the initiative: the organiser of the petition had to spend a year in prison (Knežević 2004). Over the course of more than three centuries, various authorities would organise many border commissions and committees. Although the border was often being “smoothed out”, the fragmentation, at least in its basic aspects, has remained until today. Two moments are important from the viewpoint of border line construction in the longue durée perspective: (1) border disputes (even within the 19th century empires) tend to be passed on to the future. Only the most concrete and pressing issues at the lower levels get resolved. As a rule, provisional solutions become permanent; (2) administrative records (especially cartographic ones) are stronger than any state-legal framework. In the 20th century, the state-legal context would change often, while the administrative heritage was mostly succeeded by new states after the demise of the old ones. If nowadays the state-legal demands of Croatia or Carniola based on the historical law are outdated in the political sense (they literally no longer apply), we could hardly claim this of the 19th-century cadastre, which the current cadastres of both countries are still based on (Zajc 2018b). In 2015, the fragmented border was additionally complicated by the refugee crisis. Slovenia decided to build a fence to control the influx of refugees, yet it has still not been erected at this section of the border when this article was submitted.

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Figure 2: Section on the map Lechner’s General-Karte von Krain, 1910 (available in free access on Sistory.si).

3 A section created as a border between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of SHS (the 1920 Treaty of Rapallo) This section of the current border1 between Italy and Slovenia is interesting because it is the only remainder of the border as an object-line based on the bilateral Treaty of Rapallo, signed in 1920. According to this Treaty, extensive areas

1 From the Peč mountain in the Karawanks (the triple border between Slovenia, Austria, and Italy) in the north to the V koncu špice peak in the Julian Alps in the south.

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with Slovenian and Croatian-speaking population went to Italy (these would later be annexed to socialist Yugoslavia [Slovenia and Croatia] after World War II). Before 1918, the area in the northeast of what is currently Italy had belonged to the Habsburg Monarchy (Wohinz-Kacin and Troha 2001). The Kanalska dolina / Val Canale valley along the river Bela / Fella with the city of Trbiž / Tarvisio / Tarvis were a part of the province of Carinthia, while the iron mine settlement of Bela Peč / Fusine in Valromana belonged to the province of Carniola (Mikša and Zorn 2018). Although the Entente had not promised this area to Italy with the London Agreement of 1915, the victorious Italian forces nevertheless occupied it after the end of World War I. In 1919 and 1920, based on the Treaty of Saint-Germain and subsequently also the Treaty of Rapallo, Italy negotiated for itself the entire territory of the Val Canale valley as well as the Carniolan settlement of Bela Peč. According to the Kingdom of Italy, the official reason was completely defensive; Italy would supposedly control the main strategic valleys where military movement was significantly easier than through the mountainous world of the Julian Alps (Cattaruzza 2016). The population of the Val Canale valley – mostly farmers who spoke Slovenian – found itself in a complicated situation virtually overnight: all the previous balances of power were abolished, their entire linguistic repertoire became useless, and their literacy, mostly in the German language, was now irrelevant. The ethnic self-determination of the inhabitants of this valley was influenced by the dramatic political, demographic, and linguistic political changes in the valley after its annexation to Italy in 1919: the inhabitants were forced to opt for either German or Italian citizenship; there had been radical demographic changes during World War II; and the fact of the relatively extreme distance of the valley from the Slovenian centre in Yugoslavia as well as from the other Slovenian border communities in Italy and Austria. As ethnicity researchers have established, in the Val Canale valley at the end of the 20th century, the speakers of the native Slovenian dialect did not automatically associate their language with the cultural/ethnic or national Slovenianism (Šumi 1998, 33). The Treaty of Rapallo (of 12 November 1920) determined the new state border with a description. It assumed that the border line would adhere to the following geographical points, corresponding to the peaks and ridges of the following mountains: Peč – Jalovec – Triglav – Bogatin – Možic – Porezen – Črni vrh nad Cerknim – Krnice pri Novakih – Špehovše – Bevkov vrh – Hotedršica – Planina – Javornik nad Cerknico – Bička Gora – Snežnik – Kastav – the city of Rijeka (Mikša and Zorn 2018, 612). At this section, the border as an object-line was created completely anew without paying any attention to the previous administrative and cadastral borders. The new Rapallo border in this area deprived the former Carniola of a rather extensive piece of land. It cut into the Radovljica district and appropriated

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the entire cadastral municipality of Bela Peč (German Weißenfels, Italian Fusine and Valromana) as well as a part of the territory of the Rateče cadastral municipality (Mikša and Zorn 2018). Constructing the border as an object-line in this section was not simple. The Treaty of Rapallo assumed that joint border commissions would be formed. On 23 February 1921, the delimitation commission in charge of the northern part of the Rapallo border met for the first time in Ljubljana. It carried out most of its work up to the end of 1921, except in the Julian Alps and in the section under consideration. The cadastral municipality of Rateče was the most disputable. The Yugoslav side demanded the entire cadastral municipality, while the Italian side insisted that it be divided in accordance with the Treaty of Rapallo. The process of constituting the border line also had a significant public impact. On the Yugoslav side, the inhabitants of Rateče requested that the government in Belgrade should exert its influence on the commission and prevent the division of the cadastral municipality. They complained that many landowners had land beyond the demarcation line. The people allegedly also suffered damages because their rights to firewood and grazing in the state forests, which would now go to Italy, were restricted. The Yugoslav side did not yield; towards the end of 1922, it proposed that the Swiss Confederation carry out an arbitration regarding the unresolved sections of the border. At the meeting in August 1924, just two sections remained unresolved: the area of Rateče and the Planina section. The dispute regarding the municipality of Rateče was not resolved until 1926, when the delimitation commission finalised its work and Yugoslavia lost a small part of the Rateče cadastral municipality (Žorž 2016). The delimitation commission created this border as an object-line meticulously (similarly as with the other state borders after World War I). For the purposes of the delimitation, cartographic measurements on a scale of 1: 5000 were carried out between 1920 and 1925 by the members of the Italian military geography institute (Istituto Geografico Militare) from Florence. Apart from the border line itself, these maps also indicate all the border stones. After the border was drawn on paper, it also had to be marked with border stones in the field. To mark the border, both delegations decided to use concrete border stones in the form of a prism, constructed with reinforced concrete and attached to the rocky surface where possible (Mikša and Zorn 2018, 612). The border section under consideration turned out to be surprisingly stable. After the attack of the Axis Powers against Yugoslavia in April 1941, it became a part of the border between Italy and Germany. Although the Yugoslav Partisan forces occupied the Val Canale valley in May 1945, they had to withdraw under pressure from the Western Allies. The post-war division (1945–47) of Venezia Giulia into Zone A (under the administration of the Western Allies) and Zone B

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Figure 3: Slovenian-Italian border near Rateče / Bela peč (Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, The Anton Melik Geographical Institute, 2020).

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(under the Yugoslav administration) started south of this section. On 18 September 1945 in London, Yugoslavia demanded that the former border between Austria-Hungary and Italy be reinstated with certain adjustments, but the Allies did not agree. Most of the proposals for border changes took into account the aforementioned section. The northern and central part of the Yugoslav-Italian border was set out with the peace treaty concluded with Italy (10 February 1947), which established the Free Territory of Trieste in the south (1947–1954). From the viewpoint of the materiality of the border as an object-line, the reuse of the former border between Austro-Hungary and Italy in the mountains and hills between Predel / Predil and Goriška brda hills is very interesting. I am referring to the section of the border that was reused after not having existed for 29 years (Troha 2005). Italy and Yugoslavia did not acknowledge their mutual delimitation until as late as the Treaty of Osimo (1975), which also settled a few minor territorial ambiguities, while the independent state of Slovenia became the legal successor to the Treaty of Osimo on 31 July 1992 (Škorjanec 2007). The analysis conducted by the Anton Melik Geographical Institute reveals that the border stones, erected by the delimitation commission between 1921 and 1926, are still in use at this section (see Figure 3). How does one explain the stability of the border as an object-line in this area? The border line does not follow any rivers or ridges that could be defined as a “natural border”, but instead runs through a narrow Alpine valley. It is also obvious that the border line did not adhere to linguistic or any other ethnically defined criteria. One of the reasons for this stability is definitely the proximity of the Austrian-Italian-Yugoslav triple border. After World War II, the new authorities in Vienna argued for the restoration of Austria within its pre-war borders, and the Allies supported this idea as well. The triple border represented a crucial geographical point that guaranteed the stability of the sensitive border between three states entangled in a knot of mutual territorial demands (Troha 2005).

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4 An example of a section created from the cadastral municipality borders at the border river between two Yugoslav republics: The Slovenian-Croatian border at the river Mura between Hotiza (Slovenia) and Mursko Središće (Croatia) The river Mura is a part of the Black Sea drainage basin, a left-bank tributary of the river Drava. It is a snow-fed river system and belongs among lowland rivers, characterised by frequent riverbed changes on the flood plains, meandering, and frequent floods. Due to the hydrological characteristics and lowlands environment, the downstream part of Mura has always kept changing. Mura represents three borders for a total distance of 115 km (25 % of the whole river). First, it divides Slovenia and Austria between the villages of Ceršak and Petanjci (for a distance of over 33 km); then Slovenia and Croatia between Gibina and Krka (almost 34 km); and finally, Hungary and Croatia for a distance of 48 km between Krka and until it flows into the river Drava (Zajc 2019).

Figure 4: The river Mura border (Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, The Anton Melik Geographical Institute, 2019).

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No official border as an object-line, recognised by both states, exists at this section. Only the delimitation between the Slovenian and Croatian cadastral municipalities exists (the so-called cadastral border), which is, in practice – apart from the consensus that the Mura represents the border in this sector – the only precise delimitation between the states. The main problem stems from the fact that due to the meandering of the river, the cadastral border does not correspond to the current basin of the border river Mura. The borders between cadastral municipalities were determined with the first systematic cadastral measurement in Hungary in the 1860s and were not intended to perform the role of administrative, let alone international borders. After it attained its independence in 1991, Slovenia argued for the position that the border with Croatia followed the basin of the river Mura, while Croatia supported strict adherence to the line between the Slovenian and Croatian cadastral municipalities as the true border between the states. In November 2009, Slovenia and Croatia submitted their border disputes to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague. The PCA Final Award (2017) suggested that the cadastral border in the Mura region should be acknowledged by both countries as the state border, with one minor exception. The interpretations of the Mura as the “true” Slovenian-Croatian border river, emphasised by the Slovenian negotiation team in the Hague, were not successful. The Slovenian side counted predominantly on the division of administrative units (the so-called oblast or banovina) in the period of the Kingdom of SHS/ Yugoslavia (1923–1941) and the fact that the left bank of the Mura had been in the hands of the Slovenian administration until as late as 1991. Since Croatia has not accepted the PCA decision due to the maritime border in the Bay of Piran, the issue of the exact borderline remains open (Zajc 2019). At this section, the Mura also separates the Slovenian region of Prekmurje from the Croatian Međimurje region. Before 1918, Prekmurje only existed as a concept of the Slovenian nationalists, as “the Slovenian land” on the other (Hungarian) side of the Mura. In the administrative sense, before 1918, the territory of Prekmurje was divided into two counties: Železna (Vas) and Zala County. Međimurje (the area between the Styrian-Hungarian border and the rivers Mura and Drava) was a part of Zala County. In the period from 1848 to 1918, the region of Međimurje was the subject of a dispute between the central Hungarian authorities in Budapest and the Croatian autonomy. In 1848, the Croatian leader (Ban) Josip Jelačić annexed Međimurje to the Croatian administration, while in 1861, it was excluded from the Croatian autonomy by the Hungarian government. Until 1918, the section of the Mura between Radgona and Gibina represented the border river between Austria and Hungary, while from Gibina to its mouth, it had the status of a Hungarian interior river. After the consolidation of new states in the region in 1920, the Mura retained the status of a border river,

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but at a different section and with another country. The new Austrian-Yugoslav border was established on the river Mura between Cmurek and Radgona, while the section of the river between Radgona and Podturen – the point where the border with Hungary began – now became the interior river of the Kingdom of SHS. The section of the river between Radgona and Razkrižje lost the status of being a border river after more than five hundred years. There was no border between Slovenia and Croatia at the time, as neither the Slovenian nor Croatian political unit existed in the framework of the Kingdom of SHS/Yugoslavia. In 1923, the government divided the country into 33 administrative units called the oblast. Following a brief period of belonging to the “Croatian” Zagreb provincial administration (1918–1923), after the oblast administrative units were formed, the entire Međimurje region became a part of the “Slovenian” Maribor administrative unit (1924–1929). Only six years later, the administrative units were abolished and replaced with the so-called Banates (banovina) as new, more centralised regional units in the era of the 6th of January Dictatorship. In 1929, Međimurje fell under the “Croatian” Sava Banate, based in Zagreb (Zajc 2019). In the period between 1945 and 1991, the Mura did not “actively” appear in the international (or inter-republican) disputes. The nature of the border between two Yugoslav federal units did not call for a precise demarcation or division of jurisdiction. It is important for the future development of the events that the equating of the Slovenian-Croatian border with the cadastral border took place rather late. The border between Slovenia and Croatia might have had an administrative and state-legal character (the Yugoslav republics were defined as “states”). However, in the field, the boundary line was not defined precisely until as late as 1980. In 1980, the legislation on municipalities changed in Slovenia, and now set out that the territories of the municipalities should correspond to the cadastral municipalities. As the border between Slovenia and Croatia had been defined descriptively as the border between the Slovenian and Croatian municipalities, the border between the Slovenian and Croatian cadastres de facto became the Slovenian-Croatian boundary line (Demšar 1992). In March 2005, the Croatian side started building a bridge across the Mura without any prior agreement with Slovenia. Because of the bridge, the Slovenian authorities protested more than once. According to the opinion of the Slovenian water experts, the bridge worsened the local flood safety. In August 2005 the Mura flooded, and it turned out that new embankments would need to be constructed on both banks of the river in order to improve flood safety. However, who would do the building in the territory under dispute? Towards the end of August 2006, the Croatian side started building embankments on the left bank of the Mura (in the Croatian cadastre), without asking the Slovenian government for permission. After the meeting of both Prime Ministers in the disputed territory

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Figure 5: River and border line (Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, The Anton Melik Geographical Institute, 2019).

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on 2 September 2006, an agreement was reached on the joint construction of embankments on the river Mura. The border dispute culminated on 13 September 2006 when the Croatian police detained a few Slovenian journalists due to their alleged illegal crossing of the state border. The Slovenian authorities reacted immediately and made a show of force, deploying a fully outfitted special police unit to the border. The conflict was appeased after the agreement of the Slovenian-Croatian Commission for Water Management of 15 September 2006 on the joint restoration of the high-water embankment Kot-Hotiza on the left bank of the Mura (Zajc 2019). In the autumn of 2015, another layer was added to the rich tradition of ambiguous borders and boundaries in the region as the “anti-migrant” border fence at the Slovenian-Croatian border was constructed due to the refugee crisis. The border at the river Mura literally became a wall of “Fortress Europe” (Bajt and Frelih 2019). The villagers of Hotiza were not happy with the erection of the razor wire border fence. They feared that placing such a fence in this area would create new misunderstandings between the two countries and hoped that it was a temporary measure. Since most of the locals own land on the other side of the border, they were concerned about how they would manage to farm the land through which the fence ran. The Slovenian state provided them with compensation, but the village of Hotiza complained that the amount offered to its inhabitants was allegedly too modest (Gomboc 2016). To be precise, the border fence erected by the Slovenian government does not follow the exact border line that the Slovenian government advocates, especially near the border rivers – the fence had to be erected on Slovenian soil. Two different variations of the border have come into existence since 2015: a) the administrative border line marked in the official registries, which has not yet been confirmed due to the dispute with Croatia; b) the unofficial border line of the bordering practice in the landscape, which is becoming permanent due to the inability of the EU to tackle the issue of migration.

5 Conclusion What can we learn from the examples of reusing the borders as described above? The various sections of the border can have completely different biographies that provide them with specific characteristics. It is obvious that the above examples of the reuse of sections of borders are not equal. We are discussing three different manners of reuse. In the first example, the border as an object-line had a good tradition of delimitation (documentation), but not consistently enough to function as a state border. Difficulties stem precisely from the rich Habsburg administrative (and geodesic) legacy. Although the state border, created by reusing the

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administrative border, does not suit its role, it is very difficult to alter it. Already its impractical structure produces border disputes, which are then passed on to the future instead of being addressed. In the second case, however, we can establish that an almost complete reuse of the border has taken place. State borders simply have different characteristics and are constituted in a different manner. Those who determine such borders must take into account different arguments than the creators of the cadastral borders. Reusing state borders as another state’s borders presupposes stability, based on the precise work carried out by those who constructed the border with significant efforts (border stones as well as special maps are brought back into use again). Border lines can change due to environmental reasons. Of course, we are merely talking about borders as objects-lines, as this is the only stable component in this case. The complex border processes and borders as objects-infrastructure are much more dynamic. In the last example (the border at the river Mura near Hotiza), a status change took place: first, from cadastral or geodesic borders to the border between two federal units, and then to an international border. If we perceive borders as useful objects, we can say that this border was used for a higher purpose even though it was neither appropriate nor created for this purpose. Indirectly, border rivers as dynamic environmental elements can cause nationalistically motivated border disputes. In the first part of this contribution, I proposed the term “border as an objectline” to define the material representations of border lines in the official descriptions and landscape, based on my own research into the history of the Slovenian borders as well as in line with the modern border studies of the significance of the borders’ materiality and temporality in the processes of delimitation. The term “border as an object-infrastructure”, however, defines the materialised infrastructure “around” the border line, which possesses a symbolic as well as supervisory value. Borders as objects are merely a minor part of the whole story of borders. The conceptualisation of the materiality of borders as traces and tidemarks allows for a connection between the broader border processes and the materiality of borders. How should we use the metaphor of traces in the case of borders as objects-lines? It seems that we are not dealing with a single trace, but rather with an abundance of traces from different periods, related to what is, in principle, a one-dimensional border-line. Would it be better, in this case, to use a more geological metaphor, namely, of layers? Geological layers are material, yet nevertheless reveal the dynamic processes that occurred in the past. How about the metaphor of tidemarks, in our case? Sarah Green explained that a “tidemark also combines space and historical time, and envisages both space and time as being lively and contingent”. Any reuse of the already established borders as objects can be defined as a new “wave”, while the effects of this reuse can be referred to as a tidemark. The expression “tidemark” is, apart from “the mark left in

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the sand by the water” also defined as “the vertical measuring post that measures the height of the tide” (Green 2018, 81). Borders as objects can be imagined as measuring posts, indicating the undulation of the dynamic social processes involved in the delimitation as well as in the transcendence of borders.

Literature Bajt, Veronika, and Mojca Frelih. 2019. “Crimmigration in Slovenia.” Dve domovini / Two Homelands 49/13: DOI:10.3986/dd.v0i49.7251. Baud, Michiel, and Willem Van Schendel. 1997. “Toward a Comparative History of Borderlands.” Journal of World History 8/2: 211–242. Cattaruzza, Marina. 2016. Italy and Its Eastern Border, 1866–2016. New York and London: Routledge. Demšar, Božo. 1992. “Ureditev državne meje Slovenije s Hrvaško.” Geodetski vestnik 36/4: 298–303. Donnan, Hastings / Hurd, Madeleine / Leutloff-Grandits, Carolin (eds.). 2017. Migrating Borders and Moving Times: Temporality and the Crossing of Borders in Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Gabrič, Aleš. 2018. “Ustvarjanje meje v jugoslovanski državi.” In Ustvarjanje slovenskohrvaške meje, edited by Marko Zajc, 69–88. Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino. Gomboc, Samanta. 2016. “Domačini ob bodeči žici se počutijo kot v vzporednem svetu.” 16 November 2016, sobotainfo.com, URL: https://sobotainfo.com/novica/lokalno/doma cini-ob-bodeci-zici-se-pocutijo-kot-v-vzporednem-svetu/116365. Accessed on 15 January 2021. Green, Sarah. 2012. “A Sense of Border.” In A Companion to Border Studies, edited by Thomas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan, 573–592. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Green, Sarah. 2018. “Line‘s, traces, and tidemarks: further reflections on forms of border.” In The Political Materialities of Borders: New Theoretical Directions, edited by Olga Demetriou and Rozita Dimova, 67–83. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hirschhausen von, Béatrice; Grandits, Hannes et al., eds. 2015. Phantomgrenzen, Räumen und Akteure in der Zeit neu denken. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag. Kacin-Wohinz, Milica, and Nevenka Troha, eds. 2001. Slovensko-italijanski odnosi 1880–1956 / I raporti italo-sloveni 1880–1956 / Slovene-Italian relations 1880–1956: Poročilo slovensko-italijanske zgodovinsko-kulturne komisije / Relazione della commissione storico-culturale italo-slovena / Report of the Slovene-Italian historical and cultural commission. Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino. Knežević Hočevar, Duška. 2004. “’Kri ni voda’: potomci Uskokov ob slovensko-hrvaški meji.” Razprave in gradivo 45/1: 126–143. Lisec, Anka, and Gerhard Navratil. 2014. “Avstrijski zemljiški kataster.” Geodetski vestnik 58/3: 482–516. Megoran, Nick. 2012. “Rethinking the Study of International Boundaries: A Biography of the Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Boundary.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 10/2: 464–481.

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Mikša, Peter; Zorn, Matija. 2018. “Rapalska meja: četrt stoletja obstoja in stoletje dediščine.” In: Nečakov zbornik: procesi, teme in dogodki iz 19. in 20. stoletja. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, str. 605–641. Paasi, Anssi. 2012. “Border Studies Re-animated: Going Beyond the Relational/Territorial Divide.” Environment and Planning 44/10: 2303–2309. Paasi, Anssi. 2020. “Political Borders.” In International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, edited by Audrey Kobayashi, 15–24. Oxford: Elsevier. Pfoser, Alena. 2020. “Memory and Everyday Borderwork: Understanding Border Temporalities” Geopolitics, DOI:10.1080/14650045.2020.1801647. Rajšp, Vincenc, ed. 1995. Slovenija na vojaškem zemljevidu 1763–1787, part 1, Ljubljana: Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU and Arhiv Republike Slovenije. Ribnikar, Peter. 1982. “Zemljiški kataster kot vir za zgodovino.” Zgodovinski časopis 36/4: 321–337. Škorjanec, Viljenka. 2007. Osimska pogajanja. Koper: Znanstveno-raziskovalno središče. Šmid, Gašper. 2003. Uprava Dravske banovine 1929–1941. Ljubljana: Arhiv Republike Slovenije. Šumi, Irena. 1998. “Ker živimo na tromeji: Poznavanje, vrednotenje in raba slovenskih kodov pri starših otrok-slušateljev zasebnega pouka slovenščine v Kanalski dolini.” Razprave in gradivo 33: 31–56. Troha, Nevenka. 2005. “Urejanje mejnih vprašanj.” In Slovenska novejša zgodovina: od programa Zedinjena Slovenija do mednarodnega priznanja Republike Slovenije 1848–1992, edited by Zdenko Čepič et al., 908–915. Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino. Willson, M. Thomas / Donnan, Hastings. 2012. A Companion to Border Studies. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Zajc, Marko. 2018a. “Obsedena meja.” In Ustvarjanje slovensko-hrvaške meje, edited by Marko Zajc, 5–12. Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino. Zajc, Marko. 2018b. “Ustvarjanje upravnih meja v Beli krajini.” In Ustvarjanje slovenskohrvaške meje, edited by Marko Zajc, 15–28. Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino. Zajc, Marko. 2019. “Administrative legacy and the river Mura border dispute between Slovenia and Croatia.” Südosteuropa: Zeitschrift für Gegenwartsforschung 67/3: 369–392. Žorž, Grega. 2016. Varovanje rapalske meje in vojaška navzočnost na območju XI. Armadnega zbora: magistrsko delo. Ljubjana: Univerza v Ljubljani – Filozofska fakulteta.

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Boundary stones: Standing witnesses of World War II borders in present-day Slovenia 1 Introduction With regard to physical and cultural geography, Slovenia is situated on the “border”. Four important European natural geographic units meet in its territory (the Alps, the Mediterranean, the Dinaric Alps, and the Pannonian Plain), as do four main groups of languages (Slavic, Germanic, Romance, and Finno-Ugric) (Perko, Ciglič, and Zorn 2020, 13; Perko and Ciglič 2020, 211). The consequence of this natural and cultural “draught” led to various authorities aspiring to control this space. To mark “their” territory, different authorities had to place boundary markers, thus leaving behind material remnants, some of which will be addressed in this paper, namely, boundary stones. A boundary stone (also border stone, border marker or boundary marker) “ . . . is a physical marker that identifies the start of a land boundary or the change in a boundary, especially a change in direction . . . Boundary markers have often been used to mark critical points on boundaries between countries, states or local administrations . . . ”, and one might add, private landholdings as well. Traditionally they were often made of stone, but later also of concrete or a mixture of materials. “They are typically placed at a notable or especially visible point. Many are inscribed with relevant information, such as the abbreviation of the boundary holder and often a date” (Guo 2018, 56). The importance of a border and its marking can be traced back for a few thousand years concurrent with the development of arable farming and permanent settlement, which was when the question of ownership of land came to the forefront (Waldhäusl et al. 2014). For instance, arable land was measured meticulously in Mesopotamia and boundary stones referred to as kudurru were placed on boundaries of estates in Babylon (Simmerding 1996, 17). Moving border stones

Acknowledgement: The work was supported by the Slovenian Research Agency through research programs: “The Slovene History” (P6-0235) and “The Geography of Slovenia” (P6-0101) and research projects “Make This Land German . . . Italian . . . Hungarian . . . Croatian! The Role of the Occupation Border in the Denationalization Policy and the Lives of the Slovene Population” (J6-8248) and “Creating, Maintaining, Reusing: Border Commissions as a Key to Understanding Contemporary Borders” (J6-2574). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110712766-005

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was an offence, even a crime. It says in the Bible (Deuteronomy 27: 17), inter alia, that “Cursed be anyone who moves his neighbor’s landmark”. Moving boundary stones between plots of land was punished severely in ancient Egypt, e.g., by cutting off one’s ears or forced labour. Demarcation by means of boundary stones was commonplace in ancient Greece and boundary stones placed between estates were referred to as horos (Simmerding 1996, 24–25). Homer wrote about two neighbours arguing about boundary stones; “as two men with measuring-rods in hand strive about the landmark-stones in a common field” (Homer 1924, 12, 421–423). Etruscans were familiar with boundary stones (tular), as were Romans (terminus), who had a series of liminal deities, with Jupiter, the chief Roman deity, being the protector of boundary stones. One can read about the cult of boundary stones in works penned by the Roman poets Ovid and Virgil (Simmerding 1996, 32). Ovid wrote (Robillard et al. 2009, 6): “O Terminus, whether thou art a stone or a stump buried in the field, . . . thou dost set bounds to people and cities and vast kingdoms . . . ”. Roman law defined moving boundary stones as a serious crime that was punishable by death (Simmerding 1996, 36). The largest border structure in the world, the Great Wall of China, whose beginnings date back to centuries BC, the Roman limes in present-day Germany (Philippi 2014, 7) or Hadrian’s Wall in Britania, as the northern border of the Roman Empire, all bear witness to the importance of borders. Boundary stones dating back to Roman times can be found in Slovenia as well (Šašel Kos 2002). In this paper, we focus on the boundary stones in the territory of present-day Slovenia, which were placed during WWII as demarcation points between new state borders running through this territory. Slovenia, at the time, was divided among four states (the German Reich, the Kingdom of Italy, the Kingdom of Hungary, and the so-called Independent State of Croatia) (Repe 2019; Figure 1). This paper will focus on two borders: the one between the German Reich (hereafter Germany) and the Kingdom of Italy (hereafter Italy), the one between Germany and the Independent State of Croatia (Cro. Nezavisna Država Hrvatska – NDH, hereafter NDH). Barring a short section between Slovenia and Italy, the first border is not a present-day state border, while the latter runs predominately along the present-day state border between Slovenia and Croatia.

2 World War II borders in present-day Slovenia With the occupation of Slovene territory, there were four state borders in 1941 (Figure 1): between Germany and Italy, Germany and the Kingdom of Hungary (hereafter Hungary), Germany and the NDH, as well as Italy and the NDH. In

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Figure 1: The division of Slovene territory among four occupying states in 1941.

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total, 665.5 km of occupation borders ran across the territory of present-day Slovenia. Measuring almost 277 km in length, i.e., almost 42% of all the occupation borders, the border between Germany and Italy was the longest. It was followed by the border between Italy and the NDH (172 km or 26%), Germany and the NDH (133 km or 20%), Germany and Hungary (83 km or 13%). Slightly more than half of occupation borders (51.3%) corresponds to Slovenia’s present-day borders, while the remaining part (48.7%) ran within present-day Slovenia. The border between Germany and Italy was the longest border running within present-day Slovenia, i.e., 264 km or 95%. The remaining borders consisted of more sections that correspond with present-day borders: Italy and the NDH 171 km (99%), Germany and the NDH 115 km (86%), Germany and Hungary 44 km (52%) (Zorn, Ciglič, and Gašperič 2020, 203). With respect to relief units, the bulk of occupation borders (47%) ran along stream beds or in their immediate vicinity. Considering Slovenia’s dynamic relief, it is not surprising that they are followed by mountainous and hilly regions with 45%. A good one-seventh of the border ran along ridges of mountains and hills, and almost one-third on their slopes. Only one-tenth of the borders ran along lowlands (Zorn, Ciglič, and Gašperič 2020, 207–208). The largest share of Slovene territory, which comprised the area of the Drava Banovina in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, was occupied by Germany, i.e., almost two-thirds of it. Almost 6% was occupied by Hungary and 0.08% by the NDH. Almost one-third of the territory belonged to Italy (Table 1). Along with present-day Slovene territory to the west of the former border between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (the so-called Rapallo border), Italy occupied more than 44% of present-day Slovenia (Zorn, Ciglič, and Gašperič 2020, 208). Table 1: Size of occupied areas in the territory of the former Drava Banovina in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (Zorn, Ciglič, and Gašperič 2020, 208). area (km)

share (%)

,.

.

,.

.

.

.

NDH

.

.

Total

,.

Occupying state Germany Italy Hungary



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The territory was divided according to the treaties concluded between the occupying states. Germany and the NDH signed a treaty on 13 May 1941, Italy and the NDH five days later, and Germany and Italy on 8 July 1941. Germany and Hungary, as well as Hungary and the NDH, did not conclude a treaty because Međimurje (now a part of Croatia) had been occupied by Hungary, which the NDH opposed (Ferenc 2006, 72; Mikša and Zorn 2021). Even though the interests of Germany, Italy and Hungary were in conflict over Slovenia, Hitler totally on his own demarcated the borders between them. He did so even before the attack on Yugoslavia as seen as early as 3 April 1941 in the document “General Intentions for the Future Organisation of Administration in the Yugoslav Area” (Ger. Allgemeine Absichten für die spätere Organisation im jugoslawischen Raum). More precise instructions for the division were given on 12 April 1941 in Hitler’s special instructions for dismembering Yugoslavia (Ferenc 2006, 72; Mikša and Zorn 2021). The directives specified that Slovene Styria, along with a zone measuring 90 km in length and up to 15 km in width to the south of the river Sava, and Upper Carniola would be given to Germany, the region of Prekmurje would belong to Hungary, and the rest of the Slovene territory to Italy. Thus, the German occupier annexed almost two-thirds of the former Drava Banovina with a population of 798,700 (according to the 1931 census); Italy less than a third with a population of 336,279; and Hungary less than 6% with a population of 102,867. This division remained in effect even after conferences “on the organisation of the Yugoslav area” held in Vienna on 18 and 19 April 1941 (Ferenc 1968, 139; Mikša and Zorn 2021). The exact layout of boundaries on the terrain was later defined by intergovernmental commissions, that is, by the autumn of 1941. Interestingly, neither Hungarians, Italians, nor Germans were satisfied with the final division (Celar 2002, 37). The regimes on these borders were different, as was life in these areas. Some borders were much more fortified than others; they included minefields, barbed wire fences, bunkers, etc. To allow better control of the area, the occupiers often demolished buildings near the border and thinned out forests (Mikša and Zorn 2020b, 36).

3 The German-Italian border in the Alps The longest occupation border was between Germany and Italy. It had two branches – to the east and west of Ljubljana (the present-day capital of Slovenia). The river Sava could have served as a natural boundary for the branch to the east of Ljubljana (the city was part of Italy); however, the Germans also

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wanted to control the territory across the river Sava in order to defend the economically important area. Consequently, the border was set to the south of the river, to the benefit of Germany. The branch running to the west of Ljubljana ran through the Polhov Gradec Hills as far as the former pre-war Rapallo border between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. From there it turned towards the north following the pre-war Rapallo border and crossing the pre-Alpine Cerkno-Škofja Loka Hills and the central Julian Alps, terminating at the present-day tripoint between Austria, Slovenia and Italy. For the purpose of this study, boundary stones were surveyed in the section of the border to the west of Ljubljana, particularly its north-western part, which traverse the mountainous world of the Julian Alps, and in its western part, which went along the pre-Alpine Cerkno-Škofja Loka hills. As mentioned above, this section of the border was based on the pre-war Rapallo border (Figure 1), i.e., the border between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (subsequently the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). The Rapallo Border was the result of a treaty signed in Santa Margherita Ligure near Rapallo (Italy) in 1920, which defined the border between both countries after World War I (Mikša and Zorn 2018, 606; Zorn and Mikša 2018, 166). It is relatively easy to identify boundary stones in this section of the border because the WWII border made use of boundary markers identifying the pre-war Rapallo border, for which detailed delimitation maps were produced between 1920 and 1925 at a scale of 1:5,000 (Figure 2). These maps were produced by the Italian Military Geographical Institute (Ital. Istituto Geografico Militare) in Florence. In addition to the border itself, these maps also contain all boundary stones with the data on their elevation, distance from the previous and to the next boundary stones, and the cumulative distance from the boundary stone standing at the prewar tripoint between Austria, Italy and Yugoslavia. The border was divided into sectors, which were separated by the “main” boundary stones inscribed with Arabic numerals. The year 1920 was featured on them, denoting the date when the Treaty of Rapallo was signed, as well as the letter “I” on the face that was turned towards Italy and the abbreviation “SHS” (Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes or, subsequently, “J” for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) which was pointing towards Yugoslavia. In addition to Arabic numerals denoting sectors, a consecutive Roman numeral was added to indicate the “secondary” boundary stone’s position within the sector. Alongside the line pointing towards the previous and the next boundary stones, the top surface of the boundary stones also indicate north (Mikša and Zorn 2018, 613, 615–616; Zorn and Mikša 2018, 171–174). That section of the Rapallo border which became the border between Germany and Italy in 1941 is covered by 43 delimitation maps; these maps include 1,993 “Rapallo” boundary stones. In 1941, these boundary stones took on the role of marking the new border. With the

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formation of the new state border, the letter “D” was chiselled on the German side of boundary stones (Figure 4E), replacing the previous letter “J”. The Italian side of the boundary stones still featured the letter “I”. The course of the new border coincided with the pre-war Rapallo border from the former tripoint between Austria, Italy and Yugoslavia as far south as the main boundary stone no. 40 (Figure 2) near Spodnji Vrsnik, where the new border took a turn to the east, in the direction of the Polhov Gradec Hills and Ljubljana. The numbers on boundary stones in the area where the WWII border overlapped with the pre-war Rapallo border remained unchanged. The fact that all “Rapallo” boundary stones were marked on the aforementioned maps allowed for their digitalization and, consequently, the determination of geographic coordinates for each boundary stone. Based on this, point (for boundary stones) and line (for the borderline) vector data layers were produced, enabling a detailed insight into the course of the Rapallo border and its boundary stones in the present-day landscape (e.g., via the Internet portal “Rapalska meja”; Zgodovinsko društvo rapalska meja 2021). We can thus find the location of each boundary stone (Figure 3). According to the data found in the literature, somewhere between one-quarter and one-half of the boundary stones of the Rapallo border are still preserved within individual sectors (Pečelin 2003). Our research shows that within border Sectors 15 and 16 above the forest line in the high mountains of the Julian Alps about one-seventh (12) out of a total of 82 boundary stones still stand and for almost two-thirds (50) of the boundary stones, their location were identified. Their shares can also be significantly smaller. Within Sector 8 (Figure 3), which is located in the high mountains of the Julian Alps as well, less than a quarter (7) of locations were identified out of a total of 29 boundary stones, of which only one still stands. In the pre-Alpine Cerkno-Škofja Loka Hills, below the forest line within Sectors 31 and 32, the locations of one-eighth (13) of the boundary stones were identified out of a total of 104; less than one-tenth (9) of boundary stones still stand. The poor state of preservation (of many boundary stones) is partly associated with their intentional and unintentional (due to tillage or expansion of traffic routes) removal after the “fall” of the border, as well as with weathering and other natural processes (Mikša and Zorn 2018; Zorn and Mikša 2021). After Italy’s capitulation in September 1943 and after the German forces had seized control of the territory it had occupied, the border was no longer necessary because Italian provinces became part of what was called the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral (Ger. Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland), with Trieste as its centre (Nartnik, Mikša, and Knez 2019, 98). Specific parts of the border were still guarded to prevent partisans from crossing it. Formally, the Italian-German border was preserved; in 1943 the Italian Social Republic (the Republic of Salò) was formed in northern Italy (Ferenc 2006, 361; Repe and Ajlec 2020, 24). After

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Figure 2: (A) Detail of a map at a scale of 1:5,000, showing the course of the Rapallo border near the settlement of Spodnji Vrsnik (map no. 43), and which was produced in the years

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the end of World War II in 1945 and up to 1947, the territory to the west of the prewar Rapallo border was under the Yugoslav military administration (Troha 2005; Mikša and Zorn 2018; Zorn and Mikša 2018). Following the official discontinuation of the border in 1947, when the new border between Italy and Yugoslavia was moved further west (Cattaruzza 2011; 2017; Troha 2016), boundary markers were removed in more prominent spots (e.g., former border crossings; Figure 4B); in places, this happened even sooner when the territory to the west of the pre-war Rapallo border ended up under the Yugoslav military administration (Žorž 2016). Special events were organized to remove boundary stones (Zupančič 1948, 68; Pečelin 2004, 126; Naglič 2005). Zorko Jelinčič’s memoirs for the period between 1945 and 1947, referring to the area of Border Sectors 22 and 23 in the Julian Alps (the Bohinj-Tolmin ridge) read: I try to pull out, break off this unfortunate marker [boundary stone, author’s note] of a quarter-century-long fate [from 1920 onwards, when the Rapallo border was introduced] with my bare hands. I could not do it, my hands were too weak. I drag a big, fat stone, it crumbles into small pieces when I strike. I find a bigger one, a harder one, tossing it to the side of the boundary stone’s top. Yes, the cement began to rock in the sandy, weather-beaten limestone, in its foundation. I hurl a few stones with an improvised catapult, the boundary stone hits the ground. [. . .] I roll it over to the edge of the slope, so that it falls into the depths [. . .] the stone bounces grotesquely . . . its bounces appear to me as fate laughing at the repeated words about the millennia-long empire and about cementing holy boundary stones. [. . .] The mountains are finally clean, virginal as they were in times past [. . .] But how many boundary stones still stood as far as Gredica, Suha . . . It was hard work, but many of them ended up . . . lying in the depths of Bohinj cirques or among dwarf pines . . . . (Jelinčič 2011, 146)

Some boundary stones had been removed already during World War II. In the summer of 1944, partisans removed the boundary stone on Mount Triglav (2,864 m), Slovenia’s highest mountain and symbol of Sloveneness (Svetek 1985, 396; Zorn Figure 2 (continued) 1920–1925. The red line indicates the course of the border (the Kingdom of Italy lies to the left (west) of the line, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later the Kingdom Yugoslavia) to the right (east) of it). Boundary stone no. 40, the main boundary stone, is marked with a square with red sides. From the pre-war tripoint of Austria, Italy and Yugoslavia in the Karawanks to this boundary stone the new border between Germany and Italy overlapped with the pre-war Rapallo border, which separated the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Here, the new border turned eastwards in 1941. Circles bounded with a red curve denote secondary (intermediate) boundary stones, which are inscribed with Roman numerals. The boundary stones’ altitude is written in red Arabic numerals. (B) Data on the boundary stones’ locations are an integral part of each map: their altitude, the distance between two consecutive boundary stones, and the cumulative distance to the first boundary stone at the pre-war tripoint. Map (A) and the adjoining data (B) are from the ZRC SAZU Anton Melik Geographical Institute Archive.

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Figure 3: Preserved boundary stones from the pre-war Rapallo border between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which served as border markers between Italy and Germany (Border Sector 8) during WWII. A section of barbed wire is partly preserved near the Dovška Vrata saddle (2,176 m), which obstructed the passage on the German side of the border.

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and Mikša 2021). One of the partisans who removed the boundary stone on the summit of Triglav reminisces: Well, well, look at that: right next to Aljaž Tower [a turret erected in 1895 on the summit of Triglav, author’s note; Figure 4A] stands a metre-and-a-half-tall column, with a capital letter D (Deutschland) shining brightly on the side that faces the Gorenjska region along with a capital I (Italy) on the other side, facing the Primorska region. So this is how you divided our Slovene soil! [. . .] This boundary marker struts right next to the turret, announcing the heartless, self-willed dismembering of our nation from the highest summit in Slovene soil. We felt a wave of anger and wrath rising within us. Off with this marker of foreign violence, with this stain on our beautiful alpine world! Not a word had to be said; with a fire burning within us, we set to work, started digging on its northern side, braced ourselves against it and the hated, unjust marker went flying across the Triglav’s northern face, bouncing off rocks and falling into a thousand tiny pieces somewhere in the Vrata Valley. There you go, “sacro confine”, your fame was short-lived, you will not disfigure our proud, free Triglav ever again! Our rage subsided and we cleansed Slovenia’s and Yugoslavia’s highest summit of this fascist monstrosity. [. . .] Look – the visitors’ book is preserved! [. . .] in 1942 only names of German soldiers and Germanic tourists were entered. There are no German entries in 1943 – oh, you can tell that partisans began making a commotion then in these parts! [. . .] The first partisan patrol wrote their names as early as in the spring of 1944 [. . .] We are the second group of partisans on Triglav [2 August 1944, author’s note] . . . . (Svetek-Zorin 1946, 99–100)

Their entry in the visitors’ book reads: “We have demolished the unjust boundary marker on the summit of Triglav”. Referring to the former border area on Triglav in 1947, the wording reads: “Boundary stones that used to disfigure the summit and slopes of our eminence [Triglav, author’s note] have disappeared [Figure 4C]. Foreign-language inscriptions and green-red [Italian, author’s note] spots on rocks of its western and southern edge are also no more. Triglav, you are liberated and free!” (Wester 1951, 276). The Alpine terrain was difficult to traverse, it was unpopulated and rarely contained paths; consequently, any intensive guarding of the border was mostly at the passes and saddles. At the saddles there are still remnants of barbed wire, and even of the wooden or metal posts to which it was attached (Mikša and Zorn 2018; 2021). Nowadays, only the most extreme north-western part of the WWII border between Italy and Germany (Figure 1), which was also part of the Rapallo border before the war, still serves as the state border between Italy and Slovenia (Yugoslavia between 1947 and 1991). Interestingly, contemporary boundary stones stand in the same locations as the boundary stones of the Rapallo border and the boundary stones of the WWII border (Zorn and Mikša 2021). However, contemporary boundary stones bear a different date, i.e., 1947 or the date when the Treaty of Peace with Italy was signed after World War II, rather than the year 1920 that signifies the date when the Treaty of Rapallo was signed. In this part of the border (Rapallo

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Figure 4: (A) The summit of Triglav with Aljaž Tower, which stood on the German side of the border during WWII. In 2018, a plaque (bottom left) commemorating the removal of the boundary stone in 1944 was put up on the former location of a boundary stone separating Italy and Germany (photography by Matija Zorn). (B) The removal of a boundary stone (Border Sector 35, boundary stone no. 61) at the former border crossing Podlanišče supposedly in 1947 (Idrija Municipal Museum Archive). (C, D) Many boundary stones were pulled out on purpose, a few can still be found near their former locations; (C) the main boundary stone of Border Sector 9 (marked 9–0 in Figure 3) and (D) a secondary (intermediate) boundary stone from Border Sector 6 (boundary stone no. 6). Even though it had been extracted, it was put back in place because it was preserved in its entirety. However, the letter “I” points towards Germany because it was not positioned properly (photography by Matija Zorn). (E) The main boundary stone in the proximity of the Prehodavci mountain hut (2,071 m) in the Julian Alps. The letter “D” (Deutschland, Germany) was chiselled on the boundary stone’s surface, which was turned towards Germany, replacing the letter “J” (Jugoslavija, Yugoslavia) in 1941. Signifying the year when the Treaty of Rapallo was concluded between the kingdoms of Italy and SHS, the year 1920 can be seen on that same surface. The Arabic numeral “12” is seen on its side and stands for the border sector (photography by Matija Zorn).

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and WWII Sectors 1, 2, and partly 3) there were a total of 252 boundary stones standing, whose locations identify the state border to this day. As stated above, the remnants of boundary stones were examined in the area where the WWII border overlapped with the pre-war Rapallo border. The ItalianGerman WWII border forked from the pre-war Rapallo border at the location of the main (sector) boundary stone no. 40 and turned towards the east (Figures 1 and 2). Presently, we do not know if any sources exist that would provide detailed locations of boundary stones either on maps or in any other form from this spot moving eastwards. On the basis of German WWII military maps Deutsche Heereskarte at a scale of 1:25,000, the entire borderline was digitalized (Zorn, Ciglič, and Gašperič 2020). However, this source does not contain boundary stones, which would make searching for them easier. Only four locations of boundary stones (Figure 5A) are known at the moment in the area extending via the Polhov Gradec Hills, between (main) boundary stone no. 40 and Ljubljana. Boundary stones to the east of Ljubljana have not been explored yet. Their existence has been confirmed by accidental finds during different construction works. During the restoration of a house in Šentvid pri Ljubljani, near to where the border ran in the past, about 20 boundary stones were dug out (Figure 5B), which bears witness to the fact that the boundary stones were removed and buried. They consisted of a single piece of magmatic rock, approximately half of which was sunk into the ground. According to the locals’ testimonies, these boundary stones had been hewn on-site (Ajlec et al. 2019). By contrast, boundary stones along the Rapallo border were made of concrete at locations where they were installed.

4 The German-NDH Border in the Pannonian (low)hills The Independent State of Croatia (NDH) was formed just after the beginning of World War II, roughly covering the territory of present-day Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a small area of Serbia. Five Slovene settlements fell under its rule in 1941, namely: Bregansko Selo (present-day Slovenska Vas), Nova Vas pri Bregani (present-day Nova Vas pri Mokricah), Jesenice na Dolenjskem, Obrežje, and Čedem. These villages cover an area of approximately 12 km2 and were inhabited by around 800 people (Repe et al. 2019, 10; Mikša and Zorn 2021). The new border shifted the boundary of the German Reich to the eastern border of present-day Slovenia or to the former border between the Austrian province of Styria and the kingdoms of Hungary and Croatia within Austria-Hungary, where it bordered on the newly established NDH. The border between Germany

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Figure 5: (A) A boundary stone identifying the border between Italy and Germany in the Polhov Gradec Hills. Its markings differ greatly from those on the Rapallo section of the border (photography by Matija Zorn). (B) Numerous WWII boundary stones with clearly visible letters “D” and “I” were discovered north of Ljubljana during construction work (photography by Blaž Štangelj). (C) In the location of the former border crossing between Italy and Germany, i.e., the present-day street Podgorska cesta in Ljubljana, boundary stones were built in the foundations of a fence (photography by Matija Zorn).

and the NDH was about 130 kilometres long; the bulk of the borderline ran along the river Sotla (Figure 6). For the most part, the new border matched the ethnic and old administrative border of the previous state and political formations in the area. The river Sotla had functioned as a national border between Slovenes and Croats for centuries (Mikša and Zorn 2020a, 33). Along with the German border with Italy, the border on the river Sotla became the southernmost German border. The German administration carried out ethnic cleansing in the border

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zone: Slovenes were deported and the area was re-populated with Gottscheers (Germans resettled from the present-day Kočevje (Ger. Gottschee) area in Slovenia, which in 1941 became part of Italy); the new southern German border was fenced in and heavily guarded (Mikša and Zorn 2020a; 2020b). The delimitation committee divided the entire length of the German-NDH border into two sections. The NDH part of the committee controlled the marking of Section A (83 km; the southern part) and Section B (Abschnitt B; the northern part) was controlled by the German part of the delimitation committee. There were 595 boundary stone’s standing in the former and 1,524 in the latter section. Boundary stones for the German section were produced by two companies from Graz (present-day Austria); failing to keep up with the orders as early as December 1941, these companies delivered boundary stones with a delay. Boundary stones for the German section were kept in storage facilities in Ptuj, from where they were transported to the vicinity of the border. The placing of boundary stones in the NDH section was concluded by mid-January 1942, but they were yet to be numbered. Up to December 1942, when the marking of the border was officially concluded, a total of 2,119 boundary stones had been installed. Boundary stones in the German section outnumbered the ones in the NDH section by almost 1,000, even though the German section was more than 30 km shorter (Mikša and Zorn 2020a, 104; 2020b, 59). We have found the number of boundary stones in German sources, but we are yet to find their locations recorded in the sources. We assume that their locations were indeed recorded because the border was divided into sectors and boundary stones within them were numbered (Figures 7C), similarly as described in the previous chapter. The entire course of the border was determined on the basis of German WWII military maps Deutsche Heereskarte at a scale of 1:25,000 (Zorn, Ciglič, and Gašperič 2020). Unlike the situation in the Alps, where WWII borders used boundary stones from the pre-war period, here they did not use the boundary stones that had identified the border between the Austrian and the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Monarchy to mark the border between Germany and the NDH, even though the border ran for the most part along this demarcation line (Figure 7A). Boundary stones standing on the “German section” were hewn from a single piece of (magmatic) rock. They featured the letter “D” (Deutschland, Germany) on the side that faced Germany (Figure 7A) and the abbreviation “NDH” (Nezavisna država Hrvatska, Independent State of Croatia) on the side that faced the NDH (Figure 7B). The boundary stones feature two numbers (Figure 7C): the upper number denotes the sector of the border and the lower its consecutive number within the sector. The top surface featured two cuts that indicate the directions of the previous and the following boundary stones. Two types of boundary stones can be identified on-site. There are numerically more “small” boundary stones

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Figure 6: A sketch produced by the German border commission depicting the course of the border between Germany and the NDH in the upper part of the river Sotla between Dobovec pri

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located within the sectors, whose top face measures approximately 20 by 20 cm. They are about a metre long, of which 40 cm are above ground (Figure 7B). In Figure 8 there are 31 “small” boundary stones within Sector 19. Each sector begins with a “large” boundary stone that marks the beginning of the sector; its top surface measures approximately 25 by 25 cm, protruding more than half a metre out of the ground. We found most boundary stones on the ridge of the Macelj Hill (Figures 7C and 8), where they stand a good 50 m apart (Figure 8). Figure 8 shows that trenches were dug and bunkers built on the German side of the border. The depicted section measures 3,140 m, with trenches totalling 2,450 m in length. On average, bunkers were built 100 m apart, in some instances the distance between them equalled a quarter of the average length (Mikša and Zorn 2020b, 62). This indicates that the border was heavily guarded and protected with barbed-wire fences (Figure 9A). This intensified with the partisans’ and Red Army’s success in Serbia from the autumn of 1944 onwards (Mikša and Zorn 2020b, 79). Nevertheless, this border was not closed; it could be crossed at border crossings with special permits. Boundary stones were placed next to border crossings as well (Figure 9C). The present-day border between Slovenia and Croatia in this area follows for the most part Austria-Hungary’s internal border. Although both states gained independence in 1991, the final agreement on the course of the state border between them has not been reached yet. A few attempts have been made to settle the issue, including arbitration proceedings before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague between 2009 and 2017 (Arbitration . . . 2021). The lack of boundary stones on the border between these two states is one of the consequences of this situation. Thus the course of the border is in several sections marked by Austro-Hungarian boundary stones or even WWII boundary stones (Figures 7 and 8).

Figure 6 (continued) Rogatcu (south) and Macelj Hill (north) at a scale of 1:25,000. It shows three courses of the border: the “new border” (neue Grenze; green line), the “old border” (alte Grenze; red line), and the “proposed change of the border” (vorgeschlagene Grenzänderungen; black crosses). Additionally, the sketch includes three border markers: Grenzpfahl (blue dot) and “old boundary stone” (alter Grenzstein), and “boundary stone” (Grenzstein). Both boundary stones identified the border of the Austrian and the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary. The location of the northern boundary stone (Grenzstein) is marked 19–0 on Figure 8. The present-day border between Slovenia and Croatia runs along the river Sotla (red line). Map source: The Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office, Berlin.

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Figure 7: (A) The WWII delimitation between Germany and the NDH did not make use of the boundary stones that had been located on the border between the Austrian and the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Monarchy from the pre-WWI period, even though it was mostly based on it. An Austro-Hungarian boundary stone, separating two entities of the Habsburg Monarchy, and a WWII border stone, delimiting Germany and the NDH, standing next to one another near the spring of the river Sotla on the Macelj Hill (number 18–7; for its location see Figure 8). These boundary stones face Slovenia, i.e., the pre-WWI Duchy of Styria and WWII Germany, whereas the Austro-Hungarian boundary stone features the letters “S D” (Styriae Ducatus, Styria) and the WWII boundary stone the letter “D” (Deutschland, Germany). (B) The abbreviation “NDH” is carved on the side that faced the Independent State of Croatia. (C) The present-day border between Slovenia and Croatia on the ridge of Macelj Hill can be traced by way of WWII boundary stones, which stand a few dozen metres apart. Markings consisted of two numbers; the number on top denotes the sector of the border, the one on the bottom its position within a sector. The photograph depicts boundary stones 19–2 and 19–3 (for their location see Figure 8) (photography by Matija Zorn).

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Figure 8: Preserved boundary stones between Germany and the NDH on the ridge of the Macelj Hill (the highest summit: Maceljska Gora, 718 m). At present, these boundary stones are the only boundary markers between Slovenia and Croatia. The figure also demonstrates the location of trenches and bunkers on the German side of the border. Figure 7A depicts boundary stone marked 18–7, and Figure 7C boundary stones marked 19–2 and 19–3.

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Figure 9: (A, B) Déjà vu – a fence on the border between Slovenia (Germany during WWII) and Croatia during WWII (A) and at present (B). (A) Fences could measure more than two metres in height on the German side of the WWII border. Nevertheless, goods were still smuggled across the border. A rare photograph depicts the use of ladders when smuggling goods across the border. It was taken on the river Sotla, in the vicinity of Rogaška Slatina, probably in 1944 (Božo Kolar’s personal archive). (B) To prevent illegal crossings of the border, a two-metre tall panel fence with barbed-wire on top stands on the present-day Slovene-Croatian border, also along the river Sotla (photography by Matija Zorn). (C) Boundary stones were also placed next to the border crossings between Germany and the NDH. The photograph shows the border crossing near Harine Zlake (Podčetrtek) on the river Sotla. This photograph was probably taken in 1941 or early 1942, when the border was still not protected with barbed wire (Museum of Contemporary History Archive). Boundary stones can be seen on both banks of the river, to the left of the bridge. (D) A present-day border crossing between Slovenia (front) and Croatia is located in the same spot; the boundary stones were not preserved (photography by Božidar Flajšman).

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5 Conclusions The boundary stones presented here no longer serve their original purpose; however, in their respective locations, they function as historical “markers” of the past. Old boundary stones that no longer serve their purpose are subject to natural processes (especially weathering) and anthropogenic activities (intentional or unintentional removal) (Waldhäusl 2019) and, consequently, to decay. None of the presented boundary stones is included in Slovenia’s Register of Immovable Cultural Heritage (Register kulturne dediščine 2021), which renders their preservation difficult. A few local associations began to recognize the importance of boundary stones as sites of remembrance, as preservers of historical memory and their tourist potential (Kumer et al. 2020; Lisec et al. 2020); however, this does not apply to the boundary stones discussed in this paper. For instance, a few boundary stones located along the Rapallo border are being restored (Kozorog 2008; Slak et al. 2019; Škodič 2020; Zorn and Mikša 2021), but their restoration is associated with the prewar border, not with that of WWII border. With regard to cultural heritage, we can highlight the importance of boundary stones in intangible terms because they present the tradition of regulating rights in space, as well as in tangible terms as they are archaeological remnants (Zorn and Mikša 2021). Their importance in terms of legacy is recognized by others as well, which is attested, for instance, by the effort for their inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List (Waldhäusl et al. 2018; Lisec et al. 2020). A portion of the boundary stones that were installed during World War II, when the territory of present-day Slovenia was divided between four states, have been presented. They are situated in the high mountains of the Julian Alps and parts of the pre-alpine hills, in an area where the WWII border between Germany and Italy overlapped with the pre-war border between Italy and Yugoslavia. Boundary stones standing on the WWII border between Germany and the NDH have been highlighted as well. This border overlapped with the pre-WWI border between the Austrian and the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Monarchy, i.e., the border that Germans considered as the centuries-old border of the “clustered German territory” (Ferenc 2006, 92). When comparing views on boundary stones on either side of the borders, we cannot ignore eyewitness testimonies about the “hated” border and border markers along the German-Italian border and the absence of testimonies of this kind along the border between Germany and the NDH. This difference stems mostly from the fact that the former was a continuation of the pre-war border between Italy and Yugoslavia (the Rapallo border), which Slovenes regarded as “hated” and “unjust” because this border had cut off one-third of Slovenes from their motherland after WWI (Mikša and Zorn

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2018, 606). In this regard, the WWII Yugoslav liberation movement pronounced aspirations to shift the former border between Italy and Yugoslavia westwards (Cattaruzza 2011; Mikša and Zorn 2018). Consequently, the national pride expressed both during the removal of these boundary stones before (Figure 4B) and after the introduction of the new, post-war border with Italy does not come as a surprise. We did not come across similar testimonies at the border between Germany and the NDH, which could be perhaps associated with the fact that boundary stones were set on the Slovene ethnic border and thus did not represent an “unjust” border in the eyes of Slovenes. Nevertheless, boundary stones standing on the border between Italy and Germany can be identified on-site much more easily, not because we are aware of their respective locations, but because in high mountains they are not “hidden” in forests (Figure 7C). Although WWII boundary stones remind Slovenes of difficult times that were marked by the occupying forces’ denationalisation policies they are important material sources of the former borderscapes and require the attention of stakeholders. As time passes, the memory of these borders and their markers is fading, as is the awareness that Slovenia’s present-day borders, or that of any other state, are not self-evident and that if a border is perceived as “just” by one side, it is not necessarily perceived as such by the other side, regardless of international agreements.

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Vedran Duančić

Mapping the uncertain: Difficulties with establishing the ethnic borders in interwar Yugoslavia 1 Introduction During the bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, maps emerged as yet another effective political tool showcasing the concerns and aspirations of conflicting nationalist projects. Some of them depicted Yugoslavia’s constitutive republics which were striving and fighting for independence as self-contained and self-sufficient political, economic, cultural – and ethnic – units, omitting the other parts of the (former) country. Others offered alternative territorial-administrative arrangements or depicted supposedly ethnically coherent territorial units, some of which had existed earlier and some that were yet to have come into being for the first time. Depictions of the borders of the Independent State of Croatia, which existed in 1941–1945 and included Bosnia and Herzegovina, or depictions of Greater Serbia stretching to the Virovitica–Karlovac–Karlobag line to the west, thus also incorporating Bosnia and Herzegovina and large parts of eastern and southern Croatia, were the best known among numerous such examples. The census data such as the ethnic structure, density, the absolute and relative size of population was visually presented to support or challenge the claims that a given area “belonged” to one ethnic group or the other (Campbell 1999; Jansen 2005; Klemenčić 2006). As another chapter in this volume persuasively demonstrates, the political potential and usefulness of geography were clearly recognized at the time when Yugoslavia was disintegrating, but its role in breaking up the Yugoslav state in the 1990s pales in comparison to the role geography had played in creating the country between 1918 and the mid-1920s. It was geography, rather than historiography, literature, or art, that decisively influenced how the Yugoslav state was perceived at home and abroad; and it was geographers who provided the most persuasive defense of, as well as the fiercest attacks on the country’s very raison d’être – the notion of Yugoslav kinship (Duančić 2016; 2020). This chapter explores a conspicuous difference between the engagement of geography in nationalist politics at the beginning and at the end of Yugoslavia. National categories and relations among Yugoslav “tribes” were central to geography in Yugoslavia in the first half of the 20th century. Whereas the kinship of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was widely recognized, especially in the years leading up to

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and immediately following the establishment of Yugoslavia in 1918, the nature of the relation among them was contested even among the supporters of Yugoslav unity: could and should they merge into a Yugoslav nation or were they similarbut-distinct ethnic and cultural communities? Why then was the treatment of these categories in geographical discourse so vague? To put it simply, why were there no maps of national territories within Yugoslavia? The 1920s, after all, were a period when geographers across East Central Europe waged relentless “map wars” (Haslinger and Oswalt 2012; Górny 2013). With their maps they countered territorial claims made by their peers whom they often sat next to in classes at the University of Vienna and elsewhere, but who now lived in different states and supported opposing nationalist projects (Górny 2017; Seegel 2018). No map is truly comprehensive, or even an entirely faithful representation of the phenomena it depicts (Monmonier 1991; Black 1997; Crampton 2001). In the first half of the 20th century, geographers across East Central Europe made maps emphasizing one type of data at the expense of others, or they used bright colors to depict the geographical spread of an ethnic group, which created a sense of spatial continuity, suggesting the predominance of that ethnic group in the local population, even when that was not necessarily the case. In 1918, the Hungarian geographer (and prime minister in 1920–1921 and again in 1939–1941) Pál Teleki famously created the so-called “Carte Rouge” (red map), a choropleth (colorcoded) map in which, because they were presented in red, ethnic Hungarians appeared to constitute an extensive territorial block, understating the presence of other nationalities, primarily Romanians, in ethnically mixed areas (Ablonczy 2006; Seegel 2018, 64–68). Teleki’s aim was to demonstrate that dividing the territories of Greater Hungary, which would be sanctioned by the 1920 Trianon Treaty, opposed the principle of (Hungarian) national self-determination. Yugoslav geographers knew about maps used in the Polish–German postwar conflict over the new border, such as the 1916 Atlas Polski by Eugeniusz Romer, the 1918 “Nationalitätenkarte der östlichen Provinzen des Deutschen Reiches” by Jakob Spett, or the 1925 “Karte des deutschen Volks- und Kulturboden” by Albrecht Penck (Herb 1997; Briesewitz 2014; Seegel 2018; Laba 2019), especially because Penck’s map concerned Yugoslav territories as well. The national question and internal politics of interwar Yugoslavia in general could have been mapped relatively easily and effectively. Maps would have been powerful political tools in heated deliberations over the internal organization of the new country which had begun well before the country was officially proclaimed on 1 December 1918 and lasted long after the country got its constitution in 1921, and new administrative arrangement in 1922 – and then again in 1929 and 1939. Maps would likely make what was already a highly politically engaged discourse even more persuasive in the public sphere. But instead, a spatial “imagining” of the nation

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in interwar Yugoslavia was popularized predominantly through monographs and, most importantly, in articles in various cultural and political journals that aimed at a non-professional readership. Between 1903 and 1913, the Serbian geographer Jovan Cvijić produced several influential maps of ethnicities in Macedonia. He visually organized them in order to support Serbia’s territorial claims, although it should be noted that he did not identify the local Slavic population as Serbs, but rather as Macedonian Slavs, a distinct group that “might become either Serbs or Bulgarians” (Wilkinson 1951, 149–150; Cvijić 1906). In 1918, in anticipation of the end of the war and the creation of a larger Yugoslav state, Cvijić was keen to show the geographical distribution of the Balkan peoples to international audiences, and so he resorted to maps (Cvijić 1918b; he had earlier written about the issue in Cvijić 1913). The experience at the Paris Peace Conference, however, left him disillusioned and doubtful of the “fairness” of ethnographic maps in general (Cvijić 1921, 6). At the end of the First World War, establishing the borders of “national spaces” and of newly created countries was clearly a top priority. Cvijić, for instance, was primarily interested in the outer borders of the Yugoslav national space. And he was not the only one: in the early days of the Yugoslav state, a number of Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian geographers focused on the “Yugoslav territories” as a foundation of Yugoslavia’s international borders (Duančić 2016). Establishing the spatial extent of the Yugoslav national (ethnic) territories was of strategic importance for determining the country’s borders, even if relations among the titular ethnic communities – the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes – was the issue that would loom large over the political life of the country. As this chapter shows, geographers’ treatment of the Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian national territories within Yugoslavia would be significantly different, politically more convoluted and occasionally methodologically more demanding. Yugoslav geographers knew how to make maps, and they did. By the mid1920s, Slovenian geographer Roman Savnik (1925) was able to review as many as twenty-seven maps of Yugoslavia created by Yugoslav geographers. These mostly unambitious maps depicted either physical terrain or administrative borders, and in fewer cases transportation lines, industry, or agriculture, but not the burning issue of interwar Yugoslavia which was otherwise being continuously and abundantly elaborated in geographical works. There was a difference between the visual and textual representation of the national territories (with an important caveat that historians of geography and cartography treat maps as texts, too [Harley 2001]): textual representations seem to have been more tolerant of ambiguities and uncertainties inherent to the concept of national space or national territories. We have for a long time been accustomed to an abundant use of maps and other forms of visual representations in geography. Yugoslav geography

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from the first half of the 20th century nevertheless proved to be hugely influential in shaping the understanding of the new country among its citizens, even with relatively few maps. There is no one, single explanation of this seeming paradox. The answer to the question why such a ubiquitous and essentialized category such as national territory was difficult to point to on a map involves a combination of very practical issues, the contemporary political context, and the disciplinary tenets of contemporary geography itself. It should be noted that, despite all the talk about maps thus far, the chapter is not an attempt within the history of cartography. By examining the relative underrepresentation of politically pertinent maps connected to the national question in interwar Yugoslavia, the chapter aims at addressing a set of larger issues, including the contemporary practices of discursive b/orderning of space (van Houtum, Kramsch, and Zierhofer 2005) in a largely determinist and essentialist tone. The chapter also proposes to observe the process from the perspective of geographers in their paradigmatic scientific settings: on the move on a horse, on a train, or behind an office desk. The spatial turn in the history of science and, more recently, the emergence of a historical geography of science hold valuable lessons suggesting that where science is done shapes how and why it is done (Ophir and Shapin 1991; Livingstone 2003; Henke and Gieryn 2008; Withers 2009). A heuristic tool rather than a strict model, the tropes of horse, train, and office highlight the methodological proclivities of Jovan Cvijić (1865–1927), Filip Lukas (1871–1958), and Anton Melik (1890–1966) – an ethnic Serb, Croat, and Slovene, respectively – who played prominent roles in “naturalizing” and “denaturalizing”, that is, in discursively constructing and deconstructing Yugoslavia in the first half of the 20th century. None of these settings was characteristic exclusively for one of them, but the horse, train, and office speak of the ways in which geographers – not only the three of them – built their professional reputations, what they thought the point of geography was, and what their personal research interests were. This, perhaps unusual, perspective further complicates the study of the production of borders and spaces in Southeast Europe by looking beyond the explicitly and exclusively political aspects, while remaining acutely aware of their significance.

2 Redrawing the map of Europe Since the late 19th century and, in particular, during the first half of the 20th century, geography captivated large audiences well beyond the confines of small circles of academic geographers. Geography proved to be an astonishingly versatile

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and politically pertinent scientific field, addressing matters from the tiniest of phenomena to global patterns and processes, and bringing the realms of nature and men together (Livingstone 1992). Geographers from various countries – first in Europe, later in North America and elsewhere – contributed to the imagining and building of overseas colonial empires in the heyday of European imperialism as well as nation-building efforts across the European continent (Godlewska and Smith 1994; Morag, Butlin, and Heffernan 1995). Physical geography was at the center of most geographers’ professional training, focused on the observable and measurable phenomena and artefacts that lent themselves to classification and, in many cases, visual representation through geographers’ most persuasive tool, the map. The standards of precision and reliability, when it came to human geography (Anthropogeographie, in the German-language geographical tradition, which is of central importance for this chapter [Schultz 1980]), were equally high. Besides using their own research, geographers could also rely on a growing body of data, including the census, gathered and systematized by a number of neighboring disciplines, which often worked in some relation to the modernization or state-building efforts of various states and imperial projects. Rarely have the precision and detail of geographical knowledge come to play such a pivotal, and problematic, role in a political deliberation as they did at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919/1920, where the maps of Europe and overseas colonial possessions were redrawn (Macmillan 2002; Prott 2016). True, most representatives of victorious powers at the conference had little or no understanding of, or even interest in, the “exotic” parts of Europe and the rest of the world, but they came accompanied by large groups of experts, including geographers. Geographers had been preparing, in a sense, for such a prominent role for a long time – for decades in the case of the imperial powers – but the Paris Peace Conference saw the involvement of geographers and geographical knowledge on an entirely new, unprecedented level. Armed with detailed, reliable, objective, and persuasive – or so they believed – knowledge on the physical terrain, communication lines, access to raw materials, historical boundaries, and “ethnographic” (ethnic) composition of the local population, geographers accompanied the delegations of victorious countries large and small. The defeated parties were not invited to the negotiating table, which meant that geographers from countries facing imminent territorial losses presented their counterproposals for the new borders to different audiences and through different channels. The largest, best organized, and most influential of these scientific support groups was the U.S. “Inquiry” (House and Seymour 1921; Gelfand 1963), while the role of Jovan Cvijić in creating Yugoslavia’s borders, on the other hand, has likely been the most romanticized (Duančić 2020, 97–102)

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Especially in East Central Europe, the notion of “self-determination”, articulated and vigorously advocated by the U.S. president, Woodrow Wilson (Wolff 2020), was guiding the attempts to establish the borders of newly created and re-created countries (such as Poland) which were emerging from the debris of the Habsburg, Hohenzollern, Ottoman, and Romanov empires. Even before the conference opened, it was clear that negotiating so many competing and overlapping territorial demands in a region so ethnically mixed would be difficult, yet few could have anticipated just how complex the task would prove to be. Representatives of many countries left Paris dissatisfied, feeling as if they were on the losing side. Yugoslavia, initially reluctantly counted as an allied country on grounds of Serbia’s war contribution, was one of them, even if it fared relatively well regarding its territorial demands in comparison with other East Central European countries. Throughout the interwar period, most countries of East Central Europe (and beyond) operated within a framework of several types of borders: their internationally recognized borders; the borders they desired at the expense of others; and the borders others desired at their territorial expense. Obsession with borders persisted and intensified throughout the interwar years, stoking another, far more destructive conflict. The borders of the new Yugoslav state were regulated through a series of opaque political decisions at the Paris Peace Conference and subsequent negotiations with its neighbors (the border with Italy was particularly contested, while the border with Austria was settled in a very “modern” way, by the 1920 plebiscite in Carinthia, where even a large part of the Slavic population opted to stay/become part of Austria). The fact that this complex process did not always take into consideration “geographical realities” is hardly surprising for at least two reasons. For one, the vast body of geographical knowledge produced and presented, largely in the form of maps and graphs (Crampton 2006; Slukan Altić 2016) at the Paris Peace Conference addressed issues that, when observed separately, were often mutually conflicting. An “optimal” border, geographers and politicians agreed, would be based on natural criteria (including geomorphology and strategic concerns arising from it), economic, and cultural criteria (including ethnicity) (Prott 2016, 131). However, such examples were relatively rare and most territorial claims were based on one or a few of the criteria that were perceived as advantageous, at the expense of other, equally accurate and scientifically valid, but politically less advantageous criteria. This was also visible in Cvijić’s writings and the territorial claims that Yugoslavia’s delegation presented in Paris: the “ethnographic principle” was favored in the northern and northwestern section of the border, where numerous Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes lived in disputed territories claimed both by Yugoslavia and by Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Romania; and then there was

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the strategic one, for instance, in the context of the border with Albania. There was no unambiguous answer to the question which category of the border should be prioritized. Cvijić (1921) emphasized the importance of ethnic borders, especially when they did not cut across major communication lines and terrain features or were not strategically detrimental. In 1913, however, he had rationalized Serbia’s claims regarding the border with newly established Albania as an example of an “anti-ethnographic necessity” (Cvijić 1989 [1913], 20). Secondly, the redrawing of the political map of Europe, to say nothing about the overseas colonial possessions, was first and foremost a political affair. Successful territorial claims owed as much, if not more, to the influence of delegations, professional connections and the political acumen of the applicants as they did to the soundness of the maps depicting the demands. In that regard, the uneasy validation of Yugoslavia as a political entity through the international recognition of its border was not unique, though it took longer than in the case of most other newly created East Central European countries. Throughout the interwar period Yugoslavia’s borders were contested, occasionally transgressed, and their “qualities” were continuously debated, not only by geographers, but also by politicians and lay audiences. The issue was not only where, but also what kind of borders they were. What were their historical implications for the development of South Slavic “tribes” and what did they entail for the future of Yugoslavia? The seemingly unanimous conclusion was that Yugoslavia lacked strong, effective borders with most of its neighbors (Cvijić 1918a; Melik 1919; Cvijić 1921; Melik 1928). But they were “real” and perceptible nevertheless: abstract topographical points listed in the most tedious of genres, international treaties, existed outside maps, not least in the form of thousands of border markers. If depicting the Yugoslav state on a map and pointing to its borders in the physical terrain was relatively easy, why did doing that in the case of one of the most pressing issues of Yugoslavia’s history – the national question – proved to be so much more difficult?

3 Categories, scales, and units An attempt to answer the question should take into consideration some very practical as well as the more complex factors that were more obviously connected to the sphere of politics. As I already suggested, the relative underrepresentation of maps by Yugoslav geographers does not mean that there was no map-making. There was, of course, although across the 1918 divide, map-making was largely a military affair in Austria-Hungary as well as in the Kingdom of Serbia – and that remained the case in interwar Yugoslavia (Šobić 1953; Altić 2018; 2019). The financial and

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logistical requirements of surveys for large mapping enterprises were indeed prohibitive for actors other that the state apparatuses, but no such large and coordinated efforts were necessary for presenting, for instance, the geographical spread of ethnicities. The latter required a different kind of knowledge: data on the local population, whether based on personal observations or a census (Vujević 1922). The high price of printing maps or the small market that would make it unprofitable are most likely part of the answer, even if not entirely convincing. For, individual maps and atlases, as well as maps accompanying geographical books and journals, were printed throughout the interwar period, presenting many issues other than the national question. Two major publications by Anton Melik are illustrative in this regard. His ambitious two-volume overview of the geography of Yugoslavia (Melik 1921–1923) contained barely any maps, and not too well produced. His even more ambitious two-volume overview of the geography of Slovenia (Melik 1935–1936) was not only a more mature work, but the publication was far more luxuriously equipped and included a number of maps (but again primarily regarding physical geography). While financial problems likely impacted the way in which the geography of Yugoslavia was presented in the country itself, especially in the early postwar period, Jovan Cvijić enjoyed support from his international professional contacts during his stay, first in London, then briefly in Switzerland, and finally in France, between 1915 and 1919 (Trgovčević 1975). This support was occasionally financial, such as when he was paid “several hundred dollars” for his papers “The Geographical Distribution of the Balkan Peoples” and “The Zones of Civilization of the Balkan Peninsula” which appeared in the Geographical Review (Livingstone 1992, 251). Both papers included maps vital for Yugoslavia’s claims in Paris. These maps and their content were not entirely new: they had appeared occasionally as part of Cvijić’s ever-growing anthropogeographical opus but, just as his anthropogeographical vision of the Balkans and the South Slavic lands, in 1918 they were synthesized and presented to international audiences very effectively, in a way that could not have been done when he was relying on Serbia’s (or, after 1918, Yugoslavia’s) resources alone. The central problem, however, was not of a financial nature, nor was it directly connected to maps – it was merely clearly manifested in maps. The focus of Cvijić’s anthropogeographical research and writings shifted between the turn of the century and 1918, and largely mirrored the interests and concerns of the Kingdom of Serbia in that period. Before the First World War he was interested primarily in southeastern parts of the “Yugoslav lands”: Albania, Macedonia; and then Bosnia and Herzegovina when in 1908 Austria-Hungary officially annexed it after 30 years of occupation (Cvijić 1902; 1908; 1989 [1913]). The First World War, and the prospect of a unification of the South Slavs (in the sense of

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Yugoslavs, omitting Bulgarians), turned his attention in a different direction, to the northern and northwestern parts of the Yugoslav lands (Cvijić 1914b; 1918a). While he was expanding and refocusing his research interest, Cvijić also created a conceptual confusion that would last for decades, reverberating even into the 21st century. It was not entirely his fault; contemporary anthropogeography employed a complex methodological and conceptual apparatus to think about the nation, a concept that defies unambiguous definitions. Across Europe, geographers spoke about the nation by combining racial discourse and elements of physical, historical, and cultural geography. Cvijić developed a particularly complex conceptual apparatus which often spoke of the national question only indirectly, observing “zones of civilization” and, most famously and controversially, four ethnopsychological types (with various subtypes or “varieties”): the Pannonian, Dinaric, Central Balkan, and East Balkan types. None of these corresponded to ethnic communities, even though Cvijić favored the Dinaric type and its Šumadija variety, believing it was the core of the Serbian (and, by extension, Yugoslav) people. Similarly, most of Yugoslavia’s population belonged to the so-called Patriarchal regime (Cvijić 1902, 26; 1918a, 109–111), yet it too was neither distinctively Serbian nor Yugoslav. The fact that he inconsistently used ethnic labels while shifting his regional focus and adapting the narrative to the contemporary political situation contributed to the confusion. His reluctance to differentiate between the Serbs and Croats (whereas he did that more readily in the case of Slovenes) has been stirring controversy for more than a century. Even as he was embracing a wider, Yugoslav cause, he remained biased towards the Serbian nationalist project. Cvijić offered a unifying geographical narrative and clearly had little interest in pointing to differences and delineation among the Yugoslav “tribes”. In early geographical works on Yugoslavia and the “Yugoslav lands”, the relations among them were temporarily put in the background. A number of Croatian and Slovenian geographers wrote foundational narratives that constructed Yugoslavia as a coherent natural and cultural unit and they too were primarily interested in outlining the outer borders of the Yugoslav national space. Starting with the mid-1920s, works dealing with the geography of Yugoslavia gave way to more focused works in regional geography. Geographies specifically on Croatian and Slovene “lands” started emerging – though, interestingly, not on Serbian (Duančić 2020, 107) – with the tension between the specific national and the Yugoslav level of narration becoming especially obvious in the Croatian case. The Slovene national question has frequently been marginalized in the studies of nationalism in Yugoslavia, which added to the somewhat simplistic view revolving around the Serbo–Croatian dichotomy. Yet in geographical works on the Slovene lands, the position of Slovenia and the Slovenes within Yugoslavia

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indeed did not emerge as problematic. Especially after the creation of the Drava banovina – one of nine banovinas (banates) established in 1929 – which gathered the overwhelming majority of Slovenes in Yugoslavia within one territorial-administrative unit, the border between the Slovene and adjoining Croatian national territories attracted barely any attention in geographical works. The issue of Slovene national space outside Yugoslavia, on the other hand, was elaborated in detail (Melik 1921–1923), sometimes in innovative ways from the perspective of cultural geography (Melik 1931). The border separating the Slovenes and Croats was at the same time historical (created through centuries of Habsburg rule), natural (in part following rivers), and cultural (linguistic, though the difference in some sections was less pronounced). Melik, for instance, did not emphasize the division too strongly, for that would have had detrimental effects on the notion of Yugoslav kinship. While Cvijić had no interest in delineating national territories within Yugoslavia and Melik maintained a balance between the Yugoslav and Slovene identity and levels of narration, Filip Lukas made that issue central to his articulation of the Croatian national question. He was one of many reserved supporters of the creation of the Yugoslav state at the end of the First World War, though he never supported unitarist Yugoslavism. He joined the ranks of experts who promoted the Yugoslav cause abroad, especially in the context of the territorial dispute with Italy (Lukas 1919). But starting in the mid-1920s, Lukas (1925) embarked upon a different, politically diametrically opposite, project and became one of the foremost Croatian nationalist ideologues (Aralica 2016; Kljaić 2017). Lukas insisted that Yugoslavia was composed of geomorphologically, historically, “spiritually” and culturally incompatible units that could only be kept together through acts of political violence (Lukas 1938). No other Yugoslav geographer was as persistently interested in delineating national territories within Yugoslavia as Lukas. He had countered Italian territorial claims in Istria and Dalmatia after the First World War, and in the late 1920s started countering territorial claims of Serbian nationalists, including Cvijić. In both cases, on the international and domestic political level, he had little success, for both Yugoslavia’s international borders and internal administrative-territorial arrangement were created with only limited input by geographers, including himself. A certain conceptual confusion is noticeable in Lukas’ works, too. The conceptual apparatus he employed to address the national question through geography might have been less complex than Cvijić’s, but it was still a mélange of geographical, historical, philosophical, and biological (racial) categories. Accused by his contemporaries of dealing with metaphysics rather than science (Rubić 1926), Lukas indeed embraced a peculiar genre, which could best be described as geopolitics of the national spirit, which seems to have appealed to many conservative Croatian nationalists at the

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time. Because he observed the Croatian national culture and “spirit” in a longue durée perspective, he was prone to glossing over the “small” phenomena. Incidentally, the occurrence and extent of cultural artefacts such as kozolec, a distinctive hayrack characteristic for Slovenia, which Melik wrote about, or typologies of houses and villages, and climatic zones, which Cvijić wrote about, were mappable, unlike the phenomena and categories that were at the center of Lukas’ attention. Whether an area was predominantly inhabited by Croats or Serbs, Catholics, Orthodox, or Muslims, was often less relevant for him than the role that the area had played in the historical development of the Croatian nation. In his early postwar works, aimed against Italian territorial aspirations, the Adriatic Sea appeared as a separator, while it would later appear as a link connecting Croatia with the west, as opposed to the Serbs in the east. The river Drina between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia was one of the rare fixed physical demarcations between the Croatian and Serbian national territories appearing in his opus (e.g. Lukas 1942), although Lukas emphasized it less than other Croatian geographers (for instance, Pilar 1918). While Cvijić stressed what he called “metanastasic” migrations – historical mass migrations within the Balkans and from the Balkans, largely a consequence of Ottoman invasions, which decisively contributed to the “merging” of the South Slavic “tribes” (Cvijić 1918a) – to present a unifying anthropogeographic narrative that blurred the lines between the Serbs and Croats, Lukas kept pointing to the divergent historical and cultural development of the Serbs and Croats as a means of separating them.

4 The horse, train, and office The similar-yet-different approaches that Cvijić, Lukas, and Melik devised in geographical works dealing with the national question in interwar Yugoslavia were not the only manifestations of the nationalist projects prevalent among Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian intelligentsia at the time. I believe they also speak of “styles” of “doing geography”. Most Yugoslav geographers from the first half of the 20th century were trained at the University of Vienna, where Albrecht Penck exerted a strong influence on several generations of geographers who, as Seegel (2018) persuasively argues, became “transnational Germans”. Cvijić was likely Penck’s closest student (Górny 2017, 20, 228) and, unlike Lukas and Melik, Cvijić was actually professionally formed under Penck’s supervision and the two of them maintained (that is, renewed) cordial communication even after the First World War (Duančić 2020, 52–53). Cvijić, Lukas, and Melik – just as many other geographers from Yugoslavia and around the world – shared this

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German connection, but this shared intellectual heritage did not mean they shared methodological preferences. The differences between where and how they conducted their research are worth examining as it could help explain their different treatment of the national question. Geographers often resorted to horses (or other mounts) when conducting field research in remote areas, while trains and office desks were more quotidian elements of their professional and personal lives. While these “scientific places” were largely common, I will, by way of conclusion, elaborate on the horse as somehow paradigmatic for Cvijić’s anthropogeography, the train for Melik, and an office desk for Lukas. To this day Cvijić is primarily remembered as a prolific and influential political geographer, even though he was first and foremost a geomorphologist. He began his career as a geomorphologist researching the Karst and glaciation, and between 1920 and his death in 1927 he dedicated most of his efforts to this field of research. He applied geomorphological methodology to anthropogeographical research: he would start with the observation of physical landscape, which he connected to geology and geomorphology, and to this he added observations of local ethnography (Cvijić 1902). Cvijić built his considerable domestic and international reputation on an intimate and detailed knowledge of the Balkans that he had accumulated in annual research trips that he started making in 1888. No other geographer could claim such first-hand insight into the geography and ethnography of the Balkans. He spent summers walking or riding through scarcely populated areas, using towns and cities mostly as locations where his travels would take a new direction, rather than as objects of his study. As a recognized scholar, local newspapers occasionally reported on his travels, sometimes printing pictures of him on a horse. This was the foundation of his scientific authority. Cvijić was indeed the most suitable candidate for the role of lead expert adviser for the Yugoslav delegation at the Paris Peace Conference (a setting diametrically opposite to roaming the sparsely inhabited Balkan valleys on a horse). He was uniquely knowledgeable of the entire Balkans, of its massive geological formations and the tiniest of hamlets. Some of his publications offered incredibly detailed insights into micro-borders: that hamlet was predominantly Albanian, while the nearby valley was inhabited almost exclusively by Serbs; a Muslim population lives on that side of the mountain, but not the other, where instead Catholics live; this type of traditional house is characteristic of that area, whereas further to the north it gives way to a different type, etc. But he was not the only such scientific figure in Paris, and some of his opponents came equipped with more political capital, which made a huge difference. He left a complicated legacy regarding the issue of the national question that later commentators not only interpreted differently, but they often read their own concerns into his opus.

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Whereas Cvijić paid relatively little attention to “modernity” and constructed an image of traditional rural Dinaric arcadia (which he interpreted as Serbian, as opposed to Lukas, who largely agreed with his romanticized description but insisted that the Dinaric population was the core of Croatian nation), Melik often chose to focus on the modern rather than the historical perspective. Hence the association of a train with Melik. It was not only one of his recurring topics of research (Melik 1938; 1945) and a means of transportation in his enthusiastic travels through Yugoslavia (Melik 1926), but a symbol of modernity uniting the regions and communities of Yugoslavia. Melik was also keenly aware of the effects that modernization and socio-cultural stratification arising from industrialization was having on the national question in Slovenia (Melik 1919), and he occasionally offered more pointed observations pertaining to economy than Lukas, who taught economic geography for decades. Melik represented a generation of younger scholars who were more interested in the contemporary geography of Yugoslavia than in seemingly atemporal “ethnographic groups”, as was the case with Cvijić, or in the historicized geopolitics of the national spirit, as was the case with Lukas. Cvijić was empirically minded, teaching and writing about regions and phenomena that he had personally examined (Duančić 2020, 38–42). Like other Yugoslav geographers, Lukas could not have competed with that type of knowledge. But unlike many of them, he did not even try. Befitting his role as a professor of economic geography, the precision in his discourse, at least until the mid-1920s, was built upon ample data regarding industrial and agricultural output, commerce, and censuses (Lukas 1923–1924). Resembling the nineteenth-century “armchair geographers” (Dritsas 2011), Lukas was not to be found conducting field research, and he seems to have left no writings about himself marveling at the scenery through a train window. If we were to imagine Lukas at work, it would undoubtedly be a scene of him surrounded by books from which he drew statistical data for works in economic geography, and philosophical, historical, anthropological, and geographical books that inspired his thinking about the geopolitics of Croatian culture. As he started addressing the national question more and more pronouncedly and passionately, he intertwined historical and geographical narratives. The Croatian national spirit as a manifestation of national culture (which he emphasized the most, as he believed that culture, rather than “race”, differentiated Croats and Serbs), which he understood in superorganic terms, would not have been mapped easily, even if Lukas had tried. In the end, the Yugoslav public did not need detailed and colorful maps to comprehend the notion and extent of the national territories– whether Yugoslav, Serbian, Croatian, or Slovenian. Geographers described them well enough in words alone, and the contemporary political sphere served as an echo chamber, translating them into a politically even more sensitive language. However,

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they managed to do so either because, as was the case with Melik and the Slovenian-Croatian demarcation, the existing administrative-territorial arrangement was largely congruent with the notion of the southeastern borders of the Slovene national territory or, more interestingly, because they resorted to discourses and explanations that were not strictly geographical. The discrepancy between the natural (physical geographical), historical, ethnic, racial, and existing administrative-territorial borders within Yugoslavia – not to mention the significant presence of ethnically mixed populations, cultural similarities or, for instance, the presence of Bosnian Muslims (which complicated things even further) – made attempts at separating Croatian and Serbian national territories extremely difficult. Once Yugoslavia was established and the Serbian historical mission thus achieved (Cvijić 1914a), Serbian geographers, including Cvijić himself, no longer seemed to find the issue relevant. The surprisingly imprecise answers that Cvijić had offered up to 1918 now became contentious for Croatian nationalists, led by Lukas, who felt that Croatian national identity was threatened by Serbian hegemony. However, the way Lukas conceptualized the notion of national territories precluded unambiguous definitions in geographical terms, let alone precise mapping. The definition he offered was often more historical than geographical, referring to areas that once (since the early Middle Ages) were part of the Croatian state, regardless of the current ethnic structure of the population. (In Lukas’ opinion, the Independent State of Croatia, established in April 1941, was also not identical to the notion of the Croatian national territory because it had ceded its historical core, Dalmatia, to Italy.) In the final analysis, resorting to historical explanation was not a sign of weakness of nationalist geographical narratives or geographers’ incompetence. To the contrary, it spoke of the versatility and adaptability of the discourse and of the geographers’ skillful employment of different scales of examination and of linking the measurable with the abstract – precisely the traits that made geography so uniquely politically influential in the interwar years.

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Srdjan Radović

Mapping ethno-politics: Borders and cartographic representation in post-Yugoslav (virtual) space 1 The anthropology of maps as representations Back in 2005, a prominent Serbian public intellectual, sociologist Slobodan Antonić, commented that he could not imagine watching a weather-report map of Serbia that did not contain Kosovo, adding how “the map of Serbia without Kosovo would horrify the majority of Serbs”.1 Such a statement presumes a relatively high sensibility among the general population towards cartographic imagery, especially towards maps in wide circulation in the media. One could argue with such a presumption if one keeps in mind the relatively mild reactions of Serbian audiences to the quite frequent alterations of “weatherreport cartography” on Serbian television stations over the last thirty years. Since the very beginning of the Yugoslav wars (1991–1995/1999), Serbian broadcasters regularly featured on their weather forecasts (and other programs) the Serb-held regions of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia as parts of the “national” territory. Indeed, Serbian citizens were slowly getting used to the oddly shaped contours and borders of the “potential” greater Serbian state. However, a large chunk of the designated “national territory” dropped out of the frame in 1995 with the fall of the self-proclaimed Krajina state (Serb occupied parts of Croatia), and the maps featuring this novel situation did not really lead to that much public horror or fury. From 1995 until the end of the century, Republika Srpska, an entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina with a Serb majority (created according to the 1995 Dayton Agreement), was a must-have on maps shown in Serbian electronic and print media, conjoined with the then existing Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (an interim state

1 Slobodan Antonić, “U susret pregovorima o statusu Kosova” Nova srpska politička misao 108 (25 October 2005) – http://starisajt.nspm.rs/komentari2005/2005_ant_kosovo1_a.htm, accessed on 30 December 2020. Note: This paper is the result of research carried out at the Institute of Ethnography SASA, Belgrade (funded by the MPNTR – Ministarstvo prosvete, nauke i tehnološkog razvoja Republike Srbije, contract no. 451-03-9/2021-14/200173), and during a research stay at the Institute of Slavic and Hungarian Studies of the Humboldt University Berlin in 2018 (funded by the DFG – Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110712766-007

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established in 1992, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro). With a slight change of Serbian policies towards Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially after 2000, borders and maps of the Bosnian-Serb entity in time were also omitted from most media representations of national cartography. Finally, with the dissolution of the (con)federal union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2006, the standard map with the widest circulation became the map of the Republic of Serbia. In less than two decades, the citizens of Serbia had experienced several radical changes of national and political frames of reference, along with the shifts in the related national cartography as spread through media, educational system and publishing. Having this in mind, it could be argued that there is a widespread sense of the fluidity and transitory character of contemporary borders in the post-Yugoslav space, which could mean that people are used to experiencing changes in the map and borders of the nationstate, and with the still ongoing Serbo-Kosovan dispute regarding the independence of Kosovo (declared in 2008), anticipation of another map-alteration might well be expected.2 Mapping has long been viewed as a means of strengthening or establishing a sense of attachment to one’s community, especially an ethno-national community. Yi Fu Tuan (2001, 178) states that “maps in school atlases and history books show nation-states as sharply bounded units. Small-scale maps encourage people to think of their countries as self-sufficient, discrete entities”. Nations as imagined communities have constantly referred to the shape of their territory as a proof of their existence, and maps have emerged as a useful means for visually associating the nation with its homeland within the popular imaginary (Anderson, 1991, 170–174). Geographic space of a nation (country, state) can be translated into symbolical domain and symbolic textuality, and materialization of such symbolism and reading of such a text (“nation as a text”) is also procured through mapping (Radović 2013, 164). Maps are not only “the products of geography and reason but also of the norms and values of societies – all maps state an argument about the world, and they are propositional in nature. There have been no limits to the varieties of maps that have been developed historically in response to different purposes of argument, aiming at different rhetorical goals” (Harley 1989, 2). Given such functions of geographic mapping, especially political mapping, a constant changing of the modern maps of Serbia as presented in media and textbooks

2 Serbia’s defiance in recognizing Kosovo’s independence is on formal and political levels also promoted through the regular featuring of Kosovo as a part of Serbia in all publicly featured maps; and any sporadic, usually accidental use of maps that do not do so (those which are mostly borrowed from foreign digital sources), is almost immediately met with public condemnations.

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comes as a clear, if not really desirable message about the unfinished foundations of contemporary Serbian identity and statehood. Besides borders in the post-Yugoslav space and any political maps of this part of Europe, some other things have also undergone changes in recent decades. The creation of maps is no longer practiced solely by professionals in the field of cartography – the advancement of computer technologies and the wide availability of graphic, visual and GIS software has globally led to popular production of various maps. Today the means of making maps is becoming more accessible – there is no doubt that since the Second World War in the developed countries of the world, access to maps has exploded (Godlevska and Martin 2011, 364), and nowadays it is also possible for non-professionals to make them. This newly emerging “grassroots” mapping (mostly a non-commercial and unofficial production of maps) could have certain limits if we adopt the position of John Brian Harley (1988, 301) that “the means of cartographic production, whether commercial or official, is still largely controlled by dominant groups (. . .) Cartography remains a teleological discourse, reifying power, reinforcing the status quo, and freezing social interaction within charted lines”. On the other hand, although the non-commercial and unofficial production of maps still may not possess the scope of both the empirical data or the map-making skills of professional cartographers, this new corpus of maps reaches the public almost directly, along with “a distributed user/agent relationship in cartography, especially in relation to geographic visualization, where users are their own cartographers” (Crampton 2001, 242). The game changer in this respect was the shift from the predominantly printed production of maps in the past to the digital sphere now – the dissemination of both non-professional popular maps and digitalized maps from original sources on the internet has become widespread (including the emergence of the geo-web), and since such maps are usually free of charge and easily accessible, they are actually more available to the wider public than most current professional maps and geospatial data. In the era of the digital world and internet, this cartographic perception of the world, or of a segment of the world, is no longer exclusively passive for many people, since the increased availability of technical tools and empirical data enables even the non-skilled individuals to create at least simple maps. Often these maps are thematic, mirroring the interests of the authors, and they range from very simple, to very complex ones, often with original and new geo-data. Many of these aspire to circulate knowledge widely about a certain area or a theme, often not claiming any copyright, and such maps can become prominent on various internet platforms and social media.

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This paper will discuss one type of such thematic maps which are proliferating in recent years. The focus will be on thematic maps of ethnic distribution (i.e. ethnic maps, traditionally also called ethnographic maps)3 in the former Yugoslavia (covering various time periods), which have been springing up in the past couple of years on various internet platforms, from Wikipedia, Facebook and other social networks, to specialized sites and forums. The focus might be limited to those thematic maps produced and digitally disseminated in Serbia, but a comparative look into related “cartography” coming from neighboring countries is inevitable, not only because of the obvious post-Yugoslav context of this kind of unofficial mapping, but also given the overlapping of themes, content and authors occurring across virtual communities in this particular instance, but also in general. This kind of mapmaking and circulation eludes categorizations such as community or vernacular mapping, but it could be defined as “volunteered mapping”, leaning on Goodchild’s remarks on volunteered geographic information (Goodchild 2007).4 Authors and disseminators of these ethnic distribution maps come from almost all the post-Yugoslav states; some are anonymous, while others are not, and some of them are regular collaborators on Wikipedia and other web sites (in any case, almost none of these maps were created as a professional task). This paper will interpret ethnic and ethnographic mapping of both the digital and the preceding analogue era in the former Yugoslavia by following Jeremy Crampton’s positions on providing “a social history or anthropology of maps and mapping as contingent and contesting representations, that is, maps as social constructions (. . .) and document[ing] the power

3 The above-mentioned terms will be used interchangeably in the article, with author’s position being that the most accurate term would be map of ethnic distribution, and ethnic map (mapping) being more common although not as precise (see also Winlow 2009, 398). “Ethnographic map” is a term frequently used by academic geographers, and almost exclusively utilized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but which can mean a different kind of cartography in ethnology (and cultural anthropology), usually designating thematic maps of the territorial spread of particular cultural elements and phenomena. 4 Community mapping (including indigenous and vernacular geographies) is for the most part participatory and often counter-hegemonic with regards to thematic axioms of traditional cartographic representation of the world, almost always adding new information or viewpoints to maps or geo-data. Contemporary unofficial ethnic mapmaking usually does not do that, since it replicates the old and (according to some authors) conservative practices of ethnographic cartography, and usually relies on existing knowledge and data (most often official and statistical) on ethnicity (no matter its source or reliability) which is then mapped. Volunteered mapping and volunteered geographic information (VGI) presents a somewhat broader term which could better suit such mapping practices.

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of the map by tracing out the genealogy of power discourses, that is, how maps are strategies and relations of power-knowledge” (Crampton 2001, 242).

2 Mapmaking and b/ordering ethnicity Non-professional, volunteered maps of ethnic distribution now follow in the footsteps of their previously professionally prepared predecessors in the former Yugoslavia. This kind of thematic maps was quite frequently created, starting in the beginning of the 1990s. Such so-called ethnic mapping had a revival with the onset of the Yugoslav wars, especially in Belgrade and Zagreb, and several ethnic distribution maps were produced by professional cartographers; and at the same time, ethnic maps were also quite present in the media.5 Interest in this kind of thematic map was obviously ignited by the ongoing wars and territorial claims of that time, and such maps often catered to the political agendas of the period. While the creation of ethnic maps was a frequent practice in the 1990s, that was not the case in the socialist period to that degree. In overall demographic/population cartography, ethnic distribution was not a prominent theme in major geographic publications of the latter socialist era in Yugoslavia – in the Big Geographical Atlas of Yugoslavia published by Zagreb University (Bertić 1987), out of eleven demographic maps, just one covered the distribution of ethnicity. In the second edition of the Yugoslav Encyclopaedia (Enciklopedija Jugoslavije, 1980–1990), there were no ethnic distribution maps in the gigantic entries on the Yugoslav republics (apart from Bosnia-Herzegovina).6 On the other hand, the seminal World Atlas (6th edition) by the Lexicographic Institute in Zagreb (Feldbauer 1988) displayed separate maps of the spatial distribution for all Yugoslav “nations and nationalities” (Croatian: narodi i narodnosti, were then the official terms designating the peoples of Yugoslavia and its national minorities), together with even more numerous general demographic, and especially economic maps. It was similarly the case with school atlases in the late socialist

5 The majority of such ethnic distribution maps depicted territories of war-torn Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and among others included those produced by the Geographic Faculty in Belgrade in 1992 (based on 1981 and 1991 census data), and Lexicographic Institute “Miroslav Krleža” in Zagreb, also in 1992 (based on 1991 census data). At the same time, the early 1990s witnessed an increase in the production of historical atlases and wide public circulation of various historical maps throughout (post)-Yugoslav countries (and émigré communities), which attested even more to the resurgence and (re)construction of national identities. 6 In the first edition of the Yugoslav Encyclopaedia (1955–1971, eight volumes) there were no ethnic or ethnographic maps.

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period: the historical atlas for schools published in Zagreb (Lučić and Drašković 1985) featured no ethnic maps whatsoever, while the Belgrade historical atlas by Željko Škalamera (1983) displayed just one ethnic distribution map, the one of Austria-Hungary and the autonomous region of Vojvodina at the turn of the century. Political changes and the start of the war inevitably influenced the politics of cartography, which is evident in the new school historical atlas in Serbia after the break-up of Yugoslavia (Blagojević 1997) – of three full page maps covering the interwar Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes / Yugoslavia (1918–1941), one was a map of ethnic distribution, and the other map represented the distribution of religions (both based on 1921 census data). Contemporary ethnic mapmakers have continued the practice started some thirty years ago by professional cartographers from the region, and they leaned on their work, but not just on that. Maps, once publicly not widely known, which depicted the ethnic distribution of the Balkan Peninsula and Central Europe, had been created in the late 19th and early 20th century, and now were brought from library bookshelves and academic domain, being reproduced in contemporary Balkan print media, and later also on the internet. In the 19th century, an array of statistical cartographic techniques for mapping populations were developed hand in hand with population statistics in Western and Central European countries – “by the early 1900s there was a rich set of techniques for mapping human population distributions across territories, including population density, migration, longevity, as well as language or religious characteristics” (Crampton 2006, 733).7 Thus, a plethora of thematic demographic maps, including those of ethnic (linguistic, religious etc.) distribution, based on statistical and census data, were then produced across Europe, including Austria (later Austria-Hungary), home at the time to numerous South Slavs.8 Thanks to advanced statistics and cartography, and regular population censuses, lands of the Danube Monarchy were very well covered by various thematic maps in that period (including ethno-linguistic ones), published in many atlases, lexicons and other editions of the Belle Époque Europe. That was not the case so much with the Ottoman Empire (including its European territories) – Turkish statistical and cartographic surveys lagged behind those in the West

7 Jeremy Crampton also notes that “the variety of map types exceeded that of today; indicating that ‘cartodiversity’ has consistently decreased during the twentieth century, perhaps due to standardization in modern software” (Crampton 2006, 733). 8 A number of “ethnic” maps (of Europe and the world) were produced and published in 19th century atlases even when not based on demographic data, such as those by Heinrich Berghaus; on the development of the mapping of race and ethnicity see Winlow 2009 and Crampton 2010.

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(the first ever all-Ottoman census was finalized only in 1893), but that (ethno) geographical “void” was readily being filled by researchers and maps created in other European countries, including the young Balkan nation-states. Ethnographic maps of the Balkans started proliferating especially after the RussoTurkish war which ended in 1878, when the carving out of new national borders in the European tissue of the declining empire became a top priority for Christian Balkan political elites in the decades to come.9 As Robert Peckham (2000, 79) states: Given the complex ethnic composition of the region, political significance was attached to ethnographic maps that purported to demonstrate the distribution of distinct populations and aimed at the ethnographic appropriation of the region. It was the Russians, pressing for Slav hegemony, who had adhered to the principle of the ethno-political boundary when arguing for an enlarged Bulgarian state at the Conference of Constantinople (1876). The ambassadorial meeting at Constantinople brought home the principle of the ethnographic frontier for the peoples of Europe with all the force of a thunderbolt. It dramatized its significance and invested it with a propagandist value which the Balkan peoples were not slow to grasp.

A “map mania” (Peckham 2000) swiftly ensued, with top prize in this geopolitical game being (geographic) Macedonia, soon to be crammed with foreign-sponsored militias, clerics and clerks, teachers, and professional and amateur cartographers and ethnographers. Bulgaria and Greece led the way in this political and mapmaking endeavor, soon to be joined by Serbia, and even Romania. Henry Wilkinson ([1951] 1992) compiled and analyzed 216 ethnographic maps of Macedonia in his oeuvre Maps and Politics: A Review of the Ethnographic Cartography of Macedonia, attesting to the divergent political goals of competing parties, the ethnic “gerrymandering” of maps, the criteria used for compiling and drawing maps, and the ethnographers and their classification and distribution of “ethnicities” in maps. Parties interested in the “Macedonian question” sent out their usually biased “ethnographers” to the region, and Serbia’s prime delegate was geographer Jovan Cvijić, who was also considered the founder of Serbian ethnology (see Prelić 2018, Radović 2017).10 In 1906 he published a study with an ethnographic

9 The most influential “ethnographic maps” of the Balkans before 1870s were those by Ami Boué, Guillaume Lejean, and Pavel Jozef Šafárik (Peckham 2000, 80). 10 Cvijić surveyed physical and human geography of the Balkans. His seminal work on the Balkan peninsula, La Peninsule Balkanique, Geographie Humaine (Cvijić [1918] 1987), was originally published in Paris in 1918, coinciding with the beginning of peace negotiations after the First World War.

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map entitled “A Political and Ethnographic Overview of Macedonia and Old Serbia”;11 it backed Serbian claims to certain areas of Macedonia, which would be joined in 1913 with an even more comprehensive ethnographic map of the entire Balkan peninsula, also serving as the basis for Serbian aspirations in the demarcation of political borders in the aftermath of the Balkan wars (1912–1913). The climax of these “map manias” occurred with the end of the First World War and in the course of the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920), in which Cvijić also took part, this time as an official member of the delegation of the newly constituted Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes; he focused on the ethnic and political demarcation and border creation for the territories of the former Austria-Hungary.12 The peace conference resulted in a number of treaties (the most famous being Treaty of Versailles) and it congregated thousands of political representatives and experts from the winning Entente countries who were redrawing the political map of the world in the war’s aftermath. Utilization of maps, including those which were “ethnographic”, was one of the pillars of this radical b/ordering of Europe and the world, and a vast number of ethnic distribution maps were produced at this time in both winning and losing countries of the war; these maps served as one of the parameters for the new political rearrangement of Europe.13 It could be argued that the aim of dismantling the multiethnic empires, coupled with the Wilsonian principle of self-determination, brought the nation-state logic to its pinnacle at this time, together with a close associating of identity with territory. Ethnographic maps of the era reiterated and strengthened this logic under the guise of scientific and empirical authority, notwithstanding the chronic problems of such population cartography even with the existent statistical or census data, let alone when such data on “identity” was not available. As a means of bringing national subjectivities into being, few genres have greater impact than a census which, through its mutually exclusive yet shifting

11 The first Serbian ethnographic map of Macedonia and adjoining regions was published in 1889 by Spiridon Gopčević (Grčić 2019, 36). In his overview of the history of Serbian cartography, Mirko Grčić (2019, 34) shows that what could be described as the first thematic map in Serbian cartography was an “ethnographic map” from 1821 by Dimitrije Davidović (“States in which Serbs reside”). 12 The Yugoslav delegation and Cvijić produced a number of ethnographic maps backing their claims regarding the northern and western borders of the nascent monarchy; the corresponding writings of Cvijić on this ethno-political task were compiled in late 1980s (Cvijić 1987a). See more on the issue in the recent contribution by Vedran Duančić (2020). 13 For a detailed analysis of the American delegation’s utilization of ethnographic maps, see Crampton 2006; 2010, and Slukan Altic 2016, and on France and the United Kingdom, see Heffernan 2002.

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national categorizations, “fills in politically the formal topography of the map” (Anderson, 1991, 174). In the first half of the 20th century, many European countries did not collect data on ethnicity with their census forms (some do not do that even to this day), or certain regional, ethnic and national ascriptions (identities) were not allowed to be recorded (additionally, the presence and dynamics of layered identities is still a problem for statistical collecting, even less so a hundred years ago). Data on native language (mother tongue) or spoken language were also often a matter of serious debate, with these categories being adjusted and manipulated by authorities for political goals. All the mentioned categories of ascription and identity (even when not manipulated or distorted), were then ground through certain mapping styles so as to suit the map’s goals, often for the mere sake of simplicity of presentation or an edition’s technical limitations.14 Hence, homogenization and essentializing of lived (collective) identities, already decontextualized by limitations of census categorizations, is “furthered in the representational conjunction of identity and space (usually ethnicity and territory) in the ‘anthropogeographical discourse’ of ethnographic maps” (Noyes, 1994, 241). Leaning on Noyes and Wilkinson, David Campbell (1999, 406) argues that: Purporting to show the spatial distribution of identity groups, ethnographic maps have often served colonial practices of government through their reduction of dynamic social situations to conceptions of homogenous territory. Such maps feed the limitations of the census categories into the constraints of Euclidean cartography, thereby compounding the reduction of complexity and contingency. As a technology crucial for the fixing of “natives in their places”, ethnographic maps have often been deployed to justify nationalist claims.

It could be argued that such translation of identity (national, ethnic, religious etc.) onto maps falls more into the domain of imaginative and image representation than simple empirically based cartographic presentation, where agents and actors of particular representation strategies determine the means and goals of such map making (as argued by Crampton and Harley in multiple instances). The primary agency of ethnographic mapmaking at the turn of the century was clear, the delineation of national political borders, and the frequency of “ethnic/ethnographic” cartography in what was to become Yugoslavia in the 20th century might support such a view in the wider sense. Namely, with Yugoslav external borders mostly settled after the Treaty of Rapallo, ethnographic maps were no longer so present

14 The additional limitations of the cartographic representation of identity are present when no census returns or any statistical data are available, when politically opportunistic categories for mapping can be managed or even created, and then also cartographically presented, with 19th and early 20th century Ottoman regions in Europe being a good example of this (as shown in Wilkinson’s research).

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as they had been ante bellum, since the imagined nation was now politically achieved and slowly consolidated, usually through autocratic means. Thus, ethnic/ethnographic cartographic imagery was not needed in the way it was before, maybe not even wanted. A mapped image of one’s own “body of the nation” segregated along (ethnic) identity lines might not have been desired, a viewpoint that could be supported by the dominant politics of (ethno-national) identity in monarchist Yugoslavia (unitarism of the first Yugoslav state and the episode of “integral Yugoslavism”), including demographic and census management of that era.15 At the same time, ethnographic maps were still in widespread circulation, including production of new ones, in countries seeking revisions of their external borders (such as Germany and Hungary), but not only there – a significant corpus of ethnographic maps were also produced in ethnically complex new nation-states (such as Czechoslovakia and Poland) with shifting national identity politics.16 If we disregard temporary border delineations stipulated by the Axis powers and Bulgaria’s acquisition of Southern Dobruja in 1940, the next major political re-b/ordering in the Balkans occurred with the end of the Second World War, foremostly the modification of the western border with Italy for a victorious Yugoslavia (in 1945 already constituted as a socialist and federal state). Not surprisingly, this led to novel ethnographic map-making with regard to the Julian March and Yugoslav claims of sovereignty over the port city of Trieste, with one of the major Yugoslav arguments being that the entire Triestine hinterland had a Slovene ethnic majority (also supported by appropriate mapping).17 With the eventual resolution of this border demarcation, maps of ethnic distribution rarely

15 The first Yugoslav census of 1921 registered the population’s native language and religion, but not ethnicity, while the census of 1931 collected information on ethnicity (census questions no. 11 and 12), but with one significant limitation – instructions for the census basically required most South Slavs of the monarchy to state Yugoslav ethnicity (see Mrdjen 2002, 78). On mapmaking in interwar Yugoslavia, see chapter by Vedran Duančić in this volume. 16 On the other hand, the regular presentation of ethnic distribution maps in atlases and other editions in Austria-Hungary followed the discourse of imperial greatness and pride of a vast continental empire inhabited by many peoples, a Habsburg variant of “multiculturalism”, and not the representational strategies of a nation-state (a view that could also be partially applied to corresponding maps in Tsarist Russia). 17 In this instance, one of the most detailed maps of ethnic distribution from the former Yugoslavia was charted, presenting the ethnic composition of the Julian March and Venetian Slovenia (based on the 1910 Austrian census and the 1921 Italian census respectively), featuring both choropleth (color coded) mapping and proportional symbols (in Novak and Zwitter 1945). Trieste remained an Italian city in the end, while the rest of the region had been successively partitioned between Italy and Yugoslavia (now territories of Croatia and Slovenia) – see Kaja Širok’s chapter in this volume dealing with the border delineation in this region.

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found their place in Yugoslav atlases and editions featuring cartography, as already mentioned. The big comeback of ethnic maps (the very old ones and those newly made), would occur, yet again, simultaneously with the resurgence of border disputes, first on intra-Yugoslav levels (with nationalist calls for a redrawing of the borders of the Yugoslav constituent republics in the 1980s), and after 1991 as an international issue that arose with the violent break-up of the country and wars raging across now external borders of former Yugoslav states. Ethno-territorial discourses had swung in full force, tightly binding ethnicity and borders of the (new) nationstates in most public discourses and are present to a great extent even to today, which could also explain the ongoing interest in ethnic maps and their new digital life. However, it was not only the “ethnic cartography” of the (ex)Yugoslav and European geographers of the 19th and the 20th century that influenced the contemporary volunteered cartography in the digital domain. One could argue that public interest in maps depicting ethnic distribution and the consequent spatial b/ordering discourses stem even more from the legacy of the public political and diplomatic map making of the 1990s during the wars in Croatia, and especially in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Audiences in the entire former Yugoslavia, and war-torn Bosnia in particular, were bombarded through media (some simultaneously with the literal bombardment of their homes), with proposed maps of a partition of BosniaHerzegovina along projected ethnic border lines, to the horror and unease of many. It was not only ethnically based segregation maps that were, officially or unofficially, publicly spun out by the warring factions and their representatives, but also maps put forward by international diplomats and peace negotiators over the course of at least four years. These legitimized ethnic segregation, delineation and construction of de facto inter-ethnic spatial borders within Bosnia (albeit formally with the purpose of ending the war).18 Such an approach was

18 The omnipresence of ethnic reordering and b/ordering through mapping at the time might best be epitomized by the now infamous “napkin cartography”, i.e. the event when then the president of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, drew an ad-hoc map of a potential partition of Bosnia on the back of the dinner menu, and gave it to Paddy Ashdown (leader of the UK Liberal Party) during a formal dining event in May 1995 in London. This event has repeatedly been recounted by Ashdown on numerous occasions (including his formal testimony in March 1998 before the Hague Tribunal / International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia), adding to an already widespread belief that Croatia and Serbia were considering a mutual partition of the neighboring country; a concise summary of Ashdown’s repeated statements on the issue (including Tudjman’s comments and the alleged “menu map”) is given in the news source (in Croatian), accessed online on 20 December 2020: https://express.24sata.hr/top-news/u-sefu-je -cuvao-tu-manovu-skicu-podjele-bosne-19255.

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likened to the apartheid-era demarcation of Bantustans, and the resolutions of the Bosnian war very much centered on “the singular cartographic delineation of territory” (Crampton 1996, 353). As Campbell (1999, 402–406) argues, “international diplomacy and its cartography has, therefore, through its reliance on an apartheid logic, played an important though not single-handed role in foreclosing the possibility of non-nationalist conceptions of political community in Bosnia”, and ethnographic maps based on the 1991 Yugoslav census data were the foundation for many of the international community’s efforts to resolve the Bosnian war. This petrified logic (as represented in the possibility of translating ethnicity onto maps and their demarcation via drawing borders) will endure into the coming decades.

3 Mapping ethnicity in the digital space Many of the above-mentioned maps started circulating on the world wide web, gaining thereby their new digital life as a part of unofficial “public geography”, accompanied by a new corpus of digitally made amateur maps of ethnic distributions which soon joined in. In what could be characterized as post-Yugoslav virtual space (internet platforms primarily operating in what used to be known as the Serbo-Croatian language, and to a lesser degree other languages of the former Yugoslavia),19 these maps were to be found first on a number of public internet forums (in their historical, cartographic and geographic sections/threads), and then also on Wikipedia pages related to the geography, demography and the history of former Yugoslav countries. With the growing prevalence of web 2.0, “ethnic mapping” also started circulating on social media, primarily Facebook, and features regularly on pages primarily dealing with cartography.20 This kind of mapmaking could be designated as a segment of participatory web cultures, which commonly also entails the anonymity of most map creators and, unlike

19 After the break up of Yugoslavia as a state, what used to be Yugoslav space gained its afterlife in the cultural sphere, which further invigorated with the advent of the virtual space; thanks to linguistic proximitiy and shared historical and cultural heritage, a post-Yugoslav space (real and virtual) exists in some domains of arts, literature, pop culture, academia, media etc. (see also Radović 2014). 20 In the Serbian domain the most prominent Facebook pages and groups hosting ethnic maps in the last couple of years are Kartografija (facebook.com/kartografijaD) and Atlas srpske istorije (facebook.com/groups/341938102830305). Internet spillover of such graphic content enables its presence on other, especially image oriented social media as well, such as Flickr, Pinterest, Instagram etc.

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earlier institutionalized cartography, mostly eludes any transparent agency of such mapmaking, and relations of knowledge and power can be read mostly from its context.21 One direction that can channel the interpretation is the fact that contemporary ethnic maps display almost complete continuity with “traditional” ethnographic cartography in terms of the mapmaking styles, the general themes of the maps, and the information they provide through the creation of maps. Hence, the vast majority of these volunteered maps represent mapping of different census data on ethnicity, religion and native language; recent censuses of post-Yugoslav states, censuses held in both incarnations of Yugoslavia, and in Austria-Hungary (especially the 1910 census) have all been mapped in the last ten years, covering almost all regions of the former Yugoslavia (the data from the Ottoman censuses have been mapped only a few times). Ethnic distribution maps of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo are the most frequent, followed by those of Croatia, Montenegro, Vojvodina and Macedonia, while Slovenia and Serbia proper (or Central Serbia, the territory of Serbia excluding Vojvodina and Kosovo) are only randomly covered by this kind of mapmaking.22 Neighboring Balkan and Central European countries are rarely present when it comes to this kind of thematic maps, apart from the frequent presence of ethnic maps of the neighboring regions of Romania and Hungary. Data on native language from censuses held in Austria-Hungary (particularly the 1910 census) has been cartographically rendered numerous times, by both professional and amateur cartographers (mostly from Hungary, and to a lesser extent from Croatia and Serbia); the maps are for territories of Hungary proper and Croatia-Slavonia before 1918, and in recent times separately also for the contemporary territory of Vojvodina. In these renderings, data on languages is very often presented as ethnicity (including explanations in legends), attesting to very loose translations of identity categories onto maps, which will often occur in ethnic maps of other regions and countries (especially when mapping data from the 1921 and 1931 Yugoslav censuses).

21 Apart from anonymous map makers, a number of these volunteered maps name their authors, especially on Wikipedia, and there are regular contributors to this mapping domain. A few of them have backgrounds or graduate education in demography, sociology, geography, history and architecture for example, and obviously possess technical skills for working with base map sheets and understanding statistical data. Volunteer mapmakers are sometimes part of project groups not directly dealing with ethnic mapmaking (such as the authors from the Serbian DNA Project). 22 Naturally, with the constant flux of internet content, the situation in this regard changes with time.

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The significant majority of these maps are choropleth maps (color coded, using sequential color schemes and sometimes shading patterns for rendering statistical data); less frequent are maps with proportional symbols (most often using discs that vary in size formatted as “pie charts” displaying statistical distribution), and only a few of them are dotted maps (dot distribution maps using dots to represent presence or absence of a feature). Technical simplicity of choropleth mapping compared to other styles is part of the reason for its prevalence, in spite of its downsides for population mapping and especially for cartographic representations of identity as already seen in traditional “analogue” mapping. For the most part, color coded maps ignore population density, and a given group’s proportion of the total population is concealed behind visual generalizations. They do indicate the comparative strengths of ethnic groups (yet represent neither their numerical strength nor their distribution), and the tendency to depict ethnic groups in color codes as homogeneous blocs obscures the representation of ethnic diversity in such maps (Wilkinson [1951]1992, Black 1997, Peckham 2000).23 On the other side, if we read such maps as intended social constructions, ethnic choropleth maps actually serve ethno-territorial discourse and its traditional goal of purporting population homogeneity in a certain territory and its visual representation of an even and congruent spatial spread of a particular “identity”. The prevalence of choropleth mapping, which takes into account the majority or plurality in a certain territory (but not the population size), does attest to the still dominant association of ethnicity with territoriality, a bond which was cemented in most national discourses of the 1990s Balkans, and which still seems to hold firmly. This kind of mapping indirectly shows that the prime interest of ethnic maps of this sort is territory and borders (bordering), since the stress lies exclusively on the spatial component of the group’s distribution, and not the numerical one. In the technical sense and information-wise, maps with proportional symbols fair somewhat better because they can represent the size of the population(s) and sometimes population density, and, if desired, can render the ethnic heterogeneity (in a demographic sense) of a place or a territorial district/unit. However, this cartographic style can also serve particular mapping goals, such as emphasizing population size over its spatial distribution (combined with convenient map districting). In professional cartography during the 1990s, ethnic maps utilizing

23 As Peckham (2000) also summarizes, in many ethnic/ethnographic maps sub-groups were merged into dominant ethnographic categories and a map’s scale adjusted to include or exclude specific minorities and ethnic groups according to the map’s purpose, something that happens also in contemporary amateur mapmaking, especially when “translating” ethnic and other identity categories from past times into present day maps.

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proportional symbols were usually being made by Croatian geographers, while that was usually not the case with Serbian authors who mostly relied on choropleth maps. This discrepancy, which has been pointed at previously (Klemenčić 2006), testifies to the strategies of presenting ethnic distribution by either putting stress on territorial presence, or at population numbers, whichever is more suited for strategies of national legitimization through cartographic means. Yet it can also be dependent on individual mapmaking skills. With the newest, unofficial ethnic maps, there is also a tendency among authors from Croatia to utilize proportional symbols maps more frequently than those from Serbia. It is an open question if this is a matter of mapping representation strategies, adoption of the map style from the predecessors, or simply a question of technical skills. In the socialist era demographic maps usually displayed statistical data with “municipality” being the basic and most common district (unit) for data representation, while with current ethnic maps there is a tendency to map data based on the smallest territorial districts possible. This can go down to map districting at the level of the sub-municipal local community, cadastral municipality (community) or even village, and a significant number of such detailed (usually choropleth) maps have been produced, particularly for the territories of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Montenegro.24 This tendency can be attributed to the legacy of the 1990s, especially from the Bosnian war, when many mapped plans for ethnic segregation of this country went into the smallest geographical detail (there were even attempts to map ethnic distribution based on land parcel ownership, i.e. taking into account the presumed ethnicity of the cadaster plot owners).25 One could point out another legacy of the professional mapping of the 20th century in the newest popular ethnic mapmaking – the use of particular colors for certain ethnic/religious/linguistic groups As the different variants of green have often been used to denote Muslim communities of the Balkans in some older ethnic maps (as well as the Ottoman Empire in historic maps), that is regularly the case in recent ethnic cartography of the digital domain. Also, starker colors are sometimes used for the author’s own ethno-national community represented on the map, thus

24 But also a few ethnic maps of Vojvodina represent ethnicity on the level of a single village, again, usually delivering data from the 1910 census (and mostly made by mapmakers from Hungary). 25 This principle was utilized most frequently by the Bosnian Serb military and civilian leaders throughout the war, who, in an avant-garde twist of ethno-territorial logic, claimed that “64 per cent of the land was registered to Serbs as most lived in rural areas”, and that land parcel ownership should also be the basis for border delineation of the projected Bosnian-Serb polity (see Campbell 1999, 421).

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emphasizing its territorial distribution compared to other mapped communities (a practice not unfamiliar to earlier professional cartography as well).26 Popular maps of ethnic distribution from historic times, usually based on census data, have been created for most post-Yugoslav states and regions by these cartographic enthusiasts. While contemporary ethnic/linguistic/religious maps (either amateur or professional) can sometimes serve the aim of claiming legitimacy over a certain territory, popularly produced historical ethnic maps also do not necessarily need to be just a matter of simple cartographic enthusiasm, since the creation of these maps can also have the purpose of comparing ethnic distribution in the present time. A number of maps represent the combined cartographic renderings of usually two maps (re)presenting ethnic distribution from past and present, or are consecutively presented in forum threads or on the same web page. This is very commonly the case with maps presenting the ethnic distribution of Serbs in Croatia and maps of the ethnic distribution of Kosovo (and to a somewhat lesser degree of Bosnia-Herzegovina), with comment sections on some pages also narratively pointing out the purported decline of an ethnic group’s presence in certain territory (again focusing on the spatial aspect of ethnicity, since usually no absolute population numbers or demographic data accompany either the maps or the discussions). “Before and after” comparisons, again, do not represent a post-Yugoslav specificity; these have been present throughout the 20th century very often with the goal of emphasizing the greater (territorial) spread of a certain group in past times, thus serving nationalist and political goals, very often irredentist. (This is similar to the way historical maps have been used) Most of the contemporary volunteered ethnic mapping correlates with paradigms of ethnographic mapmaking from previous decades, and cartographic means and strategies of representing ethnicity seem not to have changed too much from the analogue times. Contemporary renderings of ethnic distribution maps again entail dangers of a misrepresentation – as Stef Jansen (2005, 47) puts it, such maps can suggest the fixedness and importance of ethnic or other identity categories that might have had little bearing in the actual self-perception of the members of the “mapped” communities. Ethnic maps can thus essentialize

26 Paradigmatic for this “technique” might be the famous Hungarian “Carte Rouge” by Pál Teleki, an ethnographic map of the so-called Hungary proper before 1918; it was based on the linguistic data of the 1910 census and made for the Paris Peace Conference and also noted for its deliberate use of colors as a means of visual manipulation (the Hungarian presence on the map depicted in stark red, and the Romanian in light purple).

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cartographically represented identities to an extent which does not correspond to the actual (either past or present) state of things, and which basically mirrors the contemporary sense of belonging to a certain ethnic or other group. Viewed in this way, maps speak more about their authors than about the communities which are being mapped, also given that mapmaking “is never merely the drawing of maps: it is the making of worlds. Deconstructing the map is deconstructing the society that produced it” (Harley 1990, 16). So, worlds are created rather than just simply presented through a map, and the question arises as to what kind of mapped worlds are being imagined from the post-Yugoslav perspective of the second decade of the 21st century?

4 Imagined spaces and borders The 2010s saw the resurgence of nationalism and a grand entrance of populism into mainstream European politics and public discourses, and the countries of South East Europe were no exception. Focus on territory and borders further heightened with the acceleration of the migrant crisis in the second half of the decade, along with renewed calls for the strengthening of the role of the nationstate by a number of rightist governments of EU countries and beyond. All these processes had their precedent in the countries of the former Yugoslavia decades ago, and further invigorated already present public and official assertions of national identity, sovereignty and territory. The alignment between territory and identity could be described as “ontopological”, as national identities are fused with the particular territory – the process is reinforced and sustained by “creating man-made landscapes of a symbolically charged character aimed at placing the nation’s territory in the mind’s eye” (Björkdahl 2018, 37). If imagining the nation is procured through a range of discursive practices, imagining national (a nation’s) territory is primarily executed by cartographic means. As shown previously, maps of ethnic distribution also contribute to this representational praxis, frequently by means of establishing or projecting national and political borders, and often go hand in hand with border delineations in Europe in the last 150 years. Most recent non-professional mapmaking could also partly stem from this b/ordering context. At least two delineation and border issues in postYugoslav space have risen prominently in the political and public discourse in the last ten years. Besides disputing Kosovo’s independence, Serbia and a number of its politicians and public figures have repeatedly called for the modification and changes of the border line between the two, regularly pitching this potential option to the general public. At the same time, in Bosnia-Herzegovina,

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officials of the Republika Srpska entity often threaten the entity’s secession from the state whilst leading Bosnian Croat politicians (along with some officials from Croatia) call for the creation of a third “Croat” entity (in which case that would consequently mean yet another administrative border within the country). All this “border talk” laterally contributes to territorial imagining in the public, including in the mapmaking discussed here. This b/ordering cartographic imagination does not mean the literal drawing of some new potential borders in digital maps (although that can also be the case),27 but when it comes to ethnic maps, it primarily entails imagining and mapping “make-believe spaces”, to use the concept of Yael Navaro-Yashin who “attempts to make theoretically sophisticated sense of the links between the idea of a state and the institutional reality of the state. The concept ‘make-believe’ refers to something that exists but not really. The ‘make’ refers to the doing, and the ‘believe’ to the phantasmatical aspect of constructing such space” (Björkdahl 2018, 36). Translating this concept of “affective geography” into ethnic thematic mapmaking can be quite useful: mapping ethnicity (especially with choropleth mapping) provides a visualization of a homogenous territory (the make-believe space), spatialization of one’s own (and the other’s) identity that correspond with purported and imagined ethnic territories, rather than with existing political borders. The “make” is executed by the practice of mapping, while the “believe” is represented in the mapped “ethnic territory”, non-existent in reality, but imagined, and at times wished for. This representational and imaginative logic can interpret not only contemporary mapmaking, but historic ethnographic cartography as well, given that it represented a tool par excellence for imagining, and then later creating make-believe national territories with their designated borders. The relations of power and knowledge in “analogue” ethnographic cartography are more or less obvious, connecting the political and academic class (“the believers”), including cartographers (“the makers”), while the “digital” popular mapmaking eschews such “clear cuts”. The circulated knowledge and cartographic/spatial paradigms are for the most part grounded in the political and statistical pool of dominant discourses and ideologies (at least in the post-Yugoslav virtual space), while particular actors of this mapping domain are usually shrouded in the web’s profusion

27 This kind of unofficial and popular cartography would fall under alternate (political) mapmaking, which has also been researched (e.g., Batuman 2010), and is present in many digital domains. Such alternate (ethno)political mapping is naturally present also in post-Yugoslav virtual space, and in recent years has commonly coincided with (geo)political occurrences, with such maps very often mapping irredentist or (petty) imperialist and nationalist territorial aspirations.

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and recent blurring of the difference between the content creator and user.28 These online dynamics could be designated as part of an online “popular geopolitics”, which both shapes the worldviews of users and plays a role in developing new geographies and mappings of the world (Harris 2020). In the instance of current popular ethnic mapmaking, we could potentially talk about the dynamics of “popular ethno-politics” translated into spatial imagining. Those popular spatial ethno-politics in the post-Yugoslav virtual world seem not to diverge much from the ideological and political tracks set in the 19th century, replicating still dominant (and conservative) discourses on ethnicity and territory, both those which are political and those cartographic.

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28 The perceived spontaneity and absolutely popular character of this “democratization” of the knowledge production on the internet should not be taken for granted of course; having in mind common proxies and (mis)use by covert social actors in the cyber world.

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Duančić, Vedran. 2020. Geography and Nationalist Visions of Yugoslavia. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Feldbauer, Božidar, ed. 1988. Atlas svijeta. Zagreb: Jugoslavenski leksikografski zavod “Miroslav Krleža”. Godlewska, Anne, and Jason G. Martin. 2011. “Map.” In The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, edited by John Agnew and David Livingstone, 357–368. Newbury Park: SAGE Publications. Goodchild, Michael. 2007. “Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography.” GeoJournal 69: 211–221. Grčić, Mirko. 2019. “Development of Serbian cartography from the end of XVIII to the beginning of the XX century.” Zbornik radova – Geografski fakultet Univerziteta u Beogradu 67/2: 21–52. Harley, John Brian. 1988. “Maps, Knowledge and Power.” In The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, edited by Denis Cosgrave and Stephen Daniels, 277–312. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harley, John Brian. 1989. “Deconstructing the Map.” Cartographica 26/2: 1–20. Harley, John Brian. 1990. “Cartography, ethics and social theory.” Cartographica 27: 1–23. Harris, Jonathan. 2020. “Nativist-populism, the internet and the geopolitics of indigenous diaspora.” Political Geography 78: 102124. Heffernan, Michael. 2002. “The Politics of the Map in the Early Twentieth Century.” Cartography and Geographic Information Science 29/3: 207–226. Jansen, Stef. 2005. “National Numbers in Context: Maps and Stats in Representations of the Post-Yugoslav Wars.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 12: 45–68. Klemenčić, Mladen. 2006. “Ethnic Maps: Between Reality and Propaganda.” Migracijske i etničke teme 22/4: 363–378. Lučić, Josip, and Blagota Drašković. 1985. Povijesni atlas za osnovnu školu. Zagreb: Kartografija and Školska knjiga. Mrdjen, Snježana. 2002. “Narodnost u popisima. Promjenljiva i nestalna kategorija.” Stanovništvo 1–4: 77–103. Novak, Viktor, and Fran Zwitter, eds. 1945. Oko Trsta. Belgrade: Državni izdavački zavod Jugoslavije. Noyes, John Kenneth, 1994. “The natives in their places: ‘Ethnographic Cartography’ and the representation of autonomous spaces in Ovamboland, German South West Africa.” History and Anthropology 8: 237–264. Peckham, Robert Shannan. 2000. “Map mania: nationalism and the politics of place in Greece, 1870–1922.” Political Geography 19: 77–95. Prelić, Mladena. 2018. “Jovan Cvijić i prve decenije formiranja i institucionalizovanja etnologije kao nauke u Srbiji.” Glasnik Etnografskog instituta SANU 62/2: 83–96. Radović, Srdjan. 2013. Grad kao tekst. Beograd: Biblioteka XX vek. Radović, Srdjan. 2014. “Pop (post)socijalizam: crtice o konstrukciji i muzealizaciji jugoslovenskog socijalističkog nasleđa u najnovije doba.” In Dni na nasledstvoto 2013, edited by Lozanka Peycheva, 148–159. Sofia: IEFEM BAN and Akademichno izdatelstvo “Prof. Marin Drinov”. Radović, Srdjan. 2017. “Urbana istraživanja u etnologiji i antropologiji u Srbiji – od ‘udaljenog pogleda’ do ‘subdiscipline’.” Etnoantropološki problemi 12/2: 583–601. Škalamera, Željko. 1983. Školski istorijski atlas. Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike i nastavna sredstva.

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Slukan Altic, Mirela. 2016. “The Peace Treaty of Versailles: The Role of Maps in Reshaping the Balkans in the Aftermath of WWI.” In History of Military Cartography, edited by Elri Liebenberg et al., 179–198. Cham: Springer. Tuan, Yi Fu. 2011. Space and Place. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wilkinson, Henry R. [1951] 1992. Kartite i politikata: pregled na etnografskata kartografija na Makedonija. Skopje: Makedonska kniga. Winlow, Heather. 2009. “Mapping, race and ethnicity.” In International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, edited by Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift, 398–409. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Petar Todorov

Production of territoriality in the Balkans: The border and the Monastery St. Naum Do not go across the border, they will arrest you (Ne odi preku granica, ke te vrzat)

I heard these words from Mitre (čičko Mitre), a native from Pustec (Liqenas) in Albania. His friends and family used to tell him that if he crossed the border illegally to go into Ohrid or to the villages where he could look for a job to earn money to feed his family, he would be arrested. I met Mitre on the border crossing point between the Republic of North Macedonia and the Republic of Albania, close to the monastery St. Naum on the shores of Lake Ohrid where he was hitchhiking for a ride to Pogradec (a town on the southern part of Lake Ohrid). The conversation I had with him revealed to me the perspective of someone who all his life had tried to resist the border in search of a better life. In the present day, people from the village Trpejca (in N. Macedonia) just north of the border speak openly that they are crossing the border control without identity cards in order to buy food products at the Pogradec markets, since these are closer than the Ohrid markets. The police officers working at the border crossing will allow them 2 to 3 hours to shop and get back before the changing of the border guards takes place. Throughout my research in 2018 and 2019 in the regional department of the State Archive of the Republic of North Macedonia in Ohrid and through interviews with people living on both sides of the border near the monastery St. Naum, I came to experience many stories like Mitre’s. However, more importantly, I discovered different perspectives about the past, the territory and the border, which made clear to me the impact of the border on the life of the local population which mainly consisted of ethnic Albanians and Macedonians.1 This chapter deals with the impact of the border on people in the region of Lake Ohrid and tries to understand the developments in the life of the local population living in the borderland. The present state border between N. Macedonia and Albania was actually defined during the period after the Balkan wars and the

1 During my research, I have crossed the border between N. Macedonia and Albania several times. I have interviewed dozens of people from both sides of the border, villagers, politicians, but also local historians. Their views on the border and the importance of the monastery St. Naum are presented in this paper. Only the names of few are changed or not mentioned in order to protect his or her identity. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110712766-008

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First World War (1912–1925) as the border between Albania and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, also known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The initial negotiations over the borderline started in 1913 but were interrupted in 1914 by the outbreak of the First World War. The negotiations resumed in 1919 and lasted for six years in which both sides exchanged sets of arguments before the international commission for the delimitation of the borders of Albania. The final agreement came after direct negotiations between Belgrade and Tirana in 1925 and was implemented on the ground the following year. Since 1925, the borderline between what is today N. Macedonia and Albania divides Lake Ohrid in two parts. On the southeastern part of the lake, the border straddles the main springs of the lake and one of the largest monasteries in the region, St. Naum. In this chapter, I will take borders and/or boundaries not as a given, but as social constructs, related to state power, ethnonational identities and their respective narratives about the past, symbols and cults (Paasi 2005, 18–19). Therefore, the chapter examines how borders are created and how territoriality as a project of imagined spaces of the nation is produced, reimagined and what the impact is on the life of the people living in the borderland area where two or more cultures are coexisting or abutting each other (Osterhammel 2014, 107–108; Feldman 2010, 236). Today, one of the main symbols of the dispute over which territoriality has been created in this part of Europe is the monastery St. Naum. In search for answers, I will focus on the communities and their relationship towards national symbols, state power, and how the borderline and the boundaries are interpreted in relation to the different interests of the communities living in the borderland. In research, borders are considered not only as physical obstacles, but also as social processes, practices, discourses, knowledge, narratives, symbols and institutions and as part of processes which establish lines of divisions between ethnic and other groups. These lines of divisions consist of elements of interpretation (of the past) and elements of distinction between two groups (ethnic groups) (Cohen 2013, 12). Therefore, borders do not represent only a specific territoriality, but also different interpretations of the world in which all of us live. Briefly, the main idea is to examine how territoriality and borders in this part of Southeastern Europe were constructed, practiced and reimagined. The history of the delimitation of the border in this part of the Balkans has been the subject of research. Today we know the entire process in detail as a result of the access we have in archives, but also from the written memoires of the people involved in this process. A majority of the studies depicts the process, and focus on the monastery St. Naum, since it was the main symbolic place about which both parties disputed the borderline using different arguments – ethnic, geographic, economic and political (Asani and Azizi 2019; Azizi 2015; Balevski 1984; Bislimi 2015).

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Founded in the 10th century, the monastery and the cult of St. Naum (Sveti Naum or Shёn Naum) represents today an important religious sanctuary and symbol of shared history. It is a holy place for Orthodox Christians, Albanians, Macedonians and other ethnic groups living in the Balkans, such as Bulgarians and Serbians. At the same time, the monastery is equally important and respected by the Muslim community in the region. In fact, St. Naum is identified by the local Bektashi community as Sari Saltik (Sarı Saltık), named after a dervish from medieval Anatolia. Together with other orthodox saints such as St. Clement of Ohrid, and St. Marena or Ognena Marija (literally, Fiery Mary), it represents an important aspect of the everyday life of the people living in that region. The cult is relevant not only from a spiritual perspective, but also from an economic one. Namely, people visiting the monastery and the grave of St. Naum pray for the health of their own and their close relatives, while others enjoy the beautiful nature of the springs and the food in many restaurants. However, the monastery is also a symbol of dispute between different ethnonational narratives about the past and the present. Namely, since the 19th century up to the present day different ethnic and/or ethnoreligious communities and political entities have been fighting over an alleged historical right to own the monastery and its historical legacy. Thus, this turns the monastery into a main symbol of the dispute over the process of producing and reimagining the territoriality in this part of Southeastern Europe. Today, the monastery is part of the Macedonian Orthodox Church and one of the main tourist sites in the region of Ohrid under protection of UNESCO. This chapter centers on the last decades of the Ottoman presence in the Balkans up to the present day. Namely, beginning at the end of the 19th century, various political actors began to imagine Ottoman space in new ways, primarily as ethno-confessional, homogeneous spaces that radically cut through what had previously been the fine mesh of ambiguity. In focus are the actors who were directly involved in the process of producing the territoriality and borders. To start, it is important to reconstruct the space that came into being in the imperial context during the Ottoman Empire. This space represented a network of towns constructed as a result of economic and human activities, namely, trade, administrative organization, distribution of religious cults, education, etc. The second part focuses on the first disagreements over the “historical rights” to possess the monastery St. Naum, and the coinciding creation of ethno-national maps and borders. Different ethno-religious communities in the region and different political entities have fought each other to own the monastery or to incorporate the region inside their respective ethno-national territory. The third part looks into the life of the people living near the borderline in the period from 1925 until 1990 and the collapse of the socialist regimes in Albania and Yugoslavia and/or Macedonia. The last part

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focuses on the meaning of the border and the monastery in the post-socialist era, i.e., in the context of European integration, but at the same within a context of increased nationalist rhetoric and policies of re(b)ordering the territories in the Balkans.

1 Production of space and territoriality in the Ottoman period Reading the historical literature on Macedonia one will frequently encounter the terms ethnic (etnička), ethno-geographic (etnogeografska), and geographic (geografska) Macedonia. By means of these terms, a “Greater Macedonia” emerges as a nationalistic ideal. Within the limits of this imagined ethnic territory, often understood as frozen in time, and given and determined centuries ago, sometimes also seen as natural, the entire region around Lake Ohrid is considered to be part of Macedonia. The southwestern corner of ethnogeographic Macedonia also includes the region of Lake Prespa. However, the town of Korça (Korçё/Gorica/Korytsa) and its surrounding region located south of the two lakes are not considered as Macedonian lands. The dominant criteria for drawing the lines of boundaries are the historizing legitimations for territorial claims, but most importantly ethnic criteria, i.e., territories in which ethnic Macedonians are living or, more precisely, where it is believed that they represent the dominant community. Another criterion in the argument over the limits of the region Macedonia is that it also represents an economic unity with specific economic and trade patterns (Makedonija 1978).2 In a similar way to Macedonian historiography, Albanian historiography also exploits the term ethnic Albania or natural Albania, which can be translated as Greater Albania. No different criteria are used in imagining the limits of ethnic Albania. According to this ethno-geographical perception, the Ohrid region belongs to the Albanian territories. The third ethno-nationalistic narrative that today competes for the monastery St. Naum, its historical legacy and the region, comes from Bulgaria. This narrative considers the Ohrid region as historically Bulgarian. The frequently used term to describe the Bulgarian ethno-national limits is as the “Bulgarian lands” (Bălgarski Zemi).

2 The geographical perception of the region Macedonia, the Macedonian historiography borough from Bulgarian one. For this see the noteworthy article on ethnic Macedonian identity (Marinov 2013, 273–330)

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However, a close look into the sources from the 19th century, at the time when ethnonational maps of the newborn nations in the Balkans and elsewhere were invented, reveals a completely different situation. The specific formation of the regional space is the result of specific human activities during the long history of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, and not of the national ideologies that produced the political maps of the 19th and 20th centuries. These activities created networks of towns and their surroundings based on trade, religion, administrative division, education, etc., factors that were completely ignored by the new nationalistic political and intellectual elite of the 19th century. When we speak for Lake Ohrid and its region, including the monastery St. Naum, we could argue that during the Ottoman Empire a network of several towns was forged. This area included the towns of Ohrid, Struga, Pogradec, Korça, Bitola, Berat, Kastoria, Elbasan, which today are parts of three European states. The administrative division of the Ottoman Empire, especially that of the 19th century, is very well known to historians. Since the first decades of the Ottoman history in the region (the end of 14th, beginning of 15th centuries), Ohrid was the center of a kaza (county) which included the region Debarca (north from Ohrid) and parts of the Prespa region. A century later Ohrid became the center of a Sancak (Department). Consequently, Ohrid and Debar, today in N. Macedonia and Starova (Pogradec), Kruja (Akçe Hisar), Mat and other settlements in today’s Albania were an integral part of the Ohrid Sancak. Neighboring Korça and Kastoria in what is today Greece were part of a different Sancak, known under the name of Pasha Sancak (Gjorgiev 2009, 23–26). In the 19th century, the administrative borders of the boundaries of the kaza Ohrid were almost the same as the one from the first decades of the Ottoman history in the region. Namely, the southern part of the lake belonged to the kaza Starova, as one of the kazas of the Korça Sancak, an integral part of the Monastir Vilayet. However, the larger administrative units do change. To be precise, the kaza Ohrid is part of the larger Monastir (Bitola) Sancak center of the Vilayet bearing the same name (Salname-i vilayeti Monastir 1896, 298–301). Drawing the administrative boundaries in the Ottoman Empire, like elsewhere, did not follow the logic of economic or other human activities and they had a low impact on production of space. It was a different logic, the one of politics and security. However, it influenced the lives and activities of the people in relation to the local authorities as regards the judiciary and taxation. For the production of space during the Ottoman Empire, economic and other human activities and patterns were more important. Indeed, the diffusion of religious cults, trade, economy, network of schools, historical legacy and folklore were shaped by the mentioned activities of the local population. We can begin with the cult of St. Naum. Records from the Ottoman period show that the cult of St. Naum was respected in what is today a larger region

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that includes parts of Albania, N. Macedonia and Greece, but also other countries in the Balkans. As one of Ss Cyril and Methodius disciples, St. Naum is part of the collective invocation of the Seven Saints (Sveti Sedmočislenici). The Monastery St. Naum had its admirers and benefactors in the Romanian principalities as well (Balevski 1984, 11). It represents a particularly important religious cult for the Slavic Orthodox and Catholic Christians in Europe and the Balkans, but also for the Albanian speaking Orthodox Christians living in Korça, Pogradec and Berat. In addition, the importance and influence of the monastery and the cult of St. Naum can be seen by the property the monastery owned in the region, and also by the donations it received from various members of the Christian elites. Along with the possession of arable land in the nearby villages of Ljubanishta, Pёshkepi, Trpejca, Ralup and others, the monastery had its own property in Bitola, Korça, Ohrid and Kastoria, while faithful Christians from Krushevo, Resen, Ohrid, Moskopoje, Struga and other towns donated money and/or constructed mansions (konaks) for the monastery. Residences were named after the town that donated the money for their construction and the people of those towns used it during their visit when the feast of St. Naum was celebrated. The importance of the cult of St. Naum for the Muslims can be seen by the donations made by Muslim nobles from the region. Among the benefactors of the monastery we can find the names of Ismail bey who constructed a dwelling and Djeladin bey (Celadın bey) who built a guest house for the pilgrims visiting the monastery (Grozdanov 2015, 278–292). Another aspect that affirms the network of towns and the space constructed during the centuries of Ottoman and Byzantine history is its shared historical legacy. This legacy had its influence on the literary production of the Ohrid elites. A noteworthy example can be found in the autobiography of Grigor Prlichev and his poetry work, but also in the network of schools and the origins of pupils at these schools. A native of Ohrid, Prlichev wrote several poems of which the most important is O Armatolos (Serdarot) which won him fame and the name “the second Homer” after winning the annual poetic competition in Athens in 1861 (Detrez 2001). As in O Armatolos, in his other poetry works, Prlichev was inspired by the history of the region, which articulates the relevance of some of the shared historical figures and events for the people who today live on both sides of the present state border between Albania and N. Macedonia. Namely, the poem 17623 named after the abolition of the Ohrid archbishopric in 1767 and the poem about Skanderbeg (an Albanian national hero) interpreted in the poem as a Christian leader struggling against the Ottomans. However, more

3 The poem 1762 is also one of the elements of the Macedonian narrative of victimhood.

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indicative is the situation with education. In his autobiography, Prlichev notes that young boys from Ohrid attended schools in Janina and Bitola. On the other hand, he notes that boys from most western parts of today’s Albania attended the school in Ohrid where Dimitar Miladinov (a famous poet from Struga) was teaching. In addition, there is the significant fact that Prlichev himself was a teacher in Tirana for a short period (Prlichev 2012, 28, 31–32). Concerning the economic activities, several towns in the region were interdependent and people were trading with each other: Ohrid, Pogradec, Korça, Elbasan, Struga, and Berat. The monastery itself represented a place of an annual fair (panagjur). Until the beginning of the 18th century, the fair and the celebration of the feast of St. Naum took place on 23 December / 5 January at which point it was moved to a more suitable period, in summer, on 20 June / 3 July (Lory and Nathanaili 2002, 36). During that day, people from different towns and villages would visit the monastery for spiritual, but also for economic reasons. Between the holidays, people from Pogradec, using wooden boats, would frequently go to Ohrid to buy different products that they could not find where they lived, such as fez (fes – ottoman felt headdress), different sweets, soaps, shoes, etc. (Todoroska 2011, 84).4 On the other side, citizens from Ohrid would look for some food products in Pogradec, Korça or Elbasan, notably olives from Elbasan as we can read in the memoires of Angel Uzunov, brother of Hristo Uzunov, one of the most famous leaders of the Macedonian revolutionary organization in Ohrid (Uzunov 2014, 22). Another piece of relevant information on the economic activities during the Ottoman period can be found in the endowment (vakıfname) by one of the most famous Muslim families from Ohrid, the Ohridzade family. Along with the property they had in the region of the Lake Ohrid, they also had a konak (mansion) in the town of Veria (Karaferye) for a long period (Gjorgiev and Janeva 2010, 53, 67). The trade between different cities is reflected in the folklore with a notable example being the song Biljana platno beleše na ohridskite izvori (Biljana was washing clothes on Ohrid springs). Although it is not clear when and how this song was created, the earliest records about the song date back in 19th century. Despite the love as the leitmotiv of the song, we hear how wine sellers from Belgrade (Berat in Albania)5 – vinari belogragjani travelled to Ohrid to sell their fine wines. The economic activities and interdependence of the regions, today part of N. Macedonia and Albania, were well known to the working groups and the

4 Extract from the newspaper Makedonija, n.24, from 17 March 1890. 5 In the historical sources, the town of Berat is also recognized as Albanian Belgrade or Arnavut Belgradı.

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commission for the delimitation of the border between the Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes and Albania after 1918. In his personal letters to his wife, the French Colonel André Ordioni, representative of France on the Commission for delimitation of the borders of Albania, noted that the delimitation of the border would affect the economy of the region (Ordioni 2014, 459).

2 Remodeling territoriality In the same period when people were exchanging goods, benefiting from the trade connections forged during the centuries of imperial rule and celebrating St. Naum together, the new intellectual and political elites of the 19th century Balkans engaged in creating distinct ethnonational communities, with clear spatial boundaries along ethnic and religious lines. The first disagreements over the potential possession of the monastery and the future state borders in the Balkans began in the second half of the 19th century. The first dispute started with the rejection of the Greek language in schools and churches by the Slavic speaking population in Macedonia and Bulgaria. These actions led to conflict between, on one side, the Slavic-speaking communities, and on the other, the Patriarchy of Constantinople and its supporters, the Greek-speaking community of Christians. For decades, the two communities and their respective churches, the Patriarchy of Constantinople and the Bulgarian Exarchate, fought over the possession of churches and monasteries in Macedonia. Although, the Sultan approved the establishment of the Eparchy of Ohrid as a diocese in the Bulgarian Exarchate, the monastery remained under the control of the Patriarch of Constantinople and its respective Eparchy in Ohrid until 1912 (Mitreski 2002, 43–44, 50; Bitoski 1985, 176–177). The demographic situation and the importance of the monastery for the Albanian-speaking Christians loyal to the Patriarchy and the dominant group in the region of Pogradec and Korça could be one of the reasons for this situation (Lory and Nathanaili 2002, 37).6 At the same time, other ideas were in place with the goal of determining the border of influence and/or the future national borders in the Balkans. Namely, the three Balkan states, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia were negotiating on future borders and/or spheres of influence. In all of these ideas and government proposals, Ohrid and its region were the object of the negotiations (Todoroska 2011,

6 The abbot (igoumen) of the monastery before and after the Balkan wars was the ethnic Albanian monk Stefan Gjergji.

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87, 91). At same time, the city and its history had a very symbolic meaning for Bulgaria and Serbia. Namely, the historical and cultural heritage important for the Slavic culture and literacy turned Ohrid into one of the pillars of the ethnonational historical narratives of the two countries (Balevski 1984, 53–56). The Balkan Wars and the First World War completely redrew the political map of the Balkans. The end of the wars in 1918 and the consequent political developments divided the region of Ohrid into two parts. A large majority of the people in the region experienced for the first time the meaning of a state border with all of its implications (customs, control, security). In this new political context, the monastery continued to be an object of contention. Namely, it represented a point of dispute between the newly established state of Albania and the Kingdom of SCS, and was part of the larger problem over the delimitation of the border between the two states. In this process, as in many other parts of Europe and the world the border was imposed as the result of negotiations and the intervention of European powers. The entire process of drawing the borderline began in 1912, however, the first demarcation work was interrupted by the start of the First World War. Following the end of the war in 1918, the process of delimitation continued, but now in a different geopolitical context. Namely, a politically more powerful Serbia (Kingdom of Yugoslavia), as one of the winners in the war, could impose its will and interests more easily. On the other side, the interests of the Great Powers were represented by the work of the “International Committee for the Delimitation of the Borders of Albania” in which Italy and France would play an important role. For seven years from 1918 to 1925, the delegations from Albania and Yugoslavia exchanged arguments, while the International committee carried out important work on the ground. Although the trials in the International Court in the Hague decided that the monastery should belong to Albania, direct negotiations between Belgrade and Tirana in 1925 granted St. Naum to Yugoslavia. The official agreement came into force the following year (Lory and Nathanaili 2002, 39–40). Regarding the process of delimitation, two aspects are important for understanding the new border and its impact on the life of the people living in the border zone. The first is the activities of the states and the International committee, and the second is the perspective of the people living in the borderland, i.e., the interests of the local population. The arguments of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia could be interpreted as legal (international law), political (being part of the victorious alliance in the First World War), but also ethnic (defined as Serbian territory). Namely, the delegation from Belgrade often claimed that as winners in the First World War and based on the London and Paris peace agreements from 1913 and 1921 they had the rights over the monastery. Moreover, they claimed that the monastery had always belonged to Ohrid and the church

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representatives from Ohrid. In addition, Belgrade often claimed that it had the “historical right” to own the monastery. Consequently, the political elite in Belgrade defined it as the holiest place for Serbs. It was also claimed that the entire Slavic-speaking population in the region was Serbian. The Yugoslav delegation, represented by an army general, argued constantly before Colonel Ordioni that the monastery was part of their national history; it was where Serbian kings had been crowned and consequently, they would go in war for it (Ordioni 2014, 457–458; Arhiv Jugoslavije, Biro za razgraničenje sa Albanijom, Files: 9, 10). The Albanian side, obviously not in a good negotiating position, had its own arguments to defend their position that they owned the monastery. As their Serbian homologues, they also had a set of arguments. Although a little different, the main arguments were economic, political, but also spiritual. Colonel Ordioni confidently believed that the economic interests of the local beys were the main reason behind the Albanian interests to control the monastery and the region. Namely, a certain Eştref bey, from Pogradec, owned important property (arable land and mines) around the monastery and had been one of key figures behind the claims of the Albanian government to move the border north of the monastery. Moreover, the International Committee also believed that the division of this part of the Lake Ohrid region would affect the economic life in the area. Namely, during their work they came to conclusion that, if the southern part of the Lake Ohrid would be divided in two, it would be difficult for the economy of this region to be self-sufficient. Alongside the economic arguments, some Albanian intellectuals, the Albanian Orthodox clergy and the population living near the monastery who were strongly attached to the cult of St. Naum considered the monastery particularly important for their life and their beliefs (Balevski 1984, 116; Ordioni 2014, 508). However, the interests and the views of the local population were hardly taken into account in the final decision. Therefore, it is noteworthy to mention the cases of two villages that describes in fine point the indifference of the delegations from Albania and Yugoslavia to the needs of the local population in this process of delimiting the borderline. The first case is the village of Radozhda, today in Macedonia and located remarkably close to the state border with Albania. During the process of delimitation, important zones of pastures and sources of water for the village of Radozhda remained in Albanian territory. Consequently, the villagers protested to the local governance in Ohrid asking to move the border in order to protect their economic interests. Although an army officer from the Yugoslav army stationed near the border noted the difficult situation that would cause problems to villagers and their economy, the borderline was not moved (Arhiv Jugoslavije, File: 10). The second case is the village of Peshkёpi (Peshkopeja). The village is located remarkably close to the state border

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with Macedonia on the Albanian side. After learning that the village would become part of the Albanian state, the villagers of Peshkёpi addressed the Yugoslav authorities that they would all take refuge in Yugoslavia if the borderline was not changed. Moreover, important arable land owned by the villagers was left on the Yugoslav side. In other cases, people living in Pogradec or other settlements protested so they would have access to the monastery and pray for their health. They sent letters to the local authorities or the Commission itself, however without any results (Arhiv Jugoslavije, File: 10). In the end, it is obvious that both sides could not create a perfect borderline. It seems that it was impossible to take into consideration the basic needs of the local population because both sides were focusing on the monastery. The symbolic importance of the monastery St. Naum was bigger than the acres of arable land and pastures of the local population. However, some necessities of the local population were included in the final agreement, such as an allowance to cross the border to cultivate the arable land, the usage of the zones of pastures or visits to the monastery during the St. Naum feast on 3 July. However, some of the requests that were related to old practices were refused. For instance, the demand of the Albanian side to allow old Albanian Christians to be buried near the monastery after their death was refused (Ordioni 2014, 512). On the other side, the establishment of the border introduced new practices. The five-hundred-year presence of the Ottoman Empire ended, and with it the spatial imprint of its rule on the region. With the introduction of border control, the movement from Elbasan to Ohrid or from Ohrid to Korça was put under the security regulations of the states and its apparatus. For the first time in the history of the region, a border with strict regulations on trade, movement and security was introduced. Taxes and customs were introduced for the trade between the two states including the areas close to the border. As elsewhere in the world, the border was the result of rising national ideologies and the forging of ethnonational territories, but also of European interests. In the following decades, people living on both sides of the border would experience even harsher policies of the state regimes, especially during the Enver Hoxha’s regime in Albania from 1948 to 1991.

3 Living with the border: Life continues As the monastery was finally allocated to Yugoslavia and consequently under the control of the Serbian Orthodox Church, it was proclaimed as a royal residence for the Karadjordjević dynasty. In the following years, a grand watchtower was

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constructed next to the church that dominated the whole environs. (Lory and Nathanaili 2002, 40; Grozdanov 2015, 291). From 1926 to 1948 and despite the introduction of restriction on movement, taxes, and other border regulations, but also despite the political changes during the Second World War (1941–1944), the people on both sides of the borderline continued to exchange contacts and to cultivate the land. Namely, the local population from the bordering villages of Ljubanishta (north from the monastery) and Peshkёpi had their own arable land on the other side of the border, which they continued to cultivate. The local population from the other side of the lake, the villages west from Struga, also possessed land and pastures across the border that they continued to exploit. Such is the case of the shepherds from the mountain village Belica west from Struga, the second largest town in the region. Along with the agriculture, people from both sides of the border could continue to trade, however, with the limitations of taxes and customs (DARSM-Ohrid, Files: 18, 75, 108, 113). Those looking for jobs could also cross the border and work, sometimes as teachers in the schools, as in the example of a certain Spiro H. Theodosi from Korça. Spiro was a teacher in Ohrid as was his colleague, an ethnic Albanian from Albania in 1945, who was also teacher in Ohrid (DARSM-Ohrid, Files: 111). The everyday life practices also continued. People and relatives from both sides of the border continued to maintain contacts and to arrange marriages. The register book of marriages from several parishes north from the monastery reveals that young boys and girls from Ohrid, Pogradec, Korça, Struga, but mostly from the villages of Ljubanishta, Trpejca, Peshtani, Elshani, Ralup and Peshkёpi were married there (DARSM-Ohrid, File: Matična kniga na venčanite). However, during these decades the border also represented an issue of security and an opportunity to earn money through illegal trade and trafficking. Since 1913 and the establishment of the first demarcation line, local authorities registered an important number of incidents of illegal crossings of the border and acts of crime. The border was also used by the Macedonian revolutionary organization (Internal Macedonian-Odrin Revolutionary Organization)7 to infiltrate armed groups in Yugoslav territory (Arhiv Jugoslavije Files: 9, 10).

7 In 1893 group of young intellectuals from Ottoman Macedonia founded the Macedonian revolutionary organization or Secret Macedonian-Odrin Revolutionary Organization. In 1905 the organization changed its name to Internal Macedonian-Odrin Revolutionary Organization – IMRO. The main political goal of the organization was autonomy for Macedonia in the Ottoman Empire. During the Balkan wars and the First World War members of IMORO fought alongside with the Bulgarian army against Ottoman, Serbian and Greek armies. After 1918 to 1934 the organization was reactivated under the name Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – IMRO. Today, the

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In 1948, the question of control and security and the border became an existential issue for the local population. With the breakup of the relations between Josip Broz Tito and Joseph Stalin, the border literally became a military zone with limited movement across it until 1991. The Albanian communist dictator Enver Hoxha’s decision to support Stalin in this ideological split in the communist world turned his country into an enormous bunker and one of the most isolated countries in Europe and the world. It was almost impossible to cross the border from the Albanian side, as fences with barbed wire and many bunkers were installed along the borderline to keep the regime safe from the “enemy of the people”. Simultaneously, on the Yugoslav or Macedonian side, strict control of movement was put in place. However, it was not comparable to the one in Albania, especially after the 1960s. The new political situation brought all practices of trade, movement, even marriages to an end. Only a few could cross the border. They were the loyal and trusted members of the local political establishment. Crossing the border was only possible with the purpose of organizing official trade between the two states. This was the case with the father of the late historian from Ohrid, Goce Angelichin Zhura, who bought olives from Elbasan for the state-owned companies. Those who tried to cross the border illegally would be arrested and would face long years of imprisonment. They would be accused of allegedly being foreign spies and enemies of the people, as is shown in the most famous case of Kočo Topenčarov who illegally crossed the border to see his love Elena in Korça. However, he was imprisoned and could not leave Albania for the next 40 years. The film producers from Macedonia and Poland employed the couple’s story in 1997 for the movie entitled Across the Lake.8 With the installation of the socialist regime, the monastery itself ceased to shelter monks and now merely represented a place and monument of cultural and historical importance under the protection of the state. In 1958, the watchtower constructed after the delimitation of the borderline was destroyed, a decision made by the authorities in socialist Macedonia. The land owned by the monastery was allocated to the villagers of Ljubanishta as part of the agricultural community organized by the state authorities (Grozdanov 2015, 291). The entire zone around the monastery was now a border zone under military control, i.e., the Yugoslav People’s Army. However, the socialist leaders and stateowned companies donated monies for the restoration and renovation of the

history of IMRO is source for historiographical and political dispute over its political and ethnic character between North Macedonia and Bulgaria. 8 The movie was Polish-Macedonian coproduction. Previously, a documentary movie was filmed about the same story.

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church and the monastery. The present-day abbot of the monastery, Father Nektarij, told me that since 1945 Yugoslav and Macedonian politicians such as Moša Pijade, Lazar Mojsov and Gligorie Gogovski (the last Prime Minister of socialist Macedonia) were involved in the restoration and renovation of the monastery. Nektarij defined these men as people with consciences and a sense for the monastery and its cultural and historical heritage.

4 The border and the monastery today: Between old practices and cooperation The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 symbolically announced the fall of socialist regimes in Europe. Borders were opening, the idea of a united Europe without borders was gaining ground. At the same time, nationalistic agendas in the Balkans challenged the idea of a united Europe without borders. Yugoslav republics entered into a long dispute and civil war, with ideas of remapping the state borders along ethnic lines. In this violent breakup of Yugoslavia, the Republic of Macedonia proclaimed its independence and avoided civil war on its territory. However, ethnic tensions between Macedonians and Albanians were threatening the peace, as nationalistic ideas supporting the change of state borders along ethnic lines were strong and gaining support. On the other side, the collapse of the socialist regime in Albania allowed people to cross the border, such as Kočo Topenčarov and his love Elena together with their children. After 40 years, Kočo finally came home to Ohrid with his wife, and they told their personal story as part of filming the documentary and the movie. Other citizens from Albania could now cross the border too. Some would cross the border to visit their relatives, while others were looking for jobs in Ohrid or in Resen (Shwartz 2010, 21,102). Many crossed the border only to visit the monastery, St. Naum. Vasil Sterjovski, ethnic Macedonian from Albania, now a member of the Albanian parliament, remembers very well how he and his family, together with others from his village in Pustec, crossed the mountain Galichica to visit the monastery on 3 July. He, like many others I interviewed in Albania, shared with me stories of how they had preserved their faith to God and St. Naum. According to what they told me, they secretly prayed to St. Naum and other saints, and decorated Easter eggs as well. The revival of religious ceremonies and the importance of the church and the cult of St. Naum brought the monastery St. Naum a new episode in its long history. The fall of socialism led to a revival of the monastic life and monasteries, but also restitution of the property. In addition, it brought a rise in the importance

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of the national Orthodox Churches in socio-political arenas in the former socialist Balkan states. The monastic life in the monastery St. Naum was reestablished with the arrival of Father Nektarij in the summer of 1991. During the discussion I had with him, he explained to me in brief the recent history of the monastery. When he arrived, he immediately started organizing the monastic life. In the autumn of 1991, he ordained a man from Albania as a deacon, and later elevated him to priest. Even today, they both still celebrate the liturgy in the church in the monastery. Today, the monastery is one of the most visited tourist and holy places in the region, with visitors from many countries. A majority of them come from Albania, Bulgaria and Serbia, as well domestic visitors from Macedonia. It seems that the most numerous are the Albanian citizens, Christians and also Muslims. Some of them are coming to pray to St. Naum for health, some to conclude marriages, some to enjoy the springs and nature and some just to eat in one of the many different restaurants. The importance of the cult of St. Naum for the Orthodox Christians from Albania, whether Albanian or Macedonian, is visible also in the newly constructed Orthodox Church that dominates the landscape in Korça. Inside the church the figures of St. Naum, St. Clement and other saints, disciples of Ss’ Cyril and Methodius are depicted on the frescoes. However, not everything is a positive story for promoting the revival of the monastery as a holy place and place of enjoyment. With the renewal of the old practices, old narratives are being reshaped. When I discussed with Father Nektarij about the visitors and tourists to the monastery, he mentioned that among the faithful Christians some visitors from Bulgaria and Serbia were provoking incidents on ethnic ground, claiming the monastery as Bulgarian or writing four letters S (Serbian nationalist insignia) on the walls of the monastery. He defined them as disrespectful and uncultured (nekulturni) in the sense of lacking respect and proper behavior for holy places such is the monastery St. Naum. The story Father Nektarij told me hints at another aspect of the symbolic importance of the monastery and the cult of St. Naum today. Namely, during the last decades, an important number of publications on the history of St. Naum and the region have been published. Today, the history of the monastery and its importance for history and the history of art is well-known and wellstudied. The earliest research dates back in 19th century and was begun with the aim to prove the Bulgarian or Serbian character of the monastery and its importance for the history of the Bulgarian or Serbian peoples. Today, after the end of Second World War and especially after 1990 Macedonian and Albanian historians are now leading the historiographic “battle” for the monastery and its history. In this context, the interest of scholars in the history of the monastery has an equal importance for the question of the border. Today, historians

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with different ethnic backgrounds, Albanian or Macedonian, but also Bulgarian and from countries outside the Balkans are producing many articles focusing on the previous process of drawing the border and the negotiations between different parties in the delimitation of the state border between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Albania. Based on an imaginary geographic space of the region of Macedonia, Macedonian authors are mainly focusing on the historical events in the territory of this imagined geographical region. Consequently, all activities over the delimitation of the border are presented as part of the process of a division of “ethno-geographic” Macedonia carried out by their neighbors. In this context, the region of Lake Ohrid is considered as a Macedonian region in an ethnonational sense and the monastery is usually depicted as an integral part of Macedonia (Balevski 1984, 260; Katardjiev 2000, 186–187; Bitoski 1985, 176–177, 271–272). On the other side, the history of the monastery is also in the focus of ethnic Albanian historians. During the last decade, the number of publications about the border delimitation between Albania and Yugoslavia has increased considerably. Such publications contain, for example, collections of documents from different archives on the status of the monastery and the delimitation of the border (Bislimi 2015; Azizi 2015; Azizi 2019; Asani and Azizi 2019). During the discussion I had with Isamedin Azizi, author of one of these publications, he told me that the aim and the motive for his joint publication of documents with his colleague Skender Asani was to present the documents as “the sole witnesses of the past” and that they are “the only shield protecting the truth from misinterpretations and wrong interpretations about the past”. Other historians are radical in their views, such as the Tetovo based historian Vebi Xhemaili, who openly speaks about the Albanian character of the monastery. He even asked for border changes in 2017 as he perceived the delimitation of the borderline in 1925 as an historical injustice for the ethnic Albanians (Xhemaili 2017). During one of my visits to Korça, an employee of the Museum of Korça, an ethnic Albanian, claimed that the decision to give the monastery to Yugoslavia was an “historical injustice”. When I said this to one of the ethnic Macedonians living in Pustec, he answered me directly and proudly that he always argues with Albanians who say that the monastery is Albanian. A result of this argumentation between Albanians and Macedonians over the monastery and its recent history is the saying one can frequently hear: “it is a damage that the monastery has been left to you [Macedonia], but it is good that it was not left to us [Albania]”. This saying not only explains the narrative that the monastery should belong to the Albanian side, but also the importance of the monastery for the people in Albania and their awareness that if in 1925 the monastery had been left in Albania it would certainly have been destroyed by the Hoxha’s regime as were many mosques and churches.

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Ideas of changing the state borders were also expressed by the Macedonian intellectual and political elite. During the 2001 armed conflict in the Republic of Macedonia between government forces and ethnic Albanian rebels, the daily newspaper “Vecher” published information on the idea of a proposed redrawing of the border between Macedonia and Albania and an exchange of populations. The main argument for the idea was that it would result in a final solution of the ethnic conflict between Albanians and Macedonians. In the proposal, the northwestern part of the country (Tetovo and Gostivar) would become part of Albania in exchange for the region of Korça and Pogradec, which would join Macedonia.9

Figure 1: Road sign in Ohrid, showing the road to monastery St. Naum and Albania (photo by Petar Todorov).

9 Georgi Efremov, Obrakjanje na Pretsedatelot na MANU, Akademik Georgi Efremov do Sobranieto na Makedonskata akademija na naukite i umetnostite i do makedonskata javnost, 11 June 2001. In his letter to the Macedonian public and the Assembly of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU), the President of MANU, Georgi Efremov responded on the accusation that he proposed the idea of exchange of territories and population as final solution to the interethnic problems between Albanians and Macedonians. Many of the personalities involved in the 2001 conflict, among them Ali Ahmeti former political leader of KLA, pointed that it was the former Prime Minister Ljubčo Georgievski who gave the proposal for exchange of territories and population.

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The reinvention of the borders and the reproduction of territoriality along ethnonational lines has also had an impact on the interpretation of the folklore. For instance, today we can hear interpretations from people (Macedonians) who believe that the wine sellers from Berat who were selling wine in Ohrid and are mentioned in the song Biljana platno beleše are actually from a place called Belgrad near Kavadarci in the region Tikvesh, which was famous for the production of grapes and wine in N. Macedonia (Kamchevski and Murdzev 2016). Regardless of historical legacies, this interpretation is a quite illustrative example of the common practice of locating cultural artifacts, such as certain songs from folklore, and assigning them to the group with which people identify.

5 Conclusion: Looking into the future Resisting the reproduction of narratives and territoriality are ideas for crossborder cooperation in the context of the EU integration of the region. Projects funded by the EU usually deal with issues of environment. However, local politicians claim that the local and central governments are lacking in initiatives and better cross-border cooperation, and they are aware of this situation. According to one of the local politicians (a Social Democrat and an ethnic Macedonian), no improvement can be noted in the last decades. The few ideas for opening a ferry line between Ohrid and Pogradec have failed, and the only projects funded by the EU are related to protection of environment and many of them actually originate from nongovernmental organizations. Despite all this, the local population is trying to benefit from the freeing up of movement. Villagers from Ljubanishta and Trpejca prefer to shop in Pogradec than to go in Ohrid. Bicyclists can enjoy nature and take a long ride of almost 100 kilometers to circle the lake, only needing to show ID cards to the border police. Even the practice of arranging marriages between people from both sides of the border has resumed. Thus, we can argue that people are trying to benefit from the liberation of the border policies, while intellectual and political elites are trying to re(b)order the region for what they believe are national interests. It would seem that the case presented in this chapter proves that the views in which territoriality is not only a specific space characterized and bounded by a border, but also a space of different interpretations of the world in which we live, and which are valid also for this part of Europe. As elsewhere, the border with all of its meaning is not static here as a result of the nature of the region and the influence and interests of the power centers – Skopje and Tirana, but Sofia too. Today, in the context of the European integration of the region, the

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monastery St. Naum and its historical legacy are subject to different interpretations. However, the actors in today’s symbolic division are Albanian and Macedonian ethnonational historical narratives. However, we should not exclude the Bulgarian ethnonational historical narrative. Macedonian and Bulgarian historians in a much-politicized public discourse as part of the bilateral multidisciplinary experts committee on historical and educational issues are trying to find a shared narrative to commemorate St. Naum as part of the “common history” that could arise from the Treaty on Friendship, Good-Neighborliness and Cooperation between the Republic of Macedonia and the Republic of Bulgaria signed in August 2017.10

Bibliography Sources: Arhiv Jugoslavije, Fonds: Biro za razgraničenje sa Albanijom (Files: 9 and 10) Državen arhiv na Republika Severna Makedonija, podračno oddelenie Ohrid, Fonds: File 108 – Ohridska gradska opština (1941–1944) File 111 – Ohridski okružen narodnoosloboditelen odbor (1945) File 18 – Gradski Narodnoosloboditelen odbor – Ohrid (1944–1945) File 113 – Okoliski naroden odbor – Ohrid (1945–1965) File 75 – Okoliski komitet na KPM – Ohrid File – Matična kniga na venčanite na crkva Sveta Bogorodica Salname-i vilayeti Monastir, 1896

Literature Asani, Skender and Azizi Isamedin. 2019. Kontesti ndёrkufitar ndёrmjet Shqipёrisё dhe Mbretёrisё sё SKS-sё (1919–1925). Skopje: ITSHKSH. Azizi, Isamedin. 2015. “Prašanjeto na granicite na Albanija.” Glasnik 59/1–2:161–170. Azizi, Isamedin. 2019. “Delegacijata na Kralstvoto SHS na Pariskata Mirovna konferencija i albanskoto prašanje.” Glasnik 63/1–2:127–140.

10 The author of this chapter is part of the Committee on historical and educational issues.

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Anssi, Paasi. 2005. “The Changing Discourses on Political Boundaries: Mapping the Backgrounds, Contexts and Contents.” In B/ordering the World, edited by Olivier Henk Kramsch and Wolfgang Zierhofer, 17–31. Farnham: Ashgate. Balevski, Milčo. 1984, Balkanskite politički priliki i diplomatskite bitki za manastirot Sveti Naum, Skopje: Makedonska kniga. Bislimi, Muzafer. 2015. Granicata na Albanija i manastirot Sv. Naum (1912–1925). Skopje: Institut za nacionalna istorija. Bitoski, Krste. ed. 1985. Ohrid i ohridsko niz istorijata, t.2. Skopje: Institut za nacionalna istorija. Cohen, Anthony P. [1985] 2013. Symbolic Construction of Community. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. Ordioni, André. (Ed. By Danguy des Déserts, Dominique). 2014. Un officier français dans les Balkans, t.1, Albanie et Macédoine 1917–1925. Tirana: Maluka. Detrez, Raymond. 2001. Krivolici na mislta, trans. Zherminal Chivikov. Sofia: Lik. Feldman, Shelley. 2010, “Looking across the Horizon.” In Understanding Life in the Borderlands: Boundaries in Depth and in Motion, edited by William Zartman. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Gjorgiev, Dragi. 2009. Naselenieto vo makedonsko-albanskiot granichen pojas (XV–XVI vek). Skopje: Institut za nacionalna istorija. Gjorgiev, Dragi, and Janeva Ilinka. 2010. Semejstvoto Ohridzade: istorija dolga 600 godini. Skopje: Drzaven arhiv na Republika Makedonija. Grozdanov, Cvetan. 2015. Sv. Naum Ohridski. Skopje: MANU. Katardjiev, Ivan. ed. 2000. Istorija na makedonskiot narod, t.4. Skopje: Institut za nacionalna istorija. Lory, Bernard, and Petrit Nathanaili. 2002. “Le monastère de Saint-Naum (Sveti Naum/Shёn Naum).“ Balkanologie, 6/1–2:35–40. MNI (Makedonski nauchen institut) ed. 1978. Makedonija kako prirodna i ekonomska celina, trans. Dimche Panovski. Skopje: Institut za nacionalna istorija. Marinov, Tchavdar. 2013. “Famous Macedonia, the Land of Alexander: Macedonian Identity at the Crossroads of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian Nationalism.” In Entangled histories, edited by Roumen Daskalov, 273–330. Leiden: Brill. Mitreski, Pavle. 2002. Srpski dokumenti za istorijata na Ohridsko-struskiot region (1890–1940). Struga: Drustvo za nauka, kultura i umetnost “Braka Miladinovci“. Osterhammel, Jürgen, 2014. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Prlichev, Grigor. 2012. Avtobiografija. Skopje: Panili. Schwartz, Jonathan. 2010. Parčinja mozaik: esej za sozdavanjeto na Makedonija, trans. Ilina Jakimovska. Skopje: Tabahon. Todoroska, Katerina. 2011. Makedoncite i Albancite do Ilindenskoto vostanie. Skopje: Menora. Uzunov, Angel. 2014. Spomeni. Skopje: Državen arhiv na Republika Makedonija.

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Internet sources Xhemaili, Vebi. 2017. “Xhemaili: Sveti Naum e albanski manastir.” http://www.ohridnet.com/ vesti/ohrid/13070-dzemaili-sveti-naum-e-albanski-manastir. Accessed on 23 February 2021. n.a. 2019. “Sushata go namaluva rodot na lozjata vo Tikveshko, lozarite baraat da se proglasi elementarna nepogoda.” Last time consulted on 23 February 2021. https://m.makpress. mk/home/PostDetails?PostId=303496. Accessed on 23 February 2021. Kamchevski, Petre, and Dimitar Murdzev. 2016. “Kolegite ni chestitaat i pishuvaat za neraskinlivite vrski opeani i vo pesnite.” Last time consulted on 23 February 2021. https://www.publicitet.mk/vo-potraga-po-trajnata-ubavina/item/2993-kolegite-nichestitaat-i-pishuvaat-za-neraskinlivite-vrski-opeani-i-vo-pesnite. Accessed on 23 February 2021.

Kaja Širok

Imagining the borders of a nation: Narratives of remembrance in the Northern Adriatic area On 12 March 2020, Slovenia closed its borders with Italy as part of preventative measures taken in the wake of the corona virus global epidemic. The Prime Minister at the time, Marjan Šarec, explained that this was a necessary measure to keep the situation under control, since the Italian quarantine legislation would not prevent people from crossing the border in order to go shopping or to work. Only six checkpoints remained open for crossing, with mandatory health checks imposed on all arriving persons (Zavrtanik 2020; Kosmač 2020). As news about the border closure spread, it caused a stir among the inhabitants of the border regions, especially in areas where many were living in one city and working in a neighbouring one. That was the case for the cities of Gorizia (Italy) and Nova Gorica (Slovenia), where the border line bisects streets and houses, and also divides a square in two. The square, called “Transalpina” on the Italian and “Europe square” on the Slovenian side embodies today the challenges in understanding the past history of the territory and how it is interpreted historically. When Slovenia joined the European Union in 2004, the square was used as a symbol of the reunification of East and West Europe, where the old EU member states were joined by new ones. A symbol of the historical division of the territory and its restored unity, the Transalpina square now serves as common ground for gatherings, shared initiatives, and cultural and sporting events between two municipalities. Although many stress the importance of joint future projects and shared values in promoting the region, not all the inhabitants of the territory share the opinion that the coexistence of the two cities is in fact possible. The reality of the new divide, a set of mesh fences used on construction sites, was set up on Transalpina square on 13 March 2020, leaving the population confused. Although everyone was keenly aware how grave the situation was, as the virus death toll in Italy had been rising sharply and the number of infected showed no signs of abating, still the image of the fence recalled many conflicted memories from the period before the first fence was torn down in May 2004 (Guerrini 2020). The ideal of a strong border had never completely disappeared, particularly on the Italian side. Debates about closing the border had been ongoing for years, with the pro-border side claiming that it was necessary to stem the tide of immigrants from the Balkans into Italy. On many occasions this part of the border was portrayed in the Italian media as an open space for illegal border crossing, despite the fact that https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110712766-009

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the majority of the migrants crossed the border in much more uninhabited parts. However, the openness of the Gorizia part of the Italo-Slovene border represented for many their fear of the “intrusion of others”. It is difficult to explain to younger generations what life with borders was like. We have become so used to traveling without restrictions that it is easy to forget what life was like decades ago, when you had to wait for hours at the border control, when people’s movements were restricted by regulations or physical obstacles. To perceive your own hometown as a place of restriction, a place of physical division, where life on the other side of the line flows differently, where people perceive you as the Other – these are not trivial matters. Borders are places of differentiation and difference, and seldom make for stories with happy endings. But nonetheless, stories about walls and divided cities are not uncommon in Europe, and the heritage of division and the preservation of boundaries are part of the contemporary European experience (Schultz 2002; Janczak 2019). Borders, frontiers, demarcation lines and the like are an inevitable part of our history and heritage and the Goriška region is no exception. Before World War I, the territory was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and as the war began, the Isonzo front cut right through it. It was ceded to the Kingdom of Italy with the Rapallo Treaty in 1920, and during World War II, after the Italian armistice in 1943, it became part of the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral.1 Following World War II, it remained a hotly contested territory, as it was included in Zone A under the Allied Military Government a month after the end of the war. With the Paris Peace Treaty, the majority of the territory was divided, leaving the Istrian peninsula to Yugoslavia and the city of Trieste to the Allies, later to Italy. The new demarcation line resulted in the emptying of entire cities and the displacement of much of the Italian population from Yugoslavian territories. Stories of pain, suffering and violations of human rights were common on both sides, provoking different feelings towards the same historical events and creating diverse, mostly contested, historical narratives. Using case studies connected to the new politics of remembrance in the border region, I will present how new (old) borders are imagined, how they are remembered and what value they represent in society. In examining the topic, I will show how selected narratives became historical facts and why certain other events, including some

1 On 10 September 1943, after the Italian capitulation, the territory of the Julian March, together with the Province of Ljubljana, Fiume and Pola, passed over to the Reich as the Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland (Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral). The new zone was never incorporated in the German Reich but attached to the Gau of Carinthia.

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very crucial ones, were omitted. Seventy-four years after the Paris Peace Treaty, the memory and commemoration of the past on the border remain not only vital elements of local history but have become important building blocks for the national historical narrative.

1 The narrative of division The border between Italy and Slovenia (then Yugoslavia) was formed at the negotiating tables of the post-war peace treaties. At the end of the Second World War the region became part of the Allied Military Government (AMG), given that the territory was contested by different national and political communities. The region also gained dubious fame because it was mentioned in Churchill’s iconic speech, citing “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent”, but in reality, the territory was divided between AngloAmerican (AMG) and Yugoslav (VUJA) troops who were stationed there until the peace treaty would decide to whom the territory would belong. It was only in 1947, two years after the end of the war, that the multicultural territory was divided between Italy and Yugoslavia. According to the Paris Treaty signed in February 1947, the larger part of the town of Gorizia remained a part of Italy, while the two bigger suburban villages remained in Yugoslavia. The border meant a new reality, one that was, despite all the joy and sadness, an equally acute problem for both sides. In December 1947 the building of a new city began (Širok 2012). New blocks of flats were erected, and work on regulating the streams. The city was being built in the zealous spirit of the youth brigades, volunteers coming from all of the Yugoslav republics. However, a lingering hope still remained that Gorizia would one day become part of the unified Slovene (then Yugoslav) territory. “We shall build a new Gorizia, but we will never forfeit the old one”, resonated among the public many years after 1947 (Svenšek 2019). In the next sixty years both towns co-inhabited the town and after the first period of border closure (till 1954) the inhabitants of the territory were allowed to go across the border. A special agreement between the countries allowed persons within twenty kilometers from the border to cross at several special border points. Years passed, and Nova Gorica developed into a bustling casino centre, mainly frequented by Italian clientele, while Gorizia (much like Trieste) evolved into a shopping zone for Yugoslav buyers. In April 2004, as Slovenia was poised to join the European Union, Gorizia and Nova Gorica became the symbols of a Europe once divided, now about to reunite. Foreign media reports painted the picture of a city long divided by two ideologically contradicting worlds that was finally to be reunited in the European

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Union. A special emphasis was given to the symbolic value of the divided Transalpina square. On the eve of the enlargement of the Union, the media reported on the fall of the last vestiges of the Iron Curtain. The symbolic reunion was repeated again in December 2007, as a result of the enlargement of the Schengen area. Media reports emphasized how from that moment on, a new chapter in the history of the territory would be written, mainly emphasizing the disappearing differences and the divide that had for too long separated these two towns. The titles of articles that accompanied the discussions and covered the front pages of all the main Slovene and Italian newspapers said a great deal about the discourse that filled the border area in these last days of that December. The central part of the Domenica supplement of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica was titled “The last border: The iron curtain is no more”. A special issue of Trieste’s Il Piccolo was written in the same spirit, devoted to the fall of the border, with the telling title “Italy and Slovenia, today we are opening a chapter in a new history. The last border is demolished; after decades of tension, the symbol of division is disappearing” (Rumiz 2007). In the article “Gorica as Berlin fifteen years later”, the journalist Tomasso Cerno describes the opening of the border as a night “similar to that of 9 November 1989 in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Germany, which was marked by fear and hope for a better future. The same was also supposed to have happened in 1947, when the Americans drew out the line of the border, leaving to Yugoslavia the districts of Šempeter and Solkan, which would develop into new town districts of the Communist Nova Gorica” (Cerno 2007). The writer Paolo Rumiz laid out the problematic “our” little Berlin and the fall of the last wall in his 2004 article: “What is happening in front of the railway station of the former Transalpine square – the Brandenburg Gate of our little domestic Berlin – is not just a stitch in the wound that opened in 1947 when Communist Yugoslavia erected the wire only two steps in front of the centre of the town. Nor is it merely the destruction of the iron curtain” (Rumiz 2004). Three years later the same author stressed when telling the story of the border that on 20 December, eighteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the century of extremism also ended in Gorica. “The old century is ending and leaves behind it a heritage of catastrophe: the expulsion of the Istrian population from Tito’s land, the illegal armed group “Gladio”, a hundred thousand dead in Redipuglia and the Austro-Hungarian cemeteries, “foiba”2 and the fascist violence. All in a

2 “Foiba” is a deep natural sinkhole on the Carst (a Carstic pit). In history they were used as landfills, but during and after World War II they were used for the disposal of bodies. The word now has profound emotive meaning for the Italian community.

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single territory, within a few square kilometres: numerous shootings on the border with Italy, where seventeen years ago, in front of the television cameras of the whole world, the disintegration of Yugoslavia began” (Rumiz 2007). These aforementioned headlines were bound to two essential public discourses. The first, and most frequent, stressed the fall of the iron curtain, the last European barrier, the border that divided the world into two parts. The second emphasized change, the news that from this moment on everything would change and life at the border would be different. However, can we really understand the Gorizia case as a second Berlin? The comparison of Gorica / Gorizia with Berlin and the Italian-Slovene (previously Yugoslav) border with the Berlin Wall was all over the media in 2004, stressing the difference between the two ideological worlds of the two Goricas and the post-war reality of this region. But in reality, a comparison of Gorica with Berlin and treatment of the border as the last disappearing symbol of the cold war must be interpreted as a discursive invention of tradition,3 an adapted interpretation of the past, which was conducted in the media discourse on both sides of the border. In this way they created a problematic, unhistorical understanding of the past, which was repeatedly used by the media in order to become a public historical narrative. A constructed narrative is supposed to operate in moments of transformation and social change as a point of support in understanding that past which the group has legitimised as its own. If we follow the observation of Paul Connerton that depictions of the past are created by custom as a legitimisation of the current social order (Connerton 1999), it follows that the aforementioned news articles are merely a result of the media interpretation of rooted ideological and national discourses, which have constructed (and still construct) the understanding of this region. The construction of such a discourse for the purpose of shaping a common tradition of the two towns aims to interpret and identify Gorica as a second Berlin, an ideologically divided (but formerly unitary) town. Despite the ideological construct of the well-known curtain across the land between Trieste and the Baltic, the Gorica border cannot (and may not) be equated with the iron curtain. The development of this border area is namely unique, and as such cannot be used for the construction of mythical stories of a second little Berlin. The fact that there is a wish to construct its public image on the basis of a presentation of the past that divides and labels the space, within

3 The expression is taken from the work The Invention of Tradition, in which Hobsbawm argues that a great many customs that we consider traditional are in fact recent inventions, deliberate inventions used for a specific (ideological) aim.

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a designed discourse of a closed border and ideological indoctrination, is itself already problematic. In 1955 the Videm/Udine agreement opened the region to cross-border traffic and allowed the population to cross the border. The lively trade, the initiatives for cross-border cooperation, the traditional marches of friendship etc. had labored for several years towards opening the border area. With the Osimo treaties in 1975 the demarcation of the state border between the countries was confirmed, promoting mutual economic and technical cooperation and improving the living conditions of the population (Škorjanec 2010). As Slovenia was coming closer to becoming part of EU and there was ever louder debate as to whether Nova Gorica and Gorizia should become a single town or remain two separate entities, the public discourse insinuating the inability of coexistence increased. The eternal antagonisms, the old resentments and differing interpretations of recent history confirmed the rooted image of the Other. The state border, which for so many years had symbolically represented in political discourse a line of division, as the Italian narrative of a dividing line between democracy and communism and the Yugoslav narrative of freedom and capitalism, was far from being as strong as the mental border that was present in the prejudices and stereotypes about the inhabitants of the neighbouring communities in the region.

2 The narrative of redemption and loss In addition to the discourse presented here of another Berlin, the historical narration about Gorica is supplemented by two associated discourses within the memory communities as to the history of the place. The first construct, which builds the Italian historical narrative, is the discourse of the holy city of Gorizia, shaped as memory of the “liberation” of Gorizia on 9 August 1916. Gorizia is a holy city, la Città Santa, as the poet Vittorio Locchi celebrated it during the First World War (Locchi 1982);4 it is a martyr town redeemed, a Martire Redenta, a town liberated from beneath the Habsburg monarchy, for the liberation of which “Italy sacrificed a great many of her sons”. The mentioned discourse stresses the glorious symbol of Gorizia, its mission as a national martyr and a defender of Italian civilization. La redenzione di Gorizia, the amalgamation of the town with its motherland, already in its name stresses the redemption, liberation of Gorizia and indicates the almost religious symbolism of this act (Širok 2012).

4 Locchi wrote the poem La Sagra di Santa Gorizia in 1916 after the Italian liberation of the aforementioned town.

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The discourse of the sanctity of the town has its roots in the position of Gorizia after the First World War, when, at the end of October 1922, Italy proclaimed the area of the hills of San Michelle and Sabotin as Zona Sacra, a Sacred Zone – in memory of all the fallen Italian soldiers who sacrificed their lives so that Gorizia, the redeemed town, could be re-united with the motherland.5 The derived discourse increased in intensity over the following decades, during the war and the violence that marked Gorizia between the years 1943 and 1947, with a particular emphasis on May 1945 when Yugoslav partisan troops occupied the territory. The occupation that lasted till 12 June 1945 was for the local population the most tragic period of the Second World War, when they experienced revenge, torture and the disappearance of many family members. Some were abducted and sent to concentration camps in Yugoslavia; others were killed and dumped in Carstic pits or foibe (Troha 2019). To this day this period is remembered as the foibe massacres and has a deep emotional meaning in Italian collective memory. Different is the construction of the Slovene historical narration about the borderland area, centered mainly on the discourse of the lost town of Gorica. On 1 May 1945, when the partisans first arrived in the town, the Slovenes in Gorica experienced it as a double liberation;6 they were saved from German occupation and from the earlier Italian fascist authorities. After the signing of the Belgrade Agreement7 on 12 June 1945, the liberated town came under the Allied Goverment (AMG) and the Yugoslav army had to withdraw from it (Francesconi 1990; Kacin-Wohinz and Pirjevec 2000). In this interpretation, the Slovene population lost out after the war because of political intrigue and capitalist interests. It was thus cheated for a second time – the first time after the First World War, when the area became part of the Kingdom of Italy and Slovenes were forced to live under fascistic oppression that denied them their identity. From this point of view, Italy seized the territory as a matter of diplomatic speculation and the Slovene population, which for numerous years had defied pressure on their national identity and had fought for their existence had to abandon the

5 Sabotin is a 609 metre high hill above Gorica. Since 1947 the state border has run along the hill. The sacralisation of the place is connected with the fact that, with the breakthrough of the Italian army and the liberation of Sabotin, which represented the key point of the Austrian defense system in the sixth Soča/Isonzo front, Gorica became Italian. 6 The term is taken from the Report of the Slovene-Italian Historical and Cultural Commission, in which events in May 1945 are described as “double liberation: from German occupation and from the Italian state” (Report of the Slovene-Italian Historical and Cultural Commission, 2001). 7 The Belgrade Agreement was later supplemented with the Duino Agreement (Morgan-Jovanović), signed on 20 June 1945.

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liberated town because of the post-war course of events. In historical texts, irrespective of their political attitude to the previous regime, the town of Gorica appears together with the verb to lose. Whatever kind of interpretation of events there is about Gorica, after the Second World War, therefore, in all narrations the Slovenes lose the town.8 The narrative implies a great injustice of losing something that has been righteously gained and unjustifiably lost forever. In the same spirit the creation of the new town on the border is narrated; Nova (new) Gorica was built to show the legitimate existence of the Slavic population in the territory. Even a brief stroll through the streets of the two towns tells a great deal about the past of the place and about the events that reinforced the collective memory of the inhabitants of the two towns. While for Nova Gorica the Second World War is the source of collective memory, Gorizia preserves its memory with events from the First World War. The naming of streets in this case does not just carry symbolic value but is inserted in the wider construct of the history of the memory of the region and within the framework of shaping the identity of the area. This, as both cases show, is connected with wars from which both countries came out as victors. Deriving from the premise that the present is shaped by the past (Olick 2007), I suggest that interpretations of the past are adapted to the dominant narrations (Misztal 2003).9 These understand the past as a battleground in which opposing groups compete in mastering the position (in space). It follows from this that the space, as an object of study through memory, offers possibilities for understanding how groups shape and interpret the past and which images or presentations of the past10 an individual group preserves and celebrates and which it allows to be forgotten. We are interested both in the process of shaping memory and its adaptation to the needs of the present in accepting those images of the past that confirm the dominant narration. The foundation of all such narrations and symbolic interpretations of these preservers of memory is, in the derivation of Paul Ricoeur’s wounded memories, violence. Ricoeur interprets identities that are developed from opposing

8 The most frequent interpretation of the course of events at the time of the Paris peace negotiations is that they forgot about the question of ownership of Gorica because it was not crucial to resolving the Trieste question. 9 Dominant narrative, also official memory, as the memory used by official elites, is an amended and supplemented national history through which an elite shapes (and preserves) the desired image of the past. 10 Images (presentations) of the past are both images of the past and acts of remembrance; both phrases, namely, define constructed and reconstructed events that members of particular communities remember.

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memories as being fragile on both personal and collective levels. Above all, as the author says, excessive use or abuse of specific memories indicates that the inhabitants have a problem with identity.11 Ricoeur makes three claims from the analysis of identity: (1) Above all it refers to a relation to time, more precisely, preserving oneself through time. (2) The second source of abuse refers to competition with others, to real or imaginary threats to identity, from the moment when this is confronted with others, with difference. These, to a large extent symbolic wounds, are joined by (3) a third source of vulnerability, that is the role of violence in grounding identity, above all collective identity. In the background of pathologies of memory, namely, as the foundations of the relation between memory and history, we always find violence (Ricoeur 2004, 72). In the analysis of so-called mémoire blessée, “wounded memory”, he claims that no historical community (state) exists that has not been created from relations connected with war. What some communities celebrate as the foundations of their creation are essentially legitimized acts of violence. That which some nation might celebrate is a source of shame for another; celebrations by one side are a source of contempt for another. Wounds that are not merely symbolic are thus preserved in the archive of collective memory (Ricoeur 2004).

3 The narrative of heroes and victims Is the archive of collective memory a static storage of the past or does it react to socio-political changes? The last decades of the 20th century shows us that memory narratives are, as history itself, changeable and malleable in order to promote selected constructions on collective identities. As Misztal points out in her study of collective remembering, there are many case studies of the connections between memory and the identities of various social groups which show the construction of collective identities always involves groups defining themselves against their Others. Groups have different criteria for judging the importance of past events, as well as different conceptions of time and of legitimization. Yet, in all collectivist recollections of their respective past, the group is always

11 Identity building, interpretations and perceptions about the Other in multicultural areas can be studied by how groups form their imagined communities, individual memories and boundaries among them. A century ago, the inhabitants of the Goriška region, insofar as they were in contact with other inhabitants in everyday life, understood each other in all the languages of the region: German, Italian, Friulian, Slovene. Today the younger generations communicate in English.

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positioned in relation to the outside. Such memory is the most effective recourse any social group has to reinforce its social identity with regard to that of others (Misztal 2003, 146). In 2004, when Slovenia was joining the European Union, a special national day of remembrance was instituted by the Italian Parliament. A new day of commemoration was proclaimed for the national recognition of the tragedies that the Italian population experienced in the period after the end of the Second World War in the Julian March territory. On 30 March 2004 a Day of Remembrance was instituted to remember all the victims of the Foibe massacres and of the expulsion of the Italian population from Dalmatia and the Julian March. This National Memorial Day is held annually on 10 February, the day when the Paris Treaty of Peace with Yugoslavia was signed in 1947. As already mentioned, these events were embedded in the local collective memory, especially among families who lost family members or were forced to move from the Yugoslav territories to Italy. With the recognition of their pain on a national level the narrative of the Foibe massacres and the atrocities committed by the Yugoslav army in May 1945 became a legitimate national historical narrative of suffering and heroism. In 2005, the same year that Italy commemorated for the first time the victims of the Foibe massacres and expulsion exodus, Slovenia instituted a national day of remembrance called Return of Primorska to the Motherland, a reunification day to be celebrated annually on 15 September. The chosen day commemorates the coming into force of the Paris Treaty of Peace with Italy in 1947. The new day of remembrance was welcomed by the Slovene inhabitants of the border region with enthusiasm and joy, as it recognized at the national level the suffering and courage of the fight for freedom and honor. Both days of remembrance commemorate specific events that happened in the same historical period and present them from different perspectives, emphasizing different emotions and shaping different interpretative meanings. Celebrations on one side are a source of contempt for the other and vice versa, wherein family tragedies become political instruments in shaping narratives of victimhood and heroism. If before 2004 only very few citizens of both countries knew the meaning of the dates of 10 February and 15 September, since 2006, these remembrance days have become an important part of the national collective memory and play today an important role in national identity building. Over the course of fifteen years, political discourses and new narratives on the subject have shaped the understanding of the past of the territory, border formation and a (national) collective guilt. On the Italian side the post-war events are narrated and recalled without a broader historical framework of 20th century history, emphasizing only the postwar period and leaving the fascists legacy out the debate. Year by year the selected narrative acquired a patina of nobility that Italian politics managed to skillfully

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exploit and appropriate. Each year the media debate who was the victim and who the executioner, who the hero and who the villain; politicians on both sides try to get more public attention and new voters. In 2007 the then Italian President Napolitano gave a commemorative speech where he described the post-war period as a time of bloody anger, planned Slavic annexation and ethnic cleansing.12 The Croatian President Mesić accused him of historical revisionism and political revanchism, and the national commemoration crossed national borders. In the next years, commemorations regularly provoked unrest and public reactions in the media, but the presidents of the three states tried on several occasions to promote and establish a view of a common EU future without borders. From 2015 to 2019, while commemorating the centenary of the First World War, the border region gradually turned into a stage for conjuring up new divisions and new border proclamations, demanding justice for the Italians who died in order for these territories to become part of the mother country. The peak of the situation came with the annual commemoration at the Bazovica foibe Monument on 10 February 2019, when the then European Parliament president Antonio Tajani gave a speech were he stated that “thousands of innocent victims (were) killed for being Italians”, while the present Deputy Minister Matteo Salvini equated “the children who died at Auschwitz [with] the children who died at Basovizza”, adding that there “are no first- or second-class martyrs”. Tajani finished his speech with a declaration, “long live Trieste, long live Italian Istria, long live Italian Dalmatia, long live Italian exiles” (Barigazzi 2019). The comment ignited further outrage at his assertion that these areas, now part of Slovenia and Croatia, rightfully belonged to Italy (Zamparutti 2019). Accusation of revisionism followed, with the presidents and various politicians from Croatia and Slovenia demanding clarifications and apologies. Tajani eventually apologized, saying that his words have been misinterpreted and that “he wanted to send a message of peace between peoples, so that what happened never happens again” (Banks 2019). Today the day of Italian remembrance of post-war events forms an important catalyst for national pain and memories of post-war injustices. Following public debates, especially on social media, new interpretations of the past are being confirmed and accepted. We can agree that seventy-four years after the Paris Peace Treaty, the memory and commemoration of the past on the border have become important building blocks of the national historical narrative,

12 More on the topic: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discorsi_dei_Presidenti_della_Repubblica_ italiana_in_occasione_del_Giorno_del_ricordo#Discorso_del_Presidente_Giorgio_Napolitano_ del_2008

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emphasizing one narrative and omitting the other. Processes of “public amnesia” (Passerini 2008; Wertsch 2002) flow in parallel with processes of reawakening and exalting events to the Olympus of memory. Those who define what is collectively reawakened, preserved and honored are the same ones who apparently overlook other events and consign them to oblivion. The two processes take place within the formation of identity of an individual community, in the grounding and presentation that the latter forms about its own past. Precisely the politics of national “remembering”, thus commemoration, either in the form of holidays or symbols, indicates abuse of specific memories and the oblivion of others that are not important for the collective memory of the nation or carry the weight of an unwelcome past and are therefore inconvenient (Jedlowsky 2016). Today’s social obsession with memory and with maintaining interpretations of past events depends not so much on the experience of those who lived through the events as on the political discourse that the memory community maintains and preserves. The process of remembering and its historical narratives are always formed both in relation to the significance that the community gives to an event and the needs that the present dictates in their interpretation. Different circumstances call for a commitment to different standpoints but always with regard to preserving the border, i.e., separating and excluding those who are not members of the same community. In view of the tendencies that were dictated by the current political circumstances and the associated wave of revision of both Slovene and Italian historiography, the border and the memory of it have been built on an image of the past as accorded with the current dominant narrations. In the present discussion, I have sought to show what presentations of the past do reinforce community memory and how the latter is adapted to needs dictated by the present. In cases such as Goriška, where the (border) space is the property of several national communities, the memory space is consequently the bearer of various symbols of the past and their communicative value. Changes in the interpretation of the past are subordinate to both the significance of events and current needs, the interpretation of which is dictated by the present. From this point of view, presentations of the past are constantly (re)shaped and revised.

Bibliography Ballinger, Pamela. 2003. History in Exile. Memory and Identity in the borders of the Balkans. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Barigazzi, Jacopo. 2019. “Slovenian, Croatian leaders accuse Tajani of historical revisionism.” Politico, 11 February 2019. https://www.politico.eu/article/slovenian-croatian-leaders-ac cuse-tajani-of-historical-revisionism/ Accessed on 26 December 2020.

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Banks, Martin. 2019. “Tajani apologises after furore over Foibe massacres comments.” The Parlament Magazine, 12 February 2019. https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/ar ticle/tajani-apologises-after-furore-over-foibe-massagcres-comments. Accessed on 26 December 2020. Bebler, Aleš. 1981. Čez drn in strn. Spomini. Koper: Lipa. Cerno, Tommaso. 2007. “Gorizia come Berlino diciotto anni dopo.” Messaggero Veneto, 21 December 2007. https://messaggeroveneto.gelocal.it/udine/cronaca/2007/12/21/news/ gorizia-come-berlino-diciotto-anni-dopo-1.27779. Accessed on 10 January 2021. Connerton, Paul. 1999. Come le società ricordano. Roma: Armando editore. Guerrini, Guido. 2020. “Gorizia tra tragedie e paradossi della geopolitica.” TeverePost 20 July 2020. https://www.teverepost.it/gorizia-tra-tragedie-e-paradossi-della-geopolitica/ Accessed on 26 December 2020. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger. 2002. L’invenzione della tradizione. Torino: Einaudi. Janczak, Jaroslaw. 2019. “State Borders in Urban Spaces: Border Twin Towns and Cities from a Global Perspective.” In Old Borders – New Challenges, New Borders – Old Challenges. De-Bordering and Re-Bordering in Contemporary Europe, edited by Jarosław Jańczak, 115–124, Berlin: Logos Verlag. Jedlowski, Paolo 2016. Memorie mediate. Media e rappresentazione del passato comune. Modena: Consorzio Festivalfilosofia. Kacin-Wohinz, Milica, and Jože Pirjevec. 2000. Zgodovina Slovencev v Italiji. 1866–2000. Ljubljana: Nova Revija. Kosmač, Gorazd. 2020. “Na meji z Italijo že nadzor na šestih mejnih prehodih, drugi so zaprti.” MMC RTV, 11 March 2020. https://www.rtvslo.si/zdravje/novi-koronavirus/nameji-z-italijo-ze-nadzor-na-sestih-mejnih-prehodih-drugi-so-zaprti/516806. Accessed on 10 January 2021. Locchi, Vittorio. 1982. Sagra di Santa Gorizia. Gorizia: Editrice cartolibreria centrale. Misztal, Barbara. 2003. Theories of Social Remembering. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Olick, Jeffrey. 2007. The politics of regret: Collective memory in the age of atrocity. London and New York: Routledge. Passerini, Luisa. 2008. Ustna zgodovina, spol in utopija. Izbrani spisi. Ljubljana: Studia Humanitatis. Report of the Slovene-Italian Historical and Cultural Commission- (Poročilo slovenskoitalijanske zgodovinsko-kulturne komisije). 2001. Vlada Republike Slovenije Ministrstvo za zunanje zadeve. Poročilo slovensko-italijanske zgodovinsko-kulturne komisije. Koper, 25 July 2000. http://www.mzz.gov.si/si/porocilo_slovensko_italijanske_zgodovinsko_ kulturne_komisije_koper_25_julij_2000/obdobje_1941_1945/ Accessed on 10 January 2021. Ricoeur, Paul. 2004. Ricordare, Dimenticare, Perdonare, L’enigma del pasato. Bologna: Il Mulino. Rumiz, Paolo. 2004. “Gorizia. Cade l’ultimo muro d’Europa.” Corriere della sera 11 February 2004. https://www.feltrinellieditore.it/news/2004/04/29/paolo-rumiz-gorizia–cade-lul timo-muro-deuropa-2805/ Accessed on 26 December 2020. Rumiz, Paolo. 2007. “La fine del grande freddo.” Repubblica, 21 December 2007. http://ricerca. repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2007/12/09/la-fine-del-grande-freddo.html. Accessed on 10 January 2021. Schultz, Helga. 2002. Twin Towns on the Border as Laboratories of European Integration. Frankfurter: Institut fur Transformationsstudies.

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Širok, Kaja. 2012. Kalejdoskop goriške preteklosti: zgodbe o spominu in pozabi. Ljubljana: ZRC SAZU. Svenšek, Ana. 2019. “Zgradili naj bi nekaj velikega, ponosnega, nekaj, kar bi sijalo preko meje.” MMC RTV, 13 April 2019. https://www.rtvslo.si/zidovi/spomin-je-ziv/zgradili-najbi-nekaj-velikega-ponosnega-nekaj-kar-bi-sijalo-preko-meje/484443. Accessed on 10 January 2021. Škorjanec, Viljemka. 2010. “Osimski sporazum.” Dnevnik, 15 October 2010. https://www. dnevnik.si/1042402718. Accessed on 26 December 2020. Troha, Nevenka. 2019. “Zahodna slovenska meja med letoma 1945 in 1954.” MMC RTV, 3 March 2019. https://www.rtvslo.si/zidovi/aktualno/zahodna-slovenska-meja-med-le toma-1945-in-1954/480513. Accessed on 26 December 2020. Zavrtanik, Miha. 2020. “Slovenija zapira mejo z Italijo za potniški promet. Šarec: Ljudje karantene ne upoštevajo.” MMC RTV, 10 March 2020. https://www.rtvslo.si/zdravje/ novi-koronavirus/slovenija-zapira-mejo-z-italijo-za-potniski-promet-sarec-ljudje-karan tene-ne-upostevajo/516778. Accessed on 26 December 2020. Zamparutti, Louise. 2019. “Basovizza monument: Constructing memory and identity.” Research in Social Change 11/3: 25–38. Wertsch, James. 2002. Voices of collective remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. “Slovenia accuses Tajani, Salvini of World War II Revisionism.” Euractiv 12 February 2019. https://www.euractiv.com/section/eu-elections-2019/news/slovenia-accuses-tajanisalvini-of-world-war-ii-revisionism/ Accessed on 10 January 2021.

Tatjana Sekulić

Reshaping the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from the Yugoslav Wars to the European integration 1 Introduction During the wintertime, when we were approaching the second year of Covid19 – 2021, the media once again brought the issue of the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) to international public attention. Thousands of irregular migrants were reported freezing in the country’s wide fields and ancient forests while attempting the “game” of crossing the frontier to Croatia, Fortress Europe’s drawbridge. The “Balkan route” opened up a conduit in one of the most important “migrant” or “refugee” crises in 2015 bringing the spectre of new walls and barbwire to the continent. During the first few years the route involved other former Yugoslav states such as North Macedonia and Serbia, both being candidates for EU membership, and Slovenia and Croatia (with different border regimes) as new EU members – only the first of the two within Schengen. Since late 2017, the “zero toleration” policies towards migrants practiced by Višegrad countries and Hungary in particular, diverted the flux of the “people on the move” to the territory of BiH. (Della Porta 2018; Katz et al. 2018) The difficulty the state authorities encountered in tackling the refugee situation shed light once again on the inefficient political and administrative structure of the country as defined by the Dayton/Paris General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP) in late 1995. The state was designed as a kind of consociation of two Entities, the Federation of BiH and the Republic of Srpska – the former divided into ten cantons – and there was also the autonomous Brčko district. After Dayton, Bosnia and Herzegovina was defined as a parliamentary democracy, but with limited sovereignty – the Accords established the institution of the Office of a High Representative (OHR) with extensive, so-called “Bonn powers” to decree legislation and remove public officials. The OHR had a mandate as a Special Representative of the EU from 2002 to 2011; beginning in 2011 the EU appointed the ambassador of the EU Delegation to BiH as its own special representative, acting in accord with the OHR. The Annex IV of the GFAP and other minor acts are still the basis of the state constitution written without any democratic discussion within civil society nor with different social parts being involved, thus without any kind of a demos- or demoicratic constituents. Significant parts of the new

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political institutions at the state level – the tripartite Presidency and the House of Peoples – excluded those citizens who do not identify themselves with the three constituent nations: Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks. The complicated constitutional architecture at Entity level perpetuates the exclusion of the citizens from having a right to political participation as electors and candidates in the state territory as a whole, considering either the three constituent nations, or the “Others” – members of minority groups (Sekulić 2017). The political authorities confronted the refugee crises by shifting responsibility among diverse state levels, still without creating an appropriate legal framework and structures in order to offer a minimum of living conditions for receiving migrants on the move. The vicious circle of the decision-making process among the predominantly ethnicized political leadership of the country became quite evident in this particular and dramatic case. The multifaceted consequences of the spiral of violence into which BiH, together with other former Yugoslav republics, collapsed at the beginning of the 1990s, has constantly re-emerged and produced new conflictual situations, effectively hindering the country, twenty-five years after Dayton, from moving more quickly towards European integration. In this brief reflection about the three decades of the ongoing bordering process within the fragile state and deeply wounded society of Bosnia and Herzegovina, I will try to elaborate my long ethnographic experience as a border-crosser and boundary-observer throughout the changing contexts of the former Yugoslav space. The analysis presented in this chapter embraces the results of several phenomenological and empirical inquiries related to the former Yugoslav and South Eastern European societies; these are studies I have approached from a sociological perspective over the last few decades. In this sense, Bosnia and Herzegovina may be seen as the privileged observation point for what James W. Scott has defined as the main topic of border studies, i.e., that “borders are in a constant process of confirmation, contestation, transformation and reconfirmation” (Scott 2020, 2). Both the external political borders of the state, and its internal administrative borders and, more importantly, its socio-cultural, symbolic and emotional boundaries as based on the politicized ethnonational identities of dominant groupings, compose specific space-sets in which the border-shaping processes constantly and imperceptibly occur with different nuances. I will concentrate on the following questions: How has the institutional establishing of the internal borderlines reproduced the political, socio-cultural and psychological consequences of the war? How are these post-war boundaries being challenged politically and socially twenty-five years after the Dayton Accords? It is hard to answer these complex questions in a synthetic and yet comprehensive way from the perspective of the new spatiality of politics (Newman 2016; Rumford 2006). Thus, the analysis will tackle the question of the

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shaping of the multifaceted borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina historically, contextualizing the process of bordering around three crucial points. Firstly, I will briefly explore the dialectics between the borders’ negotiation and production process within the framework of the Peace Conferences, and the violent boundary-setting war practices that reshaped the territorial partition among the groupings within the period from February 1992 to December 1995. Secondly, I will examine the impact of the Dayton Accords (including the new state constitution) on the political and social life of the country through the lenses of bordering, ordering and othering processes (Van Houtum and Van Naerssen 2002; Paasi 2020). Thirdly, I will consider the challenge of the EU accession process of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the ethno-political foundation of the country and its society in view of its problematic European future.

2 Yugoslav Wars 1991–1999 and the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina Telling the story of the Yugoslav wars from the perspective of border-crossing experiences proves to be a challenging endeavour. At the end of the Cold War, while the European Community of twelve member states worked on becoming the European Union – ratified by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 –, the conflict among the constituent nations of the Yugoslav Federation was growing in strength and violence, producing a snowball effect that boosted social distances and boundaries among groups and individuals. In this sense, the othering process, understood as a construction of symbolic and cultural boundaries between “us” and the “others” (Paasi 2020, 3), started much before the open conflict, with a discursive redefinition of the legitimation principle of there being a brotherhood and unity of the Yugoslav nations and nationalities (Sekulić 2002). It was an indispensable prelude to the violent re-ordering of the borders between the Yugoslav republics and constituent nations (and nationalities). The EU was moving towards further enlargement and deeper integration, based on common principles that included free movement of people and goods. At the same time, the external and internal borders of the Yugoslav Federation became sites of contestation and violence. The war in Slovenia started with the proclamation of its independence in June 1991, the first act of which was the seizing of control of the new state’s borders by the newly established Slovenian Border Police. The war in Croatia was more complicated, as the proclamation of independence triggered both the external reaction of the Yugoslav Army, as in the case of Slovenia, and the internal exacerbation of the conflict between paramilitary forces related to the Serbian minority, and the Croat

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Army. The borders of the country remained blurred and were fought over for a long time, until the full reintegration of contested territories in January 1998 (Calic 2019). The dominant strategy of conflict resolution and pacification adopted by the EU and the international community from the very beginning could also be interpreted in terms of a bordering process regarding the negotiation of sovereignty among the conflicting parties over territory as well as dealing with the re-ordering of border regimes between new states and ethnonational groups. From the first conferences on Bosnia and Herzegovina in Lisbon and Sarajevo (February and March 1992) to the Washington Agreement in 1994 and Dayton Accords in 1995, both the interlocutors and methods were almost the same. The negotiations included an almost exclusively tripartite ethnonationalist leadership legitimated by the first democratic elections held in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as by their partners in Serbia and Croatia. The territorial partition of the country among Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks – understood as crystalized collective identities and recognized as constituent nations –, was taken as the only acceptable solution. Several military and paramilitary forces were determining the new internal borders with extreme physical and psychological violence, at varying levels of responsibility (Bianchini et al. 2005; Caplan 2005; Sekulić 2002). The whole country and its citizens, and in particular those who were identified as members of the constituent nation of Bosniaks, were crushed between the hegemonic ethnonational politics of the neighboring states of Serbia (using the force and structures of the Yugoslav Army) and Croatia, in synergy with their “own” local ethnonational elites – Bosnian Serbs and Croats – who were looking towards their external national homelands (Brubaker 1996). The violence of redefining internal borders and boundaries affected every scale and aspect of the social and individual life-space in that period; it increased to its extreme during the almost four years of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995). The first war strategy was the systematic destruction of communication devices, in order to block the contacts and flow of information among citizenry: the fight for the control of radio and TV relays, channels and frequencies, the demolition of railways, interurban and urban mobility, the devastation of the postal services and telephone lines. The “ethnic cleansing” policies used all the possible criminal instruments as defined in international law: killing, rape, torture, forced migration, genocide. The indictments and verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indeed encompass in juridical terms the horror of the war in BiH; the documents related to the testimonies of the victims and perpetrators, available to the public in the Tribunal’s archive, do indeed render the human dimension of the suffering of so many people. The ICTY findings and decisions may be understood as

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valid indicators of the responsibility among the major players in the Yugoslav Wars. The war was total, and probably not a single Bosnian citizen escaped the consequences of the conflict, whose nature, stories and effects have been narrated in art, in novels, theatre, documentary films and fiction, and explored and analyzed in many scholarly works. The most dramatic loss, apart from the material destruction of state, social and private goods, were the human lives and the lingering scars. The demographic effects of the conflict affected the territorial dimension of the lifeworld and social space of individuals, as more than half of the pre-war population changed their place of residence during and immediately after the war. Displacement can be traced all over the country’s territory, independently of ethnonational identification (Sekulić 2002). More than a million and a half BiH citizens never returned from third countries;1 many of the returnees never went back to their previous homes. Remaining within the borders of their ethnonational community was a privileged, if not unique, option for the majority of them. In that sense, we may speak here about the final act in the process of othering, where the new borderlines effectively divided communities, imposing new border regimes and ordering new forms of societal interactions. Anssi Paasi speaks about complementary processes of social spatialization and spatial socialization, the latter as the “creation of meaning to bounded spaces such as schools, streets, monuments” (Paasi 2020, 5). The Bosnian-Herzegovinian school programmes are unmistakably divided in their interpretation of the “national group of subjects”. A differentiation exists with regard to the following: the territorial and spatial composition of the country2 (Sekulić 2009); the institutional division between Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian linguistic communities (Veličković 2015, 2017; Mujkić 2016b); the interpretation of the past and recent history of

1 According to the study by the BiH Ministry of Security, published in 2018, 1,691,350 of the citizens born in the country, were now registered as living permanently in third countries. The data of the World Bank differs slightly reporting a figure of 1,638,113 persons. (Čičić et al. 2019, 38) The Analytic Report of the European Commission on BiH in 2019 proposed that around 100,000 citizens registered in BiH with refugee and internally displaced person status, related to the conflicts in the 1990s, whose conditions were not yet resolved, impeding the closure of the Annex VII of the GFAP (EC 2019a). 2 An image of three different countries emerged during my research on textbooks in geography for Primary and Secondary schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sekulić 2009). Schools with the Bosniak curriculum proposed a ‘unitary’ vision of a homogeneous, naturalized territory in which the internal borders were under-represented. Schools with the Serb curriculum emphasized the entity division and the strong territorial and societal relationship with Serbia. Finally, schools with Croat curriculum spoke more about Croatia than about BiH, even using textbooks from the neighbouring country.

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the country and of the whole region, including revisionism of fascist regimes (Soldo et al. 2017). Even nowadays, at the beginning of 2021, there still persists a clearly visible phenomenon of the ethnic segregation of children and youngsters in the “two schools under the same roof”, separating children into distinct communities who live in the same place, and inhabit their towns and villages. In these cases, the perpetual separation practices occur symbolically through different teaching curricula, but also physically and socially: two different school-open areas, separate entrances and classrooms, different schedules for the daily agenda, different teaching staff, all in order to make encountering one another problematic, if not impossible (Lofranco 2011; Madacki and Karamehić 2012). During the Covid-19 pandemic, notwithstanding the difficulty of guaranteeing the continuation of lessons with weak resources, these schools used different online platforms. (EC Report on BiH 2020) Asim Mujkić (2012) interpreted the system of education in the country as a process of a naturalization of the ethnonational ideology, and Azra Hromadžić (2015) sees it as a structural effort of the ethnocracy intended to remove any sense of civic nationhood. The streets and squares all over the country have been renamed, changing urban landscapes and redefining a spatial sense of belonging (Gregorić Bon and Repić 2016). The issue of monuments, old and new, enters the broader process of reframing the memory and identity of the country as a whole, as a part of the Yugoslav socialist past, and as a post-war and post-Dayton complex space of conflictual day-by-day negotiation about the sense and meaning of living together (Dougherty 2019). The question of memory and remembrance arises here in its cultural, symbolic and emotional dimensions with regard to social divisions: the production of contrasting narratives of the recent past clashes with the efforts towards reconciliation. As Alma Jeftić found in her research, the formation of “dangerous memories and their transgenerational transmission” through intimate family stories, and more importantly through education and media, is forging the post-war status quo, and hampers the creation of more cohesive, cross-border social ties and processes. We speak here of psychological and emotional barriers among people, already divided by internal administrative borders created on ethnic principles, and an Entity-/ canton-based division of cultural and educational policies. In this way the war’s repercussions also affect “those a bit younger, who did not experience it in person, but still feel its consequences” (Jeftić 2019). This “post-Yugoslav generation” emerges in the work of Arianna Piacentini as frustrated and disenchanted, aware of the burden of ethnic collectivism. These young people talk about their dual vulnerability and exposure: both to ethnonational indoctrination through education and media, and to the economic insecurities of their present. Piacentini

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spoke about the ethnonational ruling class understood by youngsters as a powerful “employer”, and the ethnic self-identification as a strategy to survive, working as “the key able to open system doors” (Piacentini 2020, 177). However, I see the awareness about the distorted nature of the actual political regime, and its corrosive social and economic consequences which these youngsters have acquired and spoken about, as a rift in the system that opens up a horizon of hope for rebellion, and for a substantial transformation of the country. The Dayton Peace Agreement was a coherent final act for the politics and policy of the international community and the European Union in conflict prevention and resolution worked on since 1991. The Dayton-based constitutional order of the country preserved its territorial integrity within its previous former Yugoslav borders. Even more importantly, Dayton ratified the legal continuity of the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the international level, while guaranteeing institutional tools and basic legal conditions for peaceful conflict-settlement and peace-building processes. The question of whether and how these tools have been used effectively since 1996 opens up an extensive space for critical analysis.

3 Constituting state and society the day after the devastation The Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and, in particular, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, destroyed not only the federal state and the state structure and institutions of the Socialist Republic of BiH; it almost destroyed its complex society, its specific culture of diversity, and the republic´s experimental social capital from its self-management experience. Notwithstanding the ambivalence and contradictions of the Dayton Accords, I start this part of the analysis by pointing out that the peace agreement had preserved minimal basic conditions for rebuilding both the state of BiH, and the Bosnian-Herzegovinian society. It is not just the complex political and administrative structure of the country as such, decentralized and divided in differently organized entities, each with a high level of political sovereignty at Entity or cantonal level in several important domains that hinders the functioning of the state institutions, as this structure is still “compatible with EU membership” (EC Opinion on BiH 2019b, 13). It is most of all a substantial lack of political will by the main ethnonational parties and their leadership (who took the power in 1990–1991 and have continued, almost exclusively, to govern the country since the end of the war), to re-create a common vision of a Bosnian-Herzegovinian European future and to act in accordance with it (Abazović and Mujkić 2015; Bieber 2006; Sekulić 2020). The overwhelming

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politicization of every segment of individual and collective life in the country has been structurally reproduced due to the ethnicity-related normative procedures that determine the distribution of power among dominant groups. These procedures lie on ethnic-based veto rights protecting “vital national interests”, and on ethnic- and residence-based provisions decisive for political participation in the elections (Woelk 2017). In practice, the Dayton Constitution defined the right of who could stand for election in two of the three main political bodies of the country – the House of Peoples and the State Presidency in a problematic way. The requirement was that one must declare oneself to be a member of one of the three constituent peoples: Serb, Croat, or Bosniak. Conversely, the main contradiction of the Constitution lies in the fact that it focuses on the individual, subjective character of one’s ethnic affiliation, since it depends exclusively on self-identification and thus cannot represent an objective and legal category. Yet, the ethnic affiliation actually gains crucial importance as a selective political category for active participation in the political life of the country on all levels and within the state territory as a whole. The paradigmatic case of “Dervo Sejdić and Jakob Finci Vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina”, as decided in the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, clearly illustrates this contradiction. Following the lawsuit of the two BiH citizens, who, (as members of “national minorities”, Roma and Jewish respectively) could not stand for election to the Presidency and the House of Peoples, the judgment of the European Court, issued in June 2009, supported the plaintiff’s rights by acknowledging a violation of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The verdict obliged the state to amend the law to comply with European legislation. In turn, the sentence could not be implemented without a substantial change to the Constitution, based on the Annex IV of the Dayton agreement. To date, no suitable solution has been found and other similar cases have been brought before the Court. The pre-association of BiH with the EU was subsequently bound by that ruling until 2015, when it was re-interpreted by the European Commission in order to restart the accession process of the country, without resolving the case. This contradiction lies at the heart of deeply rooted issues that cause the current institutional impasse, stagnation and even backsliding in the EU’s integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Joseph Marko (2019) spoke about a “defective democracy”, and the state being captured by the “cartel of power” these parties had formed, obstructing any real opportunity for inter-ethnic electoral political activism and participation. In my research on EU enlargement, I have questioned actual policies and devices of not only the EU, but also of the international community as such, and of local political and civil alternative actors, in order to understand if there were any effective opposition to dominant

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ethnonational political elites. These elites confirmed to be quite successful in opposing to any substantive transformation of the country, while hindering any chance for opening the dialogue about amending or re-writing the Dayton Constitution (Sekulić 2020). There is so much evidence that the actual Constitution and institutional framework of the country are not adequate in its present structure to guarantee full rights and freedoms to all citizens of the BiH in each part of its territory. Moreover, due to both the internal impediments and also to the continual crises (from the financial one of 2008 to the current Covid-19 pandemic crisis), the support for sorely needed economic empowerment of enterprises, citizens and civil society remains highly inadequate. The permanent political crisis of the country reflects either in the failure to ensure efficient work by the parliaments at all levels – state, entity and cantonal – in order to deliberate about new legislation and harmonize the normative foundation of the country with the acquis communautaire, or in the failure to forming governments in an appropriate time-span after the elections. Both failures had been reported negatively by the EC in terms of “shortcomings”, as part of the EU’s assessing the progressive achievements of the country (Sekulić 2020). This situation has been producing increasingly serious cross-border social consequences in the form of a growing poverty rate, unemployment, political disillusionment and apathy, and an increased rate of recent emigration flows – independently of ethnic affiliation or entity-based citizenship (Čičić et al. 2019). Dayton as a peace agreement must take its place in the history of the country and the region. As a constitutional framework for the state, it offers the ground for opening a new constitutional debate on how the citizens want to live together, with their own individual, ethnonational and cultural identities. If we consider the Dayton constitution as an expression of the structural ordering of violently produced boundaries, which continues to create impasses in the accession process, then what kind of change and transformation does the country need today in order to speed up the European integration process? Are there any social and political agencies in the country which might be able to shift the debate over the existing internal bordering/othering regime as founded on division and exclusion? Borders can be considered as “resources for dialogue, cultural expression and empowerment” (Scott 2020, 11), and both BiH and the EU need political wisdom and appropriate time-and-space for innovative solutions able to create the grounds for a better life for all Bosnian and Herzegovinian citizens. I address here the issue of a hyper-politicization of the Accords and the Dayton-based constitution in the political and public discourse as a concrete impediment to developing the potential for change within the country’s existing

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institutional framework. However, the question of how to approach the discussion about constitutional changes in a less dramatic way in order to reactivate the structural and institutional transition of the country towards full EU membership remains highly problematic in the context of its present political constellation. Three alternative and clashing narratives (and potential political agendas) overshadow the country’s European pathway: the statehood of the Republic of Srpska; the abolition of the country’s entity structure and reinforcement of the central state institutions according to a majority principle; the creation of a third, Croat-based, entity. Each of them is perceived as a menace towards the “other” ethnonational groups and fuels the “systematic disputes on the distribution of competences between the state and the entities” (EC Opinion on BiH 2019b, 6). Each of them can be understood as a continuation of the re-bordering and re-ordering discursive practices that brought the country to the escalation of the conflict in the 1990s. Moreover, as a bordering process cannot be considered separately from the “question of power and its spatial deployment” (Casaglia 2020, 27), in the case of BiH these narratives continuously and seriously undermine the very existence of the common state. In this sense, I argue here that, firstly, any external intervention, discursive or effective, with regard to Bosnia and Herzegovina, needs to remain strongly anchored within the framework of the EU accession process, despite its complexity and ambiguity. Secondly, the further transformation of the country requested by the European Commission as a condition for accepting the membership application delivered in February 2016 needs to be considered in connection with, and included within, EU politics and policies towards the wider post-Yugoslav space of the Western Balkans. Thirdly, concerning the local actors and agencies, there is a crucial need to reinforce the conditions for a huge transversal public discussion about the common vision of the state and society and its European future by empowering a trans-national and bordercrossing civic agency, with bottom-up social and political devices, including civil disobedience. There is significant evidence of the European, regional and local agencies effectively supporting all of these three points and producing counter-narratives to the dominant tripartite ethnonational discourse. Will they be powerful enough to substantially change the dominant bordering politics, and direct them towards the creation of spaces for renewed forms of living together? In the next section I will try to set out arguments for a slightly more optimistic perspective of gradual de-ethnicization of the country, accepting the premise there is no other realistic peaceful alternative to European integration.

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4 Post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina between ethnicization and Europeanization State borders have to be acknowledged as diffused within the society; as affirmed by James W. Scott, they “do not exist as mere objective facts, as they condition social realities” (2020, 8). In our case, the question arises: how do we consider the Bosnian-Herzegovinian “society” as such here? It becomes difficult to connect it to the traditional consideration of a nation-state, as it remains intrinsically divided, as demonstrated in the previous sections. Different scales of societal ties can be identified as structured by dominant border politics, or in opposition and resistance to it: ethnonational, but also civic, regional, and transnational ties. The EU integration and accession process can be addressed as a question of an asymmetric power negotiation with a (potential) candidate country, based on the conditionality principle, significantly affecting the redefinition of mutual borders. Each step in the softening and relaxation of border regimes (as in the case of Trade Agreements, visa liberalization, inclusion in and connection with European and regional cooperation programmes), moves in the direction of candidate status and then full membership, and may be approached as a gradual realignment of a citizenship regime with that of the EU’s. This important dimension of the Europeanization process assumes the capacity of the local actors to provide just and timely resolutions with regard to disputes on the internal and external borders of the country. The Dayton Agreement implicitly presumed the European pathway of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The country was defined as a potential candidate for EU membership in 2000,3 signing the Stabilisation and Association Agreement in 2008, which did not come into force until June 2015 due to the impasse related to the ruling of the European Court for Human Rights. In the meantime, BiH fulfilled the conditions for entering the visa liberalization regime with the countries of the Schengen Area in November 2010. In February 2016 the country officially submitted its application for membership. In a 22-month time span,

3 “The European Council in Feira in June 2000 acknowledged that the Western Balkan countries participating in the Stabilisation and Association Process are ‘potential candidates’ for EU membership. The European perspective of these countries was confirmed by the European Council in Thessaloniki in June 2003 which endorsed the ‘Thessaloniki Agenda for the Western Balkans’. This agenda remains the cornerstone of EU policy towards the region”. (European Commission 2019a, 1)

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the government of the BiH delivered 3897 answers to the EC Questionnaire,4 yet a small, but crucial number of 22 questions remained open: one on political criteria,5 four on regional policy, and seventeen on educational matters. The Opinion of the European Commission was published in late May 2019, imposing conditions on fourteen “key priorities” considered unsolved, and almost exclusively related to the issue of democracy and the rule of law (EC 2019b, 13–16). The state structure and its administrative borders, in their political dimension of deploying legislative, judicial, and governmental powers, held by dominant ethnonational parties at all levels, emerges from the EU reporting devices as highly problematic (Sekulić 2020). Notwithstanding its supra- and transnational character, EU integration is based on the crucial importance of the national state and its political, social, economic and cultural configuration harmonizing with the common and shared principles defined by the Lisbon Treaty, the Copenhagen and Maastricht criteria, and other important documents. The acceptance of BiH candidature for EU membership is conditioned on its capacity to act as a democratic national state: composite, pluralistic, heterogeneous, multifaceted, but with its own statehood. At this stage, the spatial deployment of the political power(s) in Bosnia and Herzegovina perpetuates the negative consequences and effects of the Dayton Agreement, and its contradictions. The former Yugoslav model of socialism was characterized by the specific identification and overlapping of the one-party state with society, as if society were diluted within the state by controlling the whole space of one’s individual and social life, with the effect of reducing space for any spontaneous agency by citizens. A similar kind of ideological mechanism can be traced on a smaller scale in the quasi-states of ethnically determined entities and cantons. Individual identification as a complex, multifaceted, fluid, and continuous process is reduced here to its ascribed component of ethnic origin, imposed as a precondition for participation in the country’s political life. We may speak of this phenomenon in terms of an alienation of the individual as a citizen, denied his/her political power concerning the right to take part in configuring his/her own social (and spatial) environment. This democratic ideal is disfigured again by the sophisticated mechanisms of “feigned representations of otherness”,

4 This questionnaire is an instrument of the European Commission indispensable for the preparation of the Opinion on the Application for the membership in the European Union. 5 The chapter of the Opinion on BiH regarding the political criteria described the situation as to the constitution, parliament, executive power, public administration, judiciary, fight against corruption and organized crime, fundamental rights and reconciliation (European Commission 2019b, 6–10).

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individualized by Darko Lukić in his analysis of the theatre and political action in post-socialist transition states (2021). The war fought on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina heavily eroded trust and confidence among groups and individuals, as the crimes committed in the name of the nation embodied the worst imaginable fears and perils. The violence of the process of othering, before and during the war, produced real barriers among communities and constructed visible and invisible borders. Huge efforts were made in order to come to terms with the past, but they are not yet enough, since the elaboration of grieving and of guilt is a painful and lasting process that needs a much more effective collective agency in all post-Yugoslav countries. In the twenty-five years following the war, this “feigned representation of otherness” compared to members of one’s own ethnonational group, returns as a “feigned representation of ourselves”, strongly damaging the capacity of the political leadership to define the situation, to recognize the real needs of “their own people”, and of the country as a whole. Ethnonationalism has become an empty discourse, not representing anyone anymore, if not the particular egotistical interest of the political leadership riding the waves of neoliberalism. But, who will raise his/her voice against this, and on behalf of whom? To conclude this brief analysis of the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the perspective of bordering, ordering and othering processes, I will try to briefly analyze those agencies and voices that have emerged in the last few decades as counter-narratives to the dominant discourse, and which have slowly been reconfiguring the democracy and the polity of the country.

5 Borderscapes, protests and the EU integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina The final section in this brief analysis intends to spotlight elements of resilient and resistant civic capacity that is intrinsic to the country’s deep-seated societal configuration. I will select and highlight three quite different elements here that deserve deeper investigation: the material and symbolic reconstruction of destroyed objects and scapes; the civic capacity to protest and rebel whilst crossing ethnic lines; and the institutionalization of the EU accession process and its embedding within the society.

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5.1 On places of worship and bridges The pluralistic character of traditional BiH society created a particular pattern of cultural and religious borderscapes throughout the territory. The proximity and aesthetics of the religious borderscapes – as places of worship and their sounds (the bells ringing and the singing of the muezzin), the visibility of different religious practices and traditional interaction and the exchange of everyday-life cultural reproduction, including burial rites, have survived the destruction of the 1990s. Two among many destroyed places of worship – the Orthodox Holy Trinity Cathedral in Mostar, Ferhadija Mosque in Banja Luka – and then the Old Bridge in Mostar, have become symbols of that kind of resilience. I was able to see “with my own eyes” the two situated in Mostar, in different phases of their silent scream. All of them were destroyed deliberately and completely by mining and shelling: the Cathedral was blown up in June 1992, the Mosque in May 1993, and the Old bridge mined and bombed in November 1993. Their stones were scattered in different landfills or left on the riverbed, like the bones of people killed and separated in different mass graves. The reconstruction of the bridge started in 1998, and the citizens of Mostar celebrated the opening of the “new Old” in July 2004. Ferhadija reopened its gates in 2016 after fifteen years of restoration, and the Cathedral began to rise again in 2010. The stones they had been built of – many of them recovered and restored –, no longer had their ancient patina, but they reshaped the local post-war borderscapes, connecting their past with their future.6 The reconstruction of these material historical monuments re-created the routines of everyday life, such as walking over the bridge or just admiring its beauty, and gave a place to practices of worship for the communities reduced to the social condition of minorities. While highlighting these three examples I try to glimpse if and when it might again be possible to see just the common landscape in them, instead of an ethnic boundary.

5.2 On protest, uprisings and social movements While speaking about the social production of space and spatial ideologies, Anssi Paasi has stressed that “in the context of borders, we simply must ask how spatial entities like borders or spatial orders are established and mobilized

6 I have used the passive voice of “being destroyed”, and “being reconstructed”, inviting less expert readers to explore the actors, causes and responsibilities of the Yugoslav wars, and rebuilding the country. See, among other, Calic 2019.

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in othering” (Paasi 2020, 2). I propose to reverse the question and ask how the borders and spatial orders established and mobilized in othering can be contested and occupied by alternative voices and actors seeking other forms of solidarity beyond ethnicity? Exclusively ethnonational solidarity swept away any other form of collective action for a long decade of the 1990s, with only a few occurrences of civic protest and resistance that preserved the nucleus of an alternative way of thinking and acting in contrast to ethnonational chauvinist ideology. The segregation of the communities and the dividing up of a common public space were still contested even during the war, and immediately afterwards, by pacifists and women’s movements, by different civic initiatives on local and regional levels, by independent intellectuals, and by the practices of many ordinary citizens. Several forms of protests had already emerged by the mid-2000s, some of them involving citizens of both entities, but without major effects (Wimmen 2018). The second wave of protests in Bosnia and Hercegovina that started at the beginning of the 2010s attracted more attention from the regional and international media and social scientists as they assumed, on several occasions, forms of violent uprisings. Chiara Milan has explored forms and features of mobilization beyond ethnicity in divided societies, addressing the issues of inequalities and social justice. The author emphasized the importance of the “learning path” of the protests, “with a cumulative construction of relational, emotional and cognitive resources”, in contrast with the modest results gained by each of them. According to her, the experiences of the contentious political action created “new spaces for civic-minded rather than ethnic-grounded or party-driven politics” (Milan 2020, 142–149). Asim Mujkić has spoken about these protests and uprisings in terms of the formation of democratic counter-power, introducing the class paradigm in his analysis. In his view, we need to speak here about the two constituent classes – “the class of agents of ethno-political entrepreneurship, and the class of objects of these entrepreneurs’ appropriation”, instead of the “three constituent ethnic peoples”. The citizens participating in the protests and uprisings are seen by the author as agents of a new political order, notwithstanding the limits and short-term effects of their action, as they seriously undermined the “hegemonic position of united ethno-political entrepreneurs” (Mujkić 2016a, 13). Heiko Wimmen has analysed the two decades of “spontaneous, decentralized protests” in BiH in terms of normalization, i.e., the “consolidation of practices and structures of civic resistance” (Wimmen 2019). The authors of the study published in late 2020 by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung speak about the “already long history of protests and social movements” in Bosnia and Herzegovina becoming a “regional example of dynamics, challenges, achievements, and also failures of contentious movements” (Pudar Draško et al. 2020, 8).

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There is no doubt that protests and uprisings in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the last two decades have acted as a “challenge to the existing political hierarchies and values” (Kauppi 2013, 6). The main cause of the protesters’ outrage was a new system of social inequalities produced by neoliberal forms of exclusion from social citizenship, and the sense of injustice concerning the performance of the ethnonationalist (pro-authoritarian) leadership. The questions as to what system(s) of meaning these civic actors will be able to produce and what kind of socio-political change they will be able to bring remain open. I hope that, as Wimmen has said, these protests are “steps towards a genuinely pluralistic polity some years down the road” (Wimmen 2019, 24).

5.3 On the accession to the European Union The EU integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the pillars of the complex political leadership of the country, highly supported by the citizenry, and has never been seriously questioned. During my long ethnographic research on the accession process of the Western Balkans, many interlocutors stressed the extent to which the EU figured as a key cohesive factor in internal and regional integration in these countries, especially with regard to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and North Macedonia (Sekulić 2020). The research unveiled the way in which the communication networks, both institutional and informal, of people involved in the process, had been producing cooperation and achievements, notwithstanding so many obstacles, as in the case of BiH. These networks grow each time the country takes another step towards candidate status and membership. The ethnic division of the country remains a political reality that hampers any acceleration of the transformation urged by the European Commission and other EU institutions. This empirical reality determines the practical ability of the local institutions to match the requirements imposed by EU conditionality, or to question them with good arguments. People whom I interviewed in the BiH Directorate for European Integration in 2019, stressed the important achievement of building a state coordination mechanism for the EC Questionnaire, and providing answers to so many demands, although the remaining twenty-two unanswered questions resulted in conditioning the membership candidature on the basis of the 14 key priorities previously mentioned. This chain of action by so many actors in Brussels, in the region, and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, has been producing day-by-day the social texture of what we call “Europeanization”, understood here as a complex, non-linear and demanding co-construction of shared values, norms and standards, defined as European. I see it as a circular learning process, where the Bosnian-Herzegovinian

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historical experience, with its periods of violence, yet much more importantly its production of a specific culture of diversity, still has so much to offer. This book chapter started with a reflection on two intersected crises: the first regarding people on the move, and the second – the pandemic crisis. Both shed light to the ambivalence of the EU bordering politics in this particular context, through the normative instruments of the accession process. The country was left alone to solve the emergency with the refugees, and almost without any coordinated health assistance and inclusion in Covid-19 vaccination planning. At the same time, the EU remains the crucial agent in supporting local civic democratic actors, while contesting the ethnonational politics of bordering and othering. Here new questions arise in regard to the capability, liability and commitment of the EU actors and institutions to effectively build up the necessary conditions for a radical transformation of both member and accession countries, and in our case, of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The answers will determine the alternative futures of Europe as such.

References Abazović, Dino and Asim Mujkić. 2015. Political Will – A Short Introduction. Case study of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sarajevo: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Biachini, Stefano et al. 2005. Partitions. Reshaping states and minds. London and New York: Routledge. Bieber, Florian. 2006. Post-war Bosnia. Ethnicity, Inequality and Public Sector Governance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Brubaker, Rogers. 1996. Nationalism Reframed. Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Calic, Marie-Janine. 2019. A history of Yugoslavia. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Originally published in German as Geschichte Jugoslawiens im 20. Jahrhundert by Marie-Janine Calic. Verlag C.H.Beck oHG, München 2014. Caplan, Robert. 2005. Europe and Recognition of New States in Yugoslavia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Casaglia, Anna. 2020. “Interpreting the politics of borders.” In A Research Agenda for Border Studies, edited by James Scott, 27–42. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Čičić, Mirsad et al. eds. 2019. Studija o emigracijama – Bosna i Hercegovina. Posebna izdanja, knjiga CLXXXII. Sarajevo: ANU BiH. Della Porta, Donatella. ed. 2018. Solidarity Mobilizations in the ‘Refugee Crisis’. Contentious Moves. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Dougherty, Beth K. 2018. “Letting Nature Swallow the Past: Politics, Memory, and Abandoned Monuments in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Nationalities Papers Abingdon Vol. 47, Fasc. 2 (Mar 2019): 248–263.

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European Commission. 2019a. Analytical Report on Bosnia and Herzegovina. https://ec. europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/20190529-bosnia-andherzegovina-analytical-report.pdf. Accessed on 5 February 2021. European Commission. 2019b. Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council. Commission Opinion on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s application for membership of the European Union. https://ec.europa.eu/neighbour hood-enlargement/sites/near/files/20190529-bosnia-and-herzegovina-opinion.pdf. Accessed on 5 February 2021. European Commission. 2020. Bosnia and Herzegovina 2020 Report. https://ec.europa.eu/ neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/bosnia_and_herzegovina_report_2020. pdf. Accessed on 5 February 2021. Gregorić Bon, Nataša and Jaka Repić, eds. 2016. Moving places. Relations, Return and Belonging. New York: Berghahn Books. Hromadžić, Azra. 2015. Citizens of an Empty Nation. Youth and State-Making in Post-War Bosnia- Herzegovina. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press. Jeftić, Alma. 2019. Social Aspects of Memory. Stories of Victims and Perpetrators from Bosnia-Herzegovina. London and New York: Routledge. Katz, Irit, Diana Martin, and Claudio Minca, eds. 2018. Camps Revisited. Multifaceted spatialities of a modern political technology. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Kauppi, Niilo, ed. 2013. A Political Sociology of Transnational Europe. Colchester: ECPR Press. Lukić, Darko. 2021. “Performing the Otherness.” In The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance. Volume I, edited by Tim Prentki and Ananda Breed. London and New York: Routledge. Lofranco, Zaira T. 2011. “Scuola ed etno-nazionalismo nella Bosnia Erzegovina post-Dayton.” Orientalia partenopea 12: 31–53. Madacki, Saša and Mia Karamehić, eds. 2012. Dvije škole pod jednim krovom. Studija o segregaciji u obrazovanju. Sarajevo: Centar za ljudska prava UNSA. Marko, Joseph. 2019. “Bosnia-Herzegovina: The Role of the Judiciary in a Divided Society.” Constitutional Review 5/2:194–221. Milan, Chiara. 2020. Social Mobilization Beyond Ethnicity Civic Activism and Grassroots Movements in Bosnia and Herzegovina. London and New York: Routledge. Mujkić, Asim. 2012. “Obrazovanje kao proces naturaliziranja etnonacionalne ideologije.” In Dvije škole pod jednim krovom. Studija o segregaciji u obrazovanju, edited by Saša Madacki and Mia Karamehić, 1–24. Sarajevo: Centar za ljudska prava UNSA. Mujkić, Asim. 2016a. “In search of a democratic counter-power in Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 15/4: 623–638. Mujkić, Asim. 2016b. “Language and resistance.” Dijalog, Special Issue 1–2/2016: 82–89. Newman, David. 2003. “On borders and power: A theoretical framework.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 18/1: 13–25. Paasi, Anssi. 2020. “Problematizing ‘Bordering, Ordering, and Othering’ as Manifestations of Socio-Spatial Fetishism.” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie Vol. 0, No. 0: 1–8. Piacentini, Arianna. 2020. Ethnonationality’s Evolution in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia: Politics, Institutions and Intergenerational Dis-continuities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Pudar Draško, Gazela, Vedran Džihić, and Marko Kmezić. 2020. Unheared calls of democracy from bellow. Social and protest movements for democracy revival. Sarajevo: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Rumford, Chris. 2006. “Theorizing Borders.” European Journal of Social Theory 9/2: 155–169. Scott, James, ed. 2020. A Research Agenda for Border Studies. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Sekulić, Tatjana. 2002. Violenza etnica. I Balcani tra etnonazionalismo e democrazia. Roma: Carocci. Sekulić, Tatjana. 2009. “Riscrivere la geografia, ricostruire lo spazio immaginato.” In Didattica critica della geografia. Libri di testo, mappe, discorso geopolitico, edited by Enrico Squarcina, 255–270. Milano: Edizioni UNICOPLI. Sekulić, Tatjana. 2017. “Bosnia Erzegovina, l’Unione Europea e l’arte di vivere insieme. Sul ventennio degli Accordi di Dayton.” In A venti anni dagli Accordi di Dayton, edited by Giuseppe Motta, 93–118. Canterano and Roma: Aracne Editrice. Sekulić, Tatjana. 2020. The European Union and the Paradox of Enlargement. The Complex Accession of the Western Balkans. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Soldo, Andrea et al. 2017. Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina: What do We (not) Teach Children? Content Analysis of Textbooks of the National Group of Subjects in Primary Schools. Sarajevo: Open Society Foundation. Van Houtum, Hank and Ton Van Naerssen. 2002. “Bordering, Ordering, Othering.” Journal of Economic and Human Geography 93/2: 125–136. Veličković, Nenad. 2015. Školokrečina: nacionalizam u bošnjačkim, hrvatskim i srpskim čitankama. Sarajevo: Mas Media and Fond otvoreno društvo BiH. Veličković, Nenad. 2017. Laža i apanaža, O upotrebi književnosti u obrazovanju. Beograd: Fabrika knjiga. Wimmen, Heiko. 2018. “Divided They Stand. Peace building, state reconstruction and informal political movements in Bosnia-Herzegovina.” In Social Movements in the Balkans: Rebellion and Protest from Maribor to Taksim, edited by Florian Bieber and Dario Brentin. London and New York: Routledge. Woelk, Jens. 2017. “The Constitutional Transition of Bosnia and Herzegovina between Nationalism and European Conditionality.” In Twenty years after Dayton. The Constitutional Transition of Bosnia and Herzegovina, edited by Ludovica Benedizione and Valentina Rita Scotti, 23–49. Roma: LUISS University Press.

Katharina Tyran

On word boundaries and blank spaces: Perceptions of orthography and writing reforms in the post-Serbo-Croatian language sphere 1 Introduction In late autumn of 2020, when the Covid19-pandemic was manifesting itself in a second wave, keeping distance from other people was already established as one of the mechanisms to reduce the risk of infection. This ubiquitous notion of distance as necessary and critical was picked up by the central scientific linguistic organization in Croatia, the Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje (IHJJ) [Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics], to emphasize the orthographic principle of necessary distance in writing negated verbs: On 16 November 2020, the IHJJ posted an illustration showing a roundish manikin holding up a sign with the imperative “Držite razmak” [Keep the distance] in between the negator ne and three verbs znam [I (do not) know], mogu [I can(not)], smijem [I am (not) allowed]. The cartoon published on the Facebook-page of IHJJ alluded to the most prominent social directives of the time, due to the pandemic crisis, and exported the importance of distance over to orthography. But why is this blank space given such importance? In this article I will take borders, boundaries and spaces as linguistic notions and discuss word boundaries and blank spaces as orthographic markers which are highly important for linguistic bordering in a south-Slavic context. More concretely, I will focus on the orthographic principle regarding negated verbs – as illustrated by the Facebook-post of IHJJ. The word boundary between the negation marker ne and the inflected verb is common in both Serbian and Croatian and with only specific exceptions: neću [I won’t], nemoj [do not, imperative], nemam [I do not have], nisam [I am not] with the entire verb paradigms being exceptions, which would include the negated present tense indicative (realis) of htjeti [want], imati [have], biti [be] and the negated imperative paradigm of nemoj [do not]. The first, however, has been strongly disputed in the Croatian context in recent times. Some linguistic circles interpreted a compound spelling as Serbian hegemony or even an imposed linguistic violence, and therefore argued for a separate spelling and the introduction of a blank space: ne ću. Therefore, this specific issue was

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central in arguments on language planning in Croatia and is closely connected to national identity (cf. Langston and Peti-Stantić 2014). Such linguistic phenomena, I claim, are adduced for separating standard languages after the disintegration of Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian languages, which followed the break-up of Yugoslavia. Therefore, not only territorial borders have clearly been in dispute, but also linguistic boundaries. I start with the assumption that scripts are not only a secondary system for the notation of spoken language, but also inherently perform further functions in their visual appearance. I proceed to argue that the described difference in orthography must not be interpreted only as a linguistic issue, but as a visual representation of standard language, which likewise implies ethnicity, nation and culture. More precisely, the blank space in this very specific negated verb or conversely its absence in neću or ne ću, must be understood as one further written shibboleth between Croatian and Serbian, or as what Gal and Irvine call a sign of difference (Gal and Irvine 2019). The blank space is an emphasized axis of contrast between the two languages, and therefore a practice of bordering. This on the surface linguistic discussion, then, is critical precisely due to its visuality; one single variation, a blank space in this very specific case, is interpreted as indicating a linguistic boundary, and thereupon emphasizing autonomy. Such linguistic autonomy and clear language boundaries have been much discussed in various contexts in Southeast Europe, especially in the last decades. This applies intensely to the former Yugoslavia and the disintegrating SerboCroatian language. In my contribution, I will start with a theoretical framing and discussion of the orthography, writing reforms and the importance of visuality in this very context generally, followed by a tracing of the regulations regarding this specific spelling rule in orthography manuals starting in the late 19th century. I will then explain the recent arguments about this very question. By doing so, I hope to explain why we can grasp this blank space and word boundary as such an important visual written linguistic marker in the Croatian and Serbian language context.

2 Notions on orthography In this article, orthography is approached as a sociolinguistic matter. As writing generally, spelling and respective reforms must be examined in their particular sociocultural indexicality (cf. Spitzmüller 2013, 284; Meletis 2020, 371). Orthography generally refers to the written form of language and is generally – with

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the exception of (for instance) English – not a self-regulating system, but needs external codifications (cf. Meletis 2020, 155, 368). This surely is true for the Croatian language. If orthography is understood in a normative sense, regulations on word spelling and punctuation characters are the primary topics of such (cf. Dürscheid 2016, ch. 5). In several linguistic contexts, as for instance in German but also south Slavic languages, discussions on orthography as a normed system maneuver between having an exaggerated consciousness of standard rules, on the one hand (with the failure to follow them indicating a decline in education and an ability in written language) and on the other hand, a call for freer handling of such matters, claiming rules as such cannot keep up with language change (cf. Dürscheid 2016, 166–169). Such rules, however, are derived only when attempting language standardization, which in this article’s language of interest, was only the case beginning in the early 19th century (cf. Lehfeldt 2014, 1459–1463). Arguments on orthography, however, may “come with an entire machinery of sociopolitical consequences”, as Meletis (2020, 370) states generally, something which will be discussed later in this article as it pertains to the Croatian language specifically. The respective language may be characterized as a highly regulated, but also highly disputed language in terms of orthography. Orthography, therefore, must be understood as a social practice and action, which makes it important to examine it in a social, historical and cultural context (cf. Sebba 2007, cit. in Meletis 2020, 162), or as ideologically embedded (cf. Spitzmüller 2013, 296).

3 Neću, or ne ću, that is the question Importantly, as a result of the standardization attempts of both Croatian and Serbian, two orthographic principles collided in the 19th century: the phonological, most prominently advocated by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić and Đuro Daničić, with spelling being oriented toward the pronunciation, versus the morphophonological, which is considered older and rests on etymological spelling. The main difference or most important distinction here is the spelling of consonant compounds due to regressive or anticipatory assimilation regarding voiced or voiceless pronunciation, place of articulation, as well as loss of consonants. However, compound or separated spellings of future tense forms have similarly been discussed with our specific example of neću or ne ću. Therefore, one must always understand the orthography phenomenon elaborated in this article in the broader context of phonological and morphophonological spelling. As Karadžić’s view prevailed with the catchphrase of Piši kao što govoriš! [Write as you speak], the

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introduction of phonological orthography was not only understood as a fundamental modernization of spelling, but in the course of time also as the “Serbian” solution. (cf. Okey 2005, 423–429; Neweklowsky 2010, 160–174; Lehfeldt 2014, 1463–1466) The first orthographic handbook that is considered to present the standard language in a Croatian context is Ivan Broz’s Hrvatski pravopis, published in 1892 in Zagreb. His compilation is especially dedicated to the teaching or educational sectors. Broz, who was a teacher at the royal high school in Zagreb, discusses in his preface how proper regulations on orthography have been missing, which left it “motley” (Broz 1892, I). Following the work of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić and Đuro Daničić, Broz anticipated counterarguments or resistance to some of his orthographic principles, but also expected support from the younger generation (Broz 1892, III–IV). His position must be understood in the context of the various philological schools arguing for supremacy regarding language codification (cf. Moguš 1993, 157–176; Vince 2002). In the section on separate or compound spellings, Broz prescribes a separate spelling of negated verbs: “(. . .) tako treba da se piše n. p. Ne pišem. Ne čitah. (. . .)” [therefore, it must be written c.f. Ne pišem [I do not write]. Ne čitah [I did not read].] (Broz 1892, 41) Interestingly, he draws on the exceptions nijesam [I am not] and nemam [I do not have], stating they need to be written as compound, as negator and verb have been amalgamated and must not be separated. Since neću / ne ću are not mentioned here, this suggests Broz opted for a separated spelling. With the formation of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918, and then after 1929, Yugoslavia, the linguistic convergence of Croatian and Serbian remained the clear focus of language policy. Initially, the orthographic instructions followed Dragutin Boranić’s manual for Croatian and Aleksandar Belić’s manual for Serbian; while both refer to the phonetic principle, they nevertheless show some deviations. With a stronger proclamation of Yugoslavdom by King Alexander in 1929, the orthographic principles of Croatian were more strongly adjusted to those of Serbian (cf. Neweklowsky 2010, 186). This was accomplished by an orthographic regulations booklet for schools published in 1929 (Pravopisno uputstvo 1929). Here, paragraph 28. states: “Odrečno hoću treba pisati kao jednu reč, dakle neću, nećeš, neće itd. isto kao što se piše odrečno jesam i imam: nisam, nemam”. [Negated hoću [I want] needs to be written as one word, as neću, nećeš, neće [I do not want, you do not want, he/she does not want] and so on, such as negated jesam [I am] and imam [I have] are spelled: nisam [I am not], nemam [I do not have].] (Pravopisno uputstvo 1929, 12) This unity, however, lasted only until the invasion by the Wehrmacht in 1941. Yugoslavia was occupied by the Axis powers, however Croatia was proclaimed as the Nezavisna Država Hrvatska [Independent State of Croatia], yet it remained in fact a puppet state of Nazi Germany.

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Political circumstances of course highly affected language policy, with strong tendencies toward emphasizing the dissimilarities between Croatian and Serbian. Hence, spelling rules again changed and shifted back to the older, morphophonological principles in Croatia: the so-called kori(j)enski pravopis, an etymological spelling, was introduced. This also included a return of the blank space: ne ću, ne ćeš, ne će was again introduced with separated spellings (Cipra and Klaić 1944, 65). After the defeat of the Axis powers and the end of the Second World War, south Slavic unity was again in the forefront, with the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia being declared in November 1945. In the early years of the second Yugoslavia, when the language issue was not conclusively resolved – the federal constitution of 1946 only mentioned generally that languages were to be treated equally, without specifically naming which languages (cf. CvetkovićSander 2011, 103) – it was once again Dragutin Boranić’s orthography manual Pravopis hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika that was used in Croatia. Initially published in 1921, the manual went through ten editions, with but a few adjustments throughout the years (cf. Neweklowsky 2010, 186). The 10th edition from 1951 prescribes a separated spelling of negater and verb, with only nemam mentioned as an exception in the present indicative (realis). Boranić states: “Uza sve druge glagole ne se piše odvojeno: ne ću, ne ćeš . . ., ne bih, (. . .), ne smijem, (. . .)” [With all other verbs, ne is written separated: ne ću, ne ćeš, . . . ne bih, (. . .), ne smijem, (. . .).] (Boranić 1951, 50). He therefore explicitly advocates a separated spelling of ne ću. The Serbian equivalent to Boranić’s orthography was Aleksandar Belić’s Pravopis srpskohrvatskoga književnoga jezika from 1923, also going through several editions into the 1950s (cf. Neweklowsky 2010, 186). He proposes the opposite: “(. . .) i, najzad, u neću, nećeš, neće, nećemo, nećete, neće – ne se nikad ne piše odvojeno, (. . .) a u neću imamo slivanje izraza ne u (h)oću, tako da se ne može podeliti na ‘ne’ i ‘ću’ (. . .)” [(. . .) and finally in neću, nećeš, neće, nećemo, nećete, neće – ne never is written separated, (. . .) as in neću ne merges with (h)oću, therefore it cannot be divided into ‘ne’ and ‘ću’.] (Belić 1950, 30). He here refers to ću as an enclitic and underpins this further with negator and clitic merging to a single form, with the accent shifting to the negator. With the 1954 Novi Sad Agreement, a new phase of converging of Croatian and Serbian appeared. This followed a survey by Letopis Matice Srpske in 1953, directed to writers, academics, and politician, and asking for their opinions on the tangle of competing forms and differences (cf. Okuka 1998, 77–78; Cvetković-Sander 2011, 107–108). One such issue was the above-mentioned variance of neću and ne ću. Thereupon, 25 authors and academics met in Novi Sad, and a commission of eight drafted a text of ten conclusions (cf. Cvetković-Sander 2011,

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108), which have gone down in language history as Novosadski dogovor, the Novi Sad Agreement, which proposed a linguistic unity among Serbs, Croats, (and Montenegrins). Orthography was one of the topics addressed in the questionnaire. In an introductory synopsis of the responses at the meeting in Novi Sad, the importance of a common spelling was highlighted by almost all respondents (cf. Letopis 1955, 15). Section 7 of the agreement, hence, specifically addresses spelling and orthography as an urgent task to be solved jointly by Serbian and Croatian experts: Zajednički jezik treba da ima zajednički pravopis. Izrada toga pravopisa danas je najhitnija kulturna i društvena potreba. Nacrt pravopisa izdradiće sporazumno komisija srpskih i hrvatskih stručnjaka. Pre konačnog prihvatanja nacrt će biti podnet na diskusiju udruženjima književnika, novinara, prosvetnih i drugih javnih radnika. [A common language needs common spelling rules. It is the most urgent cultural and social need to prepare such guides. An orthography draft will be developed by Serbian and Croatian experts. The draft will be offered for discussion to writers’ associations, journalists, educational and other social workers before a final decision is made.]. (Letopis 1955, s.p.)

Only six years later, a compound orthography was in fact published, however in two different editions both published in 1960 by the Matica hrvatska and the Matica srpska, respectively. The Zagreb edition was written in Latin script and ijekavian variety; the Belgrade edition was written in Cyrillic and ekavian variety. The spelling rules had been elaborated by an orthographic commission of eleven linguists from mostly Zagreb and Belgrade. In their opening remarks, the commission highlighted the unique character and possibility of both publications as a final approval of common orthographic rules for the entire Serbo-Croatian and Croato-Serbian language. Interestingly, the authors drew on Broz’s and both Boranić’s and Belić’s manuals as pioneering works with respect to orthography, since they were based on common principles (Pravopis hrvatskogsrpskoga književnog jezika 1960, 5; Pravopis srpskohrvatskoga književnog jezika 1960, 5). Regarding separate or compound spelling, both manuals advocate one and the same principle, a blank space or separated spelling between negator and verb, with neću being addressed as one of the few exceptions (Pravopis hrvatskogsrpskoga književnog jezika 1960, 84; Pravopis srpskohrvatskoga književnog jezika 1960, 82–83). However, this stage of convergence did not last too long, and already a few years later, in spring 1967, the Deklaracija o nazivu i položaju hrvatskog književnog jezika [Declaration on the Name and Status of the Croatian Literary Language] was published. Signed by various Croatian philological institutions the text argues against a common language concept, as constituted by the Novi Sad agreement, which was solid in theory but did not perform in application. Rather, the text promotes Croatian and Serbian as two languages (cf. Telegram 1967, 1; Okuka 1998, 80; Neweklowsky 2010, 187; Cvetković-Sander 2011, 207–215). One

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outcome of this linguistic and political movement – which went down in history as Hrvatsko proljeće or the Croatian Spring – was a new proposed orthography: Stjepan Babić, Božidar Finka and Milan Moguš’s Hrvatski pravopis published in 1971. The manual, however, was forbidden by the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia, and consequently most published copies were shredded. As one copy found its way to London, where it was reprinted a year later (cf. Okuka 1998, 86), this orthography is also known as Londonac. Importantly, it was not so much the orthographic regulations that appeared to be problematic, but the orthographic dictionary that had been added (cf. Cvetković-Sander 2011, 239–243). Regarding separate or compound spelling in negated verbs, the Londonac maintains the three exceptional cases of nemoj, nemam, neću (with the entire paradigm following compound spelling) to the established rule of a blank space separating negator and verb (Babić, Finka, and Moguš 1971, 89). A second edition of this orthography manual was published in 1994. It was intended not to introduce mayor reforms or changes in spelling but instead proceed with commonly accepted rules. Above all, a proper orthography should be a stable norm without constant fluctuation and confusions, the authors state, which made them also include more recent spelling rules (Babić, Finka, and Moguš 1994, s.p.). It was this specific context that the regulations on neću or ne ću were also situated. Importantly, in this new edition, only nemoj and nemam were noted as exceptions and having such compound spelling. Ne ću or neću, however, is the only negated verb here offering both variants: “Tako se može pisati i ne ću, ne ćeš, ne će, ne ćemo, ne ćete, ne će uz sastavljeno pisanje neću, nećeš, neće, nećemo, nećete, neće” [It is therefore also possible to write ne ću, ne ćeš, ne će, ne ćemo, ne ćete, ne će, additionally to compound spelling neću, nećeš, neće, nećemo, nećete, neće] (Babić, Finka, and Moguš 1994, 86). For the first time, the compound or a separated spelling are offered as two alternatives, which introduced further discussions about whether a blank space and word boundary are necessary and obligatory in this context or not. This second edition from 1994 was the first spelling manual following the breakup of Yugoslavia. State independence brought a linguistic liberation from the incontestable supranational language concept which in the end had seemed unassailable. Clear signs of differences between varieties emerging out of Serbo-Croatian gave rise to linguistic discussions in all of the former Yugoslavia, with prominent disagreement on spelling rules specifically in Croatia. Several spelling manuals and orthographies came to print in the years following, mostly diverging as to what extent either the phonological or the morphological principle of spelling should be introduced, with the latter presenting a stronger linguistic or orthographic boundary to Serbian. In this context, neću or ne ću was featured prominently and eventually divided linguists into two

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camps. Vladimir Anić’s and Josip Silić’s orthography published in 2001 clearly addresses this question in paragraphs 321 to 324, where it promotes the rule of separated spelling of negator and verb, mentioning htjeti as the only exception. In a paragraph highlighted in a different color (322.), the authors state: “Jedino se nenaglašeni (enklitički) oblik prezenta glagola htjeti pišu zajedno s riječju ne: neću, nećeš, neće, nećemo, nećete, neće” [Only the unaccented (enclitic) present tense form of the verb htjeti (to want) is written compound with the negator ne: neću, nećeš, neće, nećemo, nećete, neće] (Anić and Silić 2001, 103). Other prominent exceptions – nemam, nisam, nemoj – are presented in separate paragraphs, which gives neću a stronger emphasize. In the introductory note, the editor in chief states that Anić and Silić had been working for 25 years on the project of an orthography manual for Croatian literary language, which implies they began this already by 1975, after the Croatian Spring movement. They, however, clearly affirmed the phonological principle in orthography, which they saw as the tradition that had been followed for the last 100 years in Croatian spelling, ever since Ivan Broz’s manual from 1892 (Anić and Silić 2001, V). Matica hrvatska published a further orthography in 2007, stating that they as an institution always fostered the Croatian language and therefore felt obliged to present a solution to the “untenable mess of orthographies” [(. . .) neodrživo stanje pravopisnoga nereda.] (Badurina, Marković, and Mićanović 2007, XIII). Compiled by Lada Badurina, Ivan Marković, and Krešimir Mićanović, this manual in regard to the spelling dilemma of neću and ne ću also sticks to the phonological principle and a compound spelling as an exception to the general rule of separated negator and verb (Badurina, Marković, and Mićanović 2007, 164). In April 2005, the then minister of science, education, and sports, Dragan Primorac established the Vijeće za normu hrvatskoga standardnoga jezika [Council for the Norm of the Croatian Standard Language], which among other tasks was asked to discuss unsolved linguistic issues, to promote the Croatian language norm generally, and to determine the orthographic norm specifically. Members of the Council were linguists and philologists from various universities and institutions. Seven years later, in 2012, the Council was shut down by the then minister Željko Jovanović; the reasons for closure, however, remained unclear. Members, obviously, did not approve of it (Katičić 2013, 41–42; Jezik 2013, 57–61). The council’s meeting minutes were published subsequently in a special edition of Jezik, a periodical dedicated to the culture of the Croatian written language and published by the Hrvatsko filološko društvo [Croatian Philological Association] (Jezik 2013). The spelling regulation on neću or ne ću was one of the controversial issues among the council members and was designated as a “war on orthography” [“rat za pravopis”] in media coverage (Ožegović 2007, 1). This specific question was addressed at the council’s seventh meeting on

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15 December 2005. In his opening statement, the council chairman, Radoslav Katičić, addressed this issue as a contentious one which needed to be discussed calmly and thoroughly (Jezik 2013, 74). Katičić clearly argued in favor of a separate spelling, stating that proclitic and enclitic are two separate words, despite the fact that the accent switches to the proclitic creating one accentual unity – which would according to the phonetic orthography imply compound spelling. He stresses however the prioritization of the word in-boundary in between two lexical units which generally function on their own, something which may also be observed in other cases. Katičić further emphasized how even Broz and Boranić, both advocates of a phonological spelling, stuck to a separate spelling of negated auxiliaries. According to him, only political pressure on orthographical issues following the unification tendencies in 1929 and the Novi Sad agreement led to compounding the spelling of neću etc, which Katičić saw as a move brought about “by violence and pressure” (Jezik 2013, 75). Such a way of speaking, however, may be interpreted as being neither calm nor thorough, and he leaves no doubt that according to his belief no conclusion other than a separated spelling is reasonable and all other variations should be rejected. This statement, actually, did not promote, but instead hindered any discussion. One of the strong opponents to Katičićs’s position was Ivo Pranjković. He stressed that ne and ću merged into one word out of the long form *ne hoću, which makes a separated spelling illogical. The introduction of such would rather be a new form of violence, since compound spelling has become acceptable because it is common practice. Pranjković stated (Jezik 2013, 76) that attempts to introduce the blank space, which appeared beginning in the mid 1990s, had not been successful at all, and had encountered resistance, Katičić however answered that word contraction is not a proper argument in this specific case and irrelevant to spelling rules. Other proponents of a separated spelling of ne ću, such as Dunja Brozović Rončević, advocated that at least younger generations would not have a problem with such reform and that it therefore could easily be introduced (Jezik 2013, 77). The issue finally came to a vote. In their report to the ministry in charge, the council presented their decision on a separated spelling: Zanijekan enklitični oblik pomoćnoga glagola htjeti piše se odvojeno od niječnice, dakle ne ću, ne ćeš, itd. Taj je većinski zaključak Vijeće donijelo na svojoj sedmoj sjednici 15. prosinca 2005. sa 7 glasova za, 2 protiv i 2 suzdržana. [The negated enclitic form of auxiliary verb htjeti [want] is written separated from the negator, therefore ne ću, ne ćeš etc. This majority conclusion was taken at the seventh meeting on 15 December 2005, with 7 votes in favor, two against and two abstained.]. (Jezik 2013, 151)

This conclusion, however, was not a final one as it was not accepted by all orthography manuals published subsequently.

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Following the work and the conclusions of the Council regarding the norms of the Croatian standard language, the aforementioned Stjepan Babić and Milan Moguš (now without Božidar Finka who had passed away in 1999) published another, but slightly revised Hrvatski pravopis. They said that this orthography, issued in 2010, was a new edition bearing the well-known title of their previous works. However, they emphasized that it was not intended to introduce any kind of new rules, but only modifications of individual elements (Babić and Moguš 2010, 7). One such individual element, quite clearly, is the spelling of the negated verb htjeti [want]. Babić and Moguš do not offer both varieties of either compound or a separated spelling as in their prior manual of 1994 but decide on the obligatory blank space: “Rastavljeno od glagola piše se niječna čestica ne (. . .) Tako se piše i ne ću, ne ćeš, ne će, ne ćemo, ne ćete, ne će”. [The negator particle is separate from the verb. Therefore, it is written as ne ću, ne ćeš, ne će, ne ćemo, ne ćete, ne će] (Babić and Moguš 2010, 64). Only nemoj and nemam remain as exceptions to the rule of separated spelling. The manual corresponded to orthographic handbooks recommended for teaching in schools by the Ministry of Science, Education, and Sports (Babić, Moguš 2010, 7). Three years later, in 2013, the Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje [Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics], the official institution in Croatia for language preservation and fostering, issued another orthographic handbook entitled Hrvatski pravopis. The introductory statement reflects on the controversies regarding spelling rules, which caused difficulties and uncertainties especially in schooling and education. This orthography, hence, aims to be the oil poured on troubled water, introducing a single orthography for the Croatian language (Jozić 2013, V). The compiled spelling rules follow the phonological principle with some morphophonological elements (Jozić 2013, VII). Here, the orthographic ambiguity of neću and ne ću is solved again as variable. In the proper manual, compound spelling is adduced: Kao jednu riječ pišu se: (. . .) niječi oblik prezenta glagola htjeti: neću, nećeš, neće, nećemo, nećete, neće (. . .)” [As one word is written: (..) the negated present tense of the verb htjeti [want]: neću, nećeš, neće, nećemo, nećete, neće [I, you, he/she, we, you, they do not want] (. . .)]. (Jozić 2013, 58)

This subparagraph, however, shows an annotation with an explanatory note in the appendix: “Zbog tradicijskih razloga dopušteno je pisati i ne ću, ne ćeš, ne će, ne ćemo, ne ćete, ne će”. [For traditional reasons, it is also authorized to write ne ću, ne ćeš, ne će, ne ćemo, ne ćete, ne će] (Jozić 2013, 121). Hence, the decision on writing either a blank space or not is left to the writer. The variation which includes a word boundary, however, is marked as the more traditional.

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4 Conclusion One consequence of the dissolution of Yugoslavia was that the common language concept, Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian first split into three – Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian – and later four varieties – adding Montenegrin. Especially the late 1990s, but also the 2000s were characterized by intense debates on introducing boundaries to the languages, something which linguistic idiosyncrasies bring to the fore. Linguistic policies arguing in a national or even nationalistic sense finally accentuated and highlighted language markers to separate the varieties and to argue for language autonomy. In the light of hegemonies and power struggles back in Yugoslav times, it was mostly Serbian that the other languages had a need to be separated from (cf. Okuka 1998, ch. 3 and 4; Neweklowsky 2010, ch. 5.3.). It is this specific context which is important for understanding the arguments on a separated or compound spelling of the auxiliary verb htjeti in the negated present tense. As Meletis states, the resources of orthography are myriad and it offers several functions, potentially conveying meaning on various levels beyond the denotative (Meletis 2020, 175). The case study presented in this article clearly supports this position as one very specific orthographic issue – a blank space or word boundary – is not as important as a denotatum, but it clearly shows the function of linguistic differentiation. Arguments on neću or ne ću in the Croatian context highlight how academics and institutions fight for supremacy, both in their theoretical arguments and by publishing various but competing orthography manuals. Importantly, the spelling using either compound or separated fits periods of convergence and divergence of Croatian and Serbian. The blank space was reintroduced into the Croatian orthography by Babić and Moguš (2010), following a resolution of the Council for the Norm of the Croatian Standard Language that claimed the authority to adjudicate this dilemma. Who or what was the antagonist for differentiation, Babić and Moguš make clear in their introduction: Sadašnji je hrvatski pravopis po svojoj naravi fonološko-morfofonološki. (. . .) Nevolja je hrvatskoga pravopisa u tome što je u objema Jugoslavijama, a posebno Novosadskim dogovorom i njegovim pravopisom, hrvatska pravopisna tradicija podosta narušena, a narušen je i put kojim bi se hrvatski pravopis normalno razvijao i usvajao. Budući da je po novosadskome pravopisu odškolovana većina današnjih pismenih ljudi, njima je teško napuštati stečene navike. [The current Croatian orthography follows the phonologicalmorphophonological principle. (. . .) It is the trouble of the Croatian orthography that both Yugoslav States, and specifically the Novi Sad Agreement and its orthography, demolished the Croatian orthography tradition, as well as the path along which the Croatian orthography would have naturally developed and been adopted. As most of today’s literate people have been educated according to the Novi Sad Agreement, changing acquired habits will be hard for them.]. (Babić and Moguš 2010, 9)

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Both authors clearly overlook that orthography never develops “naturally”; it is always regulated by respective authorities. Their argumentation, however, also supports the notion that not only the orthographic reform as such was significant, but also had two concurrent goals, clearly showing that they are not only linguistically, but politically motivated (cf. Meletis 2020, 164, 168). The important parallel goal in this case is difference. Importantly, language in written form always implies visual information and allows classification based on visible impressions. A blank space and word boundary, hence, perfectly fit this concept, as they are certainly identifiable. The reform was not intended to be more user-friendly, which is often mentioned in the context of spelling reforms, but sought to place stronger emphasis on the axis of differentiation of current Croatian from Serbian and also of recent linguistic forms to spelling rules of earlier times associated with a political history that needs to be overcome. Nevertheless, the separated spelling did not become socially sanctioned, but turned into a variation in Croatian orthography. As such, it opens new questions on whether the use of either of the two variants may be connotated with different social categories.

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