Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia: Synchronous Pasts (Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict) 3030764001, 9783030764005

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN CULTURAL HERITAGE AND CONFLICT

Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia Synchronous Pasts Edited by Gruia Bădescu Britt Baillie · Francesco Mazzucchelli

Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict

Series Editors Ihab Saloul, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands Rob van der Laarse, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands Britt Baillie, Wits City Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

This book series explores the relationship between cultural heritage and conflict. The key themes of the series are the heritage and memory of war and conflict, contested heritage, and competing memories. The series editors seek books that analyze the dynamics of the past from the perspective of tangible and intangible remnants, spaces, and traces as well as heritage appropriations and restitutions, significations, musealizations, and mediatizations in the present. Books in the series should address topics such as the politics of heritage and conflict, identity and trauma, mourning and reconciliation, nationalism and ethnicity, diaspora and intergenerational memories, painful heritage and terrorscapes, as well as the mediated reenactments of conflicted pasts.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14638

Gruia B˘adescu · Britt Baillie · Francesco Mazzucchelli Editors

Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia Synchronous Pasts

Editors Gruia B˘adescu University of Konstanz Konstanz, Germany

Britt Baillie Wits City Institute University of the Witwatersrand Braamfontein, South Africa

Francesco Mazzucchelli Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies University of Bologna Bologna, Italy

ISSN 2634-6419 ISSN 2634-6427 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict ISBN 978-3-030-76400-5 ISBN 978-3-030-76401-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © Tim E White/The Image Bank, Skopje, Skopje, Macedonia This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

The initial vision for this volume crystallised during a research trip to the former Yugoslavia organised by Francesco Mazzucchelli, Carlos Reijnen, and Britt Baillie in 2013. The trip was part of the Terrorscapes Research project (funded by NWO Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, NIAS Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, Memorial Centre Camp Westerbork, AHRC Arts and Humanities Research Council, and hosted by CLUE at VU University and NIAS). The project was coordinated by Prof. Robert van der Laarse (UvA, University of Amsterdam/VU University). Initial thoughts were presented at the Connecting Competing Memories conference (2013, Amsterdam) organised by Prof. van der Laarse and Prof. Ihab Saloul. Gruia B˘adescu and Britt Baillie both contributed to the Conflict in Cities and the Contested State ESRC Large Grant Project (RES-060-2500150) and the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research (UCR), directed by Wendy Pullan at the University of Cambridge. The intersection of interests and themes lead to a rich cross fertilisation of ideas between them, with Britt and Francesco inviting Gruia to join the editorial team for this volume. The editors would like to thank the research centres and projects that supported their work on this book: UCR (University of Cambridge), the Balzan Prize project “Reconstructing Memory in the City” led by Jan and Aleida Assmann at the University of Konstanz, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded v

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Capital Cities Institutional Research Theme, University of Pretoria directed by Alan Mabin; Wits City Institute, University of the Witwatersrand directed by Noëleen Murray, Trame—the Center for Semiotic Research on Cultural Memory, directed by Patrizia Violi (University of Bologna). We would like to especially thank the contributors for their dedication to this volume and for their patience with the editorial process. They have graciously endured periods of revisions, carefully responded to queries, and echoed a multiplicity of voices and perspectives. We are also grateful for the meticulous copy editing assistance of Dr. Andrew Hodges and Elana Theunissen as well as indexing assistance from Andrew Heritage. The former’s work was sponsored by the Center for Cultural Inquiry and the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz. Finally, we are grateful to the editorial team at Palgrave for their support in the realisation of this book.

Praise for Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia

“This wonderful collection weaves together diverse and varied perspectives to explore the fascinating politics of cultural heritage in Yugoslav successor states. Properly placing cultural heritage within the contested nation-building projects of post-Yugoslav states, this volume bursts with empirical richness and detail. It is the first collection of its kind and one of tremendous scholarly value.” —Jelena Subotic, Professor of Political Science, Georgia State University, USA “This book spans the territory of the former Yugoslavia, tracing how (re)emerging nation states wrestle with the legacies of tumultuous pasts as they seek to forge themselves as modern projects with promising futures. It makes essential reading for those seeking to understand the (ab)uses of heritage for nation-building purposes as much as those intrigued by the challenges faced by the region.” —Dacia Viejo Rose, Senior Lecturer in Heritage and the Politics of the Past, University of Cambridge “The book takes an innovative approach in interweaving cultural heritage and collective remembrance theories that opens new perspectives in the field of Southeast European memory studies. The contributions, from both established scholars as well as young researchers, are well-written

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PRAISE FOR TRANSFORMING HERITAGE IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

and will undoubtedly inspire further discussions about memory politics in this region.” —Vjeran Pavlakovi´c, Department of Cultural Studies, University of Rijeka, Croatia

Contents

1

Introduction: Heritage in ‘Conflict-Time’ and Nation-Building in the Former Yugoslavia Gruia B˘adescu, Britt Baillie, and Francesco Mazzucchelli

1

Part I Remaking the Urban 2

Beyond Yugoslavia: Reshaping Heritage in Belgrade Gruia B˘adescu

3

Carving War onto the City: Monuments to the 1992–95 Conflict in Sarajevo Maja Musi

4

5

Heritage Reconstruction in Mostar: Minorities and Multiculturalism in Post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina Emily Gunzburger Makaš The Limits of Affects: Defacing Skopje 2014 Goran Janev and Fabio Mattioli

27

55

83 107

Part II Rebordering Memory 6

Borders of Memory: Competing Heritages and Fractured Memoryscapes in Bosnia and Herzegovina Francesco Mazzucchelli

131 ix

x

7

8

9

10

CONTENTS

‘Seeing Red’. Yugo-Nostalgia of Real and Imagined Borders Roberta Altin and Claudio Minca Long Live Yugoslavia! War, Memory Activism, and the Heritage of Yugoslavia in Slovenia and in the Italo-Slovene Borderland Borut Klabjan

12

13

14

189

Religiously Nationalizing the Landscape in Bosnia and Herzegovina Robert M. Hayden and Mario Kati´c

215

The Politics of the Past in Kosovo: Divisive and Shared Heritage in Mitrovica Mattias Legnér and Simona Bravaglieri

247

Part III 11

157

(Re)Membering: Monuments, Memorials and Museums

The Njegoš Chapel Versus the Njegoš Mausoleum—The Post-Yugoslav Ethnicization of Cultural Heritage in Montenegro Nikola Zeˇcevi´c The Post-Yugoslav Kaleidoscope: Curatorial Tactics in the (Ethno) Nationalization of Second World War Memorial Museums in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina Nataša Jagdhuhn

267

295

Locating Memorials: Transforming Partisan Monuments into Cultural Heritage Jonas Frykman

323

Vukovar’s Memorials and the Making of Conflict-Time Britt Baillie

351

Index

377

Notes on Contributors

Roberta Altin is Associate Professor of cultural anthropology at the Department of Humanities, and the coordinator of CIMCS (Centre for Migration and International Cooperation on Sustainable Development), University of Trieste (https://cimcs.units.it/). Her latest research projects concern the hospitality of asylum seekers in the border area, action-research against scholastic dropout in migratory context, public memories in participatory museums. Gruia B˘adescu is an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow and a Zukunftskolleg Research Fellow at the University of Konstanz. His research has examined how interventions in urban space relate to societal and political processes of dealing with a difficult past, including war and political violence. In his Ph.D. research, conducted at the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge, he analysed the relationship between post-war urban reconstruction and dealing with the past in Belgrade and Sarajevo. He has also published comparative work between urban reconstruction in Sarajevo and Beirut. He was a Departmental Lecturer and Research Associate in Human Geography at the University of Oxford (2015–2018), researching with an AHRC-Labex-Les Passés dans le Présent grant, architectural engagements with sites used for political violence during previous dictatorial regimes in South-Eastern Europe and in the Southern Cone of Latin America. B˘adescu is one of the conveners of the Critical Memory and Human Rights working group and the founder of the Memory and xi

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Space group of the Memory Studies Association. He is currently finalising a book on the relationship between post-war architectural reconstruction and dealing with the past. Britt Baillie is a founding member of the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research at the University of Cambridge, and Honorary Fellow at the Wits City Institute. Previously, she was a Research Fellow on the University of Pretoria’s Capital Cities Institutional Research Theme, an Affiliated Lecturer at the Division of Archaeology (University of Cambridge), a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the Conflict in Cities and the Contested State ESRC funded research project (University of Cambridge); a Postdoctoral Researcher on the AHRC/NWO funded Landscapes of War, Trauma and Occupation project (University of Cambridge); an AHRC funded Early Career Researcher on the Cambridge Community Heritage Project, a Researcher Fellow at Vrije Universiteit University Amsterdam and the Director of Studies for Archaeology and Anthropology at Peterhouse. Dr. Baillie completed her Ph.D. in Archaeology and Heritage Management at the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge in 2011. Her recent books include: Locating Urban Conflicts: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Everyday (Palgrave, 2013, co-edited with Wendy Pullan) and African Heritage Challenges: Communities and Sustainable Development (Palgrave, 2020 co-edited with Marie-Louise Sørensen). Simona Bravaglieri is a Ph.D. Candidate in Preservation of Architectural Heritage at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Polytechnic University of Milan. Her main research interest is on cultural heritage and its role in situations of crisis. The title of her doctoral thesis is: “The heritage of the Cold War. Identification, mapping and preservation of decommissioned military buildings and sites in Italy (1947–1989)”. Her educational background is in architecture and preservation. Since the course of her Master’s Degree, she is part of the editorial staff of the journal ANANKE, one of the main references for the preservation debate in Italy today. She spent periods of international exchange at the National Technical University of Athens, Uppsala Universitet, University of York and Chalmers Technical University. Jonas Frykman is Professor Emeritus of European Ethnology at the University of Lund, Sweden. In a series of books and articles he has been analysing contemporary culture in Scandinavia (see, e.g., Culture Builders

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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Rutgers University Press, 1987, co-authored with Orvar Löfgren; Force of Habit Lund University Press, 1996, co-edited with Orvar Löfgren; Sense of Community: Trust Hope and Worries in the Welfare State, Ethnologia Europaea, 1. 2009) as well as in Europe (see, e.g., Articulating Europe: Local Perspectives, 2003, Museum Tusculanum Press, co-edited with Péter Niedermüller; ACompanion to the Anthropology of Europe, Wiley 2012, co-edited with Ullrich Kockel and Máiréad Nic Craith). Together with Nils Gilje he edited the volume Being There: New Perspectives on Phenomenology and the Analysis of Culture, Lund 2003. Memories related to monuments in Croatia have been dealt with in the book Minnesmärken, Carlsson Bokförlag, 2012, co-edited with Billy Ehn, and in several peer-reviewed articles. Robert M. Hayden is Professor of Anthropology & Law at the University of Pittsburgh. His primary research since 1981 has focused on the Balkans, but has also done fieldwork in India and among the Seneca Iroquois of New York State. He has done extensive work on issues of violence, nationalism, constitutionalism and state reconstruction in the formerly Yugoslav space, as seen in his collection From Yugoslavia to the Western Balkans: studies of a European disunion, 1991–2011 (Brill, 2013). Dr. Hayden’s current research follows on his comparative study (with T. Tanyeri-Erdemir, T. Walker, A. Erdemir, M. Baki´c-Hayden, M. Aguilar, D. Rangahari and E. Lopez-Hurtado) Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites and Spaces (Routledge, 2016). Nataša Jagdhuhn studied visual art (history/theory/education) and museum studies in Belgrade, Vienna, Ljubljana and Berlin. In January 2020, she successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis in Southeast European Studies at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Jagdhuhn is currently Postdoctoral Fellow of the Leibniz ScienceCampus “Eastern Europe— Global Area” at the GWZO (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe) in Leipzig. Her current research concentrates on collecting and exhibiting Nonalignment in Yugoslavia. Recent publications include “The Memorial Center Lipa Remembers—From a ‘Museum of the People’ to a ‘Museum of the Community’: Auto-Reflective Models for Curating Public History”, in: Berger, S., Dierks, D. and Kesteloot, C. (eds.) Public History on the Battlefield of Europe. Dealing with Painful Pasts in the 20th Century. De Gruyter (forthcoming).

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Goran Janev is Professor of Social Anthropology at the “Sts Cyril and Methodius” University, Skopje, Macedonia. He has completed a D.Phil. in Social Anthropology at Oxford University exploring the interethnic relations in Macedonia. He was a post-doc at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Gottingen. He was a visiting Research Fellow at the Humboldt University Berlin at the Institute for Slavic Studies. Among his recent publications: “Burdensome Past: Challenging the Socialist Heritage in Macedonia” (2017), Studia Ethnologica Croatica, 29. He co-edited the forthcoming volume Macedonia and Its Questions: Origins, Margins, Ruptures, and Continuity, Peter Lang, Berlin. Mario Kati´c is Assistant Professor at the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology, University of Zadar, Croatia. His most recent books are Military Pilgrimage and Battlefield Tourism: Commemorating the Dead (Routledge, 2018, co-edited with John Eade), Pilgrimage, Politics and Place-Making in Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2014, co-edited with John Eade), and Pilgrimage and Sacred Places in Southeast Europe (LIT Verlag, 2014, co-edited with Tomislav Klarin and Mike McDonald). He is the author of Death in the Dalmatian Hinterland (Naklada Ljevak, 2017). Borut Klabjan is historian, Principal Research Fellow at the Science and Research Centre Koper and he teaches as Associate Professor at the University of Ljubljana. He graduated from the University of Trieste and received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Ljubljana. He enhanced his studies at universities in Bratislava, Prague, and Venice, he was Humboldt Fellow at the Institute for South-East Europe of the Humboldt University in Berlin, Visiting Fellow at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. He is dealing with political and cultural history, memory and border issues in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, with special emphasis on the northern Adriatic and Central Europe. His articles were published in nine languages, he is co-editor and author of four multilingual volumes and his monograph Czechoslovakia in the Adriatic was published in Slovene and Czech. He recently published the edited volume Borderlands of Memory. Adriatic and Central European Perspectives (Peter Lang Oxford).

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Mattias Legnér is Docent in History and Professor in Conservation at Uppsala Universitet. In 2016–2018 he led the cross-disciplinary project Kulturarvsnoden (Research Node Cultural Heritage) at the Faculty of Arts, Uppsala Universitet, involving four departments and Region Gotland. He has researched worldwide targeting of heritage sites and protection of cultural heritage in armed conflicts. Other research interest is policy studies concerning heritage (concerning for example energy efficiency and climate effect of historic buildings) and historical studies of heritage management. He is currently finishing a monograph on cultural property protection and uses of heritage in Scandinavia before and during World War II. Examples of his most recent publications are “Contested Heritage-Making as an Instrument of Ethnic Division: Mitrovica, Kosovo” in Urban Heritage in Divided Cities: Contested Pasts/[ed] Sibylle Frank and Mirjana Ristic, London: Routledge, 2020, “Energy Efficiency and Conservation Planning in Sweden: A Longitudinal Evaluation” International Journal of Building Pathology and Adaptation, 2020, and “Post-Conflict Reconstruction and the Heritage Process”, Journal of Architectural Conservation, Vol. 24, no 2, 2018, 78–90. Emily Gunzburger Makaš is Associate Professor of Architectural and Urban History and Associate Director of the School of Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She has a Ph.D. in the History of Architecture and Urbanism from Cornell University (2007), a Masters in Historic Preservation from Columbia University (1997), and a Bachelors in History from the University of Tennessee (1995). Her research focuses on connections between memory and identity and the built environment, including architecture, urbanism, heritage, and commemoration. Her recent work explores relationships between museums and urban and national identities in Sarajevo and Mostar, Bosnia-Hercegovina. She is also focused on community-engaged research and curation exploring race, identity, museums, and memorials in Charlotte, NC. Makaš is completing a monograph on commemoration, heritage reconstruction, and public space in Bosnia-Hercegovina titled Urban and National Identities and the Rebuilding of Mostar (forthcoming from Routledge). She is also currently editing the volume Planning Eastern European Capital Cities, 1945– 1989 (forthcoming from Routledge). Her other key publications include the edited volume Capital Cities in the Aftermath of Empires: Planning in Central and Southeastern Europe (Routledge, 2010, co-edited with

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T.D. Conley) and Architectural Conservation in Europe and the Americas (Wiley, 2011, co-authored with J.H. Stubbs). Fabio Mattioli is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Melbourne. Mattioli’s research focuses on the social and political implications of economic processes. He conducted ten years of ethnographic work in Skopje. Mattioli conducted his Ph.D. at CUNY and was a lecturer at NYU. His forthcoming book, Dark Finance (Stanford University Press, 2020), analyses the connection between financial expansion and illiberal politics in the republic of (North) Macedonia. Francesco Mazzucchelli is Senior Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna. After receiving his Ph.D. in Semiotics (University of Bologna, 2009), he has been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the University of Bologna. He has spent research periods in various Institutions (Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, University of Manchester, Université de Limoges, Fondation Maison Sciences de l’Homme). At the University of Bologna, he is also researcher at CUE, the International Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities “Umberto Eco” and Scientific coSecretary of TraMe, the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Cultural Memory and Trauma. He is a semiologist, with a specific interest in Critical Theory, Culture Theory and the Semiotics of Culture. His research interests deal mainly with the relationship between memory and spatiality, with a specific focus on practices of urban memory rewriting and the mobilisation of cultural heritage. Most of his research is directed at recent sociocultural transformations in the South-Western Balkans (after the collapse of Yugoslavia). In 2010, he published the book Urbicidio. I sensi dei luoghi tra distruzioni e ricostruzioni (Bononia University Press). Claudio Minca is Professor of Geography at the Alma Mater Studiorum—University of Bologna and Honorary Professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. His current research centres on three major themes: the spatialisation of (bio)politics; tourism and travel theories of modernity; and the relationship between camps and refugee informal mobilities in the Balkan region. His most recent books are On Schmitt and Space (2015, with R. Rowan), Hitler’s Geographies (2016, with P. Giaccaria), Moroccan Dreams (2016, with L. Wagner), After

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Heritage (2018, with H. Muzaini), and Camps Revisited (2019, with I. Katz and D. Martin). Maja Musi made humanitarian-aid journeys to Croatia from 1992 to 1995 that spurred on her research in the former Yugoslavia. She completed her Ph.D. at Ghent University (Belgium), Department of History, with a thesis titled “(Re)constructions. Armed conflicts, cultural heritage, (inter)national policies and local practices of memorialisation in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina”. As part of this project, she resided in Sarajevo from 2009 to 2012. Her recent publications include: “Parallels. Construction and Re-Construction of the Heritage of War in the Urban Landscape of Sarajevo—World War II and the 1992–95 Conflict”, in Dirk Callebaut, Jan Marik, and Jana Marikova-Kubkova (eds.), Heritage Reinvents Europe (Oxbow, 2013) and “The International Heritage Doctrine and the Management of Heritage in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Case of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments”, (2014) International Journal of Heritage Studies, 20(1), 54–71. Nikola Zeˇcevi´c is a teaching fellow and Ph.D. Candidate at the Faculty of Humanistic Studies, University of Donja Gorica in Podgorica, Montenegro. His research focuses on the history of the Balkans. He uses a phenomenological approach to explore nationalism and historical revisionism. Nikola was a visiting researcher at the Charles University, Department of South Slavonic and Balkan Studies in Prague, Czech Republic in 2018. He recently published (2019) “The Diplomatic Activity of Mitar Baki´c, the Montenegrin Resident in Istanbul, from 1890 to 1903”, Foreign Policy of Montenegro—History and Contemporaneity, 50:231–247.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3

Fig. 2.4 Fig. 2.5 Fig. 2.6

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5

The modernist Generalštab in ruins and the reconstructed historicist Government building on Belgrade’s Nemanjina avenue (Photo © Gruia B˘adescu) Saint Sava Temple, expression of the Byzantine style (Photo © Gruia B˘adescu) The slender profile of the Patriarchal Church, influenced by the Vojvodina Baroque style. In the background, the socialist-era buildings of New Belgrade and Zemun can be seen, the latter formerly a border town of Austria-Hungary (Photo © Gruia B˘adescu) Religious paintings inserted in the Serbian salon of the socialist-era SIV (Photo © Gruia B˘adescu) The makeover of the CK building into a corporate office tower—the Uš´ce tower (Photo © Gruia B˘adescu) The former Ministry of Internal Affairs, bombed by NATO in 1999. Photo taken in 2014, before its demolition for redevelopment (Photo © Gruia B˘adescu) Sarajevo Rose, 2010 (Photo © Maja Musi) Plaque at Markale, 2010 (Photo © Maja Musi) Plaque at the National Library, 2009 (Photo © Maja Musi) Kovaˇci Memorial Cemetery and the Mausoleum Alija Izetbegovi´c, Kovaˇci, 2011 (Photo © Maja Musi) Monument to the Children Killed During the Siege, 2012 (Photo © Maja Musi)

28 35

36 39 41

46 59 62 64 65 67

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3.6 Fig. 3.7

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2

Fig. 4.3

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3

Fig. 7.4 Fig. 8.1

Fig. 8.2 Fig. 8.3 Fig. 8.4

Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2

Trucks in front of the Presidency building in Sarajevo, 9 July 2011 (Photo © Maja Musi) Commemorative gatherings separated by police in Dobrovoljaˇccka Street, 2012. The Serb gathering is on the left and the Green Berets gathering on the right (Photo © Maja Musi) ˇ The Old Bridge and surrounding Caršija (Photo © Emily Gunzburger Makaš) Map showing the boundaries of the Mostar Old Town UNESCO World Heritage Site and National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as key sites mentioned in the chapter (© Emily Gunzburger Makaš, drawn by Amy Stewart) View of the boulevard including the school, city hall, and Franciscan bell tower in the background (Photo © Emily Gunzburger Makaš) Topology of discursive borders between competing narratives Cover of Il Pioniere, 1981 (© Edit Publisher, Rijeka) Sections dedicated to Comrade Tito, Il Pioniere, 1980 (© Edit Publisher, Rijeka) Representatives of the Italian minority singing during a Socialist celebratory event (Rovinj, 21.09.2014) (© Edit Publisher, Rijeka) Recycled Yugo-Objects on sale (Rovinj, 21.09.2014) (© Edit Publisher, Rijeka) Memorial to the victims of the Second World War in Rodik (Slovenia). In the lower part of the monument a plaque to the victims of the First World War has been added (Photo © Borut Klabjan) The plaque on the main square in Koper/Capodistria named after Tito (Photo © Borut Klabjan) The memorial to the fallen in the municipality of Dolina constructed in 1975 (Photo © Borut Klabjan) Father and son standing by a former Slovene socialist flag in Dolina for the celebration of the Liberation day in Italy on 25 April 2018 (Photo © Borut Klabjan) Church of St. Pantelejmona in Bijeljina (Photo © 2020 Robert M. Hayden) Church of the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac in Orašje, Bosanska Posavina FBH (Photo © 2020 by Robert M. Hayden)

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72 85

90

96 149 161 168

173 174

194 197 204

208 225

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 9.3 Fig. 9.4 Fig. 9.5

Fig. 9.6

Fig. 11.1

Fig. 11.2

Fig. 11.3 Fig. 11.4

Fig. 12.1 Fig. 12.2

Fig. 13.1

Saborni Hram sv. Presvete Bogorodice in Zvornik (Photo © 2020 by Robert M. Hayden) Kajserija mosque in Goražde (Photo © 2020 by Robert M. Hayden) Pilgrimage to St. John in Podmilaˇcje in 2015. In the forefront is the reconstruction of the old St. John church, originally from the Medieval period, and in the background is the new church in construction (Photo © 2020 Mario Kati´c) 2015 Military Pilgrimage to Bobovac. Behind the military and civilian pilgrims is the Bobovac mausoleum the only reconstructed building of the old city (Photo © 2020, by Mario Kati´c) Njegoš Chapel, from the north side (Photo by Nikolai Krasnov, 1923. Reproduced with permission of the Archive of Yugoslavia) The Njegoš Chapel, from the south side (Photo by Nikolai Krasnov, 1923. Reproduced with permission of the Archive of Yugoslavia) Njegoš Mausoleum (Reproduced with permission of National Museum of Montenegro) Proposal for the Njegoš Mausoleum by Ivan Meštrovi´c, as commissioned by King Alexander Karad-ord-evi´c (Source Nova Evropa, 1925) Second World War memorial museums and houses in Yugoslavia (© 2018 Nataša Jagdhuhn) Second World War memorial museums in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina after the dissolution of Yugoslavia (© 2018 Nataša Jagdhuhn) Restored partisan monument at pisak (Photo © 2015 Kristina Uzelac)

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Heritage in ‘Conflict-Time’ and Nation-Building in the Former Yugoslavia Gruia B˘adescu, Britt Baillie, and Francesco Mazzucchelli

What happens when the past is indeed a different country? Discussions of heritage and memory have frequently emphasized the fluidity and malleability of how the past is understood. After war and border changes, after the violence of ethnic cleansing and the destruction of cities, after divisive political claims, heritage and memory can fixate societies on the past. However, they can also trigger new ways of reimagining the future. This book examines heritage in countries succeeding a federation that

G. B˘adescu (B) University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany e-mail: [email protected] B. Baillie Wits City Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Braamfontein, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] F. Mazzucchelli Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. B˘adescu et al. (eds.), Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2_1

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underwent violent dissolution 30 years ago. It traces how conflicts endure through heritage and memory battles, constituting what Britt Baillie (2013a) has called ‘conflict-time’. It analyses how political visions of the nation in newly formed states reshape what is regarded as heritage, what is highlighted and what is forgotten. Through a discussion of processes from all successor states of Yugoslavia, of cityscapes and memoryscapes, of state borders and ‘walls in the head’, this book not only displays the complex canvas of an entangled region, but also ponders the nature of heritage and memory after ruptures. The former Yugoslavia has been described on the one hand as a bastion of plurality and multiculturalism, and on the other as a territory of antagonism and radical nationalisms, echoing imaginaries and narratives relevant to Europe as a whole. It was a double experiment: a political project attempting to bring together different ethnic groups and, during its socialist incarnation, also an enterprise in political economy. Its workers’ self-management policies and non-alignment to the Cold War camps helped it gain the reputation of offering a distinctive, open form of socialism. The legacies of Yugoslavia are manifold in communicative and cultural memory alike—vilified by some, and revered and missed by others. With Slovenia (2004) and Croatia (2013) having entered the EU and the continual political contestation in the region, wounds in the memory fabric of the former Yugoslavia have once more come to light in a world that has increasingly looked elsewhere since its violent dissolution. Some ask the question of what will happen when (if?) the former republics are ‘reunited’ once more under the EU umbrella, itself beset by increasing populisms, nationalisms, and the looming prospects of territorial fragmentation. Slovenes and Croats sometimes joke that their accession to yet another multinational conglomerate, after the Habsburg Empire and Yugoslavia, is a bad omen for the EU, as both multinational formations had collapsed. Now on the verge of obtaining Schengen membership, Croatia is being asked to defend the increasingly hardened boundaries of ‘fortressEurope’ from immigrants and refugees who run the gauntlet of the ‘Balkan route’. How to deal with synchronous and yet contested pasts is a question with which many post-war and post-colonial contexts continue to grapple. Globally, a return to antagonistic memory cultures and attempts to stimulate an agonistic memory arena define the post-Cold War era. This is why understanding heritage and memory debates in the former Yugoslavia is

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relevant to wider European and international debates about the politics of memory and identity. Reflecting on the legacies of Yugoslavia and contemporary heritage processes in its successor states, this book shows how heritagization embodies the mobilization and appropriation of memory or, to the contrary, processes of silencing, obfuscation or amnesia. Each respective process awakens different responses from a range of actors across nested spatial realms. A central contention of the volume is that heritagization (see Walsh, 1992; Waterton & Watson, 2010) is a dynamic process in the former Yugoslavia that uses the past to continually remake the unfolding present in order to secure competing visions of the future. By bringing together heritage scholars, historians, architectural and art historians, semioticians, anthropologists and geographers, this book examines heritage across a spectrum of scales from a multitude of vantage points: from place biographies to hermeneutics, from the intentionality of ‘experts’ to the reception of citizens. Synchronous Pasts works towards a twofold aim: in area studies, it surveys and dissects processes in the post-Yugoslav space, while it also advances debates in heritage studies by problematizing heritage in ‘conflict-time’ and nation-building.

Heritagization and Synchronous Pasts Since the Second World War, UNESCO’s definitions of heritage have extended far beyond the restrictive concepts of ‘cultural property’ and tangible heritage to include intangible dimensions and linkages (most notably through the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage). However, the historic baggage of the frame of ‘cultural property’ persists in casting long shadows as it continues to underpin what Smith (2006) terms the Authorized Heritage Discourse. Heritagization can be defined as the process by which objects, places, and practices are transformed from functional ‘things’ or parts of habitus (Bourdieu, 1984) into objects or performances for display or listing, registering or cataloguing in some form (see Harrison, 2013). There is an assumption that once ‘heritagized’, objects will then remain ‘heritage’. However, the reinterpretation of heritage is ongoing and heightened in times of social and political change. Graham argued that heritage may ‘be discarded as the demands of present societies change, or even – as is presently occurring in eastern Europe – when pasts have to be reinvented to reflect new presents’ (Graham, 2002, p. 1004). In such shifts,

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new heritagization is carried out by the newly dominant group, in parallel with the de-heritagization of unwanted pasts. In turn, forms of heritage suppressed by previous regimes may be re-heritagized. Simultaneously, synchronous counter-narratives about the past continue to reverberate beyond the dominant group’s practices and narratives. Indeed, such pasts may be the dominant narrative in the neighbouring state, region, city, street, or house. Critical of a rigid, abstract understanding of a general synchronic space embodying diachronic historical processes, Henri Lefebvre proposed a turbulent spatiality to recover the relationship between place and history. Similarly, we propose a lens of ‘synchronous pasts’ to understand how heritage subsumes the relation between place, memory, and time. Harrison (2013, p. 37) asked ‘What temporalities are produced by different forms of heritage and how do these articulate with the production of particular futures’? This volume investigates the synchronous existence of pasts in the present, as well as projections of the future.

Heritage Forged in War: The Reification of Cultural Property Wars in the Balkans have significantly contributed to shifting conceptualizations of heritage and efforts to secure its protection under international law. In the nineteenth century, European powers fought to gain power and control over the declining Ottoman Empire’s territories. Nationalists in the Balkans used the opportunity to seek independence. Many of the parties mobilized heritage to stake their claims, drawing particularly upon religious, royal, and folklore traditions and their related tangible heritage. After the Russo–Turkish War (1877–1878), Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria–Hungary visited Nicholas II of Russia, resulting in an agreement to maintain the status quo in the Balkans. Nicholas II, fearing the impact of the armaments race for recently developed rapid-fire artillery, then convened a peace conference that promulgated the 1899 Hague Convention. Article 27 stipulated that ‘all necessary steps should be taken to spare as far as possible edifices devoted to religion, art, science, and charity’. The region once again became a significant arena of combat during the World Wars. The shift to total war resulted in staggering damage to cultural heritage worldwide. In response, the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict was drafted. The preamble to this convention asserts that because ‘damage to

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cultural property belonging to any people whatsoever means damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind’, it is incumbent upon the international community to enact special legal measures for its safeguarding. Yet, the convention has been plagued by a lack of ratification, implementation, proven inability to protect cultural property, restrictive definitions, and a low number of associated prosecutions (Desch, 1999; Gamboni, 2001; Hausler et al., 2019). In practice, the 1954 Hague Convention applies ‘to cultural property of great importance to the national cultural heritage of each respective High Contracting Party, as determined by that party’ (O’Keefe, 2015, pp. 244–245). It assumes that ‘cultural property’ is a fixed set of objects, a group that can be well defined by a list of named examples. But local definitions of heritage are both broader and in flux. The convention presumes the existence of a national consensus on whose and what heritage constitutes cultural property worthy of preservation—and that the High Contracting Party in question has chosen to reflect such unanimity. Furthermore, although the convention requires state parties to implement a number of proactive safeguarding measures in peacetime to prepare for armed conflict, it has no mechanism to deal with destructive activities occurring during peacetime or continuing in the post-war or post-occupation period. The scale of the destruction of cultural property in the wars in the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia thrust the inadequacies of the 1954 Hague Convention into the limelight. Article 4(2) of the convention, ratified by Yugoslavia on 29 December 1955, states that obligations to protect cultural property do not apply in ‘cases where military necessity imperatively requires such a waiver’. The ill-defined concept of ‘military necessity’ proved dangerously fluid, such that ‘necessity’ too quickly and easily shades into ‘convenience’ (Merryman, 1986, p. 831). Prompted by the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, from 1992 onwards, UNESCO, the Netherlands, and a number of experts in various fields worked on a possible revision or updating of the convention, which resulted in the promulgation of the Second Hague Protocol of 1999. For the former Yugoslavia, this protocol was too little, too late. Although it minimized the scope of military necessity and enhanced clarity on how the convention applied to ‘armed conflicts not of an international character’, it continued to reify the idea of cultural property as well as a rigid division between wartime and peacetime protection mechanisms.

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Article 3(d) of Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (established in 1993) avoided the restrictive definitions of cultural property offered by the 1954 Hague Convention to allow prosecution for the ‘seizure of, destruction or wilful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments and works of art and science’. It thus replicates the language of the 1907 Hague Convention. As a result, Yugoslav National Army (JNA) officers, Republic of Serbian Krajinaleaders, Serbian officials in Kosovo, and Croatian Defence Council officials have been indicted, and/or tried for the destruction of high profile heritage sites or the targeting of religious heritage. Vrdoljak (2007, p. 393) argues that ICTY jurisprudence has been notable in taking steps towards dissolving the divide between the protection afforded to heritage during wartime and peacetime. The Hague Tribunal has not included acts of destruction of cultural property as part of its definition of genocide under Article 4 of its statute. Yet, the Kristi´c Trial judgement used evidence of the destruction of mosques to prove the mens rea of genocide (ibid.). This is significant because the 1948 Geneva Convention does not require acts to have occurred during armed conflict in order to be considered genocide. The soft law enshrined in the 2003 UNESCO Declaration Concerning the Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage drafted in response to the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 during ‘peace-time’ (see O’Keefe, 2006) further challenges this temporal division. Thus, by examining in this book the dynamics present in the former Yugoslavia, we unpack how heritage processes are embedded within conflict even in the aftermath of war.

(Post-)Yugoslav Trajectories Yugoslavia’s history spans the twentieth century, with its memory well entrenched in many of the twenty-first-century debates in the region. The shots fired at Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 famously triggered the First World Warand the dissolutionof empires. In December 1918, former Habsburg territories inhabited by Southern Slavs united with the Kingdom of Serbia. Independent from the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, Serbia had since acquired Macedonia and Kosovo, and it had united with Montenegro. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes emerged, renamed Yugoslavia in 1929.

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This first Yugoslavia was contested during the interwar period by Croatian politicians dissatisfied with its centralization around Belgrade and the Serbian Karad-ord-evi´c dynasty. To the chagrin of some of the constituent territories, King Alexander I, dubbed ‘the unifier’, imposed a royal dictatorship in 1929. He attempted to shape a Yugoslav nation from the disparate groups that once belonged to Habsburg and Ottoman empires, with different religions and several languages and dialects. The Second World Warled to the dismemberment of Royal Yugoslavia, which was divided between German, Italian, and Hungarian occupation zones and the new Independent State of Croatia(Nezavisna Država Hrvatska— NDH). The latter was run by the fascist Ustasha who exterminated significant numbers of Jews, Roma, and Serbs, most notably in the Jasenovac concentration camp. Although alliances shifted during the war, the Chetniks, who were Royalist and Greater Serbia supporters (who committed atrocities in NDH-controlled Bosnia, particularly against Muslims, and the Partisans, led by Marshal Tito), fought the occupiers and the NDH. After the communist movement led by Tito took power in 1945, the Partisans carried out reprisals against their enemies and later, after the Tito–Stalin split in 1948, Stalinist purges. The acts they committed became whispered histories in a Socialist Yugoslavia that exclusively celebrated the Partisan anti-fascist struggle. The Yugoslavia which emerged after 1945 differed from its first incarnation. It came to incorporate territories gained from Italy, including Istria. As opposed to the largely centralized nature of the first Yugoslavia, after 1945 the country was a socialist federation (for a while a People’s Federation), based on ‘brotherhood and unity’ between different constituent peoples (narodi), with each narod having their own republic. Bosnia and Herzegovina was comprised of three narodi and was as such a ‘miniature Yugoslavia’ (Jugoslavija u malom), with Bosnian Muslims recognized as a narod in 1964. The presence of other non-Slavic nationalities was recognized by the special status of two provinces within Serbia: Kosovo (with an Albanian majority) and Vojvodina (with significant populations of Hungarians and other minorities). Socialist Yugoslavia went through various transformations in attempts to address and balance the needs and demands of the respective narodi, with the 1974 constitution giving more power to the republics. As leaders of the non-aligned movement, Socialist Yugoslavia was able to court both Blocs during the Cold War, enabling considerable movement of its citizens beyond its borders and welcoming tourists interested in sun, sea, and heritage. However, the

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death of Tito in 1980, an economic crisis, and complaints about unbalanced republic budgets from the more developed republics of Slovenia and Croatia, followed by rising nationalism stemming from concerns over the status of Serbs in various republics, and particularly in the province of Kosovo, all weakened the federation. Memories of the Second World War, and particularly of the violence of the Nazi-backed NDH against Serbs, fuelled narratives of victimhood. The formal dissolutionof the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia began in 1991.1 Following two independence referendums, in June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia were the first to break away. In Slovenia, a short ten-day war occurred, which ended with the withdrawal of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA). In Croatia, the presence of a large Serbian minority who opposed secession complicated the situation and led to prolonged violence. Stating that they were seeking to secure the safety of the ethnic Serb population and (partial) Yugoslav territorial integrity, the JNA and Serb paramilitary units besieged the contested border area around Vukovar and ultimately expelled its Croatian population, making the area a part of the self-declared Republic of Serbian Krajina(RSK). Eventually, the RSK, composed of non-contiguous pockets, collectively made up one-third of the territory that is today Croatia. During this conflict, the destruction of heritage was at times used as a form of retrospective ethnic cleansing while the destruction of Partisan memorialsmarked a rejection of Yugoslavia and its underpinning ideals. The targeting of urban sites of coexistence opened discussions of urbicide, as a conscious destruction of urban conviviality (see Baillie, 2011; Bevan, 2007; Bogdanovi´c, 1993). Actions targeting heritage in Croatia served as harbingers of what was to occur in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. The war culminated with the 1995 Operation Storm that precipitated a large-scale exodus of ethnic Serbs from what became internationally recognized as Croatian territory. The Vukovar area, the pocket closest to Serbia, was the object of the Erdut Agreement and of a ‘peaceful reintegration’ into the state of Croatia by the UN (1996–1998), which facilitated the return of its Croatian population, while many local Serbs decided to remain. In September 1991, the Republic of Macedonia also seceded from the federation in amiable conditions. In contrast, the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina sparked a violent war. Marked by ethnic cleansing, widespread destruction, and casualties, including at Srebrenica,

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the conflict was recognized by the international community as constituting genocide of Bosniaks(Bosnian Muslims) by the Bosnian Serb forces. Heritage was targeted during the war by various factions, with significant losses both to religious heritage as well as to urban sites of coexistence (Bevan, 2007; Bogdanovi´c, 1993; Coward, 2004; Mazzucchelli, 2010; Riedlmayer, 2008). The siege of Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serb paramilitaries, the shelling of the Mostar bridge by the Bosnian Croat forces, and the erasure of mosques in particular have become symbols of the conflict. At the end of the war, the Dayton Agreement of November 1995 enshrined a new power arrangement, in which two state entities maintained the territorial segregation that had occurred during the war, with a predominantly Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska, and a largely Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yugoslavia endured as a union of Serbia and Montenegro under the presidency of Slobodan Miloševi´c. Although contested at home through urban protests, he remained in power until 2000. Stating the aim of preventing another humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo, where local Albanians were the subject of diminishing rights and political violence, NATObombed Yugoslavia in 1999, including key urban sites in Belgrade (B˘adescu, 2019b; Mazzucchelli, 2010). In Kosovo, political violence was accompanied by the destruction of heritage by and of both sides (Herscher, 2010). After Montenegro left the union with Serbia in 2006, Kosovo declared its independence in 2008—the final act of the dissolution. The successor states underwent processes of transformation—from rejecting the political economy of socialism, to continual nation-building articulated through the politics of memory and heritage. Revisionist historiography attempted to stitch new national histories for the respective successor states. Consequently, memory has become a new arena of war. It has featured clashes between positions that view Socialist Yugoslavia as a place of national repression (to be rejected), and those that regard it as an enlightened experiment (a site of longing) (Petrovi´c, 2013; Ramet, 2013). Moreover, antagonistic memories of violence and a marked competitive victimhood were salient (B˘adescu, 2016; Baillie, 2013a; Moll, 2013; Pavlakovi´c & Paukovi´c, 2019). The memories of the 1990s remain at the forefront, yet memories of the Second World Warand earlier conflicts were also resurrected (David, 2015; Ðureinovi´c, 2020; Fridman, 2016; Klabjan, 2018; Obradovi´c-Wochnik, 2013; Sokoli´c, 2019; Suboti´c, 2009).

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Three decades since the dissolutionof Yugoslavia, it is now an opportune moment to ask what role heritage has also played in the aftermath of the wars of the 1990s and in the creation of the successor states. The wartime destruction of the region’s heritage sparked international outrage. Although there have been valuable discussions of heritage in this region, most works refer to a particular successor state or individual site (see, e.g., B˘adescu, 2019c; Baillie, 2019; Banjeglav, 2012; Burghardt & Kirn, 2014; Gusic, 2019; Herscher, 2010; Mazzucchelli, 2010; Pavlakovi´c & Paukovi´c, 2019; Risti´c, 2018; Walasek et al., 2015). This volume investigates how heritage enables synchronous pasts across the region to take form. This endeavour serves both to express the multiscalar specificities of transformation in the post-Yugoslav space, as well as broader understandings of the role of heritage and memory in nationalist mobilizations.

Heritage and Nation-Building The (physical) remains of the past are not in themselves political. Rather, the process of selecting sites, objects, or practices as or for heritage renders them so. The SFRYemployed heritage to demonstrate ethnic coexistence as self-evident and deeply rooted in the traditions shared by the region’s proletariat. However, heritage was mobilized and selectively mined by a range of secessionist actors to provide a glossary of objects, images, and stages used to buttress separatist claims and strengthen notions of ‘us’ versus the ‘other(s)’ by providing ‘incontrovertible evidence’ of the depth of a group’s ‘unbroken continuity’ of existence in or claims to a particular territory (Abu El-Haj, 2001; Arnold, 1990; Diaz-Andreu & Champion, 1996; Kohl & Fawcett, 1995). There is a tendency for dominant groups in highly contested areas to favour heritage that they claim to be associated with while paying less attention to, destroying, or wilfully neglecting the legacies of ‘other’ groups—particularly those related to the latter’s claims to collective victimhood at the hands of the dominant group. For nations forged in war, armed conflict itself creates new forms of heritage—ruins of devastated cities, mass graves, and the remains of damaged religious institutions, etc. These sites are often rapidly heritagized to highlight particular narratives of war and to emphasize claims to victimhood and the political collateral it garners. Heritage management has thus often been mobilized as a vehicle to continue war by other means in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, and Serbia.

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All the successor states of the Yugoslav federation used heritage as a part of nation-building strategies. They all had to realign their Second World Warand SFRYheritage into ‘new’ national narratives. However, independence was directly connected to war only in a number of cases. Some republics broke away more peacefully. The recent conflict is therefore less present in the memory cultures of Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. However, all the nations have been affected by the war(s) even if armed conflict did not take place within their territories. Yugoslav mobilities, army or paramilitary ‘service’ and ‘messy’ demographic patterns resulted in some heritage sites being ‘orphaned’ on the ‘wrong side’ of a post-Yugoslav border. Co-ethnics residing beyond the borders of the new states have often pushed the agendas of their narod’s‘homeland’ rather than that of their ‘new’ nation. Border areas, formerly mixed cities, and iconic sites have become hotspots of contention because often ‘opposing’ heritage agendas vied for legitimization. Nationbuilding narratives rooted in the dominant narod’s heritage have been reinforced by state funds and institutional support. However, support from co-ethnics or allies beyond national borders as well as those who reject hegemonic post-Yugoslav national narratives continue to undermine and destabilize such initiatives. Moreover, heritagization has focused on particular time periods in the nation’s past that are seen as Golden Ages of either glorious antiquity (see Janev and Mattioli, this volume) or modernity (see B˘adescu, this volume), while the Yugoslav period and its modernist heritage are marginalized and effaced. The relationship between politics and heritage resulting from war or succession is not so much different from, but rather more intense and more strongly expressed than, the appropriation of ‘national’ heritage in more ‘established’ states. Viewed in this light, this volume of case studies can be seen to bring into fine relief a spectrum of ‘successor state– heritage’ relationships across the former Yugoslavia. However, several of the contributions also highlight significant regional or local variations within each respective state. The chapters in this volume examine what role heritage plays in reshaping identities at the local, regional, national, and supra-national levels. They highlight ruptures and turns in how particular pasts are understood and how identities are remade, from urban memories to minority self-representations. The book bridges work on the post-1990s conflicts with research on the Slovene/Croatian/Italian border areas and nation-building in the southern former Yugoslav republics. Consequently, it diversifies our understandings of heritage

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across a region that is often ‘reduced’ to narratives of a few iconic cases or blanket characterizations of the ‘Balkans’. Moreover, the rise of nationalism and populism in Europe makes the examination of processes of nationalization of heritage and memory in a formerly diverse federation a relevant pursuit to understand processes of identitarian mobilization in discourse and in practice.

Heritage in Conflict-Time Herzfeld (2005) stresses the role of ‘Balkan atavism’ in the dissolutionof the former Yugoslavia. Emerging from nineteenth-century teleological evolutionary thinking, the Balkans were regarded as temporally ‘frozen’, arrested, or lagging, in the linear schema of development (Todorova, 1994). The mainly rural region was located ‘outside historical time’ and beyond the order of modernity (ibid.). Such a denial of coevality spatialized time through the anthropological discipline’s fascination with the idiosyncrasies of the ‘backwardness’ of the Balkans (Fabian, 1983). The region was seen to be doomed to ‘in-betweenness’ (Todorova, 1994). This discourse fit Cold War narratives as a non-aligned Yugoslavia attempted to negotiate between the respective blocs. Lavrence coined the term ‘Balkan time’ to describe the violent and cyclical memory of the Balkans against the sequential and universal history of Europe (2004, p. 244). The term suggests that the region has become ‘fixated with ever more distant pasts’ (ibid., p. 245). For some, such a pathological temporality is at the root of the post-Tito conflicts. The problem with such a reading is that the restorative and nostalgic discourse about earlier wars is read as symptomatic of an unbroken pre-modern memory (ibid.). For Allcock (2000), it is not so much that people in the region are locked into past patterns of behaviour, but rather that such patterns provide templates that are reactivated under specific conditions. Linear and progressive formulations of time mask the often painful, difficult, and complicated processes of transformation that occur in the wake of armed conflict. They suggest that ‘wartime is always followed by peacetime, and therefore that an essential aspect of wartime is that it is temporary’ (Dudziak, 2012, p. 1). However, on the frontier between competing empires, nations, and Cold War adversaries, clear dividing lines between war and peace in the former Yugoslavia are decidedly difficult to discern. Renewed hostilities create ‘short circuits’ to memories of earlier

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wars through specific forms of enunciation of temporality that actualize these earlier events (Mazzucchelli, this volume). Some heritage in the former Yugoslavia has entered a latent phase of quiescence (Standard, 2019) in which its historic or aesthetic value supersedes its contemporary political value (see Frykman, 2006, this volume). However, other contexts highlight not only that some heritage has been mobilized in ways that render it ‘dissonant’ (Tunbridge & Ashworth, 1996) and often ‘difficult’ (Macdonald, 2010), but also in some places as a contributor to the continuation of war by other means (B˘adescu, 2016, 2019a; Baillie, 2013a; Bevan, 2007; Gusic, 2019; Mazzucchelli, 2013; Sørensen & Viejo-Rose, 2015; Viejo-Rose, 2011). Several chapters in this book examine how heritagization can become one of several intertwined processes for the production and negotiation of ‘conflict-time’ (Baillie, 2013). This term bypasses normative temporal differentiations of wartime and peacetime by looking at the malleable, transformative nature of conflict and its impact on the conditions of society. It denotes a temporal context characterized by the projection of armed conflict into symbolic or structural forms of violence underpinned by revanchism and resentment. It designates a time in which antagonistic encounters with the ‘other’ outweigh agonistic engagements.

Heritagization as Semiotic Battlefield Synchronous narratives about the past are intrinsically ‘conflictual’. In the commemorative arena of conflict-time, contested narratives emerge from antagonisms among actual and evoked symbolic landscapes that underpin clashing identities through territorial marking practices and significant uses of space (Mazzucchelli, this volume). Although armed conflict may have ceased, ‘peace’, defined as more than the absence of physical violence, remains elusive. In conflict-time, heritage is a semiotic battlefield. ‘War heritage’ (Sørensen & Viejo-Rose, 2015) is both the heritage of war as well as a semiotic war about heritage, about what should be considered as such. But this battle extends outside the boundaries of the ‘heritage domain’ and involves other—cultural, social, political—spheres as well. Indeed, although ‘difficult heritage’ (Macdonald, 2010) is related to collective traumas (on traumatic heritage, see Violi, 2017) and memories of political violence, it would be wrong to think that what is at stake is just related to the needs of commemoration or the processes of construction

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of a collective memory. Instead, heritage becomes a layered and articulated discursive space (see, e.g., Smith, 2006 on heritage as discourse), in which contrasting values, actors, narratives, and ideologies meet, clash, and battle for the domain of the ‘heritage field’. This idea recalls immediately the concept of field by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1984, 1993): as with Bourdieu’s field, heritage is a stratified and interconnected system characterized by structural relations of power. It produces dominant and dominated positions. Drawing on Michel Foucault and his notion of discourse (1972), one could also describe heritage as a discursive practice through which ideological formations, systems of power and legitimated subjectivities are produced. But heritage, as a discourse, manifests itself through peculiar ‘expressive substances’. In this volume we focus on three distinct scales of expressive substances that we regard as salient foci for contestation: the urban—high density contact zones and centres of power; borders—where synchronous visions of the past abound, and monuments, memorials, and museums that serve as nodes of (re)heritagization. Such a discursive approach allows us to avoid solely equating heritage with its materiality and to look instead at the cultural, ideological, and semiotic systems that produce it, and to observe the ‘cultural grammars’ that translate it in space and time. Heritage, as discourse, shapes and colonizes space, transforming political geographies into symbolic landscapes. It also determines the (a)synchronization of different timelines, diverse ‘chronotopes’ (Bakhtin, 1981) that coexist in reciprocal translation. This implies that heritage is characterized by competition over conflicting definitions of what should be considered as such, and contrasting ideas about how it should be preserved, transmitted, and valorized. The result of this battling is the production of many synchronous ‘heritage discourses’ with varying political and cultural weights. This feature, which generally characterizes heritage all the time, intensifies in the prelude to, during, and after war. Cultural systems are characterized by a dialectic between staticism and dynamism, processes of continuity and sudden ‘cultural explosions’ (Lotman, 2004). Sometimes, in ‘explosive’ moments, the accepted symbolic order can be subverted and totally reconfigured through interactions with new languages and discourses. The wars of the 1990s were an explosive moment in which not just a political system, but a whole symbolic and cultural structure collapsed. What happened next? To what extent did the new symbols relate (even if only through rejection) to the

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old ones? How did the war (and all the ‘discursive formations’ that led to it, nationalist discourses above all) continue to be impressed into post-war symbols, landscapes, and practices? The dissolution and emersion out of war of a new ‘semiotic order’ is at the centre of this book. It examines the ‘process of normalization’ of new emerging heritages and the reactivation of latent conflicts by heritagization. This idea is cogently expressed again by Foucault (2003), who proposes the reversal of Clausewitz’s aphorism: it is politics that is the continuation of war by other means, and not the opposite, as Clausewitz postulated. The order resulting from war is ‘silently inscribed’ (see Montanari, 2020) into every aspect of the socio-politico-cultural order emerging from war. Our choice to study heritage in, of, and impacted by conflict and contested nation-building is aimed precisely at identifying the preceding forms of war as they are incorporated and translated into the materiality of monuments, cities, and landscapes. Similarly, traces of past conflicts are still inscribed in the symbolic landscape of this region, reactivated by today’s politics. For instance, current discussions about migration and Islam in Europe as an ‘explosive moment’ coincide with the coexistence in the Balkan region of both a local Islam, and local narratives of the ‘defenders’ of Christianity. This exists in narratives (see Zeˇcevi´c, this volume), as well as in borderlands, which are both historical and discursive fields. Refugees today pass through the historical military frontier (Vojna krajina or Militärgrenze), the strip of land used to protect the Habsburg Monarchy (and later the Austro-Hungarian Empire) from the Ottoman Empire (Damjamovi´c, 2019). It was not a demarcation line, but a borderland, a territory with a ‘thickness’, an inhabited buffer zone of defence, but of osmosis as well. There are then many reasons to consider this border not simply as a geopolitical line, but as a ‘culturally profuse’ zone, with a specific ‘semiotic density’. It demonstrates how borders are not mere demarcations on a map, but cultural translating devices in which identities and memories stratify and ‘dialogue’ among each other in space and in time (see, e.g., Calic, 2018; Todorova, 1994). One must question the consequences of narrowing such a ‘thick’ border to an increasingly hard line, as exemplified by Croatia’s increasingly guarded border as it seeks admission into Schengen. In conflict-time people struggle to make sense of the tortuous experience of war. In an era in which truth is slippery, heritagization has become

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a means of processing the past. However, the persistence of the production and consumption of competing synchronous pasts can leave people stuck in conflict-time. Until protagonists can look beyond the simple categorizations that conflict-time perpetuates, by committing to seeing how others understand the past, it will remain difficult to move towards peacetime norms. The semiotic approaches explored above are one of the lenses that contributors explore in this volume, but an attention to the meaning of heritage, its construction, and transformation emerges in all of the chapters.

Architecture of the Book Synchronous Pasts analyses heritage as a field of resignification in the dynamic processes of nation-building while exploring the persistence of regional and transnational memories in the republics of former Yugoslavia. Its 13 chapters discuss heritage using a variety of scales and lenses: from architectural objects to urban space, from tangible to intangible heritage, from national narratives to minority perspectives, from memory entrepreneurs to reception by diverse publics. It brings together senior and early career researchers, as well as scholars from the post-Yugoslav space and abroad, to advance our understanding of the region and its heritage-making. It aims to encompass a diversity of approaches, including potentially controversial stances, creating an agonistic space of debate. Its geographic breadth extends to all the former Yugoslav republics and discusses how the legacy of Yugoslavia has been transformed and remembered. Two of the successor republics have more representation, as they provide the opportunity for reflection on a wider array of themes. As such, the chapters referring to Croatia and to Bosnia and Herzegovina include discussions of heritage of former Yugoslavia in relationship to post-socialism, the Second World Warand the 1990s wars, as well as to processes of population change and forced migration. Most chapters are dedicated to specific republics, while two discuss transnational, border processes, and one compares museums in the three successor republics. The chapters discuss processes on a variety of scales—from cities (Belgrade, Sarajevo, Mostar, Vukovar, Skopje) to regions (the borderlands of Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia; rural Croatia), from religious buildings to museums.

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The perspective of this book is more focused on ‘discursive formations’, memory narratives, and critiquing ideological constructs underlying heritage rather than on a reified notion of it. This justifies our choice to consider not just ‘conventional heritage’, but also its plural (and conflicting) manifestations at different scales. This also explains our choice to divide the volume into three discrete and yet overlapping sections: Remaking the Urban; Rebordering Memory; and (Re)Membering: Monuments, Memorials, and Museums. All explore the connections between time and space in the shifting realm of the former Yugoslavia. The first section, ‘Remaking the urban’, focuses on processes of heritage-reshaping and memorialization at the scale of the city. Containing dense assemblages of heritage, cities are spaces in which multiple histories are intertwined, with the architect Aldo Rossi talking of the city as a locus of collective memory (Rossi, 1966). In cities that experienced war first-hand, some of the starkest continuities of war in peace are located. Here, the most entrenched divisions, highest levels of contestation, and primary fault lines of intergroup conflict are found (Bollens, 2012; Gusic, 2019; Mazzucchelli, 2010; Pullan & Baillie, 2013; Risti´c & Frank, 2019). Through the lens of urban space, the chapters in this section examine heritage and memory processes in relationship to heritage professionals and city makers, political figures, as well as local populations. The section discusses heritage processes in three cities that were affected by the wars of the 1990s: Sarajevo (Musi), Mostar (Makaš), and Belgrade (B˘adescu). Moreover, the section examines an urban reconstruction process unrelated to wars, but emblematic of the post-Yugoslav nation-building process, through the chapter on protest movements in Skopje. Janev and Mattioli examine the Skopje 2014 project that substituted the city’s socialist modernist landscape with an architectural makeover aimed at glorifying the Macedonian nation. They focus on the protests against these plans, discussing the limits of affective politics connected to urban space and heritage. The reframing of heritage is central also in B˘adescu’s chapter on Belgrade, which discusses how the built heritage of both Royal and Socialist Yugoslavia has been either symbolically reassigned as Serbian national heritage or marginalized. Moreover, the endurance of war legacies in the urban landscape, a war heritage of ruins, has served to sustain a narrative of victimhood. The continuities of war in urban space are also a focus of the chapters

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on Mostar and Sarajevo. Musi’s chapter examines monuments in Sarajevo dedicated to the recent conflict, interrogating whether this process of memorialization contributes to moulding the image of a multicultural city or fosters accounts of nation-building forged in war. Makaš’s chapter on Mostar shows that the reconstruction of heritage has continued to be deeply embedded in contemporary Bosnian identity politics, discussing how a ‘double minority’ syndrome has led to different understandings of multicultural heritage. The chapters underline the dichotomy between top-down and bottom-up processes in the making of heritage, with resistance to imposed tropes a special theme in the section. In ‘Rebordering memory’, the focus is on boundaries, both material and symbolic. ‘Transition’ and ‘in-between’ spaces, in which narratives, identities, and heritages overlap and intersect (and often conflict), represent the fil rouge connecting the chapters in this section. Borders are considered not only as political entities but especially as symbolic processes. Drawing on disciplines such as anthropology (Hayden et al., 2016), history (Klabjan, 2018), semiotics (Lotman, 1990), visual ethnography (Pink, 2007), architectural and urban theory (Herscher, 2010), and cultural geography (especially critical border studies, cf. Dahlman & Toal, 2011), this section examines borders both as processes of territorialization and as the result of practices of belonging/othering. Both practices of division and of coping with a troubled past are highlighted in the contributions. In Mazzucchelli’s chapter, border zones are navigated as narrative fractures of divided memoryscapes throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina and the former Yugoslavia. Altin and Minca’s chapter explores the spatiotemporal fixtures of everyday life and intangible heritage within the Italian-Slovenian-Croatian borderlands. The same border is investigated from a different standpoint in Klabjan’s chapter that analyses new attitudes towards Yugoslav heritage in border cities. Hayden and Kati´c ’s contribution probes the antagonistic materialities shaped by religiously nationalizing the landscape through new and old sacral buildings in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Finally, Legner and Bravalieri examine the fissures between Serbian and Albanian heritage in Kosovo, discussing both general processes in the young state, as well as bordering practices of heritage in the city of Mitrovica. The final section, ‘(Re)Membering: Monuments, Memorials and Museums’ examines how memory-making (remembering) uses heritage for nation-building, (membering) and to perpetuate conflict-time or move towards a form of peace that is acceptable to the dominant group.

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The section primarily probes heritage related to Socialist Yugoslavia and the memory of the Second World War (Partisan memorials, museums of the revolution), and memorial infrastructure related to the recent wars of the 1990s, but also questions how monuments related to older histories are being reinterpreted today. The chapters in this section argue that heritage remains ‘unsettled’ in the post-Yugoslav space because of the impacts of multiple wars and shifting power configurations over the last 100 years and beyond. Zeˇcevi´c ’s chapter demonstrates how heritage management in Montenegro, although not itself an arena of armed conflict in the 1990s, remains impacted by these wars. The chapter explores how the conservation of a burial site damaged during the First World Warremains contested over one hundred years later. He asserts that in Montenegro national imperatives interface with 1990s wartime narratives from beyond its borders. Jagdhuhn and Frykman’s chapters highlight the similarities and differences in approaches to Second World Warheritage within a single state and across national borders. Jagdhuhn examines the divergent trajectories of Yugoslav era war museums in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Croatia after the dissolutionof Yugoslavia. Frykman’s chapter expands upon variations in Croatia arguing that in areas directly affected by the wars of the 1990s Yugoslav era monuments are highly contested whereas in spaces beyond the ‘warzones’ they have been ‘bracketed’—placed in waiting mode, and thus deprived of their initial intentions. Baillie’s chapter concludes the volume by exploring how memorials to the Croatian War of Independencekeep the city-cumbattlefield of Vukovar in ‘conflict-time’, in which battles for different forms of peace are waged through the mobilization of synchronous pasts. Through these subsections and individual chapters, this volume aims to contribute to the distribution of knowledge about and experiences with heritage within the successor states of the former Yugoslavia. Collectively, the individual contributions provide insight into some of the diversity as well as the similarities found across the region through the lens of heritage. The chapters also seek to contribute to ongoing debates by unsettling romanticized assumptions that time and ‘past-mastering’ (Meskell, 2002) can heal all wounds.

Note 1. For a detailed analysis of the two Yugoslavias, see Lampe (2000), Ramet (2006), and Calic (2018). For discussions on the reasons and unfolding of

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breakup, see Liotta (2001), Ramet (2002, 2005), Jovi´c (2009), and Bieber et al. (2016).

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Fridman, O. (2016). Memories of the 1999 NATO Bombing in Belgrade, Serbia. Südosteuropa, 64(4), 438–459. https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2016-0041 Frykman, J. (2006). Bracketing, in O. Löfgren & R. Wilk (ed.), Off the Edge: Experiments in Cultural Analysis, pp. 47–52. Museum Tusculanum Press. Gamboni, D. (2001). World heritage: Shield or target? Getty newsletter, 16(2). www.getty.edu/conservation/publications/newsletters/16_2/feature.html Graham, B. (2002). Heritage as knowledge: Capital or culture? Urban Studies (edinburgh, Scotland), 39(5–6), 1003–1017. https://doi.org/10.1080/004 20980220128426 Gusic, I. (2019). Contesting peace in the postwar city: Belfast. Springer. Harrison, R. (2013). Heritage: Critical approaches. Routledge. Hausler, K. Bongard, P., & Lostal, M. (2019). 20 Years of the second protocol to the 1954 Hague convention for the protection of cultural property in armed conflict: Have all the gaps been filled? Blog of the European Journal of International Law. https://www.ejiltalk.org/20-years-of-the-second-pro tocol-to-the-1954-hague-convention-for-the-protection-of-cultural-propertyin-armed-conflict-have-all-the-gaps-been-filled/ Hayden, R. M., Bowman, G., Golubovi´c, Z., Jezernik, B., Krti, L., Lahiri, N., Paddayya, K., van der Veer, P., Vuini, V., Wolfe, T., & Baki´c-Hayden, M. (2016). Antagonistic tolerance: Competitive sharing of Religious sites and wider spaces. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315642079 Herscher, A. (2010). Violence taking place the architecture of the Kosovo conflict. Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/978080477 6226 Herzfeld, M. (2005). Cultural intimacy. Social poetics in the nation-state. Routledge. Jovi´c, D. (2009). Yugoslavia: A state that withered away. Purdue University Press. Klabjan, B. (2018). Borderlands of memory. Peter Lang. Kohl, P. L., & Clare‚ F. (1995). Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology. Cambridge University Press. Lampe, J. R. (2000). Yugoslavia as history: Twice there was a country. Cambridge University Press. Lavrence, C. (2004). Beyond balkan time: Memory, monument and agency in Belgrade (Unpublished PhD thesis). York University. Liotta, P. H. (2001). Dismembering the state: The death of Yugoslavia and why it matters. Lexington Books. Lotman, J. M. (1990). Universe of the mind: A semiotic theory of culture. I.B. Tauris. Lotman, J. M. (2004). Culture and explosion. De Gruyter-Mouton. Macdonald, S. (2010). Difficult heritage: Negotiating the Nazi past in Nuremberg and beyond. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203888667

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Mazzucchelli, F. (2010). Urbicidio: Il senso dei luoghi tra distruzioni e ricostruzioni nella ex Jugoslavia. Bononia University Press. Mazzucchelli, F. (2013). (Post-)urbicide: Reconstruction and ideology in former Yugoslavia cities. In R. G. Miranda & F. Zullo (Eds.), Post-conflict reconstructions: Re-mapping and reconciliations (pp. 379–401). Critical, Cultural and Communication Press. Merryman, J. H. (1986). Two ways of thinking about cultural property. The American Journal of International Law, 80(4), 831–853. https://doi.org/ 10.2307/2202065 Meskell, L. (2002). Negative Heritage and Past Matering in Archaeology. Anthropological Quarterley, 75(3), pp. 557–574. Moll, N. (2013). Fragmented memories in a fragmented country: Memory competition and political identity-building in today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nationalities Papers, 41(6), 910–935. https://doi.org/10.1080/00905992. 2013.768220 Montanari, F. (2020). The new narrative form of post-conflicts: New wars as world-wide war. In C. Demaria (Ed.), Post-conflict cultures: A reader (pp. 49– 66). Critical. O’Keefe, R. (2006). The protection of cultural property in armed conflict. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511494260 O’Keefe, R. (2015). International criminal law. Oxford University Press. Obradovi´c-Wochnik, J. (2013). Ethnic conflict and war crimes in the Balkans the narratives of denial in post-conflict Serbia. I.B. Tauris. https://doi.org/10. 5040/9780755619603 Pavlakovi´c, V., & Paukovi´c, D. (2019). Framing the nation and collective identities: Political rituals and cultural memory of the twentieth-century traumas in Croatia. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315145730 Petrovi´c, T. (2013). The past that binds us: Yugonostalgia as the politics of the future. In S. Pavlovi´c & M. Živkovi´c (Eds.), Transcending fratricide (pp. 129– 148). Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft. Pink, S. (2007). Doing visual ethnography: Images, media and representation in research. Sage. Pullan, W., & Baillie, B. (2013). Locating urban conflicts: Ethnicity, nationalism and the everyday. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978 1137316882 Ramet, S. P. (2005). Thinking about Yugoslavia: Scholarly debates about the Yugoslav breakup and the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492136 Ramet, S. P. (2013). Memory and identity in the Yugoslav successor states. Routledge. Ramet, S. P. (2002). Balkan babel: The disintegration of Yugoslavia from the death of Tito to the fall of Miloševi´c. Westview.

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Ramet, S. P. (2006). The three Yugoslavias: State-building and legitimation, 1918– 2005. Indiana University Press. Riedlmayer, A. J. (2008). The destruction of cultural heritage in BosniaHerzegovina, 1992–1996: A post-war survey of selected municipalities. Forum Bosnae, 46, 146–173. Risti´c, M. (2018). Architecture, urban space and war. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76771-0 Risti´c, M., & Frank., S. (2019). Urban heritage in divided cities: Contested pasts. Routledge. Rossi, A. (1966). The architecture of the city. Peter Eisenman. Smith, L. (2006). Uses of heritage. Routledge. Sokoli´c, I. (2019). International courts and mass atrocity: Narratives of war and justice in Croatia. Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90841-0 Sørensen, M. L. S., & Viejo-Rose, D. (2015). War and Cultural Heritage. C. Hurst & Co. Standard, M. G. (2019). The leopard, the lion and the cock: Colonial memories and monuments in Belgium. Leuven University Press. Suboti´c, J. (2009). Hijacked justice dealing with the past in the Balkans. Cornell University Press. Todorova, M. (1994). The Balkans: From discovery to invention. Slavic Review, 53(2), 453–482. https://doi.org/10.2307/2501301 Tunbridge, J. E., & Ashworth, G. J. (1996). Dissonant heritage: The management of the past as a resource in conflict. John Wiley & Sons. Viejo-Rose, D. (2011). Reconstructing Spain: Cultural heritage and memory after civil war. Sussex Academic Press. Violi, P. (2017). Landscapes of memory: Trauma, space, history. Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/b10991 Vrdoljak, A. F. (2007). Intentional destruction of cultural heritage and international law. In K. Koufa (Ed.), Multiculturalism and international law (pp. 377–396). Sakkoulas Publications. Walasek, H., Carlton, R., Hadžimuhamedovi´c, A., Perry, V., & Wik, T. (2015). Bosnia and the destruction of cultural heritage. Ashgate. Walsh, K. (1992). Representation of the past: Museums and heritage in the postmodern world. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203320570 Waterton, E., & Watson, S. (2010). Culture, heritage and representation: Perspectives on visuality and the past. Ashgate.

PART I

Remaking the Urban

CHAPTER 2

Beyond Yugoslavia: Reshaping Heritage in Belgrade Gruia B˘adescu

For more than 20 years, the ruins of the Generalštab complex in Belgrade have been photographed, stared at, and discussed as the subject of many rumours. The twin buildings of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army and the Ministry of Defence of Yugoslavia dominate the wide Nemanjina avenue that connects Belgrade’s train station to one of its main squares. The dramatic pair of ruined modernist buildings of brick and marble reminds Belgrade residents and visitors alike of the 1999 NATO bombings. As one of the final acts of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, the NATO operation targeted a selection of government and military buildings in Belgrade and elsewhere in Serbia. After 1999, the bombed buildings of Belgrade were subject to various approaches. Around Nemanjina, the historicist pre-1945 government buildings in the vicinity of the Generalštab, including the Serbian government building, have been carefully reconstructed. In contrast, the modernist Generalštab

G. B˘adescu (B) University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. B˘adescu et al. (eds.), Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2_2

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Fig. 2.1 The modernist Generalštab in ruins and the reconstructed historicist Government building on Belgrade’s Nemanjina avenue (Photo © Gruia B˘adescu)

remains in ruins (Fig. 2.1). The Ministry of Defence, which administers the complex, has even gradually dismantled parts of the buildings. The government’s vision for it has involved various iterations of a real-estate project, with potential private buyers including the American businessman and future President Donald Trump, and a Sheik from the Emirates. At the time of writing, however, its fate is still uncertain. The post-1999 fate of the government buildings along Nemanjina highlights four threads that, to some extent, mirror heritage processes in Belgrade as a whole and that will be explored in this chapter: first, the capital of Serbia has become an arena of nation-building that favours pre-1945 heritage; second, post1945 modernism and its Yugoslav connotations have been marginalized; third, the withdrawal of the state and the neoliberalization of city-making have had an impact, particularly on the modernist heritage; and, finally, the legacies and meanings of the wars in the former Yugoslavia have

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become blurred, with the heritage of war itself waiting indefinitely for a vision.

Introducing Belgrade’s Heritage For most of the twentieth century, Belgrade was both the capital of Serbia and of Yugoslavia. This political condition had an important impact on its built environment, architectural heritage, and heritage policies. Belgrade started the century as a capital of the Serbian kingdom, as a city that had undergone a rapid, comprehensive urban overhaul after the withdrawal of Ottoman troops in 1867. The city walls had been pulled down, the mosques—bar one—had been destroyed, and new, ‘European’-style buildings were being constructed frenetically by new entrepreneurs, both as an exercise in money-making and in national capital-building (Jovanovi´c, 2013; Stojanovi´c, 2008). Among the CentralEuropean-inspired buildings—with Austria-Hungary just across the Sava and the Danube from old Belgrade—attempts at a national style that echoed the medieval Serb monasteries and the Byzantine tradition also emerged in the city, therein shaping a Serbo-Byzantine style. Arriving before the First World War, Le Corbusier reputedly was not impressed with the overall cityscape, finding the makeover messy, unimaginative, and cheap. He had expected, with typical orientalist glasses, ‘the gates of the Orient’ to have been full of colour and atmosphere (Corbusier et al., 1987; Kuli´c, 2009). The architectural historian Ljiljana Blagojevi´c (2003, pp. x–xi) describes Belgrade as something that had not been sufficiently demolished, nor sufficiently reconstructed... the city constructed on a feudal foundation with an American speed and in chaotic Balkan ways... a violent clash of different size buildings and conflicting architectural styles, ranging from poor and modes representatives of the Beaux-Arts tradition, Viennese secession, and Italian or French Renaissance to the popular Serbian-Byzantine style.

While the former Ottoman Belgrade was rewritten as a new city, modern Serbia was taking significant interest in what cultural and political elites saw as national heritage. The first inventory of heritage in modern Serbia took place in 1836 (before Belgrade became a capital in 1841), with the Regulation on Antiquities and Monuments Protection adopted in 1844, reputedly among the first of such legal acts in Europe. In Serbia, most

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of the attention to heritage was focused on the protection of medieval churches and monasteries. This trend continued after the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in 1918, with a committee established in 1923 for the maintenance and restoration of churches and monasteries (Ðuki´c et al., 2016). After 1918, Belgrade’s architectural landscape and heritage policy framework changed further, as it became capital of the First Yugoslavia (1918–1941) and then the Second Yugoslavia (1945–1992), ruling— under different arrangements—lands from the Vardar to the Triglav. As the capital of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (after 1929 Yugoslavia), Belgrade grew very fast. Shantytowns lined the edges of its tentacular avenues, while more ambitious architecture adorned its centre. The city was seriously affected by Austrian bombing in 1914. The new government sector named Savski Venac, around Nemanjina, was adorned with eclectic buildings in the Russian Imperial tradition, many of which had been designed by the exiled Tsarist architect Nikola(i) Krasnov. While the state was supporting these grand, stately projects, modern architecture made its entrance (Blagojevi´c, 2003). The modernist expansion was interrupted by the Nazi occupation in the Second World War, the two sessions of heavy bombing during 1941 and 1944, and then the socialist-realist turn ushered in by the new socialist regime. Nevertheless, after the Tito– Stalin split (1948), architects were able to give up socialist realism and embrace modernism again, thus aesthetically echoing their Western counterparts (Blagojevi´c, 2007; Kuli´c et al., 2012) before modernism became prevalent in the socialist-bloc countries from the 1960s onwards. In the aftermath of the Second World War, New Belgrade—an ambitious urban project that bridged former Ottoman and Habsburg lands, namely the old Ottoman/Serbian Belgrade and the Habsburg Semlin/Zemun—was built to reflect a new, socialist Yugoslavia. From the original plans of making it the administrative quarter of Federal Yugoslavia, a number of representative buildings were built, including the former Central Committee, the Executive Council (later SIV), and Hotel Jugoslavija. Nevertheless, most of New Belgrade became a residential district once constitutional changes had diminished the role of federal institutions (Mrduljaš et al., 2012). In the meantime, Old Belgrade and Zemun were also transforming through reconstruction and densification, while particular heritage sites—with architectural or historical importance from previous eras attached to them—were being restored. After the devastating war, in 1945 the Yugoslav National Liberation Committee

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adopted an act for the protection of cultural monuments. The Institute for the Protection and Scientific Research of Cultural Monuments of the People’s Republic of Serbia was created in 1947 and a federal version was created in the 1950s (Ðuki´c et al., 2016). An emphasis was placed on individual pre-war structures and sites rather than on ensembles. In 1960, a new institute was dedicated to Belgrade’s heritage—The Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of Serbia—Belgrade. From the array of architectural styles discussed above, the institute oversaw listed heritage, which included religious buildings, a number of buildings influenced by the Austro-Hungarian Secession style, as well as buildings from the modern movement of the interwar era. Yugoslavia’s disintegration and the wars of the 1990s had an impact on Belgrade’s cityscape and heritage. The capital city was significantly larger than other Yugoslav cities, and hosted more institutions and people from other republics. In 1991, however, the city started witnessing the turbulent break of Yugoslavia and an escalation of the economic crisis of the 1980s, with hyperinflation, shortages, and unrest. War kept its distance from the city, appearing only on television, while refugees were turned away at its gates. However, the city’s youth and members of the armed forces were sent to fight in familiar yet distant battlefields. Meanwhile, informal construction, already a feature in socialist times (Savelji´c, 1988), exploded on the city’s margins, while the city streets witnessed major political unrest (Jansen, 2001). It was only in 1999 that war entered Belgrade itself through the NATO bombing campaign that intended to prevent state actions and brutality in Kosovo. More than 70 targets were bombed, leading not to a destroyed cityscape as in Sarajevo or Vukovar—cities that the former Mayor of Belgrade described as victims of urbicide—but rather to eerie, isolated ruins in an otherwise bustling urban environment. In the year 2000, Miloševi´c was ousted after a popular revolt in which the parliament building was set on fire. In 2003, Belgrade was no longer the capital of Yugoslavia but of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, which was reduced in 2006 to the Republic of Serbia. Post-Miloševi´c Serbia experienced leadership by various parties and orientations, all of which reinterpreted its multifaceted heritage in multiple and diverse ways. In Serbia today, the government is responsible for the regulatory framework for heritage (laws, by-laws, ordinances, norms), with the Ministry of Culture and Information responsible for cultural heritage (Ðuki´c et al., 2016). The main heritage institution is

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the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of Serbia, headquartered in Belgrade, under the authority of the Ministry of Culture. The Law on Cultural Property that operates today originated in 1994, in the middle of the turbulent transition. As in other contexts, heritage policy and funding lie at the interface between expert opinion and political influence. At the core of these multiple political interpretations of heritage are the ongoing conflicts between visions of what Serbia is. In Belgrade, ‘conflict-time’ (Baillie, 2013) has not been based on instrumentalizing ethnic divisions, but on mobilizing societal–political divisions. Political scientists and political sociologists discuss fractures between proWestern and nationalist views, between ‘urbanites’ and parochials, and between a First and Second Serbia (Jansen, 2005; Omaljev, 2013). While after 2010, the dominant political culture has been conciliatory to many (geo)political platforms, the political culture in Serbia of the 2000s has been described as a clash between pro-Western reformists and radicalnationalist populists. The former were accused of making too many concessions to the West, and the latter were decried for their ethnocentric, victimized accounts and understandings of Serbia (Gagnon Jr., 2006; Gordy, 2013; Rossi, 2012; Thomas, 1999). This echoes the dichotomy of nineteenth-century Slavophiles versus Westernizers in Russia, and to some extent in Serbia. Polarized politicians have either clung to tradition, or jumped on the bandwagon of a vision of progress through Westernization (Milutinovi´c, 2011; Rabow-Edling, 2012). Cultural elites and the visible civil society also mirror this division, from conservative members of SANU (the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts) for whom Serbia is a victim of the West, to organizations like Women in Black or the Helsinki Committee, for whom Serbia is guilty of heinous crimes. In the middle lies a continuum of views, along which the majority of the population are situated, arguably caring more about unemployment and poverty than about the loss of Kosovo. They often reject what they regard as the radicalism of both camps (Obradovi´c-Wochnik, 2014), for which Serbia has to repent for either being the ultimate villain, or the ultimate victim. The second cleavage, significantly related but more closely connected to the city, is between the urbanite and the ‘uncultured’, i.e. a conflict between cosmopolitan and nationalist or ethnocentric values. The urbanites see themselves as Belgraders first and foremost, with an urban, cosmopolitan outlook. They fight against discrimination of all kinds, and accuse the uncultured of not understanding what urban living and urban mixing is (Konstantinovi´c, 2009). The other Serbia, however, might

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regard cosmopolitan Belgraders as traitors to the nation. More radical views have included the idea that ‘Belgrade is Tito’s whore. It considers itself Yugoslav, cosmopolitan, and democratic. The only thing it does not want to be is what it is: Serbian’ (from Srpska reˇc, 1994, in Vujovi´c, 2000) or ‘the lurching city of Belgrade, with its intellectual circles that only care about ingratiating themselves to the West, has ceased to be the capital of its own volition. It is no longer the capital in spirit’ (by Rajko Ðurd-evi´c, 1994 in Vujovi´c, 2000). Finally, the SANU member Aleksa Buha talked about the ‘spiritual wall that today divides Serbian Belgrade from non-Serbian Belgrade, just like East and West Berlin’ (Vujovi´c, 2000). These two Belgrades and the First and Second Serbia emerge as conceptual categories and imaginaries that are active in Serbia and are used to frame conflicting worldviews. Heritage is mobilized according to these frames—at its extremes, it is Serbian versus Yugoslav or a legacy of coexistence versus submission. As such, in this chapter I shall explore how heritage processes express these conflicts, looking not only at the legacy of war in Yugoslavia, but also at how the conflicts and rifts within Serbian society are rearticulated in heritage debates. This chapter will discuss how heritage processes reflect the tensions and conflicts in Serbian society and in the three main sections it will look at the interplay between the actions of public institutions and societal responses. First, the chapter discusses how heritage policies express the refocusing of political narratives around a Serbian identity. Second, it analyses how Yugoslav-era modernist heritage is marginalized by official policies, while it mobilizes parts of the professional community and civil society. This section also further examines how the heritage of war itself is silenced, evoking a lack of engagement with the recent past from many parts of society. Finally, it explores how heritage mobilizes parts of the professional community and civil society and becomes an engine of political contestation.

Refocusing Heritage: Back to Modern Serbia and Shifting Away from Yugoslavia Heritage priorities and policies in Serbia have generally illustrated the refocusing of official master narratives about the country’s past. On the one hand, there has been a continuity in heritage policies since the creation of the modern Serbian state, including in its iterations during the socialist Yugoslav era. The focus of heritage institutions, government programmes, and projects in Serbia has remained the protection

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of medieval architecture, with a more recent interest in ancient Roman sites (Ðuki´c et al., 2016). On the other hand, in post-Yugoslav Serbia, heritage has also invested in sustaining new official master narratives about the past. Post-Yugoslav Serbian official narratives highlighted selected key events in Serbia’s history that bolstered its image as an independent entity, while the Yugoslav period and its framing of the past were silenced and marginalized. Official discourse and the national calendar of holidays, symbols, and commemorations were reoriented particularly towards the period of modern Serbian nationhood (David, 2012; Fridman, 2015). The nineteenth century has been adopted by the post-Miloševi´c state as the legitimizing reference point of the nation; even the new coat of arms of Serbia is reminiscent of the nineteenth-century kingdom, as it features royal symbols, despite contemporary Serbia being a republic. A history of the Middle Ages that includes positioning Kosovo as the ‘cradle of the Serbian nation’, while an essential feature of narratives in Miloševi´c’s Serbia, was deemed too controversial in the post-Miloševi´c era (yet Kosovo’s independence has been contested by much of Serbia’s political scene). Moreover, the twentieth century’s relationships with Yugoslavia, war, fascism, and communism have not been worked through by society. Consequently, the nineteenth century was the source of the new narrative of the nation, with the simulation of a kind of continuity (Radovi´c, 2016). The attention lavished on particular events and their associated heritage has fluctuated, depending on the political framework. For instance, during the government of Vojislav Kostunica (prime minister from 2004 to 2008), an outspoken conservative anti-Western and anti-communist politician, most funds were allocated to medieval Orthodox monuments (Vos, 2011) predominantly located outside of Belgrade. In the capital itself, attention was directed at renovating historic religious structures, but also at supporting the completion or the construction of new religious buildings. For instance, the construction of the St Sava temple, the largest Orthodox structure in the world, began in 1930 but was interrupted by the Second World War and the first decades of communism; it recommenced in the 1980s, and has been ongoing to this day (Fig. 2.2). Its Byzantine, Hagia Sophia-inspired architectural plan is strikingly different from Serbia’s Patriarchal Church, built in the nineteenth century in the Baroque-inspired style typical of Serb churches in Habsburg Vojvodina (Fig. 2.3). St Sava’s impact on the cityscape, situated at the centre of an important public space, is to fix a Byzantine-Orthodox identity

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Fig. 2.2 Saint Sava Temple, expression of the Byzantine style (Photo © Gruia B˘adescu)

to the city and the nation (Panteli´c, 2016). Furthermore, contemporary Serbian religious architecture, which includes new churches in the formerly churchless New Belgrade, all follow Byzantine forms, ignoring the various historic precedents for the construction of Orthodox churches in the territories inhabited by Serbs. While Orthodox heritage is celebrated in principle, a limited array of repertoires has been invested with relevance and inspiration for contemporary Serbia. The heritage of the nineteenth century has also been a focus of attention, renovation programmes, and events. The official discourse connects the post-2000 Serbian state with the modernizing, European, nineteenthcentury Serbia (Fridman, 2015). Its beginnings are celebrated, and its historical figures loom large in contemporary memory practices. Take, for instance, the regular Coffee with Princess Ljubica event, organized weekly by the Museum of the City of Belgrade at Princess Ljubica’s Residence. Built in 1829–1830 as a residence of the wife of Miloš Obrenovi´c, the

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Fig. 2.3 The slender profile of the Patriarchal Church, influenced by the Vojvodina Baroque style. In the background, the socialist-era buildings of New Belgrade and Zemun can be seen, the latter formerly a border town of Austria-Hungary (Photo © Gruia B˘adescu)

first prince of modern Serbia, the mansion signalled the beginning of the transition from Ottoman architecture to a European model. It displayed Western influences in the façades (pilasters and arch endings), roofs, as well as some elements of interior design. The event itself weaves together narratives of the early independent Serbia. A curator of the Belgrade City Museum dressed in an early nineteenth-century costume meets the guests and tells the story of the beginning of the modern Serbian state as well as details about the private life of the Obrenovi´c family, while sharing coffee and Turkish delight. Serbia’s multiple heritages, of Balkan coffee and Westernizing influences, are weaved together in an evocative event for locals and visitors alike. Belgrade’s identity is thus weaved as syncretic, as a meeting place of cultures, but unmistakably a place where the modern Serbian identity is forged. Similarly, Belgrade’s tourist repertoire is now

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focused on nineteenth-century cultural life, on the Bohemian quarter of Skadarlija, of the National Museum—which underwent an extensive renovation—and of the pulsating Belle Époque quarter around the city’s main pedestrian street leading up to the Kalemegdan Fortress. The latter, arguably the city’s most celebrated heritage site, fixes Belgrade’s role as a strategic place between empires. It houses, among other things, a military museum with the national narrative displayed through war artefacts, and two reconstructed churches that signal the continuity of Serbian Orthodoxy in the largely Turkish-built citadel. The Kalemegdan Fortress includes references to various other events and moments in the city’s history—a Partisan monument, a statue emblematic of the unification after the First World War, a monument dedicated to France. It weaves together historical threads, but above all sustains the narrative of the city as a place of continual meeting and continual struggle. Overall in the old town, Belgrade’s heritage of early modernity is mobilized, cherished, and enacted by events, policies, and everyday practices in ways not dissimilar to other old towns in Europe, weaving cosmopolitanism, local traditions, and a tale of becoming modern. Belgrade’s other heritage of modernity—the post-1945 modernity of the Second Yugoslavia—is harder to weave into the national narrative. One telling example is the Federal Executive Council (Savezno izvršno ve´ce – SIV) in New Belgrade, an important building during the socialist Yugoslavia. The reconfigurations of SIV—of its architecture, its interior design, and even its name, all mirror the transformations of the state. Originally, SIV was planned to be built according to a 1947 project by Vladimir Potoˇcnjak’s team, applying socialist-realist patterns in line with Moscow’s dominant style, situating Yugoslavia firmly in the Eastern Bloc. However, the architectural design changed during the building’s first decade, reflecting a shift in Yugoslavia’s geopolitical position. The project was frozen after the Tito–Stalin split of 1948, and recommenced following a modernist reiteration by Mihailo Jankovi´c. This underlined a reorientation towards the West and its modernism. Subsequently, its hybridity mirrored Yugoslavia’s non-alignment but ultimately also the inbetweenness between the two camps (Kuli´c et al., 2012; Mrduljaš et al., 2012). The renaming of the building reflected the state’s political changes. In the early years of a strong, federal government in Belgrade, the building was originally dedicated to hosting the presidency of the Yugoslav government. However, after changes in the federal framework leading

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to decentralization, it became the seat of the Federal Executive Council (SIV). Following the conflicts of the 1990s, the building became the seat of the government of the FRY, then the seat of the Council of Ministers of Serbia and Montenegro, before having its name changed to the Palace of the Federation or the Palace of Serbia and Montenegro. With Montenegro’s declaration of independence in 2006, Belgrade became ‘only’ the capital of the Republic of Serbia, and the building was renamed the Palace of Serbia. While the change in name reflected a complete refocusing from its Yugoslav past to the state of Serbia, its architectural and interior-design heritage remained, thus evoking the Yugoslav past. SIV’s interior decorations famously included salons dedicated to all the republics, and a central room accommodating around 2000 people, which bears the name the Hall of Yugoslavia, alongside roughly a thousand offices.1 Close to the entrance, in the anteroom of the Hall of Yugoslavia, a panoramic mural depicts a battle with the Yugoslav Partisans fighting against both the Nazi occupation and local nationalists. The mural thus brings attention to the central symbol of socialist Yugoslavia: the Partisan struggle as liberation from fascism and resulting ultimately in a socialist revolution. The hall itself contains a mosaic of the Partisans, abstract expressionist paintings by Petar Lubarda, and a naive painting of Yugoslavia by Lazar Vujaklija, in which the state is depicted as the centre of the non-aligned world. Next to the hall stand the salons of the various Yugoslav republics, very different in style and approach, from a Croatian salon containing abstract art, to a Macedonian salon styled like a mehana, a traditional Balkan restaurant. The Serbian salon, one of six, includes carpets featuring the wheat fields and monasteries in Kosovo. After the name change to the Palace of Serbia, the building, administered by the Government of Serbia, gained a curator, Slavomir Andjeli´c. The curator has reputedly insisted that the interior must be preserved to reflect the original design, including 1960s–1970s furniture. According to Andjeli´c, following his own recommendation, the only changes allowed would be occasional repairs and restoration of furniture, which would preserve the same chairs that were used in various political meetings and at international conferences, for instance the 1961 First Conference of Non-Aligned Countries. Idiosyncratic carpets and chandeliers, which blend abstract expressionism with local motifs, still stand. Nevertheless, throughout the rooms, various insertions of his own or others’ work have highlighted various Serbian national symbols amidst the various republic-oriented salons: there is a portrait of Nikola Tesla in

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Fig. 2.4 Religious paintings inserted in the Serbian salon of the socialist-era SIV (Photo © Gruia B˘adescu)

one salon, and a copy of an icon from a monastery in Kosovo in another. The Partisan battle mural at the entrance is flanked today by statues of two Serbian national heroes who were inserted in 1998. At the sight of

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these insertions (Fig. 2.4), the reactions by the Serbian group of visitors, architects, and artists were mixed. They echoed accusatory tropes that parochial, nation-centric attitudes are currently limiting the worldly, cosmopolitan allure of the building. Visits are rare and accompanied by a security check, which means that the six salons of the republics and the stories and meanings they may evoke are confined behind the imposing façade of a building identified as the Palace of Serbia.

Disappearing Architecture? Modernism, Between Heritage and the Abject Alongside SIV and a luxury hotel, one part of the originally planned triad in New Belgrade was the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (CK) building. Its post-1999 reconstruction into the Uš´ce office tower and a shopping mall transformed the site from one emblematic of the socialist Yugoslavia into one that represents the new capitalist, consumerist economy. Originally built in 1964 as a modernist tower, it was another instance of a building that signified Yugoslavia’s Western leanings and the state’s distance from the Soviet camp, with its socialist-realist-style administrative buildings of the 1950s. CK’s structure mimicked American skyscrapers, but instead of glass and steel, it used aluminium-coated concrete due to constraints in both the budget and construction skills (Kuli´c, 2009). After the secession of other republics starting in 1991, the building became the seat of the socialist Party of Serbia, including Miloševi´c’s office, as well as of a number of state companies. In April 1999, the CK was bombed twice. Hypo Alpe Adria bank bought the ruined tower, which they rebuilt as an office building (Fig. 2.5). Adjacent to it, they constructed a large shopping mall, the Uš´ce Shopping Center. Its architect discussed the approach as being purely motivated by precepts of office architecture, without any consideration of its political past (Staniˇci´c, 2014). Milica Topalovi´c (2012) describes this reconstruction as ‘Euroremont’ (Russian for EuroRepair), a common practice throughout the Eastern Bloc used to convert older modern buildings into a contemporary, and therefore ‘European’ look. The conversion of the site from a state building reminiscent of socialist Yugoslavia’s Western leanings into a place of valiant capitalist modernity erased memory and shaped a place of amnesia: reconstruction ignored both the building´s previous function during socialism as well as its destruction during the NATO bombings.

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Fig. 2.5 The makeover of the CK building into a corporate office tower—the Uš´ce tower (Photo © Gruia B˘adescu)

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While some modernist buildings ruined during the 1999 NATO bombing were rebuilt in different styles, certain ones, such as the Generalštab, remain unreconstructed. In 2005, declarations by the Ministry of Defence that stated that they were looking to sell the site to an investor were published in the Serbian press. According to the ministry, it lacked the finances and interest needed to reconstruct the building. Fearing the destruction of the complex, the Association of Belgrade Architects (Društvo Arhitekata Beograda, DAB) initiated a process to have the Generalštab listed as a cultural monument, a status that in Serbia would allow the sale of a building and a change in its function, but that would require the preservation of its original form. The motion had the support of both the Belgrade and the National Institutes for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, as well as of a part of the architectural community. The main argument in support of this move was that the Generalštab is a very significant structure, the magnum opus of Nikola Dobrovi´c, the most celebrated Serbian modernist architect. For some, this building was itself a monument to the Second World War, as according to Dobrovi´c its design was reminiscent of the Sutjeska gorge of Bosnia, the scene of a crucial battle fought by the Yugoslav Partisans (Kuli´c, 2010). For others, echoing Dobrovi´c’s initial writings, however, the building translated Henri Bergson’s dynamic schemes as an architectural vision of space in motion, with the space between the two main parts emphasizing the potentiality for movement in space through voids (Bobi´c, 2012; Kovaˇcevi´c, 2001; Miloševi´c, 2015). In the aftermath of the 1999 bombing, the influential architect Mihajlo Mitrovi´c called for its restoration, while the Belgrade-born Viennese architect Boris Podrecca reputedly stated that the Generalštab should be the first building in the city to undergo reconstruction (Muˇcibabi´c, 2013). Declarations from the government, however, did not show the same appreciation for the building; the Minister of Defence Aleksandar Vuˇci´c commented in 2013 that he saw nothing valuable or beautiful in the Generalštab complex (SEEcult, 2013). Unimpressed by the argument made by preservationists, in 2006 the state Directorate for Property requested the removal of the complex’s protected status in order to ease its sale. According to the lawyer Taras Pani´c, deputy director of the state Directorate for Property, it was startling that the complex was listed only after it was ruined; especially as other important buildings that were bombed such as the Ministry of Interior were not (Muˇcibabi´c, 2013). By juxtaposing the modernist Generalštab with the Ministry of Interior,

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a massive structure on Kralja Milana boulevard and one of Belgrade’s few socialist-realist buildings, the declaration implies that historical importance rather than architectural value would make a building worthy of being listed, but also that post-war architecture, be it socialist realist or modernist, was somehow of the same category, broadly defined as ‘socialist’. For many in the new political establishment modernism is invested with a double form of abjection—on the one hand, an aesthetic one (e.g. that modernism is empty, ugly and geometric), on the other, the idea that modernism is tarnished as it politically represents socialism and Yugoslavia. This becomes, in Julia Kristeva (1982)’s terms, abject heritage. Modernism in Belgrade is thus symbolically recast as the abject— echoing, with local differences, the situations of the Palast der Republik in the GDR, or Soviet modernism in various republics (Diener & Hagen, 2013). Modernism is not narrated as modernity but is increasingly portrayed as the architectural expression of a past, obsolete dictatorship. According to Dubravka Sekuli´c (2014), the new political elites had to make modernism a kind of exotic Other in order to legitimize themselves. Many politicians brushed off modernism as socialist, Yugoslav, and somehow not worthy of national attention, which has led to critics calling them parochial nationalists, unrefined and uncultured. The architect Spasoje Kruni´c went as far as to declare local politicians as primitive, due to their disregard for any of the value(s) of the past, using examples not only of their stance towards the preservation of the Generalštab, but also of their foolish plans to build a Zaha Hadid tower in the immediate vicinity of the Kalemegdan Fortress, (Zgrada Generalštaba Spomenik Pam´cenju, 2013). As such, the elites’ dislike of modernist heritage is mobilized in the culture wars that separate the two (cosmopolitan/cultured and parochial/nationalist) Serbias, firmly entrenching Serbia’s own, internal ‘conflict-time’ (Baillie, 2013). The sense of disregard for modernist heritage on the part of the political elites, as well as the various modifications and demolitions witnessed over the last few years, including of sections of the Generalštab, triggered the attention of both local and international actors who suggested that Belgrade’s modernist heritage is in distress and who therefore called for its preservation. The poor state of repair of buildings like the Generalštab or the Museum of Contemporary Arts (built in 1962–1965) led to the establishment in 2011 of a national chapter of Docomomo International, an independent organization for the documentation and conservation of sites, buildings, and ensembles of the modern movement (Ðuki´c et al.,

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2016). The Belgrade Association of Architects hosts the national chapter and has organized events to disseminate the values of modern architecture to the public. The intention of the national chapter is to create a national register and include the public in various activities dedicated to the protection of post-1945 heritage. Similarly, the Cultural Heritage Preservation Institute of Belgrade launched a research programme to document and list modernist architecture throughout Belgrade, focusing initially on New Belgrade. According to its staff and affiliates, there is a consensus at the institute that architectural modernism is important heritage and that architectural quality should be the main principle of protection. There are other modernist projects that they suggest be included in the study and protection of modernist heritage, including buildings in Banjica, Zvezdara, or iconic structures such as Rudo. However, New Belgrade remains the most popular area for both expert and community initiatives regarding modernist heritage protection.2 Beyond professional debates, community initiatives have highlighted the value of modernist heritage, like the Facebook site Stare Slike Novog Beograda [Old Photos of New Belgrade]. The Generalštab also galvanized a civil society action as part of the project Kustosiranje, organized by the active civic group REX, that included debates at an event about the fate of the complex. On social media, a Facebook group titled Spasimo Generalštab od profitera (Let’s save the Generalštab from profiteers) militates against the destruction of the ruins. While the majority of calls for action were framed as heritage initiatives in the name of preserving architectural value, supported by professionals who possessed ‘expert knowledge’, there have been also initiatives that have addressed the political meaning of modernist heritage directly. Concerns over the deterioration and marginalization of modernist architecture in Serbia led the public Belgrade Cultural Centre, the organizer of the 55th Belgrade October Salon (the city’s primary cultural event since the 1960s) to organize a special architectural seminar titled ‘Disappearing Architecture’ in October 2014 together with the NGO Blokovi. Bringing together invited architects and scholars, local architecture students, and young practitioners, it aimed to highlight the challenges faced by modern architecture in Belgrade and to explore solutions. According to the organizers, ‘socialist architecture is the golden age of modernity’, with modern architecture remaining ‘the single most valuable thing that these countries, both by themselves and as Yugoslavia, ever had’. The seminar acknowledged that ‘the general public has very little liking for it’, and the deterioration of this architecture is linked to the ‘vanishing of one

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ideology and its core values’. The organizers asked whether it was possible to ‘save the architecture of one past epoch in a new political context’? While various public figures have made statements that downgrade the value of modernism,3 and while the National Institute is more concerned with pre-twentieth-century heritage, the stances and actions of the Belgrade Heritage Institute and the Belgrade Cultural Centre show that public institutions are not mere subordinates of the government. Their agency and resistance, however, is limited at times by various procedures and pressures. For instance, during the October Salon 2014, the City Hall decided to cut the budget for the organization of the 2015 Salon, making it a biennial event, which some saw as a response to conservative critiques that the October Salon had become too international, to the detriment of the role of Serbian art. The director of the Belgrade Cultural Centre, Mia David, resigned, and the debates surrounding these acts echoed the First–Second Serbia rifts that oppose the cosmopolitan, internationalist view with one centred on local artists and national identity. The abjectification of socialist-era architecture has a different dimension with regard to modernism and socialist realism. While political elites abjectify both, large sections of the cultural elites redeem modernism. Socialist modernism is increasingly celebrated by cultural elites for its architectural value but also for its meaning as an architecture that differentiated Yugoslavia from Soviet Bloc countries. As such, it can feed the pride of both nationalist and cosmopolitan outlooks. Nevertheless, the rare socialist realism, although of ‘historic’ value, is a sort of marginal, ‘abject’ heritage for which political and cultural elites alike have not expressed concern in terms of recovery or reconstruction. One of its most significant examples, the ruins of the Ministry of Interior, was cleared in 2017 (Fig. 2.6). While the interior conflict between a First and Second Serbia is mobilized and instrumentalized in the debates, references to the wars of the 1990s are less present in the discussions. The Generalštab is treated as a heritage object of modernism by some, while for the government it is presented as mere real estate. Nevertheless, as the ruins endure, they support and sustain narratives about the NATO bombings and Serbia’s narrated victimhood. For the semiotician Francesco Mazzucchelli (2010), the inertia behind rebuilding the Generalštab reflects the ambivalent attitude of state actors towards both a past of victimhood regarding the NATO bombings and responsibility for Serbia’s actions under Miloševi´c.

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Fig. 2.6 The former Ministry of Internal Affairs, bombed by NATO in 1999. Photo taken in 2014, before its demolition for redevelopment (Photo © Gruia B˘adescu)

Narrated by my interlocutors as a bureaucratic obstacle—the Generalštab site cannot be redeveloped because the buildings have been listed—the inaction surrounding the reconstruction of the Generalštab is a source of interpretations and a mnemonic trigger. Taika Baillargeon (2013) calls it a continuously ephemeral space in waiting, its temporality defining the place. Returning to the building’s original Dobrovi´c form would privilege architectural value over its memorial role. Building anew would erase the mnemonic value of ruins. However, in most debates, what is conspicuously missing is the building’s function. Up until 1999 the complex housed the institution of the army. Seen by many as a unifying pillar of the Yugoslav state (Petrovi´c, 2010), the army brought together men from various republics; it was a place of encounter and, some would say, forging of the nation. It was regarded as the most Yugoslav of institutions. For

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others, however, this was an institution dominated by Serbs, an institution that later aimed to keep the federation together through force, and even destruction—this was the army that destroyed Vukovar and assisted the war in Bosnia (Petrovi´c, 2010). Consequently, the Generalštab ruins are not only modernist heritage, but heritage of the wars in the former Yugoslavia that were influenced by the decisions taken in the building. This state of waiting is also a state of waiting to fully discuss the meanings and narratives of the NATO bombing, the responsibilities and the recent past that is now obfuscated (David, 2014).

Heritage and Social Movements---Savamala and the Belgrade Waterfront Project The largest public outcry in Belgrade since the demonstrations leading to the ousting of Slobodan Miloševi´c in 2000 was connected to an urban project. Aimed at reconfiguring the waterfront of the river Sava, the Belgrade Waterfront (Beograd na Vodi) was promoted by a developer from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and endorsed by Alexander Vuˇci´c (the Serbian Prime Minister 2014–2017, President since 2017). It includes a kit of architectural and urban plans that echo similar projects elsewhere, involving iconic architecture (e.g. the “Belgrade Tower” skyscraper) and mixed use of office, hotel, commercial, and residential developments. The Belgrade Waterfront project has been beset by a number of paradoxes. A nationalist but pro-EU prime minister invited a UAE firm to internationalize the capital’s image. Famous for his antiMuslim remarks in the 1990s, Vuˇci´c invited a sheikh from the Gulf to reshape his capital’s waterfront (as well as the Generalštab). Nationalism is trumped by neoliberalism, but in fact they can be well related: according to the prime minister’s opinions, the Belgrade Waterfront project would bring Belgrade to the forefront of urban development and investment, thus making the nation proud again. The project sought to mirror the resurgence of Air Serbia, the former Yugoslav company that was privatized with UAE majority ownership, bringing the country back to the fore in international air travel. While the Belgrade Waterfront project centred on its novelty value and contemporary flair, its promotion has used heritage-related images. The restauration of the nineteenth-century Geozavod building in Savamala by the developer was meant to showcase the support of heritage—in classical terms and referring to the now favoured period of Belgrade’s pre-1914

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Kingdom years. The building has been used to host the promotional space for the Belgrade Waterfront project. As such, it linked the building’s past as Serbia’s first Cooperative Bank and its heritage value with a project narrated by the authorities, and particularly by Vuˇci´c, as bringing about a new renaissance in the city. While the project was met with initial opposition from a number of non-governmental organizations, including urban-planning NGOs such as the Ministry of Space, the transformation into a larger social movement was linked with the overnight destruction of barracks in the Savamala district of Belgrade in the spring of 2016. The demolished structures were not listed, but were part of a quayside neighbourhood that underwent various processes of regeneration and gentrification. Savamala had become part of Belgrade’s hip district. The buildings demolished included some of the popular cafes, such as Dvorištance, but most were old workingclass haunts caught on the margins of the gentrified area. The images of overnight demolition and the subsequent death of a witness were suggestive of images of corruption and illegality to the public. The conflict over Savamala and the Belgrade Waterfront brought back the classical urbanite–uncultured division, albeit with a twist. The protestors identify as being proud Belgraders, and the campaign’s slogan is ‘Don’t let Belgrade d(r)own’ (Ne da(vi)mo Beograd). For them, the new development attacks the city’s identity. Its globalizing image and the international capital are, however, not read as part of the cosmopolitan repertoire—they are, instead, the expression of uncultured parochials who have morphed into entrepreneurs, political or economic, for whom the city heritage is to be commodified, understood as nothing more than real estate. The parochial group is the nouveaux riches, which is seen as anti-urban through its negation of the urban tradition. The Belgrade Waterfront project, while seemingly an international venture, appears to be read through a parochial lens, and while European urbanism celebrates heritage, this new Serbia is destroying it. The protests opened up new debates about what built heritage is, shifting it from a focus on the monumental and representative, to the idea of heritage as a contributor to character and local memory, and social uses. This valuation of heritage has been advanced by certain associations before, among them the Centre for Cultural Decontamination, Grupa Spomenik (Monument Group), the DAH Theatre, or Cultural Heritage Without Borders (Vos, ). The democratization of heritage also fits in with the Europeanizing aims of some of Serbia’s elites, as it recalls the Faro

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Convention and what was proclaimed as the ‘new European heritage paradigm’, which signalled a departure from monumental heritage of universal value to locally defined visions of heritage (Vos et al., 2013). The protests to save Savamala and fight against the construction of the Belgrade Waterfront project see the cityscape, as well as simple structures that would not qualify to be listed, as being igniters of social action that echo both the local and the European.

Conclusion This chapter has discussed the mobilization of heritage in Belgrade with particular reference to how tangible, architectural heritage has been engaged in the reshaping of national narratives and alternative accounts. The conflict between different understandings of the nation and the city has been at the forefront, while the actual mobilization of the heritage of war (i.e. the NATO bombings and the general involvement in the wars of Yugoslav dissolution) has been marginal, a signal of the obfuscation of the recent past in Serbia. Belgrade’s architectural heritage reflects its post-Ottoman history as a capital of modern Serbia and of two Yugoslavias. After the Yugoslav dissolution, the city became an arena of state-sanctioned nation-building that favoured pre-1945 heritage. Local actors, however, challenged the marginalization of socialist-era heritage through various cultural projects, as well as reactions by professional associations as forms of resistance. The withdrawal of the state and the increasing neoliberalization had an impact both on the debates over reconstructing the 1999 ruins as well as on major city-making projects. While pre-socialist and socialist heritage is presently mobilized by different groups, the legacies and meanings of the wars in the former Yugoslavia remained blurred, with the heritage of war itself waiting indefinitely for a vision. Heritage dynamics have mirrored societal rifts and conflicts, as well as the evolution of socio-political debates.

Notes 1. The author visited SIV/the Palace of Serbia during a half-day private tour given by its curator, Slavomir And-eli´c, which took place as part of the Disappearing Architecture workshop at the 55th Belgrade October Salon 2014.

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2. Interview, Jelica Jovanovi´c, associate researcher, Cultural Heritage Preservation Institute of Belgrade, 9 October 2015. 3. For instance, in 2013, the then Minister of Defence of Serbia, Aleksandar Vuˇci´c, questioned the value of the Generalštab’s aesthetic value on various occasions. See http://www.b92.net/biz/vesti/srbija.php?yyyy= 2013&mm=02&dd=12&nav_id=686083, accessed on 10 August 2016.

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Gagnon, V. P., Jr. (2006). The myth of ethnic war: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s. Cornell University Press. Gordy, E. (2013). Guilt, responsibility, and denial: The past at stake in postMiloševi´c Serbia. University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/ 9780812208603 Jansen, S. (2001). The streets of Beograd. Urban space and protest identities in Serbia. Political Geography, 20(1), 35–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/S09626298(00)00052-4 Jansen, S. (2005). Who’s afraid of white socks? Towards a critical understanding of post-Yugoslav urban self-perceptions. Ethnologia Balkanica, 9, 151–167. Jovanovi´c, M. (2013). ‘The city in our hands’: Urban management and contested modernity in nineteenth-century Belgrade. Urban History, 40(1), 32–50. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926812000624 Konstantinovi´c, R. (2009). Filozofija palanke. Sarajevo: IKD ‘Sarajevo press’: IK ‘Magistrat’. Kovaˇcevi´c, B. (2001). Arhitektura zgrade generalštaba: Monografska studija dela Nikole Dobrovi´ca. Beograd: Vojna štamparija. Kristeva, J. (1982). Approaching abjection. Oxford Literary Review, 5(1/2), 125–149. Kuli´c, V. (2009). “East? West? Or both?” Foreign perceptions of architecture in socialist Yugoslavia. Journal of Architecture (london), 14(1), 129–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602360802705106 Kuli´c, V. (2010). Architettura e politica del’interpretazione: Il caso del generalštab a Belgrado. Bruno Zevi. Kuli´c, V., Mrduljaš, M., & Thaler, W. (2012). Modernism in-between: The mediatory architectures of Socialist Yugoslavia. Jovis Verlag. Mazzucchelli, F. (2010). Urbicidio: Il senso dei luoghi tra distruzioni e ricostruzioni nella ex Jugoslavia. Bononia University Press. Miloševi´c, S. (2015). The ghosts of the past, present and future: The case of the army headquarters in Belgrade, Serbia. Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, 39(1), 37–55. https://doi.org/10.3846/20297955.2015.1031448 Milutinovi´c, Z. (2011). Getting over Europe: The construction of Europe in Serbian culture (Vol. 18). Rodopi. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789042032729 Mrduljaš, M., Kuli´c, V., & McMaster, G. (2012). Unfinished modernisations: Between utopia and pragmatism [architecture and urban planning in the former Yugoslavia and the successor states]. UHA/CCA. Muˇcibabi´c, D. (2013, February 18). Cpbija Pazgovapa: Genepalxtab – Pyxiti Ili Qyvati Kyltypno Blago. Politika. http://www.politika.rs/ scc/clanak/249327/Srbija-razgovara-Generalstab-rusiti-ili-cuvati-kulturnoblago Obradovi´c-Wochnik, J. (2014). Revisionism, denial and anti-ICTY discourse in Serbia’s public sphere: Beyond the “divided society” debate. In J. Gow, R.

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Kerr, & Z. Paji´c, (Eds.), Prosecuting war crimes: Lessons and legacies of the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (pp. 182–203). Routledge. Omaljev, A. (2013). Constructing the other: Discourses on Europe and identity in ‘First’ and ‘Other’ Serbia (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Reading. Opasno isplativo. (2013, February 12). SEEcult. Portal on culture of Southeastern Europe. www.seecult.org/vest/opasno-isplativo Panteli´c, B. (2016). The last Byzantines: Perceptions of identity, culture, and heritage in Serbia. Nationalities Papers, 44, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 00905992.2015.1105205 Petrovi´c, T. (2010). Nostalgia for the JNA? Remembering the army in the former Yugoslavia. In M. Todorova & Z. Gille (Eds.), Post-communist nostalgia (pp. 61–95). Berghahn Books. Rabow-Edling, S. (2012). Slavophile thought and the politics of cultural nationalism. SUNY Press. Radovi´c, S. (2016). Memory culture and urban reconstruction: The case of Staro Sajmište in Belgrade. Transitional justice: Images and memories (pp. 103– 120). Routledge. Rossi, M. (2012). In search of a democratic cultural “alternative”: Serbia’s European heritage from Dositej Obradovi´c to OTPOR. Nationalities Papers, 40(6), 853–878. https://doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2012.742987 Savelji´c, B. (1988). Beogradska favela: Nastanak i razvoj kalud-erice kao posledica bespravne stambene izgradnje u Beogradu. Istraživaˇcko-Izdavaˇcki Centar Sso Srbije. Sekuli´c, D. (2014, October 10). Clinging to the past to bully the future or why it was necessary to make modernism the exotic other. Presented at the Disappearing architecture architectural seminar within the 55th October Salon. Staniˇci´c, A. (2014). Architettura nata dalla violenza: Il dilemma creativo delle ricostruzioni post-urbicide. esperienze di belgrado dopo la guerra del 1999 / Architecture born in violence: Creative dilemma in post-urbicidal reconstructions. Experiences of Belgrade in the aftermath of the 1999 War. Politecnico di Milano. Stojanovi´c, D. (2008). Kaldrma i asfalt: Urbanizacija i evropeizacija Beograda; 1890–1914. Udruženje za društvenu istoriju. Thomas, R. (1999). Serbia under Miloševi´c: Politics in the 1990s (Vol. C). Hurst & Co. Topalovi´c, M. (2012). New belgrade: The modern city’s unstable paradigms. In R. Diener (Ed.), Belgrade: formal/Informal: Eine Studie über Städtebau und urbane Transformation (pp. 128–228). Scheidegger & Spiess.

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Vos, C. (2011). Negotiating Serbia’s Europeanness. On the formation and appropriation of European heritage policy in Serbia. History and Anthropology, 22(2), 221–242. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2011.558584 Vos, C. (2015). Debating the reconciliatory use of heritage. European post-monumentalism versus regional national-monumentalism. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(7), 716–733. https://doi.org/10.1080/135 27258.2014.1001424 Vos, C., & Associates. (2013). The ideals and pragmatics of European heritage: The policy and practice of the regional heritage program in Serbia. In K. Klaus Pate (Ed.), The cultural politics of Europe: European capitals of culture and European Union since the 1980s (pp. 179–197). Routledge. Vujovi´c, S. (2000). An uneasy view of the city. In N. Popov (Ed.), The road to war in Serbia: Trauma and catharsis (pp. 123–145) Central European University Press. Zgrada Generalštaba Spomenik Pam´cenju. (2013, March 5). Novosti Online. http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/kultura.71.html:432270-Zgrada-Generalstabaspomenik-pamcenju

CHAPTER 3

Carving War onto the City: Monuments to the 1992–95 Conflict in Sarajevo Maja Musi

Introduction Memory was central to both the prelude and the unfolding of the armed conflict that ravaged Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995.1 The war’s outcomes revealed new questions about the (new) memories it generated, for ‘those who survived, on all sides, ha[ve] new and tangible memories of hate and fear… delivered by the neighbours and friends of yesterday’ (Bet-El, 2004, p. 213). The war was fought in the name of mutually exclusive cultural identities, and it appealed to narratives of the past centred on interethnic animosity and victimization to juxtapose ethnic groups and pursue their territorial separation. However, the Dayton Peace Agreements signed in late 1995 configured the new Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) as a multicultural state, establishing complex mechanisms of checks and balances to regulate the relations between the three constituent peoples (Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks) within the framework of a consociational power-sharing system.2

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Twenty-five years after the formal end of the war, the pervasiveness of the conflict’s memories proliferates through material reminders across the urban space of Sarajevo. However, the lack of a shared interpretation of the conflict makes memorialization susceptible to being used to provoke tensions. Since the re-establishment of peace, ‘war-related monuments and commemorations [have] continued to reshape space and time along ethnonational lines’ (Bougarel et al., 2007, p. 26), so that today the country is ‘confronted … with the coexistence and competition of three official memory narratives and ethnonational identity constructions’ (Moll, 2013, p. 912). Scores of renamed streets, new monuments, and newly established public holidays show that memorialization policies are ‘part of renationalization policies … focusing on dividing memories, values and practices’ (Dragi´cevi´c Šeši´c, 2011, p. 45, emphasis in original), and suggest that the shaping of official war memories is driven by political agendas of ‘state legitimation and friend-enemy thinking’ (Muller, 2004, p. 6. On memory politics in BiH see Bougarel et al., 2007; Correia, ˇ 2013; Custo, 2008, 2013; Dragi´cevi´c Šeši´c, 2011; Lovrenovi´c, 2016; Moll, 2013; Musi, 2015). This chapter examines the memorial landscape of the capital city. It outlines the main traits of the process of the conflict’s memorialization by examining a sample of monuments and memorials to the 1992–1995 war located in central Sarajevo, which are often included in official commemorative events. In marking the centre of the city, these sites shape the urban landscape both as the backdrop to urban residents’ everyday life and as the front stage of how Sarajevo is presented to tourists. Combined, they mould the image and identity of the city. The symbolic functions that are usually ascribed to national capitals, and the inclusion of these memory sites in official commemorative ceremonies, moreover, heighten their role within narratives of the recent conflict. These sites present different aspects of the construction of a memory of the war: consolidated sites in official commemorations such as memorial plaques, the Kovaˇci Memorial, the Monument to Children, and the ceremony on the anniversary of Srebrenica; the bottom-up engagement of citizens such as the Sarajevo Roses; and divergent accounts such as the Serb commemoration in Dobrovoljaˇcka Street. Taken together, they present a cross section of memorialization processes in today’s BiH. Their meanings reach beyond

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the urban dimension and participate in the construction and negotiation of the state’s collective identity and memory.3 By focusing on the official narrative of the war that is presented to locals and foreigners alike as an overarching shared narrative, I show how memorialization processes can stir ongoing debates. As such, they potentially feed into an ethnicization of memory whereby narratives of victimhood and assessments of guilt and blame (perpetrator-hood) are at risk of being assimilated in the reiteration of essentialist constructs of incompatible (ethnic) difference, and then exploited by opposing political forces.

Memory and War in Bosnia and Herzegovina The rise of ethno-nationalism during the decline of Socialist Yugoslavia crucially exploited ‘the past’ to create an environment of mutual suspicion and fear of the Other, where ‘history’ and ‘memory’ allegedly corroborated irreconcilable group differences as well as past sufferings and wrongs that needed to be mended. The historical revisionism accomplished by nationalist and populist rhetoric made the 1992–1995 conflict, in part, a ‘war over memory’ (Muller, 2004, p. 17). The war was largely fought to rewrite the geopolitical and demographic maps of BiH through systematic violence against the ethnic Other and the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of particular ethnic groups from contested territories. This was enhanced by the targeting and devastation of the built cultural heritage of the Other, which was undertaken in order to annihilate the material traces of past coexistence and pursue a ‘retrospective’ cleansing of the land.4 In its unfolding, thus, the conflict became a war on memory: ‘memory was literally blown up, as monuments, mosques and other concrete manifestations of collective memory were erased, and mnemonic maps were rewritten as normative maps for an ethnically reconfigured future’ (Muller, 2004, p. 17). Buildings that denote tangible signs of a pluralist and heterogeneous shared cultural space were obliterated.5 In Sarajevo, ‘armed aggressors bombed centuries-old cultural landmarks and incinerated oneof-a-kind manuscripts in their attempt to blot out the city’s vibrant history of diversity and overlaps’ (Markowitz, 2010, p. 145). The deliberate destruction of architecture and the built environment constituted a form of political violence. The clearest aim of such destruction was that of annihilating the traces of past (co)existence and preventing possible future claims over ‘cleansed’ territories. The violence

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forced ethnonationalist projections of homogeneous essentialized purity upon a historical reality of entanglement and pluralism. Destruction was a performative enactment of identity, ‘a way for its perpetrators to arrogate a collective identity, as opposed to simply mediate an identity that pre-exists its violent performance’ (Herscher, 2008, p. 41, emphasis in original). Martin Coward’s writings on urbicide (Coward, 2004, 2009) drew further attention to the fact that the targeting was not limited to buildings bestowed with symbolic significance as cultural heritage, but was equally invested in eradicating the ‘mundane’ public spaces that compose the milieu that enables life in common. Coward states: … the widespread destruction of urban fabric is the destruction of a common, shared space. Insofar as the dynamic of ethnic cleansing is that of the carving out of separate, ethnically homogeneous and self-determining territorial entities, it comprises a denial of common spaces through a destruction of that which attests to a record of sharing spaces – the heterogeneity of cultural heritage and the intermingling of civilian bodies. (Coward, 2004, p. 158; emphasis in original)

With the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (the Dayton Agreement) in late 1995 and the re-establishment of peace, the question of memory became somehow twofold: while the (new) country faced the onerous task of heritage reconstruction, ‘the modern Balkan wars had generated their own powerful cycle of memories’ (Bet-El, 2004, p. 207). The memorialization of the recent conflict thus involves both the reconstruction of damaged cultural heritage and the erection of new monuments. Both processes are entwined with the question of the recreation of the built environment as an inclusive common space for all the citizens of the new state of BiH.6

The Wounded City: Scattered Reminders of the War At first sight, Sarajevo is replete with signs of the recent conflict. A walk through the historic centre (Bašˇcaršija)—once the inner core of the besieged city and now the front stage of its tourist presentation—offers a variety of reminders of the war for consumption: from ‘survival guides’ to maps of the siege, war paraphernalia and leaflets offering guided tours

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of ‘wartime Sarajevo’, beside the ‘enduring ruins’ of buildings damaged from the war that still await reconstruction. Among the signs that can be encountered wandering through the city, the Sarajevo Roses (Sarajevske ruže) literally constitute scars in the landscape: they are the traces left on the asphalt by mortar shells and grenades, subsequently filled with red paint (Fig. 3.1). The roses are not complemented by any symbols, written texts, plaques, or other sign usually associated with monuments; their origins and initiators are unknown, and no complete map of their distribution in the city exists to this date.7 While their red, painted filling has arguably made them sites of memory, the absence of explanatory signs has left the interpretation of their meaning open to different understandings and free to mingle with personal memories. For some they serve as counter-monuments: as traces of the war with a ‘documentary value’ ˇ (Custo, 2013, p. 115) that contain no ethnic connotation, and whose filling with red resin can thus be considered the expression of a bottom-up ‘process of creation of individual memories that can … disrupt dominant narratives’ (Junuzovi´c, 2006, p. 232). Neglected by institutional and official commemorative practices for many years, and lacking proper

Fig. 3.1 Sarajevo Rose, 2010 (Photo © Maja Musi)

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protection, many roses have been destroyed or damaged by the passing of ˇ time and by urban reconstruction, renovation, and management (Custo, 2013, p. 114). The significance of the roses for remembering the recent conflict has been advocated in recent years by citizens’ associations, with initiatives undertaken to draw attention to the deterioration they endured. In April 2009, the association Akcija Grad-ana coloured eight shell craters in the city neighbourhood of Dobrinja as part of the campaign ‘Sarajevo, do you remember Sarajevo?’ (Sarajevo, sje´caš li se Sarajeva?), to preserve these unique monuments from falling into oblivion (‘Akcija Grad-ana’, 2009). The initiative was particularly relevant because it responded to a rose being removed during works on the erection of the new Monument to the Children Killed During the Siege of Sarajevo, which took place several months earlier in the city centre (‘Akcija Grad-ana’, 2009). The process of constructing an official memory of the conflict effectively erased markers of personal, informal memories from the urban landscape, as ‘citizens [could] just rely on their not too consistent memory to recall whether some of the Roses used to be there or not’ (Junuzovi´c, 2006, p. 231). With the continued engagement of citizens’ associations around the roses,8 especially alongside the celebrations of the 6 April, the Day of the City of Sarajevo (Dan Grada Sarajeva), the stance of local institutions towards these particular remnants of the war changed to one of concern. In May 2012, the Government of the Sarajevo Canton officially entrusted the Fond Memorijala—a body responsible for erecting and preserving monuments—with the tasks of reconstructing and maintaining the Sarajevo Roses.9 The first renovations took place in 2015 and were publicly presented with the inauguration of one rose in the neighbourhood of Marijin Dvor, where the Cantonal Minister for Veteran Affairs, Muharem Fišo, declared: ‘We will never allow the forgetting of [this] symbol of defence, heroism, and suffering, as well as the genocide committed by criminals who in every way tried to kill this city and its citizens’ (Hantalaševi´c, 2015). The news also reported that the ministry had advanced the idea of carving replicas of the roses also for locations in which the original craters of grenades have now disappeared (‘Simbol grada’, 2015). Works were completed in line with the principle of restoring the roses’ authentic appearance, but in one subsequent case of restoration in April 2018 it was necessary to make a replica, painted on new tiles, because the street pavement was too damaged to be repaired.10

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A second cluster of reminders that pervades the streets of Sarajevo is a series of plaques that designate the spots in which a high number of civilians were killed or injured during the siege. These plaques have been erected from 1996 onwards, as part of the Siege and Defence of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995 project (Opsada i odbrana Sarajevo 1992. ˇ – 1995. godine), adopted by the Sarajevo Canton Assembly (Custo, 2013, 11 p. 107). The plaques are made of white stone and consist of a written inscription that states ‘At this place Serb criminals (date) killed (number) citizens of Sarajevo’, and (in smaller letters, below) ‘May the dead rest in peace. Recite Al-Fatiha and pray. Remember and warn’. The inscription is signed ‘the citizens of Sarajevo’ (‘Na ovom su mjestu srpski zlocinci … godine ubili … grad-ana Sarajeva. Rahmet, pokoj i šutnja mrtvima. Poruˇcit Fatihu i pomolite se. Pamtite i opominjite. Grad-ani Sarajeva’). The appearance of the plaques is standardized, with a bunch of lilies carved on the left border, and the coat of arms of the wartime BiH (a shield with stylized lilies, used between 1992 and 1998) engraved in the upper-left corner (Fig. 3.2). In some cases, bronze plaques with the names and dates of birth of the victims were added beside the standard white-stone markers. At the Markale open-air market, located in the inner city centre, which was the site of two notorious massacres in 1994 and 1995, the plaque was complemented by red panels covering the wall at its back. They reported the names of the deceased in one of these two episodes (Fig. 3.2). On 5 February 1994 a mortar shell hit the market and provoked ‘the single most deadly attack of the siege’, killing at least 66 persons and wounding 197 others.12 On 28 August 1995 a second explosion at the market killed 43 and injured 84 people. Both episodes provoked disputes: BiH President Alija Izetbegovi´c and the establishment he represented claimed the shells had been fired from Serb positions northeast of the city, while the Serb leadership denied responsibility for the attacks, and made allegations that the shells had been triggered on the spot by the (mostly Bosniak) Army of BiH.13 Military experts within the International Community led their own investigations, yet while in 1994 they declared themselves unable to determine the exact origin of the launch, in 1995 they reached the conclusions that the mortar rounds came ‘beyond any doubt’ from firing positions located within the territory of the Bosnian Serb Army (reported in Karovi´c, 2013, p. 159). Two days after the 1995 Markale massacre, international forces launched the air campaign Operation Deliberate Force that eventually led to peace negotiations and the end of the

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Fig. 3.2 Plaque at Markale, 2010 (Photo © Maja Musi)

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war. The plaque at Markale is today the central site of commemoration of the ‘Day of Remembrance of all the citizens of Sarajevo killed during the siege’ (Dan sje´canja na sve stradale grad-ane grada Sarajeva u periodu opsade 1992. – 1995. godine), marked every year on 5 February by representatives of the city, canton, federation, and state who pay homage to the victims by laying wreaths. Unlike the roses, the plaques are a more conventional form of monument. Besides the variation in the presence or absence of the victims’ names, the central text identifies the perpetrators of the killings as ‘Serb criminals’. Although the besieging forces belonged to the selfproclaimed Republika Srpska, and represented the Bosnian Serb faction in the conflict, the use of this phrase is exploited by nationalist rhetoric on both sides of the debate: to ascribe culpability to the entire Serb nation/group within essentialist constructions of identity, and conversely, to sustain claims of discrimination against Serbs in BiH and of a Bosniak unwillingness to reconcile. The phrasing of these plaques is believed to stir up an ethnic juxtaposition because it ascribes responsibility for specific war crimes to the collectivity of Bosnian Serbs, thus promoting a ‘language of hatred’ and making this segment of the population feel unwanted in Sarajevo (see, for example, ‘Na ovom mjestu su srpski zloˇcinci’, 2011; Šehovac, 2018). A similar phrasing appears on plaques at the entrance to the National Library, written in both Bosnian and English. Although these plaques do not belong to the Siege and Defence of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995 project, and their origin is unknown, they present a central analogy with the plaques dedicated to civilian victims throughout the city in their use of the caption ‘Serb criminals’. The inscription refers specifically to the destruction of books and documents caused by the shelling of the building in 1992. It reads: ‘At this place Serbian criminals in the night of 25–26 August 1992, set on fire National and University’s Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Over two million books, periodicals, and documents vanished in the flame. Do not forget, remember and warn!’ [sic] (Fig. 3.3). In recent years, these plaques have caused a heated debate. In June 2014, the Serb member of the presidency of BiH, Nebojša Radmanovi´c, declared that neither he nor any other Serb representatives of BiH would attend the central event organized at the National Library for the centenary of the beginning of the First World War. This decision, he stated, was due exclusively to ‘the plaque at the entrance of that building, on which practically the entire Serb people/nation is labelled

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Fig. 3.3 Plaque at the National Library, 2009 (Photo © Maja Musi)

as criminal’.14 In September 2017, councillor Miro Lazovi´c presented a motion to the city council to modify the text of these plaques and draft a ‘caption grounded on historical facts and formulated so as not to evoke a feeling of collective guilt’.15 The city council is now expected to appoint a commission of experts assigned with the task of drafting a new text (‘Ekspertna komisija razmotrit c´ e sporni tekst’, 2017). It has been remarked, however, that the initiative was met with some reluctance because it opens the question of what is to be done with all those plaques in the city that bear the formulation ‘Serb criminals’ (Halimovi´c, 2017). Risti´c (2013, p. 113) asserts that ‘the plaques operate as conventional rhetorical monuments which articulate a selective version of history based on a particular ethnicity … [that] maintains collective ethnic trauma’.

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Heroism and Victimhood One of the most important sites of the official memory of the 1992– 1995 conflict is the Kovaˇci Cemetery Memorial, located on the margins of the historic centre of Bašˇcaršija (Fig. 3.4). With 1487 graves, the cemetery constitutes the largest burial ground of deceased combatants from the recent conflict.16 At official commemorations, delegates from various administrative levels (city, canton, federation, state) lay wreaths at the monument located on the memorial’s central plateau. This monument bears the inscription: ‘Monument-marker to the fighters of the Army of BiH who gave their lives in defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1992–1995 aggression’ (‘Spomen obilježje borcima Armije BiH koji su dali živote u odbrani Bosne i Hercegovine u toku agresije 1992–1995’). Only two of the three members of the state’s presidency ritually attend official commemorations at this site, as the Serb member never participates. The ceremonies then continue with a visit to the mausoleum of the

Fig. 3.4 Kovaˇci Memorial Cemetery and the Mausoleum Alija Izetbegovi´c, Kovaˇci, 2011 (Photo © Maja Musi)

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first president of the independent BiH, Alija Izetbegovi´c, located within the Kovaˇci Cemetery Memorial. The complex is the core project of the Fond Memorijala, a body under the cantonal Ministry for Veteran Affairs dedicated to the erection, protection, and maintenance of ‘cemeteries of shahids and fallen fighters’ throughout the country.17 The term shahid (šehid) originally referred to Muslims who died a heroic death in a holy war (the term literally means martyr, witness of the Truth), but has become a term commonly used to refer to fighters who died in the 1992–1995 conflict who were buried as ˇ Muslims (Custo, 2013, p. 87).18 Regularly visited by the country’s representatives as part of all major official ceremonies, the Kovaˇci complex is devoted to nurturing the memory of the recent conflict within a wider historical framework of the repeated victimization of the Bosniak people, which aims to educate future generations and warn against the repetition of past horrors.19 As stated by the Fond Memorijala, the central aim of this project is to ‘embed the sacrifice endured by the defenders of the Army of BiH between 1992 and 1995 in the system of social values of the new Bosnian state’, and thus recognize the recent war as foundation of today’s BiH.20 The graves in the Kovaˇci cemetery are marked with a standardized type of tombstone—the nišan—that was selected in 1996 by an ad hoc ˇ commission (Custo, 2013, p. 88).21 While all carry the symbol of the lily, the graves of fallen Bosniaks/Muslims are denoted by the inscription of a verse of the Quran and the symbols of the half moon and star, whereas the graves of fighters with other religious beliefs, and those of veterans who died after the end of the war, can be discerned by their relevant religious ˇ symbols and other minor stylistic differences (Custo, 2013, p. 89). The symbolic reference to religious traditions within this process of memorialization (the nišans, the use of the term shahid, and reference to Islamic traditions) conveys the message that ‘the defence of life during the siege and war for Bosniaks is represented as and equated to the defence ˇ of identity and faith – of Islam’ (Custo, 2013, p. 90, my translation), as it ‘discriminate[s] between Muslim and non-Muslim soldiers’ (Maˇcek, 2009, p. 141). After paying homage at the Kovaˇci cemetery, official commemorative rituals that mark symbolic dates from the history of both the city and country usually continue with a visit to the Monument to the Children Killed During the Siege of Sarajevo (Spomen-obilježje ubijenoj djeci

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opkoljenog Sarajeva 1992. – 1995. godine). This monument was advocated by the Association of Parents of Children Killed During the Siege (Udruženje roditelja ubijene djece opkoljenog Sarajeva 92. – 95. godine) and was constructed as part of the overall project Siege and Defence of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995, by the Sarajevo Canton (Ministry for Veteran Affairs) and the City of Sarajevo. It consists of a round fountain that surrounds two abstract glass sculptures that represent a mother protecting her child. The ring around the fountain has a bronze surface imprinted with the footprints of the siblings of the children commemorated (Fig. 3.5). A tribute to the most innocent victims of the war, the monument has already become part of official commemorative practices and the tourist image of the city.22 Inaugurated in 2009, an addition was made one year later with several columns engraved with the names of the children (‘Sarajevo memorial for children’, 2012).

Fig. 3.5 Monument to the Children Killed During the Siege, 2012 (Photo © Maja Musi)

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Despite its claim to represent shared emotions, during the period of its erection the monument was subject to criticisms concerning its cost, name, appearance, and ultimately its meaning (‘Orkestrirani napadi’, 2009). Most significantly, its designation raised the question of whether the monument was dedicated to all the children killed during the war, or exclusively to those children killed within besieged Sarajevo—that is, by the Bosnian Serb forces that attacked the city. The implicit inference was that the death of Serb children in areas of the city under Serb control, i.e. those killed by the mainly Bosniak Army of BiH, were not accorded the same reverence, and that even child victims had been divided into ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’ (Pe´canin, 2007). In principle, the cult of the deceased—both civilian victims and combatants—seeks to construct an inclusive memory that pays tribute to all those who gave or lost their lives during the struggle for the survival of a pluralist BiH while fighting against ethnic partition. As these two core sites of the memory of the 1992–1995 conflict demonstrate, however, since the end of the war, notions of heroism and victimhood have remained deeply controversial and implicitly entangled with particular ethnic identities. Each group nurtures the memory of its ‘own’ victims and fails to come to terms with the crimes perpetrated by co-ethnics.

Symbolic Geographies Each year on the 9 July, the remains of newly identified victims from the massacre that took place in Srebrenica in 1995 of more than 8,000 men and boys are collected from the storage facilities of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). They are transported to Potoˇcari in Srebrenica, where a major commemoration is held on 11 July. En route, the trucks make a two-stage ritual stop in Sarajevo that allows people to pay tribute to the victims in front of the presidency building and at the Markale open-air market (Fig. 3.6).23 The memorialization of the Srebrenica massacre is a highly sensitive issue not only because of the emotional burden it bears, but also due to the unyielding moral claims it generates and their political implications, which involve allocating blame and guilt for crimes of genocide, and questioning the legitimacy of Republika Srpska as an entity ‘created through the aggression, genocide, and ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks and Croats’ (‘Izetbegovi´c: RS nastala agresijom i genocidom’, 2012).

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Fig. 3.6 Trucks in front of the Presidency building in Sarajevo, 9 July 2011 (Photo © Maja Musi)

Marked by two of the heaviest attacks of besieged Sarajevo, Markale has become an important site of the city’s memory. The date of 5 February has been included since 2009 in the Sarajevo Canton’s official calendar of significant events, dates, and personalities from the 1992–1995 conflict. The inclusion of a ritual stop at Markale in the annual memorial ceremonies related to Srebrenica suggests an implicit symbolism that entwines the wartime experiences of the eastern town with those of Sarajevo. In this way, the Srebrenica events are embedded into the overall narrative of the Bosnian war, reasserting a shared experience of suffering and victimization and establishing tight connections with the state’s capital city. The stop in front of the presidency links Srebrenica to Sarajevo, and recollects the dreadful experience of the mass killing of thousands of Muslim men and boys to the highest authority of the state. In so doing, it metaphorically makes this memory a central aspect of the identity of today’s BiH. The additional stop at Markale symbolically equates the market explosions and the siege of Sarajevo with a genocidal campaign led by the Bosnian Serbs against (primarily) the Bosniaks. Since 2010, a new commemorative rite has begun to emerge in the city centre. The commemoration consists of a peaceful walk with the laying of wreaths and candles at a particular spot in Hamdije Kreševljakovi´c

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Street, previously Dobrovoljaˇcka Street. The gathering takes place to remember the incident during which a column of vehicles and personnel of the Yugoslav People’s Army (Jugoslovenska narodna armija, JNA) was attacked by forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina while leaving Sarajevo on 3 May 1992 (See Donia, 2006, pp. 64–277). On the previous day, Bosnian Serb forces had launched an offensive to seize the presidency building and take over the government, but the operation failed and the attackers withdrew after suffering various casualties. Later, President Izetbegovi´c, who was returning from failed peace talks in Lisbon, was captured at Sarajevo airport and held hostage by JNA forces on the city outskirts. With the mediation of UNPROFOR, it was arranged that President Izetbegovi´c be released in exchange for the JNA General Milutin Kukanjac and a contingent of JNA soldiers located in army barracks in the Bistrik area, at one end of Dobrovoljaˇcka Street. During the exchange on 3 May, the column of JNA vehicles was attacked by local BiH forces, who opened fire and killed (at least) six, and took dozens of prisoners.24 After the attack, the convoy eventually resumed its westward movement and finally reached the JNA barracks outside of the city. The events on Dobrovoljaˇcka Street are still at the centre of controversies that concern both the number of casualties and the responsibilities for the attack.25 While the Republika Srpska establishment denounces the attack as an unnecessary deliberate assault during a peaceful withdrawal, and a ‘massacre’, antithetical recollections present it as an ‘incident’ generated by the tensions raised by the abduction of the president and the lack of coordination among military and paramilitary formations of the (at that time) emerging Army of BiH.26 Moreover, different interpretations of the events of the 3 May 1992, which debate whether the attack should be considered a war crime or a legitimate act of defence, relate to disputes over the attribution of responsibilities for the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo and the war in BiH. Reproduced and amplified by the local media, the polarization around the Dobrovoljaˇcka case is thus used by both sides to blame the opposite faction for initiating the aggression and to claim that what followed was motivated by self-defence (See Erjavec et al., 2012). To denote its importance, the Subcommittee for Nurturing the Traditions of the Liberation Wars (Pododbor za njegovanje tradicija oslobodilaˇckih ratova) under the RS government included the commemorative gathering of the 3 May in the 20 ‘events of national

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importance’ that comprise its Calendar of Significant Historical Events of the Liberation Wars. The first commemoration in 2010, with a crowd of approximately 150 people arriving by bus from East Sarajevo to lay wreaths in Dobrovoljaˇcka Street, was preceded by a gathering organized in the same place by the association of the ‘Green Berets’ to pay tribute to the defenders of BiH, which reportedly caused a delay to the Serb commemoration for security reasons.27 In the following year, the perimeter around Dobrovoljaˇcka Street in Sarajevo was guarded by police forces (including riot squads) that prevented access to passers-by, so that it was not possible to witness the commemoration if not directly taking part in it.28 In 2012, before the arrival of the delegation from East Sarajevo, a group of people and representatives of Sarajevo Canton veterans’ associations gathered in the same area to pay tribute to members of the wartime Army of BiH. The Serb delegation was greeted with shouts of protest from the small crowd that had previously assembled, and the commemoration unfolded under the control of police squads, deployed in the streets in various units to keep the two gatherings separate and to secure the whole area (Fig. 3.7). When the two groups evacuated the area, a few policemen remained positioned in a circle around the roses and candles left by the Serb delegations, to prevent their damage or removal. The commemoration in Dobrovoljaˇcka Street continued to take place in subsequent years with the same standardized ritual and alongside a parallel commemoration on the same spot that remembered the forces defending the city. Each year, the gathering was proclaimed a highrisk event, and was presided over by police forces. In 2017, the RS Minister for Labour, War Veterans’ and Disabled Persons’ Protection (Ministarstvo rada i boraˇcko-invalidske zaštite), Mr. Savanovi´c, declared that the commemoration would be staged in East Sarajevo because ‘the Muslim authorities in the Sarajevo Canton and the Federation of BiH did not permit the erection of a memorial plaque with the names of the killed persons, in accordance with Christian ritual’ (‘Odata pošta stradalim vojnicima JNA u Dobrovoljaˇckoj’, 2017). Since then, the annual commemoration has been moved to the War Cemetery of Miljevi´ci in Eastern Sarajevo, where representatives of the local authorities, the RS Minister for Labour, War Veterans and Disabled Persons’ Protection, and citizens’ associations carry out the standardized ritual of laying wreaths at the central cross-monument (Krijestorac, 2018; Lingo Demirovi´c, 2018; ‘Zloˇcin u Dobrovoljaˇckoj’, 2020).

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Fig. 3.7 Commemorative gatherings separated by police in Dobrovoljaˇccka Street, 2012. The Serb gathering is on the left and the Green Berets gathering on the right (Photo © Maja Musi)

Conclusions Bosnia and Herzegovina today does not have a unified culture of memory, but rather several competing memory narratives based on different interpretations of the 1992–1995 war and embedded in parallel ethnonational identity politics. The memorialization of the recent conflict is thus characterized by dissent and contestation. This chapter has highlighted the nuanced entanglements between the memorialization of the recent conflict and the process of (re)constructing collective identities in the symbolism of BiH’s capital city. As the memory sites presented suggest, the core notion around which official memorialization revolves is an imperative to remember. This imperative aims to warn future generations against the repetition of past horrors. The call—‘lest not forget’ (Da se ne zaboravi)—is now perceived as a ‘struggle against collective forgetting and … the falsifiˇ cation of history’ (Custo, 2013, p. 92, my translation). This is openly stated in official texts regarding the Kovaˇci Cemetery Memorial and is further reinforced in the city’s 1992–1995 memorial plaques, as both

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posit remembrance as a moral obligation towards the fighters and victims of the war, and they equate forgetting with ‘a betrayal of the aims of ˇ the struggle and undermining of the very foundations of society’ (Custo, 2013, p. 93, my translation). This imperative to remember pivots around the memory of the deceased—both fighters and civilians. The definition of identity entailed in this memory discourse entwines ethnic and moral categories in subtle ways: while perpetrators are clearly identified as Serb, the identities of fighters and victims are not specified in ethnic terms. On the one hand, this depiction corresponds to the war experience of Sarajevo, where the siege could not completely separate people along ethnic lines.29 On the other hand, though, fighters are divided into Muslim and non-Muslim through the use of different tombstones at the Kovaˇci Memorial and in other cemeteries. This difference is further sustained by separate official commemorative practices.30 Similarly, the monument to the killed children does not denote victims along ethnic lines. However, while it potentially includes children of nonMuslim background in its dedication, it ultimately excludes children who lost their lives at the hands of non-Serb artillery. When it does disengage from ethnicity, the identification then pivots around the (moral) categories of victim and aggressor, and revolves around the recognition that ‘We’ were victimized (by ‘Them’), as in the symbolic ritual that commemorates Srebrenica at Markale in Sarajevo. Through this neat distinction between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ (in moral terms), the circle of crossreferences where memory and identity entangle closes back on the first link of the chain, with the identification of the perpetrators (as Serb). This mechanism demonstrates the dangers of official memorialization, whose implications regarding the construction of group identities (conflating ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ with the moral categories of victims and perpetrators) polarize society and keep past traumas alive in the present. The emerging commemoration in Dobrovoljaˇcka Street adopts conventional memorialization techniques to foster a divergent account of the recent conflict. Both in its form and substance, it runs parallel to official commemorations organized and performed by the (mostly Bosniak-Croat) Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) establishment and the Sarajevo Canton and City, insofar as it fosters an antithetical recollection of the 1992–1995 war whereby Bosnian Serbs are remembered—and constructed—as victims, contrary to dominant narratives, as they are monumentalized in BiH’s capital city (e.g. at the Kovaˇci Memorial).

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For some years (2010–2016) it provided an example of the ways in which public memory can be used by minority groups (in this case Serbs in post-war Sarajevo) to claim their own visibility in public space and embed divergent recollections in the country’s (official) memory culture. The performance of this commemorative event from the separate memorial space of Miljevi´ci in Eastern Sarajevo since 2017, on the other hand, reconnects it to the wider politics of memory of Republika Srpska and emphasizes its divisive aspects: by questioning responsibilities at the beginning of the war, the commemoration of the events of Dobrovoljaˇcka Street constitutes an opportunity to annually reassess the state of BiH and argue for different political solutions on the basis of claims of Serb discrimination. The critical feature of the ongoing memorialization process is the delicate balance between recognizing war crimes’ perpetrators and their victims, and utilizing guilt and suffering as tools to disqualify the Other and strengthen national homogenization (Rakovi´c, 2005). This is particularly relevant in today’s BiH where in order to ‘come to terms with the past’ one must seek to avoid the reification of essentialist constructions of difference, and one must disengage from ethnic identifications, or at least from assigning ‘collective’ responsibilities for the perpetration of war crimes. Within this context, the ‘silence’ of the roses and their documentary value made them—up until now—the only kind of monument wherein it was not possible to ‘recognize the memory constructed by today’s ˇ dominant political groupings’ (Custo, 2013, p. 115, my translation). The endorsement of their protection and restoration by local institutions and the Fond Memorijala represents the appropriation of a citizens’ initiative on the part of the authorities and its incorporation into the official recollection of the war. This process extends the central features of the notion of victimization, which pertains to the official narrative, to the roses, and inscribes them in a rhetoric of heroism and victimhood that maintains implicit ethnic connotations. On the other hand, civic engagement around the roses did not stop due to this involvement of the authorities, because the same associations (e.g. the Youth Initiative for Human Rights—YIHR BiH) continue to mark roses in various parts of the city on 6 April each year. This suggests that the roses are still claimed by a segment of civil society as an important reminder of the war and that their state appropriation is not complete. In the context of BiH’s memory politics, this is particularly important, and civic engagement such as that around the roses seems to represent one key instance of resistance to the

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ethnicization of memories and identities that offers the possibility of an approach to remembrance capable of embracing variation and pluralism.

Notes 1. By referring to preludes instead of origins, I mean to avoid the ‘ancient hatreds’ explanation of the war. 2. The Dayton Agreement configured BiH as a state comprised of two entities: the predominantly Serb Republika Srpska (RS), and the predominantly Croat–Muslim Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH). Additionally, the FBiH is composed of ten highly autonomous cantons, and the area of the city of Brˇcko constitutes a Self-Governing District. As none of the entities are ethnically homogeneous, consociational arrangements and mechanisms for the protection of minority rights and ‘vital interests’ are present both at the level of the entities and overall BiH state. On considerations regarding such arrangements and the tensions between the notions of state and nation see, for example, Sarajli´c and Davor (eds.) (2011). The term Bosnjak, transliterated in this book as Bosniak, was adopted during the war to refer to Bosnian Muslims. 3. For reasons of space, some other relevant memory sites (e.g. the Tunnel of Hope Museum on the outskirts of the city, or the recently launched Museum of the Siege of Sarajevo) are omitted from discussion, and the chapter does not attempt a comparative analysis with memory practices promoted in Republika Srpska or East Sarajevo. 4. The International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) recognized the ‘seizure of, destruction, or wilful damage’ to cultural heritage as a war crime in its Statute (Art. 3d), and accordingly included it in various indictments, one of which resulted in the first sentence for genocide in 2001 (Krsti´c, case IT-98-33, ‘Srebrenica-Drina Corps’, www.icty.org). 5. After the end of the war, the available surveys assessed that ‘the entire heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina [was] endangered’ (Mulali´c-Handan, 2007, p. 26). For data on the destruction of cultural heritage during the war in BiH see also Serdarevi´c (1997), Riedlmayer (2002), and Hadžimuhamedovi´c (2006, 2008). 6. On heritage reconstruction in the first years after the end of the war, see Wik (2005), Miscellaneous (2006), Mulali´c-Handan (2007), and Hadžimuhamedovi´c (2008). On the legal and institutional system of heritage management in post-war BiH and the work of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments, see Musi (2014). 7. In her monograph on the Sarajevo Roses, Junuzovi´c defines their origin a mystery. It seems that the practice of filling the craters started as early as 1996 and that it stemmed from an idea by Nedžad Kurto, Professor of

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8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

Architecture at Sarajevo University, but the official sources she consulted offered no definite confirmation of this information (Junuzovi´c, 2006). Activists of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR BiH) have annually marked some roses in the city centre with red paint on 6 April since 2010 (personal observations in 2011 and 2012). Vlada Kantona Sarajeva (2012); Zolj-Balenovi´c (2013, 2014). The Fond Memorijala is an organization now under the Ministry for Veteran Affairs of the Sarajevo Canton, see below for more details. Works on renovating the Roses are led in collaboration with the Cantonal Institute for the Protection of the Cultural-Historical and Natural Heritage of Sarajevo, and are funded by the Cantonal Ministry for Veteran Affairs. Oslobod-enje (2018), ‘Sarajevo: sanirana Sarajevska Ruža u Ferhadiji’, 27 April; Vlada Kantona Sarajeva (2018). Reportedly, an idea advanced by the Fond Memorijala to cover the Roses with glass met the objection of the Cantonal Institute for the Protection of the Cultural-Historical and Natural Heritage of Sarajevo for reasons of authenticity. Klix.ba (2015), ‘Vrijeme kad su na asfaltu cvjetale ruže: poˇcela obnova simbola stradanja sarajevskih civila’. Skupština Kantona Sarajevo, Odluka o usvajanju projekta ‘Opsada i odbrana Sarajeva 1992. – 1995. godine’, 23 March 2006, Doc. no. 0105-12591/06; Odluka o izmjeni i dopuni odluke o usvajanju projekta ‘Opsada i odbrana Sarajeva 1992. – 1995. godine’, 26 April 2007, Doc. no. 01-05-11004/07; Odluka o dopunama odluke o usvajanju projekta ‘Opsada i odbrana Sarajeva 1992. – 1995. godine’, 5 July 2012, Doc. no. 02-05-21353-5/12. UN, United Nations Commission of Experts, S/1994/674/Annex VI, entry 5 February 1994 (Saturday), p. 781. UN, United Nations Commission of Experts, S/1994/674/Annex VI, entry 5 February 1994 (Saturday), p. 781.; Sadovi´c (2007); ‘Serbs resist guilt for Markale massacres’ (2012). Markovi´c (2014), ‘“Agresore” mame u Vije´cnicu’, my translation. The President and Prime Minister of Serbia similarly refrained from attending the ceremony, AlJazeera Balkans (2014). Gradsko vije´ce Grada Sarajeva, Vije´cniˇcka pitanja i inicijative, Broj: 01-021517-12/17, 27 September (2017); Svitlica (2017), ‘Mijenja se natpis na sarajevskoj Vije´cnici?’ The complex is comprised of several additional elements, including a museum about Alija Izetbegovi´c, the reproduction of a historic tekke (an Islamic religious building), and an auditorium, or amphitheatre, and other parts that have not yet been constructed. For further information, see: www.dasenezaboravi.org.ba, Musi (2013). The full name of this institution is the Sarajevo Canton Fund for the Protection and Maintenance of Cemeteries of Shahids and Killed Fighters,

3

18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

26.

27. 28.

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Memorial Centres and Monuments of the Victims of Genocide (Fond Kantona Sarajeva za zaštitu i održavanje grobalja šehida i poginulih boraca, memorijalnih centara i spomen obilježja žrtava genocida). On the implications of the usage of this term see below, and Maˇcek (2009, pp. 136–147) and Bougarel et al. (2007). ‘Not even one of the genocides of the Bosniak people/nation has been marked… the message of the Shahid cemetery Kovaˇci must bring a warning that will be transmitted from generation to generation. May they not try again!’, Introduction, website of the Fond Memorijala, www.das enezaboravi.org, my translation. Introduction, website of the Fond Memorijala, www.dasenezaboravi.org, my translation. The nišan was a characteristic tombstone of the Islamic tradition in BiH. Existing exemplars that date back to the sixteenth century are currently protected as part of cultural heritage. Halimovi´c (2008), ‘Spomenik nedovršenim djetinjstvima’. The estimated number of children killed during the siege amounts to 1,601. Personal observation, July (2011). The number of casualties is still controversial. Investigations of the Office of the Prosecutor of BiH estimated 7 people killed and 14 wounded, whereas the RS establishment claims 42 were killed, 71 wounded, and 207 taken prisoners. See Rade Radovanovi´c (2012), ‘Slucaj Dobrovoljaˇcka: falsifikovanje istine’. In 2009, the war crime section of the Prosecutor’s Office of Serbia issued an arrest warrant for 19 BiH officials for the events of Dobrovoljaˇcka Street. In 2010, the former presidency member Ejup Gani´c was arrested in London by British authorities acting upon the Serbian warrant, and in 2011 the former ARBiH General Jovan Divjak was detained in Vienna for the same reason. Both arrests took place two months before the commemoration, which stirred tensions and resulted in a heated debate in the media. See, for example, Schwartz-Schilling (2010) ‘The Ejup Gani´c Case. How Serbia Attempted to Manipulate the British Justice System’; B92 (2011) ‘Sarajevo ogorˇceno zbog Divjaka’. Various armed formations converged into the Army of BiH (Armija BiH , ARBiH) or fought on its side. These included special police units, units of the Territorial Defence (Teritorijalna odbrana, TO, which was one section of the armed forces of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), the Patriotic League, and the Green Berets—which were two Muslim- or SDA-controlled paramilitary formations that emerged in 1991. See Donia, Sarajevo, 273–77. B92 (2010); Glas Srpske (2010), ‘Dobrovoljaˇcka Ulica’; Balkan Insight (2010). Personal observation, 3 May 2011.

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29. Though many left Sarajevo at the onset of the conflict, people of various backgrounds remained in the besieged Sarajevo. Accomplishing and assessing separation along ethnic lines is also particularly complex in Sarajevo, which used to have the highest percentages of people of mixed background, and of people choosing the categories of ‘Yugoslav’ and ‘Other’ in the pre-war censuses (Markowitz, 2010, pp. 77–90; Woodward, 1995, pp. 32–35). 30. The Day of Remembrance of Fallen Fighters in Sarajevo is held on different dates that correspond to religious holidays: Ramadan Bajram for Muslims, All Saints’ Day for Croats, and the day of Orthodox Christmas ˇ for Serbs (Custo, 2013, p. 94).

References AlJazeera Balkans. (2014, June 13). Vuˇci´c ne´ce u Sarajevo zbog ploˇce na Vije´cnici. B92. (2010, May 3). Sarajevo: dva skupa bez incidenata. B92. (2011, March 5). Sarajevo ogorˇceno zbog Divjaka. Balkan Insight. (2010, May 4). Commemoration in Sarajevo held without incident. Balkan Insight. (2012, May 10). Sarajevo memorial for children killed during siege. Balkan Investigative Report Network—BIRN BiH. (2012, February 3). Serbs resist guilt for Markale massacres. Bet-El, I. R. (2004). Unimagined communities: The power of memory and the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. In J. W. Muller (Ed.), Memory and power in post-war Europe. Studies in the presence of the past (pp. 206–222). Cambridge University Press. Blin Magazin. (2011, January 18). Na ovom mjestu su srpski zloˇcinci ubili 67 grad-ana Sarajeva. Da li je Srpski narod kriv za Markale. Bougarel, X., Helms, E., & Duijzings, G. (Eds.). (2007). The new Bosnian mosaic. Identities, memories and moral claims in a post-war society. Ashgate. Correia, S. (2013). The politics of memory in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska. In O. Listhaug & S. Ramet (Eds.), Bosnia-Herzegovina since Dayton: civic and uncivic values (pp. 329–350). Longo Editore. Coward, M. (2004). Urbicide in Bosnia. In S. Graham (Ed.), Cities, war, and terrorism. Towards an urban geopolitics (pp. 154–171). Blackwell. Coward, M. (2009). Urbicide. Routledge. ˇ Custo, A. (2008). Kolektivna memorija grada – vjeˇcna vatra i Spomen park Vraca. Historijska Traganja, 1, 101–123. ˇ Custo, A. (2013). Uloga spomenika u Sarajevu u izgradnji kolektivnog sje´canja na period 1941–1945. i 1992–1995. Komparativna analiza. Institut za istoriju

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Lovrenovi´c, D. (2016). Bosnia and Herzegovina as the stage of three parallel and conflicted historical memories. European Review (Chichester, England), 24(4), 481–490. https://doi.org/10.1017/S106279871600003X Maˇcek, I. (2009). Sarajevo under siege. Anthropology in wartime. University of Pennsylvania Press. Markovi´c, Z. (2014, June). ‘Agresore’ mame u Vijecnicu. Vesti Online, 10. Markowitz, F. (2010). Sarajevo. University of Illinois Press. Miscellaneous. (2006). Pet godina rada Komisije za oˇcuvanje nacionalnih spomenika/Five years of the Commission to preserve national monuments. Heritage (Baština), II, 23–73. Moll, N. (2013). Fragmented memories in a fragmented country: Memory competition and political identity-building in today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nationalities Papers, 41(6), 910–935. Mulali´c-Handan, M. (2007). Implementation of Annex 8 of General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Heritage (Bastina), III, 23–53. Muller, J. W. (2004). Introduction: the power of memory, the memory of power and the power over memory. In J. W. Muller (Ed.), Memory and power in post-war Europe. Studies in the presence of the past (pp. 1–35). Cambridge University Press. Musi, M. (2013). Parallels. Construction and re-construction of the heritage of war in the urban landscape of Sarajevo—World War II and the 1992–95 conflict. In D. Callebaut, J. Marik, & J. Marikova-Kubkova (Eds.), Heritage reinvents Europe (pp. 107–120). Europae Archaeologiae Consilium. EAC. Musi, M. (2014). The international heritage doctrine and the management of heritage in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina: The case of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 20(1), 54–71. Musi, M. (2015). (Re)Constructions: Armed conflicts, cultural heritage, (inter)national policies and local practices of memorialization in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (PhD thesis). Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. Nezavisne Novine. (2012, November 29). Izetbegovi´c: RS nastala agresijom i genocidom. Oslobod-enje. (2017, November 7). Ekspertna komisija razmotrit c´ e sporni tekst ploˇce na Vije´cnici. Oslobod-enje. (2018, April 27). Sarajevo: sanirana Sarajevska Ruža u Ferhadiji. Pe´canin, S. (2007, April). Naša i njihova djeca. Dani, 13. Radovanovi´c, R. (2012, May). Sluˇcaj Dobrovoljaˇcka: falsifikovanje istine. Al Jazeera Balkans, 3.

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Rakovi´c, S. (2005). We are not like them: Denial of the other in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In M. Pajnik & T. Kuzmani´c (Eds.), Nationstates and xenophobias: In the ruins of former Yugoslavia (pp. 61–74). Peace Institute. Riedlmayer, A. J. (2002). From the ashes: The past and future of Bosnia’s cultural heritage. In M. Shatzmiller (Ed.), Islam and Bosnia: Conflict resolution and foreign policy in multi-ethnic states (pp. 98–135). McGill-Queens University Press. Risti´c, M. (2013). Silent vs. rhetorical memorials: Sarajevo roses and commemorative plaques. In A. Brown & A. Leach (Eds.), Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, 30, Open (pp. 111–122). SAHANZ. Republiˇcki Centar za Istraživanje rata, ratnih zloˇcina i traženje nestalih lica. (2020, May 3). Zloˇcin u Dobrovoljaˇckoj – vjeˇcna sramota Sarajeva. Sadovi´c, M. (2007, January). Markale massacre revisited. Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), 26. Sarajevo-X. (2009, April 15). Akcija Gradjana. Sarajevo, sje´cas li se Sarajeva? Sarajeva, G. V., & Pitanja i Inicijative, V. (2017, September 27). Doc. no. 0102-1517-12/17. Sarajli´c, E., & Davor, M. (Eds.). (2011). State or nation? The challenges of political transition in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Centar za interdisciplinarne post-diplomske studije/Center for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies. Schwartz-Schilling, C. (2010). The Ejup Ganic Case. How Serbia attempted to manipulate the British justice system. L’europe en Formation, 357, 175–187. Sehovac, D. (2018). Srpske žrtve su žrtve ratnih zbivanja, a za Bosnjaˇcke žrtve krivi su srpski fasistiˇcki agresori. Frontal.ba. Serdarevi´c, M. (1997). Pravna zastita kulturno-historijskog naslijed-a BiH (Nastajanje, oˇcuvanje, destrukcija). Medunarodni Centar za Mir. Skupština Kantona Sarajevo. (2006, March 23). Odluka o usvajanju projekta ‘Opsada i odbrana Sarajeva 1992. – 1995. godine’. Doc. no. 01-0512591/06. Skupština Kantona Sarajevo. (2007, April 26). Odluka o izmjeni i dopuni odluke o usvajanju projekta ‘Opsada i odbrana Sarajeva 1992. – 1995. godine’. Doc. no. 01-05-11004/07. Skupština Kantona Sarajevo. (2012, July 5). Odluka o dopumana odluke o usvajanju projekta ‘Opsada i odbrana Sarajeva 1992. – 1995. godine’. Doc. no. 02-05-21353-5/12. Svitlica, Z. (2017, October). Mijenja se natpis na sarajevskoj Vije´cnici? Mondo.ba, 26. United Nations Commission of Experts, S/1994/674/Annex VI, Final Report of the United Nations Commission of Experts established pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992), Study of the Battle and Siege of Sarajevo.

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Vlada Kantona Sarajeva. (2012, May 25). Nakon što je potpisan Ugovor: poˇcela rekonstrukcija prve ‘Sarajevske ruže’. Vlada Kantona Sarajeva. (2018, April 27). Jedno od memorijalnih obilježja stradanja Sarajlija: Sanirana ‘Sarajevska ruža’ u ulici Ferhadija. Wik, T. (2005). Promišljanja nakon osam godina restauratorskog rada organizacije Kulturno nasljed-e bez granica u Bosni i Hercegovini/Reflections after eight years of restoration work in Bosnia and Herzegovina by Cultural Heritage Without Borders. Heritage (Bastina), I, 195–217. Woodward, S. L. (1995). Balkan tragedy: Chaos and dissolution after the cold war. Brookings Institution Press. Zolj-Balenovi´c, E. (2013, October). Sarajevske Ruže se vra´caju na ulice. Oslobod-enje, 28. Zolj-Balenovi´c, E. (2014, July). Fond Memorijala obnavlja Sarajevske ruže. Oslobod-enje, 14.

CHAPTER 4

Heritage Reconstruction in Mostar: Minorities and Multiculturalism in Post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina Emily Gunzburger Makaš

Introduction: Heritage During and After War The city of Mostar is notorious internationally as a result of the destruction of its heritage during the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The city is also globally celebrated for its highly visible reconstruction process. As happened elsewhere in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia, during the two battles for Mostar the warring parties specifically targeted sites of cultural heritage for destruction (Council of Europe, 1993; Riedlmayer, 2002; Sells, 2003b). Perpetrators, victims, and observers quickly linked these losses to the ethnic-cleansing campaigns to destroy the peoples associated with these heritage sites. Certain previously shared heritage sites took on new meanings as they were divvied up among

E. G. Makaš (B) School of Architecture, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. B˘adescu et al. (eds.), Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2_4

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the population and damaged by shelling, bulldozing, and vandalism (Fig. 4.1). In Mostar, the fighting ended in 1994 with the city and its population physically and politically divided. The population shifts occurred as part of the ethnic cleansing and also voluntary population movements during the war; this separation was formalized by the 1996 Interim Statute of the City of Mostar, signed in Rome, which established a Bosnian Croatcontrolled western part of the city and a Bosniak-controlled east. A forced reunification followed ten years later, but intergroup tensions persist even today. Thus, for more than two decades, the restoration and reconstruction of damaged heritage in Mostar have taken place within this context of continuing antagonisms. Indeed, the conflict over space within the city did not end in the early 1990s, but rather changed dimensions and has been waged ever since through the processes of building and rebuilding. Heritage sites have been intimately involved in the reinforcement of national identities in Mostar and elsewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina, just as they were implicated in the attempted destruction of those same identities during the war. In the past two decades, the continuation of the wartime struggle between the distinct identities of Bosnia’s Croat and Bosniak, or Muslim, populations and of Bosnia’s multicultural identity has been clearly visible in the heritage reconstruction process. The international community has primarily used heritage sites to promote unity and reconciliation, but local discourse among Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats about projects has been more multivalent and complex. Bosnian Serbs, who in the 2013 census amounted to just over 4% of Mostar’s population, have actively campaigned for the reconstruction of ‘their’ sites within the city, including the Old and New Orthodox Churches, but have largely been on the sidelines of conversations about other heritage projects since the 1990s. Both the international community and Mostar’s residents and institutions have involved heritage sites in accentuating national differences and marking separate territories, as well as in advocating for varying interpretations of multiculturalism. Some restored institutional, religious, and public buildings reflect the notion of a shared cultural heritage, while others suggest the coexistence of multiple cultural heritages. These different versions of multiculturalism are in part linked to different understandings of recent and more distant history and in part linked to a perceived ‘double minority’ syndrome in Mostar today. Examining the renewal of cultural, religious, and public buildings in Mostar reveals these

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ˇ Fig. 4.1 The Old Bridge and surrounding Caršija (Photo © Emily Gunzburger Makaš)

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differences, but they are also apparent in the interpretations of Mostar’s new Old Bridge, its most well-known heritage site.

ˇ sija The Old Bridge and Carˇ The city of Mostar is nearly synonymous in the international imagination with its sixteenth-century Old Bridge, which in November 1993 was deliberately shelled by the Croatian Defence Council (Hrvatska vije´ce obrane, HVO) until it collapsed. Among the most widely publicized and lamented acts of heritage destruction during the break-up of Yugoslavia, the Old Bridge’s fall focused international attention on Mostar. At the time, it was unclear whether the HVO General Slobodan Praljak, who ordered the attack, viewed the Old Bridge as a military target, a symbol of Ottoman occupation, something of value to Bosniaks specifically, or as part of Bosnia’s shared heritage (Alenko, 2000; ICTY, 2004; Pavkovi´c, 2000; ‘Šta kažu generali’, 2000). Nonetheless, the bridge’s destruction was nearly immediately interpreted both locally and internationally as an attack on the tradition of pluralism and multiculturalism in Bosnia (Drakuli´c, 1993; ‘Le Vieux Pont’, 1993; Lovrenovi´c, 1995; Matvejevi´c, 1993; Šagolj, 1993; Sudeti´c, 1993). In its absence, the Old Bridge quickly became a powerful symbol of Bosnian multiculturalism, and its reconstruction was compared with the rebuilding of metaphoric bridges between Bosnia’s divided peoples. The Old Bridge had always been a symbol of the city of Mostar and its iconic image has repeatedly been used to represent Bosnia, the region, or both. Featuring prominently in tourist paraphernalia and on the covers of travel guides and books, it has also repeatedly appeared on stamps and currency and in similar high-profile contexts since the mid-nineteenth century (Makaš, 2005). Meanings of the Old Bridge became increasingly abstract after its destruction: rather than emphasizing its place-related associations, scholars, journalists, Mostar residents, and international organizations argued that the Old Bridge symbolized the divisiveness of war, the destruction of cultural heritage, and most frequently, the attack on Bosnia’s pre-war pluralistic tradition (Donia & Fine, 1994; Gutman & Rieff, 1999; Jezernik, 1995; Pasi´c, 1994; Sells, 1996). As a corollary, its rebuilding was linked to the opposing ideas of unification and renewed multiculturalism. For example, Safet Oruˇcevi´c, the former Mostar mayor and spokesman for the bridge’s reconstruction, often asserted that project

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would ‘symbolize the restoration of [Bosnia] and the reconciliation of its people who will come together to rebuild the Old Bridge, and all Mostar’s bridges, to link them as a people once again’ (Oruˇcevi´c, 1997). The Old Bridge was able to take on these new meanings quickly and pervasively because of the timing of its destruction, its location in divided Mostar, and its typology (Makaš, 2005). In the spring of 1992, it survived the first of the two sieges of Mostar when the Bosnian Serb paramilitaries and the Yugoslav People’s Army consciously chose to spare it while systematically destroying all of Mostar’s other bridges (Architectural Association of Mostar, 1992). The bridge was destroyed in the fall of 1993 by the HVO in the second siege of the city. At that point, instead of the Bosnian Croat militia and the mostly Bosniak Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina fighting together against an army perceived as an outside aggressor, they fought one another. Multicultural cooperation within Bosnia and Herzegovina had come to an end. Thus, the Old Bridge’s deliberate destruction came to represent this moment of complete divisiveness, as did the separation of peoples within the city of Mostar that had occurred by that time. Mostar was one of Bosnia’s most multicultural and intermixed cities prior to the war. However, demographic enclaves formed in the city due to forced expulsions and a voluntary exodus, and so by November 1993 when the bridge was destroyed, Bosnian Croats lived on the west side, Bosniaks on the east side, and the city’s Bosnian Serbs had largely gone. Though the river was not the line of separation in the center of Mostar, the Old Bridge as a symbol of connecting peoples was particularly powerful once they had become literally separated. The Old Bridge was also a bridge: its dramatic single arch physically connected two riverbanks. Symbolizing connectivity and unity, and its destruction symbolizing divisiveness, came almost naturally to a site with such a form and function, and which already symbolized place. The secular, infrastructural nature of the bridge also contributed to its appeal: unlike the targeted mosques and churches throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was easy for a journalist, scholars, and politicians at home and abroad to see the Old Bridge as universal. In the immediate aftermath of its destruction, there was a widespread consensus in the country and, especially abroad, that its destruction had been an attack on culture in general and on a shared Bosnian history, rather than on a particular identity or religious group (Makaš, 2005). International donors and organizations lined up to participate in the reconstruction of Mostar’s Old Bridge because of its new meanings and

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purported neutrality. The World Bank, the World Monuments Fund (WMF), the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), and UNESCO as well as numerous foreign governments, including Turkey and Croatia as well as numerous European Union countries, were all involved in the funding, implementation of the project, or both. Nearly all of these organizations and countries explicitly described their reasons for involvement by stressing the Old Bridge as a symbol of peaceful pluralism, an interpretation of Bosnia they supported during and in the intermediate aftermath of the war (UN, 2001; UNESCO, 1997, 2002; The World Bank, 2002). The reconstruction process further reinforced this by requiring equal participation in the project by Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks in Mostar; however, beyond a few specifically engaged individuals, perceptions of the project varied significantly between the Bosnian Croat and Bosniak populations of the city. Most Bosniaks in the city agreed excitedly that the new Old Bridge would be a symbol for all of Mostar once again. Anything that restored the pre-war built environment was suggestive of the pre-war political context and reassured their position as a minority in Croat-dominated Herzegovina (HercegBosna, 2009a, 2009b; Makaš, 2005). Despite the forced cooperation at the levels of city government and project management, many of Mostar’s Croats seemed to at best ignore the whole process or at worst subtly obstruct it and suggest that the Ottoman-era bridge linked more closely to contemporary Bosniaks than to the city’s entire population (‘Fokusirano’, 1999; International Crisis Group, 2000). In addition, because it was located in the eastern, Bosniakcontrolled and dominated part of the city, they found few opportunities to interact with it or associate it with ‘their’ Mostar. During the course of the reconstruction process, the Canadian historian, politician, and journalist Michael Ignatieff were one of many who cynically suggested that even the politicians from both sides of the city were only working together on the project because of a shared interest in international funding, rather than because they actually all bought into the multicultural symbolism being touted by the donors (Ignatieff, 2002). This local alienation was reinforced and made readily visible by the elaborate opening ceremony held in July 2004 to celebrate the completed reconstruction process: the ceremony professed the international, universal, and multicultural values of the new Old Bridge at the expense of its connection to Mostar (Makaš, 2011b). Speakers and performers came from far and wide, but few from the city of Mostar, and

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most local residents were not allowed to attend in order to ensure the security of the high-profile international guests, who received the limited tickets (‘Bridge Inauguration’; ‘Opening of the Old Bridge’). Overlapping with the reconstruction of the Old Bridge, international organizations, particularly UNESCO, turned their attention to the historic area surrounding the city’s central icon on both sides of the ˇ Neretva River. This sixteenth-century marketplace, known as the Caršija, had been severely damaged during the indiscriminate shelling of the city’s sieges in the early 1990s. Within 15 years, the rubble had been cleared and most of the structures in this part of Mostar had been completely reconstructed, so as to imitate their pre-war appearances and configurations. For example, the street Kujundžiluk, located along the eastern riverbank approaching the Old Bridge, was reconstructed in 2001 with assistance from the Swedish non-governmental organization, Cultural Heritage without Borders. Despite being new ‘re’-constructions, the Old Bridge and the ˇ surrounding Caršija were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2005. Again, officially on both the local and international levels, the project was couched in the language of unification, multiculturalism, and reconciliation (UN, 2001; UNESCO, 2002; The World Bank, 1999). Though the city of Mostar is celebrated in the nomination reports for these intangible qualities, in reality, the designated area actually encompassed only the Ottoman-era historic core of the city, and did not include structures related to other historical periods or cultural groups (Makaš, 2011b). In addition, the structures within the World Heritage Site’s boundaries are almost all shops owned and operated by Bosniaks, which are staffed by and cater to other Bosniaks or to tourists. Thus, far from representing the shared and multicultural image of the city, the area of the designated Old Town is surprisingly monocultural. The Old Town in Mostar, which was officially designated as a national monument in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2004, covers a slightly larger area of the city than the UNESCO site and includes a few Orthodox churches and support buildings as well as a few Austro-Hungarian-era commercial structures and institutions. However, like the World Heritage zone, it is predominantly Ottoman in origin and includes numerous historic mosques (Fig. 4.2). The restored Old Bridge and Old Town were championed by the international community as proof of Mostar’s renewal. They—at least initially—assumed that because the physical environment from before the war had been recreated, the peacefully coexisting pluralistic society must

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Fig. 4.2 Map showing the boundaries of the Mostar Old Town UNESCO World Heritage Site and National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as key sites mentioned in the chapter (© Emily Gunzburger Makaš, drawn by Amy Stewart)

also have returned. Bosniaks in Mostar at first also largely agreed with and participated in the promotion of this rhetoric because it was the vision of multicultural Mostar that they hoped to see realized (Makaš, 2011b; Oruˇcevi´c, 1997). However, in recent years, they have become increasingly skeptical as the city’s social and political reality has proven not to mirror this ideal. This continuity bolsters Bosniak nervousness about the

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changes that have come with living in a Croat-controlled city during and since the war. On the other hand, Bosnian Croats in Mostar who were dissatisfied with the pre-war context in which they felt marginalized saw the Old Bridge project as a continuation of that context. Looking beyond the bridge at other restored cultural and religious heritage sites reveal more nuance in the ways that rebuilding a multicultural Mostar has been envisioned by these communities within the city.

Cultural and Religious Sites ˇ During the same period in which the Old Bridge and Caršija were rebuilt, international organizations undertook other interventions in Mostar to further revive and promote the city’s alleged multiculturalism. In the late 1990s, the WMF and the AKTC prepared dossiers on architecturally significant sites in Mostar that covered a larger geographic area, a greater temporal span, and a greater variety of cultural connections that would later become part of the World Heritage designated area (AKTC and WMF, 1999). From this list, the World Bank carefully selected three sites as pilot restoration projects to represent the country’s three constituent nations and three primary communities within Mostar before the war. Over the subsequent decade, the Islamic Community’s Vakuf Palace, the Serb Orthodox Metropolitan’s Palace, and the Croat Cultural Society Napredak were all rebuilt and reopened with funds managed by the World Bank collected for the Old Bridge and the Old Town (‘Dobili odobrenje’, 2003; The World Bank, 2002). If the Old Bridge’s reconstruction typified the largely European and American international community’s search for neutral sites that they saw as representative of all, the inclusive spectrum of sites restored through this pilot project typified the other international approach of separate but equal treatment. Informally known as the ‘three nations project’, the three sites—which were so closely associated with distinct religious communities that other communities would have had little reason to interact with them before or since the war—ensured that everyone got something and that the international community’s ‘neutrality’ could be maintained (AKTC and WMF, 1999). Singling out each group and stressing their distinctiveness by restoring three separate sites suggest that there are few shared heritage sites and perhaps that there is no shared, multicultural Bosnian identity. Thus, the symbolism of these projects is in tension with that of the Old Bridge, despite the similar funding sources

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and shared promotion by international organizations. This project also demonstrated the varying ways in which reflecting a multicultural society within the built environment has been understood in post-war Mostar: both as a place of shared history and a place with multiple, distinct cultural histories. The three turn-of-the-twentieth-century buildings restored through the ‘three nations project’ were all of noted historical and architectural significance, which allowed the World Bank as well as the WMF and AKTC, who coordinated the projects, to imply that their restoration would promote shared heritage. According to their joint dossier of sites and a background report, ‘these structures reflect Mostar’s multicultural past and should be reclaimed to meaningful use’ so that the city can ‘assume again its function as a truly multicultural urban centre’ (AKTC and WMF, 1999). Most importantly, though affiliated with specific cultural groups, these buildings were purposefully not mosques or churches, but were less overtly religious office and community buildings. Mostar’s mosques and churches have also mostly been restored or reconstructed since the 1990s war, and have more directly been associated with the identities of specific, separate cultural groups rather than with a shared identity or multiculturalism. Indeed, a majority of these projects have been carried out by the religious communities themselves, often with funding from religious-based charities or co-religious foreign governments. The rebuilding of the Franciscan Church of Saints Peter and Paul was the most prominent and controversial of all the church projects by the Croat Catholic community in Mostar. The ruins of the severely damaged nineteenth-century church were removed in the mid-1990s, immediately after the war. A larger concrete replacement church was erected in 1997, with support from local and international Catholic charities (‘Potpora izgradnji crkve’, May 1997; ‘Spektakl kakvog ni pamti’, September 1997). The rebuilt bell tower at the Franciscan church was double the height of the one that was destroyed during the war. Visible from throughout Mostar, the tower boldly announces the presence of Catholic Bosnian Croats in the city and dominates a skyline otherwise marked by numerous, smaller minarets. For many of Mostar’s Croats, this is an important change that celebrates their religious identity, which they argue was visibly suppressed by the previous atheist and Muslim-controlled governments during the Federal Yugoslav and Ottoman eras (Pavkovi´c, 2001;

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Šimunovi´c, 2001). On the other hand, Bosniaks in Mostar and the international community have interpreted the new bell tower quite differently. Its oversized scale, location on the former dividing line of the city, and its addition to the city’s skyline are all aspects that are viewed as aggressive and confrontational (Smajilhodši´c, 2002). This competitive reconstruction of church towers, as well as of crosses, has happened throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, as Michael Sells has documented in the nearby Herzegovinian town of Stolac (Sells, 2003a). The Cathedral of Mary, Mother of the Church, the only other Catholic church in Mostar’s center, was repaired in 1999 and a bell tower was added in 2004 after international arbitrators and local Muslims thwarted attempts to build a more prominently located and larger new cathedral on the city’s dividing line (Mrkonji´c, 1998, 1999). Many viewed this proposed project’s location as a continued affront on the pre-war status quo and as antithetical to the spirit of the city’s Central Zone, which the 1994 city statute had established as a shared space to be jointly administered by the city’s Croats and Bosniaks (‘Bošnjaci se protive izgradnj’, 1996; Makaš, 2011a). Rather than increasing in size, Mostar’s mosques increased in number in the initial years after the 1990s war. Major heritage sites that had been damaged, including the Koski Mehmed-Paša and Karod-oz-Beg Mosques, were quickly restored, but by 2002 there were 38 mosques in Mostar, more than twice as many as before the war (Strandenes, 1999). Some of these were reconstructions of historic mosques that had been destroyed or abandoned in previous decades, including the sixteenthcentury Neziraga Mosque, which was damaged in the Second World War and whose renewal was completed in 1999 with funds from the United Arab Emirates (Islamic Summit Conference, 2000). Historic mosques in Bosnian Croat-controlled west Mostar were restored at a much slower pace, and often only after having overcome significant nationalisminspired administrative hurdles. For example, the planning department of the Croat-controlled Mostar Southwest Municipality repeatedly denied a building permit for the Baba Bešir Mosque, which was damaged in the first siege of Mostar in 1992 and totally destroyed the following year (‘Postavljen križ’, 2001; US Department of State, 2001). The Baba Bešir was eventually rebuilt in 2003, after an intervention from the Office of the High Representative (OHR), the international administration established by the European Union and United States at the end of the war

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in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 to oversee implementation of the civilian aspects of the Dayton Peace Accords. There is general agreement that the impact of these new and renewed mosques has been to increase the Islamic character of the already predominantly Muslim, Ottoman-era core of Mostar; however, separate communities in the city have perceived the collective impact of the city’s nearly 40 mosques differently. Many of Mostar’s non-Bosniak residents negatively noted the trend to cover East Mostar with mosques, especially when on the defensive about the size or location of one of ‘their’ new religious symbols (Martin, 2000; Ploˇckini´c, 2001). The perceived increasing Islamification of the cityscape was viewed as aggressive and used to defend the construction of conspicuous Catholic bell towers within the city to compete with the minarets on the skyline. In line with their efforts to remain neutral, the universalist international organizations have avoided direct funding for the restoration of Catholic churches or mosques in Mostar; however, UNESCO has been significantly involved in the reconstruction of the city’s two destroyed Serb Orthodox churches. Most of the city’s Serbs left Mostar during the first siege when their co-nationals attacked the city. During the second siege, the early nineteenth-century Orthodox Church of the Nativity of the Virgin and late nineteenth-century Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Trinity were both destroyed, probably by the HVO. Funds for the churches have come from the City of Mostar and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, along with local and international donors. The absence of a significant Bosnian Serb population in the city since the war (today Mostar’s population is about 4% Serb), as well as the undisputed historical and architectural significance of the two sites, has allowed interventions by UNESCO as well as by the local government to be non-controversial in a way that supports for the contested Catholic and Muslim sites would have been, because of the continued presence of these two antagonistic communities in Mostar.

Public Institutions The tension between shared sites and parallel, separate presences within Mostar has also been complex at public buildings without explicit connections to specific religious or cultural communities. Though on the surface more seemingly neutral, buildings such as schools and government offices have been settings in which the sharing of space has been negotiated and

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varying memories and identities have led to multiple interventions and interpretations. Until the recent war, the late nineteenth-century Gimnazija served as an academic grammar school for young people of all confessions and cultural backgrounds in Mostar. During the socialist period, it was given the name of the then universally celebrated early twentieth-century local poet Aleksa Šantic, whose Serb Orthodox identity led to his rejection by both Mostar’s Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats in the early 1990s. This school’s central location on the boulevard meant that it was on the front line during the recent war. It suffered damage and was deliberately included within the shared Central Zone immediately after the war (Makaš, 2011a). In the year 2000, Mostar’s Bosnian Croat-controlled Southwest municipality partially repaired the first floor of the building and began operating a school for Catholic Croat students (Dedi´c, 1998). Mostar’s Muslim population objected, leading the regional office of the OHR to mediate an agreement for sharing the school by operating two separate schools within the same building (Mrkonji´c, 1999). Two years later, after significant resistance from the Bosnian Croat side, Mostar’s Old Town municipality finally began operating that second school (Bose, 2002; ‘Neiskorištena zgrada’, 2002; OHR, 2000; ‘Zahtijevamo korištenje gimnazije’, 2002). The segregated system of two parallel schools continues to exist today, with separate administrations, curricula, students, and even separate entrances. In the summer of 2003, when internationally organized talks on the political reunification of Mostar were underway, the OHR and Office for Security and Cooperation in Europe proposed combining the school administrations as well as the less controversial maths and science curricula (Eminovi´c, 2003; Medi´c, 2003; OSCE and OHR, 2003). The school’s integration process mirrored that of the Old Bridge and reflected in a microcosm the reunification of Mostar itself: The sharing of the school was driven by the international community, whose pressure and threats to withhold funding encouraged reluctant progress and cooperation between Mostar’s two sides. Like the Old Bridge, the school was eventually restored with international funds, and like the city itself, the building is shared by both sides, but with minimal interaction and overlap. The city’s Bosniak population is frustrated by this change from the prewar nature of the school, but many among the Bosnian Croat population see the parallel schools as a positive shift in which students from different cultural backgrounds are not assimilated but rather allowed to learn

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their histories and cultures separately (Eminovi´c, 2003; Glibuši´c, 2003; Selimbegovi´c, 2003; ‘Zahtijevamo korištenje gimnazije’, 2002) (Fig. 4.3). In March of 2012, the mayor celebrated the opening of a new town hall for Mostar within a recently restored building on the main boulevard, which had served as an elementary school before the 1990s war. Like the grammar school next door, it had been built during the AustroHungarian period and its front-line location had resulted in significant wartime damage. The school was shelled in May of 1993 by the HVO and a month later, several HVO military police from the city of Livno were killed in its courtyard by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Restoration of the building and its conversion into a new, centrally located, shared town hall for the city began in 2010 with funds from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the City of Mostar (‘Mostar: Sveˇcano otvorena’, 2012).

Fig. 4.3 View of the boulevard including the school, city hall, and Franciscan bell tower in the background (Photo © Emily Gunzburger Makaš)

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At the new town hall, separate competing commemorations have revealed ongoing tensions and varying attitudes toward sharing heritage sites in multicultural Mostar. At the end of the war, a small, informal cross was erected in memory of the military police from Livno who had been killed in the courtyard. As the building was being transformed into a shared town hall, certain Bosniaks took issue with this memorial dedicated to one side in the recent conflict, as well as with its specifically Christian form. In March of 2012, the cross was replaced with a memorial in the shape of a ste´cak, a medieval Bosnian tombstone, whose reliefs included a cross, the Croatian coat of arms, a famous commemorative quote by a seventeenth-century Croatian poet, and the names of the fallen soldiers (Hrvatskoga Kulturnog Vije´ca, 2013). Considered a compromise by Bosnian Croats, others in the city still considered the new memorial’s exclusivist symbols such a provocation that the Bosniak caucus boycotted the opening of the new city hall. They argued that the police to whom the memorial was dedicated were part of the HVO, which was an organization that ran concentration camps, killed civilians, and had ethnically cleansed parts of Mostar (‘Foto Galerija’, 2012). Ironically, in their absence at the opening ceremony, the vice president of the city council suggested that the new town hall would not ‘only be the seat of the city administration but also a place of meeting and dialog for all citizens of the city of Mostar’ (‘Foto Galerija’, 2012). A few weeks later, in April 2012, the Association of Families of Martyrs and Fallen Soldiers of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Udruženja porodica šehida i poginulih boraca Armija RBiH ) erected a second memorial on the grounds of the city hall. This memorial was dedicated to the war’s 1078 killed and missing Bosnian army and municipal police. Its form was that of a lily, a symbol of the medieval Bosnian kingdom that had been a popular wartime symbol of the Bosnian army and state, and has been associated with Bosniaks since the war. This second, competing memorial led to an immediate boycott of the city hall by the Bosnian Croat caucus and was subsequently damaged by an explosive device in January of 2014 (Hrvatskoga kulturnog vije´ca, 2013; Miliˇcevi´c, 2014). While both sides condemned the vandalism, the local Bosnian Croat politicians and media complained about the possibly illegal process through which the Bosnian army memorial had been erected, as well as its lack of a precise link to the restored city hall site, which was a clear allusion to a stronger justification for keeping ‘their’ controversial memorial. Mostar’s Bosniaks initially argued that there should be no

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memorials at the site in line with the pre-war situation, but after the Croatian police memorial appeared permanent, they began advocating multiple, distinct memorials that represent the competing identity groups and their histories alongside one another (Miliˇcevi´c, 2014).

Double Minority Syndrome, Multiculturalism, and Heritage Post-conflict Mostar exhibits a ‘double minority syndrome’, a condition that political scientists define as a multicultural society in which multiple groups perceive themselves as being the minority (Benvenisti, 1986). In Mostar, both Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats can make this case using demographic statistics and regional history. Neither Bosniaks nor Bosnian Croats constitutes a statistical majority of the population in Mostar and both groups claim minority status. In addition, Bosnian Croats are a minority in Bosnia and Herzegovina as a whole. As minorities within a multicultural society with ongoing tensions, both fear that their rights and existence are threatened. In Mostar, both groups acknowledge and support the country’s multicultural nature, but what that means and ideas of how it should be articulated in the built environment vary between these two groups, which are themselves not homogenous. The contested reconstruction of heritage in Mostar reveals these differences. Before the war, according to the 1991 census, those who self-identified as Croats constituted 17.4% of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s population, and according to the 2013 census, that percentage has dropped slightly to 15.4% (Agencija za statistiku, 2016). Those identifying as Bosnian Muslims before the war and as Bosniaks today have crossed the threshold from plurality to outright majority, that is, an increase from 43.5% in 1991 to 50.1% of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s population. In the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the two semi-autonomous entities within the country, and the one in which Mostar is located, Bosniaks today constitute over 70% of the population with Bosnian Croats at 22.4%. Thus, Croats are a clear minority within Bosnia and Herzegovina both today and historically. They have always viewed themselves as either marginalized or threatened—in the distant past by the Ottomans, more recently by the royal (1918–1941) and federal Yugoslav (1945– 1992) governments that they perceived as Serb-dominated, and during the 1990s war until today by a government they perceive as Islamicizing (HercegBosna, 2009a, 2009b).

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On the other hand, Mostar is the central and most populous city in Herzegovina, the part of Bosnia and Herzegovina in which Croats have lived in larger percentages historically. Today, many municipalities in Herzegovina are over 90% Bosnian Croat, though the HercegovaˇckoNeretvanski Kanton, the county in which Mostar is located, is only 53.3% Bosnian Croat. Before the war, Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats were represented evenly in Mostar, with each group constituting about 34% of the city’s population. But wartime and post-war demographic shifts have meant that by the 2013 census, the gap between the two populations has been increasing such that the city had become 44.2% Bosniak and 48.4% Bosnian Croat (Agencija za statistiku, 2016). Bosniaks are nervous about being a minority within a city that will soon have a majority Bosnian Croat population and often reference what happened during the recent war, specifically in west Mostar during the decade of division, and in neighboring municipalities, in which Muslims were discriminated against and harmed under Croat control. Though many Bosnian Muslims colluded with the Croats in the 1940s and were not targeted at that time for persecution based on race or religion, in the early twenty-first century, memories of the Independent State of Croatia demonstrated Bosnian Croats resolve to be part of a Greater Croatia. Thus, though Bosniaks have a slight majority in Bosnia and Herzegovina and a strong majority in the federation-level entity, it is Bosnian Croats who have a slight majority in the Kanton and a near majority in the city. Both groups can therefore perceive themselves as a minority within this multicultural context. While many, especially the Bosniak community in Mostar, have argued that shared, neutral sites, and the pre-war status quo reflect the country’s multicultural nature, others, particularly the city’s Bosnian Croats, have advocated multiple separate sites as an indicator of the multiple communities coexisting within the country’s population. These contrasting ‘shared–neutral’ versus ‘multiple–coexisting’ understandings of multiculturalism have conditioned the ways in which reconstructed heritage sites within the city have been interpreted by these communities as well as by the international community. As the above examples have suggested, Mostar’s Bosniaks see any change to the pre-war appearance of the city by the Bosnian Croats as an affront to its historical character and as a continuation of their wartime attack on them. Thus, changes to the cityscape—such as new Croat institutions, enlarged Catholic structures, and memorials to Croat

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fighters—are perceived as threatening, both to Bosniaks and to their image of a shared city, which is largely based on the pre-war situation. On the other hand, the city’s Croats see separate but equal schools and the presence of memorials for both sides as a reflection of the multiple communities with the city. For many of Mostar’s Croats, the 1990s war marked an important change allowing for the public celebration of their religious identity, which they argue was visibly suppressed by the previous atheist and Muslim-controlled governments during the recent federal Yugoslav and former-Ottoman eras (Pavkovi´c, 2001; Šimunovi´c, 2001). For example, Mostar’s Croats insist that the increased visibility of the oversized Franciscan church’s bell tower on the skyline of minarets better reflects the actual multiculturalism of Mostar than the situation before the war, as now the built environment prominently reveals the presence of both the city’s Bosniak Muslims and Croat Catholics (Mili´c, 2002). The internationally funded reconstruction of the Old Bridge and the pilot ‘three nations project’ similarly reflect these competing ideas of promoting multiculturalism within Mostar: The former is a purportedly shared, neutral site, and the latter reflects the city’s constituent nations as distinct, but all important. Thus, on the ‘architectural front’ the war clearly continues in Mostar, though the international community and Mostar’s Croats and Bosniaks all agree that the city is and should be multicultural, and though all parties feel their heritage reconstruction, new construction, and memorial projects contribute to this multiculturalism. Since the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s, heritage sites have been used symbolically to reinforce these different understandings of how a multicultural built environment should appear. Post-war reconstruction projects in Mostar have therefore simultaneously contributed to both the acceptance of shared space as well as to the perpetuation of the tensions that fuelled the conflict, as some suggest a common heritage, while others accentuate differences.

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CHAPTER 5

The Limits of Affects: Defacing Skopje 2014 Goran Janev and Fabio Mattioli

Night-time falls on Skopjani1 like a perfectly draped dress, comfortable yet stunning. The nights of June 2016, however, had a strange, almost wild feel. Before we could understand what was happening, a woman named Gordana stopped in the middle of a deserted street, her eyes sparkling with an electric intensity. ‘It was crazy, my friends, I can’t even begin to describe it. It was like an explosion – as if after so many years, we could finally feel free’. For several months, Gordana had marched along with thousands of fellow citizens, encouraging a series of protests that had helped end the decade-long authoritarian regime of Nikola Gruevski. In a crescendo of powerful, surreal urban actions, citizens and activists occupied public spaces and threw paint against the faux neoclassical façades recently erected by the nationalist government, as they claimed back the spaces

G. Janev Sts Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, North Macedonia F. Mattioli (B) University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. B˘adescu et al. (eds.), Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2_5

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of the Macedonian capital. Day after day, the streets of Skopje looked like a carnival, where signs of the regime had been turned into evidence of its impotence. The revolution, which came to be known as the Šarena revolucija (i.e. colourful revolution) did not set out to be carnivalesque, or even colourful. Instead, it had faced moments of intense political struggle. In April 2016, as Goran, one of the article authors, was biking to join the demonstration he found himself behind the line of the special riot unit who were forcing protesters down the street. That evening he was late and had no idea how the march had transformed from a normal, peaceful gathering into a chaotic scene of urban guerrilla ‘combat’, and nobody he met seemed to be able to provide a coherent account of what had happened. There was only one thing he could do. As casually as possible, Goran approached a policeman and asked him what was happening. The officer looked at him as if he were a kind of crazy alien, and then simply answered: ‘We are chasing them’. Goran thanked him and beseeched him politely to behave well, as he crossed the line—under the bewildered gaze of the riot police—to join his friends whom they were chasing. Down the street, Goran’s comrades were sweating and puffing, trying to make sense of the violence. Half an hour earlier, the president’s Citizens’ Liaison Office had been ransacked. A dozen protesters, including our comrade Brane, had been arrested. Avoiding the charging of riot police, the group spent the evening trying to coordinate legal service provisions over the phone and on Facebook, until a lawyer (and an SMS from the comrades) confirmed that they were well and would be released in the morning. Over the following days, Goran and his circle of activists met several times to strategize about the protests. They knew the time was right and that these protests could have an impact on the regime. They also knew that pushing against police shields was scary, physically and emotionally draining, and very dangerous. Suddenly, during the first coordination meeting between activists, students, NGOs, and the main opposition party (the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, or SDSM), the guys from the student plenum put forward a bold idea. What if they started hitting the regime in its symbolic spaces of power—the neoclassical monuments that Gruevski had methodically erected during his tenure as prime minister? From then on, the protest changed radically. As soon as the first paint bombs splashed red paint on the white and bronze façades of Gruevski’s

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buildings and monuments, which were key elements of the controversial Skopje 2014 project, the crowd went wild. The exploding balloons dissipated the fear both among activists and common citizens, turning the protests into a carnivalesque safe space that was filled with solidarity and hope. As more paint bombs, sprayers, and buckets added colours to the revolutionary palette, the protesters felt victorious. For the first time in ten years, they had defied the law and won. These transformative emotions and growing solidarity were still in the air when Fabio came back in June 2016. Together, we marched along with thousands of Skopje, participating in what we knew constituted a turning point in Macedonia’s recent history. Around us, we felt determination rather than hesitation, as people turned the city into a tool in order to demand accountability from Gruevski and stop his interfering in the inquiries into cases of corruption conducted by a special public prosecutor. Day after day, for months, friends and acquaintances postponed their commitments, cancelled their meetings, and marched again and again. And again. Eventually, the regime collapsed—not like a condemned building, but more like a deflating tyre, slowly and painfully. By the time Gruevski had been replaced with the leader of the main opposition party, Zoran Zaev, those who had participated in the Šarena revolucija thought they had won. And yet, a year after the new government came into power, the public spaces created by the Skopje 2014 project have returned to their white and bronze colours and most of the progressive promises remain unfulfilled. Why was there no deep, progressive change after the Šarena revolucija? Where did its powerful affective charge come from and what did it turn into? In tracing the development of the protests that came to be known as the Šarena revolucija, we focus on a driving catalyser of the revolution—the temporary defacement of monuments and buildings built by Gruevski—to explore the limits of affective urban politics. Based on the example of the Šarena revolucija, we contend that the visceral, nebulous emotions generated by soiling urban façades were not enough to provide a structural basis for significant political change. On the contrary, affects and emotions were volatile and uncertain—moments of intense emotional charge that could be tailored to different political agendas. When the marches subsisted, paint was removed but its symbolic

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meaning lingered on, manipulated by the new government for different political purposes. Our argument does not contest the importance of emotions, affects, and feelings in urban politics. Indeed, as Laszczkowski and Reeves (2015) suggest, political life is not only shaped by the calculations of elites or the movements of capital, but is rather deeply shaped by visceral, pre-discursive, emotional formations (see also Skoggard & Waterston, 2015; Stewart, 2007). These emotions are often so powerful that they can transform participants. They turn mobilizing moments into liminal spaces in which improbable leaders and new political ideas can become viable (Armbrust, 2017; Carabelli, 2018; Forlenza & Thomassen, 2016; Kurtovi´c & Hromadži´c, 2017; Schwenkel, 2013; Thomassen, 2012). In the case of the Šarena revolucija, participating in soiling monuments made citizens suddenly aware of their potential in reshaping urban politics. Each drop of paint on Skopje’s 2014 monuments and façades felt like a small victory—an inebriating sense of change that pushed more and more citizens into the street. That feeling of bursting energy changed into a sense of utter anxiety after Gruevski lost his hold on power. Instead of pushing the new government towards more progressive positions, the lingering emotions associated with the Šarena revolucija came to be manipulated by the new prime minister, Zoran Zaev, and deployed as a scarecrow tactic to galvanize support for not-so-progressive moves that were against the ideals and goals of the Šarena revolucija itself. This transformation was possible because of the undetermined and visceral character of the emotions that had come to define the Šarena revolucija.2 As our materials show, urban affects coexist with a vertical tissue of political relations. It is within this dialectical relation between state and space, events and emotions, political groups and protesters, that affective reactions associated with space acquire different political values. Vertical interests and political actors can mobilize the affective dimension of urban politics as a tool to reshape everyday experiences of participating into moments of urban upheaval. They co-opt the lingering of urban affects, using it as a tool to implement a new structural and spatial configuration of power (Gupta & Ferguson, 1992; Murawski, 2018). Ultimately, when the paint is erased and the mobilization dissolves, it is the dialectic between protesters, parties, and international interests that

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reshape the meaning of the protests—sometimes associating it with a new political objective that goes against its original purposes. We structure our argument in four sections that detail the trajectory of contemporary urban revolt in Skopje. First, we present Gruevski’s regime and his urban politics by providing an account of the Skopje 2014 project—the urban renewal plan that substituted Skopje’s socialist and Brutalist landscape with neo-baroque façades and nationalist monuments. In the second section, we analyze the period between 2009 and 2015, when activists tried repeatedly to stop or reverse Skopje 2014. Despite their failure, these early protests created some of the networks of activists and urban knowledge that proved important in 2016, during the Šarena revolucija. In fact, as we show later in this chapter, the Šarena revolucija did not emerge as an urban protest but was the outcome of a series of contestations against Gruevski’s authoritarian regime. Partly inspired by plenums of students and other grassroots urban protests taking place in former Yugoslav countries (Eminagi´c, 2017), the Šarena revolucija constituted a confluence of what many in Skopje considered as crucial issues with Gruevski’s regime, including the increasing politicization of higher education, the privatization of urban spaces, ethnic fracturing within the city, or governmental corruption. Non-violent and inclusive in nature, the Šarena revolucija withstood police brutality and attempts to provoke ethnic hatred. It recuperated what Kurtovi´c and Hromadži´c (2017, p. 278) have called one of Skopje’s ‘future past’, that is, the very socialist idea of non-ethnicized urban space (see also Juris & Razsa, 2012). As we show in the fourth section, however, it did not survive its successes. When the opposition managed to oust Gruevski in 2017, participants in the Šarena revolucija were marginalized, failing to shape the agenda of Zaev’s new government while the imagery of the revolution was mobilized for opposite political purposes. Providing an account in which urban affects are articulated within geometries of power, we suggest that it is the dialectics and struggle between actors and urban space that shape the meaning of disruptive urban experiences such as the Šarena revolucija. In the case of Skopje, that struggle operated at several levels simultaneously. During the protests, it saw a coalition of opposition parties and progressive NGOs work together with individual activists and (in)formal groups of citizens to reimagine urban life beyond the nationalist forms imposed by an authoritarian

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regime. After the protest, however, this affective space and its physical marks dissolved—allowing the winning political party to capture its social energies. In part, this co-opting of the Šarena revolucija’s affective charge was enabled because of its transient nature. Unlike other post-conflict scenarios, wherein the destruction of meaningful urban sites marked postYugoslav cities with a divided heritage (B˘adescu, 2015, 2020; Baillie, 2013), defacing Skopje 2014 did not permanently reshape the urban tissue. The painting of monuments allowed the Šarena revolucija to carve out a temporary space of affective diversity within the highly nationalistic space of Gruevski’s urbanism. These colourful moments accompanied a deeply felt unleashing of individual and collective aspirations and practices. Yet, citizens were acutely aware that the change they had achieved was transient. Its affective temporality, composed of physical marks and political possibilities always on the verge of disappearing, allowed Zaev to constantly draw on anxieties surrounding its possible failure—and to exploit its emotional resonance for his own agenda.

The Birth of Skopje 2014 Costing close to e700 million, and involving over 137 structures, Skopje 2014 was one of the largest urban renewal projects undertaken in the post-socialist Balkans (Prizma, 2018). Starting in 2007 with piecemeal actions, it became officially known as a full-scale, coherent plan in 2010 when, on an ordinary Thursday night in February, the government aired a 3D rendering of how Skopje would look like in 2014. In the video, one could see Skopje’s well-known Brutalist architecture morphed into neobaroque scenes, adorned by a whole host of monuments that celebrated the country’s past and its relation to Alexander the Great. Almost immediately, the architectural community reacted in disdain. Skopje was not a city known for its beauty. Indeed, Mijalkovikj and Urbanek (2011) provocatively called it the ‘bastard of the Balkans’ due to its stylistic and urban fragmentation and layering. Despite years of postsocialist ruination, however, Skopjani cherished the historical experiences embedded in their derelict urban spaces. For architects, Skopje’s unfinished modernity constituted a dense symbol of social and architectural values. After a devastating earthquake

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that had rendered up to 75% of its buildings unstable in 1963 (Despeyroux, 1968), the city had benefited from an unprecedented inflow of Cold War aid from the East and West alike. Its masterplan, never fully realized, had been drawn by a consortium made up of the Japanese superstar architect Kenz¯o Tange and the Croatian firm Miscevic and Wenzler (Martek & Lozanovska, 2018; Toli´c, 2011). Post-earthquake Skopje came to be known as a miracle of international solidarity, structured by contemporary rational planning and adorned with gems of Brutalist architecture, such as the Goce Delcev student dormitory or the Central Postal Office. Inspired by the international modernist style, Skopje was resurrected and transformed from a small provincial town into a modern cosmopolitan city whose rhythm was articulated by ample boulevards, large megablocks that enclosed ample public spaces between buildings and inscribed the quickly rising standards of living in an automobile-centred urban tissue (Marina, 2013). For many contemporary observers, it looked like a resurgent Skopje was about to join the ranks of modernist global capitals. By the end of the 1970s, the economic instability that characterized Yugoslavia slowed down Skopje’s reconstruction. The capital’s planned connective hubs, including its university, its bus and railway stations, remained partly disconnected from its surrounding areas—a testament to the limits of socialist modernization after the initial post-war decades of growth and progress. But it was the collapse of the Federation that turned Skopje’s socialist architecture into ugly and ruined spaces. Often built with heavy concrete, and not always of perfect quality, Brutalist architectural edifices required significant repairs and alterations to remain comfortable to use. Without the financial support of Federal Yugoslavia, coupled with the disappearance of the common market and the consequent collapse of the Macedonian economy, and preoccupied with making a contested country survive, Macedonia’s authorities let iconic spaces fall apart. In the early 2000s, iconic socialist symbols like the national radioand-television tower or the city archives had leaking faucets, the velvet curtains or tapestries of their grand halls were stained, and employees had to use cardboard or plastic patches for broken windows. Given the state of decay that characterized Macedonian urban spaces in the early 2000s, it is unsurprising that many in Skopje were ready to turn the page, architecturally speaking (Mattioli, 2012). Yet, when the government party VMRO-DPMNE (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization—Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity) started to build a radically different city, young Skopjani realized that they had

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grown to love what the architect and scholar Srd-an Jovanovi´c-Weiss called its “wonderful neglect” (personal communication). Used to hanging out, skating, or even attending concerts in some of these post-socialist derelict spaces, young architects and activists did not want to trade the freedom of their Skopje for a new urban tissue dominated by a statue of Alexander the Great, an icon of Macedonia’s past that was largely unfamiliar to them. For Gruevski, replacing older socialist, open spaces with neo-baroque façades and ethnic monuments such as a 35-metres-tall statue of Alexander the Great, made sense. Socialist Skopje had attempted to reshape the urban identity of the nation along secular, rationalist lines. In theory, this allowed different identities to coexist even if, in practice, it made urban space less than welcoming for those who did not identify with European or socialist modernity or Brutalist architecture (Mattioli, 2014). With his new ethno-baroque style, Gruevski removed the illusion of equality of socialist time and implanted a veneer of Europeanness and luxury on Skopje’s derelict Brutalism (Dimova, 2013, 2018; Janev, 2011). In the Skopje 2014 plan, Gruevski rearticulated not only the experience of moving through the city, replacing open spaces and airy boulevards with dense, almost claustrophobic, unplanned spaces, but also the overarching foundational myth of Macedonian national historiography. Until 2006, in fact, most of Macedonia’s nationalist narratives did not emphasize the country’s connection to Alexander the Great or its Hellenic background. Even among diaspora groups, nationalist references tended to evoke the insurrections that took place against Ottoman rule in the early twentieth century, or the violence suffered by Slavic-speaking, ethnic Macedonians who used to live in the surroundings of Thessaloniki (Brown, 2003; Danforth, 1997; Karakasidou, 1997). During socialism, instead, the Macedonian nation was considered to be a continuation of other South Yugoslav nations keeping to the tradition of brotherhood and unity that underpinned the entire Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Palmer & King, 1971; Troebst, 2003). Skopje 2014 and its ancient Macedonian iconography aimed to subvert this socialist narrative, recasting Macedonians as markedly different from Serbs and other Slavs. Simultaneously, it was antagonistic towards the Greeks, claiming a direct lineage from Alexander the Great—a figure who had already been at the core of the Greek national narrative. More importantly, the over 73 statues and sculptures that celebrated male heroes of the nation excluded Albanian, Turkish, Roma, or Muslim imageries

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from the core of the city. Instead, monuments celebrated members of the VMRO movement of the early twentieth century: a group of guerrilla fighters who had fuelled rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, ancient figures from the time of Alexander the Great, the founding patriarchs of the Orthodox Church, and medieval warriors—some of whom had been known for their mass killings of Albanians and Muslims. Unsurprisingly, young activists found Gruevski’s Skopje suffocating and irreconcilable with their cosmopolitan aspirations (Graan, 2013; Janev, 2016; Pojani, 2018; Véron, 2016). Most young Skopjani knew very little about these new ‘heroes’ of the nation and did not want to sign off on a city that completely disregarded and segregated the many ethnic and religious identities that inhabited Skopje.

Protesting Kitsch The first protests against the remaking of Skopje had been concerned with its architectural and urban planning inconsistencies, but they soon assumed an anti-nationalist tone. In May 2009, a group of about 200 activists, architects, and students gathered in Skopje’s main square, Plostad Makedonija, to protest plans to replace part of the square’s public space with a church. Under the slogan ‘Don’t rape Skopje’, the group wanted to join hands to form the outline of the church blueprint, to demonstrate how much public space would be taken away and designated to a single-faith project. Out of the blue, a mob of self-proclaimed Orthodox worshippers, armed with church paraphernalia and crucifixes, descended upon the protesters. In the brawl that ensued, protesters were beaten and kicked out of the main square, while police merely looked on. At the time of these events, in 2009, the Skopje 2014 project had not been announced to the public and the activists were simply shocked that their innocuous gathering could be met with such a violent response. Quickly, they discovered that those ‘Orthodox believers’ were thugs recruited by the VMRO-DPMNE and bussed there from across the country. Most of them never faced charges. This incident constituted a turning point—a first concrete sign that Gruevski’s politics had expanded beyond neoliberal policies and had, in fact, become increasingly authoritarian (Mattioli, 2018; Otten, 2013). From then on, urban spaces became a crucial centre of contention between a growing number of activists and the government. Six months

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later, when the Skopje 2014 project was announced, these emerging networks gave birth to the first architectural uprising in human history. Students of the Faculty of Architecture, who created the First Archibrigade were behind the idea, the activist choir, Singing Skopjani, and a group of activists and performers known as Freedom Square. Over the following years, these groups produced a series of guerrilla performances and flash mobs that aimed to reclaim the public dimension of spaces threatened by ethnic colonization (Janev, 2016). Many of their performances centred on the symbolic dimension to the proposed redesigning of space, which for the architects of the First Archibrigade was retrograde and absurd. In an early event in 2010, Freedom Square and other multicultural organizations built a cardboard wall on the bridge between two parts of Skopje that were often represented as marking the divide between the ‘Macedonian’ and the ‘Albanian’ neighbourhoods. After simulating a battle with plastic projectiles, the groups dismantled the wall—signalling an alternative to Gruevski’s ethnic colonization of space. In other cases, their protest inspired other groups to take more direct political actions. The Guardians of the Park, a later group of activists that emerged in part from the same networks, slept rough for several weeks to prevent the redevelopment of a small green area in downtown Skopje. Ultimately, they were removed by special police forces. LGBTQ activists took to the streets to fight for sex workers’ rights. Encouraged by the political ferment, independent trade-union organizations came together in a joint platform called the Trade Unions Chapter, which became an outspoken voice of support for the 2016 protests. More importantly, the architectural uprising and the series of other protests that followed sparked a revival of many leftist activist groupings and organizations, most notably Lenka and the Leftist movement, Solidarnost, who contributed to numerous small scale debates, interventions, and conversations at the grassroots level—separated both from the NGO world, which had been colonized by the agendas of international aid agencies, with a focus on human rights rather than solidarity (Coles, 2007; Pandolfi, 2003), and the influences of formal political parties. All these and many others started to weave connections, realizing that their common concerns with the urban constituted more than a localized issue but rather also touched upon intersectional struggles.3 It was these forces, and this broad array of political connections, that ultimately culminated in the Šarena revolucija.

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ˇ From SJO to the Sarena revolucija In the years that followed, urban spaces kept sparking political protests organized around a growing range of issues, becoming the only common focal point of opposition to Gruevski. In part, this was due to Gruevski’s increasing capacity in monopolizing the media sphere. Early on in his mandate, Gruevski secured control of most print media and TV, which he turned into a propaganda machine that even infiltrated personal discourses and relationships.4 In Gruevski’s new geography, physical and discursive public spheres were divided between those loyal to his party, and traitors—not only those of Gruevski’s line but also of the nation. In the words of a close interlocutor: ‘They are dividing us. They are the patriots. Only members of the party are the true Macedonians. Those who do not support them, let alone oppose them, are called traitors. Everyone is forced to approve of every move they make. Any criticism is silenced with accusations of treason, an insufficiently developed national consciousness and ultimately [they are labelled as] working against the interests of the nation – simply as foreign mercenaries. The dialogue is impossible, criticism is met with hostility and everyone is silenced now’. Skopje 2014, then, came to symbolize more than the imposition of new ethnic boundaries in a multicultural city. It also came to symbolize increased divisions among ethnic Macedonians themselves— a sense of growing paranoia, in which sharing one’s political view could be dangerous even among one’s own networks of friends or kin. The shadow of Alexander the Great started to weigh on the minds of Skopje residents—bringing with it a looming fear that the regime’s gaze could reach into every domain of social life. At times, extraordinary events turned the growing sense of fear that regulated the relations between Gruevski and his regime into urban and collective indignation. During the celebration of Gruevski’s victory at the 2011 election in Skopje’s main square, one of the prime minister’s bodyguards killed Martin Neskovski, a supporter of the soccer club Vardar, who was cheering for the election victory with many other rightwing friends. Martin’s brutal killing sent shockwaves throughout Skopje. Supporters of Vardar, known for their anti-Albanian racism and far-right sympathies, came together with some of the very same radical leftist organizations and civic activists that had mobilized against Gruevski’s nationalist urbanism. For months, thousands of people joined silent

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marches and performed spectacular die-ins in protest of police brutality, and more broadly, of Gruevski’s increasingly authoritarian state.5 Just like earlier movements, Gruevski directed a powerful and orchestrated propaganda campaign that claimed the protesters were organized by George Soros’s Open Society Foundation6 and controlled by the opposition party, the SDSM. As these accusations about traitors and foreign mercenaries saturated papers and television screens (Nikolovski, 2013), urban space became the main place where an alternative narration of the country’s reality could emerge, be shared, and gather traction. And yet, while they were much broader than the earlier mobilizations, the 2011 protests only gained enough support to occupy some of the crucial arteries of Skopje for short periods of time. Ultimately, after several remarkable months of mobilization, the protests tapered off. But discontent kept on brewing in Skopje’s scarred spaces. In October 2014, students who had been inspired by earlier actions took to the streets to protest against the proposed Law on Higher Education that would allow the government more control of the university education system. For months, the capital’s main universities remained occupied by various groups who engaged in a student plenum—a horizontal informal organization that undertook deliberative democratic decision-making, modelled on other plenums that had been springing up throughout other former Yugoslav countries, notably in Zagreb in 2009 and Tuzla in 2010 (Horvat & Štiks, 2015; Razsa, 2015). Conceived as both emotional and cathartic spaces, the practices of students’ and professors’ plenums resonated with socialist-era models for urban spaces. Through the plenums, university halls, but also the Skopje 2014 streets, could be turned into spaces that nurtured equality and participation, rather than fear, division, and ethnic hatred (see also Kurtovi´c & Hromadži´c, 2017). These occupations planted seeds of hope. In early 2015, the opposition party’s leader, Zoran Zaev, started to publish recordings provided by whistle-blowers from within the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In these telephone conversations, Gruevski and other senior figures in his government could be heard discussing plans to interfere with the work of judges, intimidate or beat up political opponents, and blackmail prominent business figures. Their nonchalant belittlement of Martin Neskovski’s death, and their attempts to cover it up, prompted thousands to descend on the government building on 5th of May 2015 p.m., pledging to march ‘every day at 6.00 p.m., until the end’ of VMRO-DPMNE rule. That

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spontaneous protest marked the birth of a better-organized grassroots movement, known under the bilingual hashtag #Protestiram/Protestoj. The movement named #Protestiram/Protestoj faced very tough times. On 9 and 10 May 2015, the weekend before a planned protest that was supposed to bring together tens of thousands of citizens, SWAT teams and (Albanian) criminals clashed in the city of Kumanovo. For a few days, Skopje was shut down, amid fears of ethnic tensions. Activists worried that the clash had been organized by Gruevski, and that this was the first of a series of steps to plunge the country into outright ethnic war. Sensing the urgency of the situation, the international community stepped in and forced many close allies of Gruevski to resign. More importantly, international mediators brokered an agreement for a transition of power, new elections, and established a Special Prosecutor Office (SJO) charged with investigating high-level corruption. Gruevski, however, did not intend to go out without a bang. For several months, the prime minister delayed his resignation and tried to sabotage the SJO’s work. Activists involved in #Protestiram/Protestoj, on the other hand, returned to the streets, expressing their support for the prosecutors. Backed by popular support, the SJO continued to bring forward cases against various politicians close to Gruevski, prompting the president to issue a pre-emptive pardon for over 60 politicians and business figures. It is this last act of disregard for the rule of law that prompted the protests of April 2016, the ransacking of the president’s Citizens’ Liaison Office, and the soiling of monuments. The Šarena revolucija brought forth the most potent moment of political emancipation in Macedonia since the post-Second World War socialist revolution. The 2016 protests expressed support for an institution led by a multicultural team of women (two were Macedonian and one Albanian). Popularly known as ‘Charlie’s Angels’, the leaders of the SJO came to identify with the values of professionalism, precision, justice, and impartiality that Skopjani had long associated with modern European Macedonia. Defacing monuments, then, became more than a moment of rebellion or an explosive reaction to years of frustrating attempts to change Gruevski’s urban politics. Instead, painting Skopje in different chaotic colours became a way to concretize the aspiration for a multicultural, diverse, and progressive future in the fabric of the city. Throwing paint bombs on Gruevski’s white or bronze façades symbolized more than an act of defiance and impertinence. These acts were fundamentally creative

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moments. For many, they signified the first moment when common citizens could leave their mark in and on what felt like a new dawn. Diversity permeated the Šarena revolucija—the agenda that emerged reacted and changed spontaneously every day. The routes taken were different every evening, the main slogans were changed constantly, and the key issues addressed ranged from global issues to specific instances of corruption without a precise overarching plan. This is how the Šarena revolucija became truly colourful—not because of the painting and defacing of monuments and buildings, but thanks to the articulating of grassroots hopes for an expansive, accepting Macedonia that welcomed refugees, homosexuals, workers, artists, and pensioners alike. Embracing diversity of every kind, including the ethnic diversity of the country, the Šarena revolucija stood in stark contrast to Gruevski’s homogenizing Macedonian nationalism, but also to the distinctive and separate Albanian nationalism that aimed to turn Macedonia into a bi-national state.

Winners and Losers of the Revolution Today, most of the participants in the Šarena revolucija feel extremely disappointed by the government of Zoran Zaev and his coalition. Formally, he did incorporate many members of civil society who had been active in the Šarena revolucija. Practically speaking, his government has not delivered most of the progressive reforms he had flagged during the mobilization. As some of the members of the Šarena revolucija that joined his ranks told us, their voices are constantly silenced. The relationship between the SDSM party, the previous movements, and the Šarena revolucija was a complex one from the start. In opposition for almost a decade, the SDSM came late to the realization that it needed to draw upon the energy of the civil society movements if it wanted to oppose Gruevski. In 2015, during the #Protestiram/Protestoj demonstrations, the SDSM set up a consultative body named Citizens for Macedonia that ratified a collaboration between a hundred Macedonian NGOs. Together, NGOs and the SDSM held joint meetings, sometimes producing joint press releases. But as the group continued its work, activists and NGO members felt increasingly uneasy with the lack of real debate and formal agreement within the group. It felt as if, instead of being a true process of deliberation, Citizens for Macedonia was just a facade to justify and rubber stamp the SDSM leadership of the protests.

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These fears only intensified as the SDSM started to organize the logistics of large protests, fuelling them with rank-and-file members of the party transported to Skopje. Then they started to shape the agenda of meetings and protests. In spring 2015, there would be 500–1000 protesters who participated daily in protests—especially after the violence in early May. However, the number would grow to tens of thousands with the SDSM heading up the organization. When the SDSM raised their tent city on the Boulevard in front of the government building on 17 May, very few independent activists joined them. The opposition party had practically hijacked the protest movement, thus turning it into a party affair. With counter-protests organized by the ruling VMRO camping in front of parliament in support of the government, there was no longer space for grassroots activists to protest. Managed by the SDSM and without the catalyzing moments fuelled by the spontaneous actions of activists (especially women), by the summer of 2015 #Protestiram/Protestoj had lost momentum, and eventually collapsed. When protests erupted again in 2016 in support of the SJO, the SDSM took a more prudent approach. Instead of displaying its symbols during protests and imposing a specific agenda, the SDSM left activists and citizens free to invent different slogans, protest aims, and routes that opened the protests to different platforms. Rather than dominating the protest, the SDSM party took pride in simply being one of the colours in an internationally supported, grassroots movement. Betting on the colourful nature of the protests in 2016 paid off. During the elections of December 2016, the VMRO-DPMNE won the highest number of seats (51), but not enough to form a majority. With 49 seats, the SDSM was able to form a coalition with a group of Albanian parties, whose traditional electorate had voted massively for the SDSM, despite the predominantly ethnic Macedonian composition of its membership and cadres. Undoubtedly, the SDSM benefited from having been part of, rather than dominating, the protests that made Skopje colourful again. Many things have happened since the shift in power. The new coalition government of Zoran Zaev tried to pass a law on the use of Albanian language at a national level, which resulted in a heated debate. More recently, Zaev brokered an agreement that resolved Greece’s veto against the country’s name (before then 134 countries recognized the country under its constitutional name of Republic of Macedonia, while Greece’s opposition forced certain international organizations to use the name

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Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). The Prespa agreement of June 2018 to rename the country the Republic of North Macedonia removed one of the major roadblocks to starting formal talks for accession to NATO, the EU, or both. These issues took precedence over many of the demands advanced by activists and citizens who had participated in the Šarena revolucija— demands that had coloured those moments of ferment and hope. Little has been done to enhance the transparency of how public projects are managed, or of how public managers are appointed. Zaev has not done much to promote progressive economic policies in the country. This is partly a consequence of the crucial role given to Kocho Angusev, a businessman with no government experience, questionable ties to the Gruevski government, and according to some, murky business interests. Dozens of activists, including over 50 employees from the NGO sector, were hired by SDSM-controlled state agencies, ministries, and offices of local self-government. This appropriation dampened the critical edge of the civic sector and left it without leadership and momentum. Rather than having transformative effects, their role is now invisible and has produced extraordinarily little difference in terms of institutional and administrative practices. Indeed, little of the colourful explosion brought about by the Šarena revolucija remained once the SDSM and Zaev had assumed power.

From Defeat to Defeat Two years after the 2016 protests, little has changed regarding the Skopje 2014 project. The legacy of the project has been challenged only insofar as it has allowed the new government to open court cases against allies of the Gruevski regime who had utilized illegal means to gain construction contracts. By and large, the Skopje 2014 monuments remain intact. Even though the new political elite has stopped the construction of a huge panoramic wheel in the middle of the Vardar River, most of the project’s landmarks, including fake ships that host restaurants or hotels and plaster neo-baroque façades, will continue to shape the image of Skopje in years to come. Even the most divisive objects, such as the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle for Statehood and Independence, the History of VMRO and the Museum of the Victims of the Communist Regime, have not been removed, repurposed or re-narrated. Perhaps this is intentional: for as long as the buildings that scarred Macedonians’ social cohesion remain

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clearly visible, Zaev can portray his government as a force for change, without actually challenging the nationalistic narrative of the symbolic landscape of the Macedonian capital. The Šarena revolucija promoted cosmetic changes to the urban structures of Gruevski’s Skopje as well as to the city and the nation’s governance mechanisms. Interviews that we carried out in 2017 with public servants who work in newly built ministries show that under Zaev’s government, the constructed neo-baroque halls transmit less oppressive feelings. And yet, Zaev has taken very few steps to realize the hopes of a multicultural, progressive, and equal society—a vision that made the Šarena revolucija truly colourful. Many who had embraced the political possibilities of the Šarena Revolucija feel deeply disillusioned with the new course of Macedonian politics. Nevertheless, they hesitate to oppose vocally Zaev’s failures to implement progressive economic policies and his tendency to replicate identity-related and clientelist games. As the tangible signs of the revolution’s political openness are erased from the urban environment, citizens find comfort in Zaev’s vague rhetoric of victory—an affirmation that, after all, that affective space they fought for has not completely vanished from the political scene. The dialectical relationship between space and the emotions is crucial for leaders like Zaev, who utilize it to suppress or manipulate political demands based on specific (and changing) political projects. As with the narrative of nationalist resistance to foreign intervention promoted by the VMRO-DPMNE,7 Zaev’s celebration of the Šarena revolucija constitutes a careful recasting of a history of struggle. This history is rooted in years of underground opposition to Gruevski’s regime but also in a legacy of socialist ideas about space and politics. Paradoxically, it is precisely because the revolution generated open-ended, visceral hopes for a different politics that Zaev could re-contextualize its meanings. In this dialectical relationship, affects denote a particularly salient moment of emotional charge that—in the context of urban politics in which spaces outlast mobilizations—is open to reinterpretation and manipulation. While affects can embody emergent, pre-discursive aspirations and hope, they also show evident limits in their emancipatory potential, especially when they are posited as a foundation for new political relations. Quite the opposite occurs: the emotional charge of defacing public space is now being mobilized to close down critical voices and

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marginalize those who critique Zaev’s policies as nationalists, collaborators with the previous regime, and traitors of the revolution. A cursory comparative view of the aftermath of many citizens’ protests, from Tahrir to Taksim, Puerta del Sol, Zuccotti Park, and elsewhere, offers bleak prospects for arguing for the transformative power of affective politics, despite its capacity to mobilize citizens and articulate resistance. The feeling of solidarity and optimism provided by affective politics during the protests still hold the promise of change in the future. But these emotions need actual institutional mechanisms of deliberations that can infuse openness and participation into the scheming of political actors. Without these actionable processes and plenums, the defacing of monuments remains an ambiguous feeling of a potentiality that lends itself to different, contradictory mobilizations.

Notes 1. Residents of Skopje. 2. The recent literature on space and politics has increasingly turned away from structuralist readings of contestation and towards an affective reading of space, where non-human actants generate visceral, indeterminate, and yet pervasive affects (see Laszczkowski & Reeves, 2015; Reeves, 2011; Thrift, 2008). While we found this literature useful in understanding the complexity of contemporary urban politics, we recognize affects as only one of the factors that generate urban politics—one of the factors that constitute the dialectical relationships that coalesce in urban politics (see also Lefebvre, 1991; Murawski, 2018). 3. Ethnic questions were not the only issues faced and discussed by early protesters. A significant number of activists contested the commercialization of urban and public spaces and the accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 1989) that had been enabled by the project (see Mattioli, 2018; Tomaševi´c et al., 2018). 4. The Government of the Republic of Macedonia was the second-highest client in terms of the purchase of advertising time on national television broadcasters in 2013, squeezed between the marketing giants Procter & Gamble and the Coca Cola Company (Davidovska-Dovleva, 2014). 5. This protest was organized via new social media platforms, with Twitter being dominant, which led some young activists to nickname it the Twitter Revolution. 6. The Open Society Foundation was created by the Hungarian-American Jewish financier George Soros. The foundation has been operating for over 20 years to support initiatives that strengthen liberal processes in developing

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countries. The foundation has been often criticized by the left for being too close to market mechanisms, and by the (far-)right on account of being critical of nationalist or neofascist movements (see Mattioli, 2018). 7. Since the publication of the first recordings, the mainline of defence of the VMRO-DPMNE has been to depict these leaks as the influence of foreign powers. This argument has increased in intensity following Zaev’s proposed law on the use of the Albanian Language as the second official language and the proposed constitutional change to adopt the official name of the Republic of North Macedonia. For VMRO-DPMNE supporters, the Šarena revolucija has come to symbolize the influence of western agents—charged with destroying symbols of the true Macedonian identity, such as Skopje 2014.

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Laszczkowski, M., & Reeves, M. (2015). Introduction: Affective states—Entanglements, suspensions, suspicions. Social Analysis, 59(4), 1–14. https://doi. org/10.3167/sa.2015.590401. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Blackwell (Original work published 1974). Marina, O. (2013). Skopje, great, greater, grandeur: City between solidarity and exclusivity. MONU, 19, 76–81. Martek, I., & Lozanovska, M. (2018). Consciousness and amnesia: The reconstruction of Skopje considered through ‘actor–network theory.’ Journal of Planning History, 17 (3), 163–183. Mattioli, F. (2012). Conflicting conviviality: Ethnic forms of resistance to bordermaking at the bottom of the US embassy of Skopje, Macedonia. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 27 (2), 185–198. https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655. 2012.687214. Mattioli, F. (2014). Unchanging boundaries: The reconstruction of Skopje and the politics of heritage. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 20(6), 599– 615. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2013.818569. Mattioli, F. (2018). Financialization without liquidity: In-kind payments, forced credit, and authoritarianism at the periphery of Europe. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 24(3), 568–588. https://doi.org/10.1111/14679655.12861. Mijalkovikj, M., & Urbanek, K. (2011). Skopje—The world’s bastard: Architecture of the divided city. Wieser. Murawski, M. (2018). Marxist morphologies: A materialist critique of brute materialities, flat infrastructures, fuzzy property, and complexified cities. Focaal : Tijdschrift voor Antropologie, 2018(82), 16–34. https://doi.org/10. 3167/fcl.2018.820102. Nikolovski, D. (2013). Traitors, hirelings, and sandwich-protesters: Civil activism in the Macedonian public discourse. Foundation Open Society. Otten, J. (2013). Wine mafia and the thieving state: Tension and power at the crossroads of neoliberalism and authoritarianism in 21st century Macedonia. The Anthropology of East Europe Review, 2, 2–18. Palmer, S., & King, R. P. (1971). Yugoslav communism and the Macedonian question. Archon Books. Pandolfi, M. (2003). Contract of mutual (in) difference: Government and the humanitarian apparatus in contemporary Albania and Kosovo. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 10(1), 369–381. https://doi.org/10.2979/ gls.2003.10.1.369. Pojani, D. (2018). Cities as story: Redevelopment projects in authoritarian and hybrid regimes. Journal of Urban Affairs, 40(5), 705–720. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/07352166.2017.1360737.

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Prizma. (2018). Skopje 2014 Pod Lupa [Digging Up Skopje 2014]. http://sko pje2014.prizma.birn.eu.com. Razsa, M. (2015). Bastards of utopia: Living radical politics after socialism. Indiana University Press. Reeves, M. (2011). Fixing the border: On the affective life of the state in southern Kyrgyzstan. Environment and Planning. D, Society & Space, 29(5), 905–923. https://doi.org/10.1068/d18610. Schwenkel, C. (2013). Post/socialist affect: Ruination and reconstruction of the nation in urban Vietnam. Cultural Anthropology, 28(2), 252–277. https:// doi.org/10.1111/cuan.12003. Skoggard, I., & Waterston, A. (2015). Introduction: Toward an anthropology of affect and evocative ethnography. Anthropology of Consciousness, 26(2), 109– 120. https://doi.org/10.1111/anoc.12041. Stewart, K. (2007). Ordinary affects. Duke University Press. Thomassen, B. (2012). Notes towards an anthropology of political revolutions. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 54(3), 679–706. https://doi.org/ 10.1017/S0010417512000278. Thrift, N. (2008). Non-representational theory: Space, politics, affect. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203946565. Toli´c, I. (2011). Dopo il terremoto: la politica della ricostruzione negli anni della guerra fredda a Skopje. Diabasis. Tomaševi´c, T., Horvat, V., Midži´c, A., Dragši´c, I., & Daki´c, M. (2018). Commons in South East Europe: Case of Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Macedonia. Institute for Political Ecology. Troebst, S. (2003). Historical politics and historical ‘masterpieces’ in Macedonia before and after 1991. New Balkan Politics, 6(1), 69–83. Véron, O. (2016). Contesting the divided city: Arts of resistance in Skopje. Antipode, 48(5), 1441–1461. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12269.

PART II

Rebordering Memory

CHAPTER 6

Borders of Memory: Competing Heritages and Fractured Memoryscapes in Bosnia and Herzegovina Francesco Mazzucchelli

A Semiospatial Narrative Approach to Divided Memories In Bosnia and Herzegovina the geopolitical and geocultural dimension of the 1990s conflicts—their distinctive ‘spatial rooting’—is pivotal to grasping the dynamics of war and post-war processes (Dahlam & Toal, 2011).1 Assuming the key cultural significance of ‘space constructs’ in Bosnia and Herzegovina, this chapter embraces a spatial approach in order to explore post-war memories, and looks both at the proliferation of divisive memory sites and the post-war reimagining of pre-existing places of memory. The method employed draws mainly on the paradigm of cultural semiotics, as defined in the works of Lotman and Uspenskij (Lotman

F. Mazzucchelli (B) Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies, Alma Mater Studiorum—University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. B˘adescu et al. (eds.), Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2_6

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Uspenskij, 1987; Lotman, 1990, 2005) who have proposed topological models to describe cultures,2 but it resorts as well to some of the analytical tools employed in narrative and spatial semiotics (Greimas & Courtés, 1982; Hammad, 2015).3 Through the lens of semiotics, I analyze some prominent but divisive places of memory. This list includes Second World War memorials, monuments related to the Yugoslav wars, and urban heritage areas related to the more recent armed conflicts, but that nonetheless resonate with older memories. All these sites have two main features: on the one hand, they convey discrepant narratives that commemorate events told in very discordant ways; on the other hand, they are all crossed by borders of some nature (geographical, political, administrative, cultural, ethnic, or social: all of which are ultimately semiotic). Indeed, the point of departure will be the notion of ‘border’, understood here not merely spatially and geopolitically, but rather as a narrative function that produces (and is produced by) a fractured ‘memoryscape’ (Phillips & Reyes, 2011), in which different narratives compete and conflict (Gordy, 2013; Moll, 2013; Ramet, 2007). As Moll (2013) showed, in Bosnia and Herzegovina the three main ethnic groups (Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats) refer to the same historical event, i.e. the 1990s wars, using divergent and discordant terms. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find varying names for the wars, used especially among nationalists, but not rarely also in official documents, monuments, and even textbooks. Serbs often refer to it as the Grad-anski rat (Civil War); Bosnian Serbs call it the Odbrambeno-otadžbinski rat (the Defensive and Patriotic War) and Croats call the war the Domovinski rat (Homeland War); Bosniaks usually refer to the war as the Agresija na Bosnu i Hercegovinu ([War of] Aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina). Each of these designations corresponds not only to different labels, but also to completely different narrative configurations, with distinctive axiologies and semantic values.4 In this chapter, I shall try and track these conflicting narratives ‘in space’, by looking at how they mutually interact in shaping a dissonant symbolic landscape. The underlying hypothesis is that, in all these cases, heritage is ideologically used, mobilized, and hijacked to ‘continue conflict by other means’ (Mazzucchelli, 2013). Such a perspective is compatible with the assumptions underpinning this volume, based on Baillie’s (2013) notion of ‘conflict-time’.5 This chapter asserts a two-pronged hypothesis: (a) that borders are ‘spatial semiotic forms’ capable of both expressing and generating certain

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memory narratives, and (b) that memory narratives themselves produce cultural and semiotic borders—in other words, they project borders (i.e. spatial traces of division) outside of themselves, but also establish borders through their semiotic structures (each narrative is inherently divisive). Putting together the spatial and the narrative dimension, places and borders will be viewed here mainly as ‘narrative devices’, i.e. as textual mechanisms that regulate conflicting narrations in cultural memory. What does it mean to focus on the ‘narrativity of borders’ in order to analyze how conflicting identities face each other in places of memory? First, it implies that a border is a porous structure. It divides, but also brings into contact, certain entities in accordance with semiotic and cultural rules. Put differently, following Lotman’s ideas (Lotman, 1990, p. 140), a border is a ‘translation mechanism’ that retains and filters, therein producing forms of interaction between subjects. Borders measure out not only space, but subjects and objects as well. Second, this approach requires one to look at borders as places with a high semiotic density. In the vicinity of borders, processes of auto- and hetero-representation always increase. Third, a focus on borders with the aim of observing cultural identities and memories entails the assumption that any narrative inherently produces borders by itself and that, conversely, all borders generate narratives. A border is (and has) a narrative function. Indeed, in generative semiotics any narrative has an intrinsic polemic (i.e. ‘conflictual’) nature. Subject versus anti-subject: this conflict is what generates and articulates the meaning of a narrative text.6 Hence, a tendency towards conflict does not only characterize some narratives, but rather, any narrative is conflictual at its deep semantic level. Yet one must ask the question: what kind of conflict is present? How is it expressed and ‘enunciated’ in a memory discourse?7 How does it manifest certain values to the detriment of others? In order to understand how a space of memory operates in semiotic terms (that is, how it produces identities, transmits values, and tells stories), it becomes necessary to assume that any space of memory posits (for narrative reasons) its counter-space (which may be more-or-less explicitly evoked), with which it symbolically ‘engages’ (eventually tracing borders) and with (or better, against) which it is in dialogue. All this takes place in a ‘commemorative arena’ (Duijzings, 2008) in which meanings emerge from the antagonism between actual and evoked symbolic landscapes that underpin clashing identities through territorial marking practices and significant uses of spaces.

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All the sites analyzed here have already been examined at length by many researchers in different fields, and they have also focussed on the exacerbation of conflicting versions of the past and the proliferation of divisive heritages. From a historical angle, the present study does not claim to add something substantially new to topics that have already been explored in depth. However, my aim is to interpret the ruptures in the symbolic ‘landscape of memory’, through examining how these narratives manifest themselves and interact with each other in space, thus generating distinctive forms of ‘dissonant heritages’ (Tunbridge & Ashworth, 1994). I will focus not only on how conflicting memories are told, communicated, and transmitted in opposed memorial spaces, but also, in particular, on the peculiar spatial form of memory conflict generated by the ‘semiotic dialogue’ between them. The theoretical hypothesis is that incompatible narratives produce semiotic borders, ‘tangible’ and recognizable in the territory, which at the same time reinforce and reflect the fragmentation of both the political and symbolic landscape of this area of Bosnia. The analyses will result in a proposed typology of forms of interaction between conflictual narratives—a typology of narrative borders—by looking at the different territorialities produced by the dialogue in space between those memory sites. More precisely, four different spatial modes of interaction between conflictual narratives will be suggested: the border as enclave, threshold, frontline, and boundary.8

Srebrenica: Memorial as enclave The area of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia (Republika Srpska) is representative of the fractured nature of Bosnian memoryscapes, in which competing and incompatible versions of the past produce, and are produced by, territorial narrative borders. Srebrenica has become a globally iconic place of trauma that summoned back the ghosts of genocide in Europe for the first time since the Second World War. The historical facts are well known and, at the same time, remain very controversial. Srebrenica was declared a safe zone by UNPROFOR in April 1993, as it was a Bosniak enclave almost surrounded by a territory in which an ethnic Serb majority dominated. It was seized by paramilitary Serbian VRS forces9 led by Ratko Mladi´c at the beginning of July 1995. On 11 July, thousands of Bosniak civilians (the estimated number is more than 7,000)10 were slaughtered in an operation that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former

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Yugoslavia(ICTY) ruled to be an act of genocide. UN forces, represented by a Dutch battalion, were later accused of not being able (or willing) to protect the local Bosniak population from the massacre.11 After the end of the war, the Dayton Agreement designated the city of Srebrenica as part of Republika Srpska. In 2003, the Srebrenica–Potoˇcari Memorial (full name: Srebrenica– Potoˇcari Memorial Centre and Cemetery to the Victims of the 1995 Genocide) was established, primarily through international funding, although the initiative was promoted by the families of the deceased, to commemorate the victims of the atrocity (Duizijngs, 2007; Wagner, 2010). Today, Srebrenica–Potoˇcari is considered one of the European ‘moral capitals’ of memory in the discursive arena of global memory. Nonetheless, the memorial is surrounded by other memorials located nearby that dispute its version of the facts. Serb villages that endured attacks by the Bosniak militias (local ARBIH12 troops) led by Naser Ori´c, around the time of the massacre of Srebrenica, have erected these memorials. ‘On the wrong side of history’, they commemorate victims who were co-ethnics of those who are considered the perpetrators, according to the Bosniak and international community. After quickly presenting the main characteristics of Srebrenica memorial and other monuments and memory sites in the surrounding area, I wish to focus on the interaction between the contrasting narratives they incorporate. The spatial structure of the Srebrenica memorial is articulated in two main parts. On one side, there is a cemetery in which those massacre victims whose remains have been recovered, are buried. Every year newly discovered remains found in the area are buried during ceremonies held on 11 July, the date of the massacre. On the other side of the street, the compound that hosted the Dutch Battalion of UNPROFOR (Dutchbat ) has been opened to visitors. The internal spatial organization of the memorial site anticipates two complementary but distinct spaces that perform diverse semiotic functions. In these two spaces, different narrative programmes are accomplished. The cemetery is the place of a ‘sacralized memory’, in which annual ritual burials and religious ceremonies are held to commemorate the victims. It contrasts with the space of the memorial centre (Spomen soba), in which various practices take place that deal with what could be called a ‘work of memory’ (Ricoeur, 2004). This part houses various documents, and hosts research and educational activities, including exhibitions. To use Violi’s (2017) concept, the Spomen soba is a ‘trauma site’,

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materially linked to the tragic events that occurred there.13 It constitutes a sort of ‘space of mediation’ that moves between several functions: forensic research (human remains are stored and prepared in the days leading up to the annual inhumation rituals),14 religious rituals (it is a space for commemorating and mourning victims before burial) and, above all, critical education (exhibitions, lectures, and events). The retrofitted gallery space takes on heterotopic qualities and at present acts as an ‘empty box’, still searching for its final narrative form.15 Other areas await their rescripting. The rooms whose walls are covered with obscene and anti-Bosniak graffiti drawn by Dutch soldiers, provide precious evidence of the time. Yet, they are at odds with narratives that cohere with commemoration practices held in the complex’s other spaces. In this way, whereas in the cemetery’s ‘space of death’ the dead are honoured and celebrated in their ‘pure role’ as passive victims, the memorial centre is a ‘space of life’ in which memory is an active process perpetuated by the living. In the memorial complex, this peculiar combination of different spaces discursively generates the thematic role of the victim. In the cemetery, victims are honoured and sacralized with few references to the figure of the perpetrator. The general message is one of reconciliation and pacification. A plaque with a Bosniaks prayer reads ‘May vengeance become justice’. Moreover, the massacre victims are heavily characterized as passive victims and the word ‘fighter’ is never employed. On the other side, victims and perpetrators are contextualized within the framework of historical events and are more precisely identified and figuratively characterized, although the events are always clearly thematized as active aggression perpetrated (by the Serb paramilitary forces) against a defenceless civilian population. Moreover, the fact that the memorial is situated in the same building in which the Dutchbat had their headquarters contributes to a blurring and redefining of the perpetrator role, partially including in it not just Serbs but also the United Nations, at least as passive bystanders due to their inaction. The Serb memorial cemeteries and monuments located in the surrounding villages speak in a very different voice. In all these memorials and cemeteries—such as the Kravica memorial, or the Bratunac memorial cemetery—the victims of the ARBIH’s raids are commemorated.16 Hence the dominant perpetrator–victim narrative roles are inverted, that is, they mirror Srebrenica’s narrative, while reversing the main thematic roles.

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In the Orthodox Cross of Kravica Memorial,17 the inscription reads: ‘Memorial to fallen combatants and civilian victims of the Defensive and Patriotic War and Serb victims of the Second World War’. Two elements mark a significative difference with Srebrenica’s narrative, not related exclusively to the aforementioned narrative-role inversion. First, the victims, here, are not simply civilians, but ‘combatants’ as well. This entails an active role that contradicts the ‘passivity’ of victims in Srebrenica narrative. Regardless of the historical truth, this produces the semantic effect of a ‘battling narrative’ opposed to the ‘pacifying narrative’ of Srebrenica. This could perhaps be explained by the fact that the Serbian narrative is aimed exclusively at Serbs, while the Bosniak narrative aims more at a global audience.18 The semantic frame of the war, named the Defensive and Patriotic War, as earlier noted, is also very different from that used in Srebrenica, in which the war is regarded as a ‘war of aggression’, or ‘Serb aggression’. Second, there is an explicit reference to the Second World War (as in all the other examples in this chapter). The claimed state of victimhood collides with an older narrative of when the region was under Ustasha control and many Serbs were persecuted. Collectively, such positioning helps to generate a narrative position of ‘eternal victimhood’, which transfers narrative schemes from one historical period to another.19 These Serb sites of memory form the stages for annual commemorations that mirror those in Srebrenica–Potoˇcari.20 The date chosen by Serbs for their commemoration is 12 July: the day of Petrovdan, a religious holiday for Serbs. It is also the day after 11 July, on which the official ceremonies take place in Srebrenica. The coincidence is, obviously, not fortuitous: the narrative border, which is incorporated in the specific spatial territorialization of memory observed, is also transposed into a temporal line that results in a clash. This border is then produced through both spatialization and temporalization processes that deploy the two narratives against one other, which makes the discord between the two sides even more pronounced. Each narrative is confined in specific spaces that—although they silently refer to each other—are firmly separated and pretend to be autonomous from each other. Yet the Bosniak place of memory is totally enclosed in a territory in which the predominant narrative is the Serbian one, which is the converse of the narrative told in Srebrenica–Potoˇcari, and diametrically inverts the perpetrator–victim roles attributed. The most visible (also in a global discursive arena) and prominent place of memory for Bosniaks,

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is thus surrounded and metaphorically besieged by Serb memorials that contradict it, but at the same time have a lesser visibility and recognition. This produces an overall spatial configuration that presents all the features of an enclave, in which, however, the semiotic weight of the two poles is unbalanced in favour of the encircled Bosniak narrative. This results in an inversion of the usual power relations present in an enclave: the Serb narrative is hegemonic only at local level, while at the global level the symbolic power relation is inverted. This means that Srebrenica, already a Serb enclave during the war, somehow remains a ‘memory enclave’ in a territory in which conflicting narratives—feeble yet majoritarian—and ethnic division are still in the air, in a sort of cold conflict. Here, the institution of the Srebrenica– Potoˇcari Memorial, which nevertheless was necessary and desirable, given the tragedy that occurred there, has indirectly and involuntarily led to a wartime geography being reinforced: the memorial is presently an isolated ‘narrative precinct’, just as Srebrenica was a ‘safe zone’ during the war. Thus, the territorial deployment of memory sites, structured as an enclave, thoroughly reveals both the mutual incompatibility of the two narratives and the, only apparent, absence of any overlapping. Although the opposed memorials constitute a mutual system and are in silent dialogue with each other, they act as if the counterpart did not exist: they just tell two inverted versions of the same story. Such a spatial ‘enclave model’ is also reasserted in the narrative dimension, to which it also applies remarkably in an inverted form; in a purely descriptive diagram, intended to describe the relationship between the two narratives, it is not relevant which narrative is encircling and which one is encircled (one could also consider the Serb narrative as an enclave). What is noteworthy is that each narrative works as a ‘foreign body’ that reverts the axiology of a homogeneous semiotic space in which the prevalent narrative is inverted.

Kozarac, Prijedor: Monuments as Threshold The Prijedor region, centred around a northwest Bosnian town of the same name in Republika Srpska, is characterized by different, and somehow even more complex, dynamics of conflicting memory narratives. In 1992, this part of Bosnia endured systematic ethnic cleansing directed at the Bosniak population. Physical evidence and testimonies attest to the existence of detention camps in which civilian and paramilitary Bosniaks

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were detained in inhumane conditions, tortured, and killed. Recently new mass graves have been discovered that push the victim count of those killed by the Serbian paramilitary even higher.21 In this context, the construction of a memorial dedicated to the victims of the war in Kozarac, a small municipality with a Bosniak majority near Prijedor (a region with a Serb majority) has been welcomed as a step forward in the reconciliation process. As one of the very few existing Bosniak memorials in a region in which Bosniaks underwent atrocities and violent acts carried out by Serb paramilitary forces, it has been regarded as a sign that mitigates the inevitable tensions and divisions that still affect the area today. Notwithstanding, the situation is more complicated, and somehow Kozarac’s memorial should be rather considered as a sort of ‘memory exception’, that is, as an enclave within a zone in which there is a different and contrasting prevalent narrative. However, due to the consistent multiplication of intertwining narratives that characterizes this region as a whole, the model of the narrative enclave, employed in the previous section to frame Srebrenica, seems less congruous for understanding the conflict among the memories that characterize this region. Indeed, except for the Kozarac memorial, there are almost no other monuments dedicated to the Bosniak victims of the war in the whole region.22 The Serbian administration consistently resists any plans to memorialize the detention or concentration camps, e.g. Omarska, Trnopolje, Keraterm, at which many Bosniaks were detained, tortured, and killed (Brenner, 2011). This politics of memory has reduced Bosniak narratives almost to invisibility, and here the memory of their traumatic sites survives only in patches. Many initiatives have been launched in an attempt to preserve the traumatic memories attached to such sites. The association ‘Logoraša Prijedor’92’ (Inmates of Prijedor’s camps),23 for example, claims the right to build a monument in the Omarska camp or to memorialize its infamous ‘white house’ in which Serbian militia members used to interrogate and torture prisoners (Brenner, 2011). Nevertheless, such memories are not officially recognized at these sites. A plaque to commemorate the victims has been placed in front of the former Keraterm camp by activists from the Prijedor women’s association Izvor, but it never obtained any formal authorization, so the monument stands illegally at the site. Recently, some stone plaques have been placed in the area to mark the sites of newly discovered mass graves (see note 21).

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On the other hand, there have been many attempts by the Serbian administration in the respective municipalities to transform these sites. In 1999, e.g., an eagle-shaped monument was erected in front of the site of the Trnopolje camp. Rather than commemorating the victims of the camp, it commemorated all the Serb soldiers killed in the war.24 In a similar vein, a commemorative cross dedicated to fallen Serb soldiers has been erected in Prijedor’s city centre. Other such occurrences can be found in the surroundings of such polysemic and disputed memory sites. If we move a few kilometres away from the small village of Kozarac towards the park of Kozara, we reach Mrakovica, in which we find the prominent Monument to the Revolution, built in 1972. This monument does not relate directly to the recent wars. It was erected to commemorate the battle of Kozara, fought in 1941 between Nazis (fighting together with Ustasha units) and Yugoslav Partisans, whose defeat led to the detention of tens of thousands of Partisans and civilians in the concentration camp of Jasenovac. Up until the collapse of Yugoslavia, the adjacent museum hosted an exhibition that celebrated, in the characteristic rhetorical style of Tito’s era, the greatest achievements of Socialist Yugoslavia and the ignominious defeat of the fascist enemy. After the fall of Yugoslavia, a new exhibition was opened. Explicitly nationalistic, it was devoted to commemorating ‘all the genocides suffered by the Serbian people’ throughout the twentieth century.25 Some years ago, thanks to the initiative of an Italian NGO, a debate involving Bosniak, Croat, and Serb museum directors was opened. They decided reinstalling, after some ‘editing’, the previous socialist-era exhibition. However, despite the decision to ethnically neutralize the memory of the museum and the memorial, a gigantic Serbian Orthodox cross, more than ten metres high, has been placed in front of the stairway leading to the monument. This territorial mark signals the ongoing attempts to ‘ethnically territorialize’ the area around the monument. Therefore, on the one hand, the removal of the Serb-nationalist exhibition26 apparently deactivates a ‘memory border’ and promotes a unifying narrative through the reinstallation of the socialist-era exhibition, which gave voice to the ideal of ‘brotherhood and unity’ promoted during that period. On the other hand, the semantic results of the operation are more complex, and involve different layers of ‘using the past’. Indeed, the Serb-nationalist narrative overlaps and appropriates the previous socialist narrative; it distorts and cannibalizes it. By highlighting the ‘narrative arguments’ of Serb heroism and victimhood at Kozara, the memory of the

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political violence suffered by Bosniaks at the hands of Serbian paramilitary forces during the 1990s is marginalized. Here, the scheme of interaction between competing narratives seems to present features that make it slightly different from the pure ‘enclave model’ that we identified to describe the Srebrenica area. Although some monuments could be considered ‘memory enclaves’ (such as Kozarac’s memorial), in general the Prijedor region, especially around Kozarac, presents fragmented narrative borders that fracture spaces that are axiologically inhomogeneous, despite the predominance of Serb-nationalistic narratives. And this is clearly evident in the cases of the Serb monuments of Trnopolje and Prijedor that ‘hijack’ (to use the words by Halilovi´c, 2013, p. 90) the events that happened there and claim a moral ownership over those sites, which installs a Serbocentric narrative. Similarly, the deflection of the Yugoslav character of the Kozara monument towards a Serb interpretation can be considered a parallel operation of ‘narrative appropriation’. Indeed, the positioning of Serb monuments is not fortuitous, and since most of the Bosniaks’ places of memory do not presently have the same levels of international attention and recognized ‘sacrality’ as Srebrenica, Serb counter-narratives can still ‘intrude’ upon them, and almost completely ‘semiotically occupy’ them. While the Bosniak identity in Srebrenica retains very visibly a symbolic territory, in the Prijedor area this is confined to the Kozarac memorial, while a Serb narrative has installed itself in the other places of memory and has invaded the memoryscape. This implies that, while in the Srebrenica area we have a ‘conflict at a distance’ between opposed places of memory, in the Prijedor region, the semiotic confrontation happens in the same spaces, since Serbian narratives are grafted onto those sites claimed by Bosniaks or that refer to the Yugoslav identity, and what is at stake is their ‘semiotic appropriation’. This results in an increased spatial proximity between opposed narratives that has the effect of transforming each memory site into a ‘narrative revolving door’ that moves between conflicting representations. The monument to Bosniak victims of war in Kozarac and the reinstallation of the socialist exhibition could be interpreted, superficially, as attempts at deactivating memory borders. However, an alternative reading suggests that these initiatives rather reinforce the borders through a proliferation of competing memory enclaves. To achieve this, they create short-circuits between the wars of the 1990s and Second World War memories, through specific modes of articulating temporality that actualize older historical events. This produces a cyclic temporal structure in which some events

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(e.g. the different genocides against Serbs) keep repeating. Hence, each of these sites assumes the function of a ‘threshold’, a passage from a narrative to a counter-narrative. Indeed, if it is true that Kozarac’s memorial can be somehow assimilated to a sort of memory enclave, the absence of a monument on the site of the Omarska Camp and the conversion of many other Bosniak sites into sites of Serb-nationalist counter-memory and the reinterpretation through a nationalistic lens of the memory of the Second World War, makes the threshold model more appropriate. Each site is potentially a transitional threshold between dissonant narratives and the competition for the appropriation of the symbolic landscape continues.

Mostar: Urban Memory Sites as Frontline While many years have passed since the end of a war that produced such vivid and enduring lacerations to the urban fabric, and although no actual political border divides the city today, Mostar still presents certain characteristics of a divided city. East Mostar is predominantly Bosniak, while West Mostar is predominantly Croat. For this chapter, I will not dwell on the main aspects related to the city’s post-war reconstruction, as covered in the chapter by Emily Makaš in this book.27 Instead, I focus on some facets related to this ‘duplication’ of the city—facets whose semiotic effects are clearly visible on its surface, in its practices of territorial marking and the production of space. Among the many examples that could be provided, two features are sufficient to clearly highlight the competition between narratives pervading the urban landscape of Mostar today. On one side, the large Catholic cross on Mount Hum, erected after the war, overlooks the whole urban landscape. Its core function seems to flag the Croat presence within the city. On the other side of the city, a small ‘spontaneous monument’, positioned near the reconstructed bridge, Stari most, bears a simple inscription: ‘Don’t forget!’ This tiny memorial tablet, made of the same stone as the bridge and the whole historical district, has now become a permanent landmark in the area, which fills something seemingly considered as a gap in the reconstruction. It seems to deny in one shot all the attempts at forced pacification conveyed by the restitution of the Old Bridge to the people of Mostar, under the auspices of UNESCO and the international community. This operation has been perceived by part of the population as an experiment in soft diplomacy that has resulted in an imposed blackout on the city’s conflictual past.

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These two symbols, the cross and the ‘micro-monument’, epitomize a much larger proliferation of signs with opposed meanings that colonize the respective halves of the city. As already noted in the first paragraph of this chapter, the over-representation of identities is quite common in border zones: in Mostar, such identity spatial markers are often comparable with a sort of enunciative system: they fulfil the function of spatial pronouns, whose purpose is ‘to establish positions’. They are a way of saying: ‘we stand here, and we are different from you, who stay there’. Such increased semiotic activity (of auto- and hetero- representation) reaches its peak near the Bulevar, the street that became the actual frontline between Croats and Bosnian during the war.28 Still today, all the ‘semiotic manoeuvres’ of territorialization employed in Mostar become thicker along this street. It is now a sort of neutral space in which the visible narratives are so numerous that they elide and counterbalance each other. Along with the opposed nationalist symbols erected here, Croat, and Bosniak, material testimonies of the war are manifest in the many ruins that line the street. The ruins mingle with pre-war memories, embodied for example by a Yugoslav Partisan monument that stands sentry approximately at the middle of this street: the Hidden Hand Memorial Fountain.29 This somehow alludes to the city’s most important Partisan monument, the memorial cemetery complex designed by Bogdan Bogdanovi´c, that sits on the city’s periphery (in what is today the ‘Croat side’) and is currently in poor condition, dilapidated and vandalized, despite its high architectural value. The overlapping of all these different symbols (the opposed nationalisms, the Yugoslav memories, the war memories evoked by the ruins) generates narrative interferences that, on the one hand, make this strip of territory surrounding the street a sort of no man’s land over which no one can claim ideological or narrative ownership, while, on the other hand, this fringe zone of division can become a point of contact between the two halves of the city, as testified by many ‘reconciliation’ initiatives hosted here,30 such as the cultural association Abraševi´c, located near the Bulevar and whose activities are also aimed at fostering a sociocultural reunification of the city.31 Although the two halves of the city have innumerable ‘one-sided’ monuments, this part of the city has, in contrast, almost no explicit ‘demarcation signs’. It is thus no surprise that when in 2013, a small monument commemorating fallen Bosniak soldiers suddenly appeared in this street, it was swiftly blown up. As already pointed out, there is

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certainly no lack of monuments of comparable tone in the rest of the city: for instance, not far from the Bulevar, but more towards the Croat side, one could not avoid the huge ‘Monument to the City Defenders’, which refers to the Croat soldiers who laid siege to the city during the war. However, these monuments have rarely been vandalized or destroyed like the one near the Bulevar. What happened in that case? The Bosniak Bulevar monument was probably too close to the ‘no man’s land’ and its erection was perceived as an attempted ‘semiotic invasion’. In this case, the most suitable spatial model to describe the border that separates the two narratively homogeneous city districts is the frontline. Indeed, the border here acts as a neutral frontline at which the battle for the dominant narrative must be suspended to allow for equal competition between the two narratives, as with frontlines during the war, which are not just ‘lines’, but strips of land not occupied by any of the fighting sides. The main characteristic of this type of narrative border is precisely the presence of such a neutral buffer zone: an implicitly negotiated space of ‘no-invasion’ in which marked identity-related symbols are hardly tolerated. One could say that, far from being a non-lieux, such a buffer zone is actually ‘congested’ by contradictory narratives that balance themselves and instead multiply the possibilities of positive overlapping between opposed narratives.

Jasenovac and Donja gradina: Memorial Sites as Boundary The last example concerns a site that is probably the most paradigmatic instance of a ‘border memorial’, due to its geographic location. This memorial area is crossed by the Sava River, which used to serve as an administrative border between the two federal republics in Socialist Yugoslavia. Today, the river marks a political boundary between two sovereign states: Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. To complicate things further, most of the space of the memorial area sits in the Serbmajority region of Republika Srpska. In other words, an actual national border cuts across the same area, once a single memorial site in Yugoslav times, and this divides it into two distinct memorial sites: a Croat one and a (Serb-) Bosnian one. The two memorials recall differently the events that occurred in this space during the Second World War. Jasenovac’s memorial complex represents today one of the most divisive places of memory. Each year in April, separate commemorations are

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held by representatives of the Croatian government on the one side and, on the other, Croatia’s Serb, Roma, and Jewish communities. Nonetheless, one could argue that the divisive nature of the Jasenovac Memorial Site has been present since its construction, because it was deemed to be the place where the Croat Ustasha brutally slaughtered (predominantly) Serbs in pursuit of ethnic cleansing—a theme that reemerged in the wars of the 1990s.32 It was built in 1966 in the area of one the most abominable labour, detention, and death camps of the Ustasha regime, which was supported by Nazi Germany. The structure lay abandoned for decades after the war until, during the 1960s, the task of designing the monumental area was entrusted to the architect Bogdan Bogdanovi´c, who, in line with his poetic approach, opted for a highly allusive and symbolic solution that, while evoking the tragedy that happened there, strove to avoid any direct and figurative reference to violence.33 The most powerful component of Bogdanovi´c’s landscape artwork at Jasenovac is the massive grey, concrete, stylized flower that became the symbol of the memorial camp. It was supposed to embody the rebirth of the reunited Yugoslav peoples, who were rising up to a new beginning after a past of death and violence. In 1968 a museum with a permanent exhibition was added to the memorial complex. It displayed historical documents, images, and objects that testify to the fascist atrocities and praise the victory of Socialist Yugoslavia over the Nazis and their allies. In 1988 a new exhibition was installed which focused on the evils of fascism. It deployed images that depict violent acts and emphasized the brutality of the camps’ operators, and insisted on including gruesome details.34 The site and its memorial were repeatedly vandalized and targeted during military actions by Croat paramilitary militias throughout the war between Croatia and the rump state of Yugoslavia, which indicated the discordant nature of the memories it evoked. Franjo Tud-man’s election as President of Croatia35 triggered revisionist historiography that targeted Yugoslav narratives of the Second World War. The downgrading of Jasenovac from federal monument to nature park after the war, coupled with heavy cuts to its management budget, points to its symbolic suppression by the new regime. In the post-war period, an intense ‘war of numbers’ concerning the number of victims and their ethnic identity was waged and remains ongoing.36 After various vicissitudes, the memorial site, along with its museum, reopened as Spomen podruˇcje Jasenovac (Jasenovac Memorial

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Site) and in 2006 a new exhibition was launched. The new exhibition has been purged of most of the previous, controversial graphic material, which was considered too ideological. It is instead based on an approach that focuses on researching and documenting individual victims and the personal biographies of people who were interned and killed in the camp.37 According to the Jasenovac Memorial Site, current figures point to around 83,000 documented deaths in the camp.38 This number is the highest of the estimates issued by different Croat institutions during the 1990s (some of which dropped the number to 40,000). However, it contrasts starkly with the figures proclaimed in Yugoslav times, such as 700,000 casualties, most of whom were ethnic Serbs.39 A sign proclaiming the 700,000 figure is still the central feature of the Museum of the Memorial Site of Donja gradina. Once a part of the Jasenovac Memorial Site, this museum now sits on the other side of the river-border, on majority-Serb Bosnian territory. These striking and conflicting death tolls result in significantly different modes of representing the victims: two diverse ‘collective bodies’ characterized by different symbolic weights, which are not just quantitative but also semantic (i.e. relating to their status as subjects). On the ‘Croat side’, the emphasis is put on individuals, on singular personal stories, while ethnic affiliations are downplayed. The main artistic installation of the exhibition showcases the names of individual victims inscribed onto glass panels. On the ‘Serb side’ of Donja gradina, victims are instead represented through their collective identities. Individuals are subsumed and merged into group identities, explicitly thematized through recognizable symbols: the Orthodox Cross for Serbs, the Red Chakra Wheel for the Roma, the Star of David for Jews. These differences in representations of victims are likely more meaningful than the dissimilarities in the two victim tolls. There is a marked discrepancy between the sole collective put in play on the Croat side, a sort of ‘single actorial bundle’ generated by multiple individualities, and the collective (ethnic) actors presented on the majority-Serb Bosnian side, in which the various individualities lose any individual character in order to converge into an ‘absorbing group’. This deep semantic level to the narratives shows how they are not mutually exclusive: both the sites tell the same story, but they do so in very different ways, redistributing the narrative roles and characters, and the representations of perpetrators and victims. This implies that they are

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competing for the ‘semiotic occupation’ of the same memory landscape, of which they propose a different narrative territorialization. What is at stake is not then just a ‘war of numbers’ concerning the victim toll, but rather the semiotic construction of a ‘narrative border’ based on different discursive constructions of the victim role. The political border seems here to be reinforced and reaffirmed by this additional narrative border. The two contrasting narratives both refer to the Second World War, but nevertheless retain traces of the more recent conflicts and war. In a similar way to the political border, this narrative border operates as a boundary, crossing and dividing a territory that is ‘narratively disputed’ by two different discursive spaces. It is, somehow, the inverse of the ‘frontline’: while in Mostar the differences between two opposed discursive spaces are neutralized near the border, yet here the opposite happens—both the opposed sides project their narratives onto the ‘shared’ border.

Conclusion. A Comparative Summary: Topologies of Competing Memories The analysis of the spatial positioning of conflicting memorials has led me to identify different forms of competition between memories in space.40 The memorial of Srebrenica–Potoˇcari is completely enveloped in a region in which the dominant narrative is inverted and discordant, and comprises a separate—but globally recognized—memory enclave encircled by competing monuments. In the Prijedor region around Kozarac, alongside the presence of several enclave-like sites of memory, the memoryscapes are fragmented and fractured and there is a pronounced competition for the narrative definition of the symbolic landscape, with many sites that incorporate contradictory valorizations. In Mostar, the two narratively homogeneous halves of the city cancel each other out in a sort of buffer zone of division, in which the overlapping of different narratives results in the neutralization of a strong symbolic territorialization. In Jasenovac, two opposed discursive spaces project themselves onto the same site and dispute its ‘correct’ narrative valorization. In all these sites, the discursive arrangement of memory places produces and reinforces previous war-geographies. My aim was to extract from these diverse topographies of clashing memory (i.e. the spatial positioning of memory sites) some form of abstract models of ‘engagement’ among the competing narratives. Such

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models could also be described as different topologies (i.e. significant spatial interrelations) of narrative borders, intended, as specified at the beginning of this chapter, as narrative functions. The following table sketches out the main spatial models of cohabitation–conflict narratives that emerged during the analysis, that is, the four ‘spatial figures’ of narrative borders: enclaves, thresholds, frontlines, and boundaries (Fig. 6.1). This categorization aims to highlight how memory narratives can collide in space in manifold ways and produce multiple sorts of fractured territorialities. Several scholars have pointed out how conflicting narratives in Bosnia usually follow a tu quoque (in Latin, you too) argument, defined as a ‘rhetorical strategy [that] tends to cross over from denial to resentment’ (Gordy, 2013, p. 102). Generally speaking, all the spatial counter-narratives here considered respond somehow to such a ‘you too’ strategy, but in different manners. This chapter showed how certain kinds of ‘narrative reversal’ (‘you too’) can take different forms, shaping (and at the same time being shaped by) the meanings embedded in spaces that are already heavily loaded with ideological connotations. Divided memories in Bosnia and Herzegovina are an example of the difficulties in—maybe the impossibility of (assuming that it may be desirable)—finding shared narratives concerning divisive pasts in ‘conflicttime’ (Baillie, 2013). But they demonstrate as well that narratives sometimes overlap and enter in contact with one another in various ways: narratives and spatial borders can be considered as points of contact between opposed narratives. Through the notion of border, this chapter has attempted to look at the various ways in which different discourses of the past may clash in space, with the belief that deepening the understanding of the multiple facets through which conflicting narratives of the past confront each other can help in finding points of possible intersections.

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ENCLAVE – A narra ve enclave is a discursive space of ‘narra ve excep onality’ enclosed within a homogeneous discursive space with a discordant dominant narra ve. In this kind of topology there is usually a power asymmetry, but not necessarily in favour of the encompassing narra ve (the rela on could be centre/periphery, where the centre has greater semio c weight, although it is encircled). Moreover, usually the rela on between the two narra ves is that of inversion (one narra ve reverts the a ribu on of narra ve roles of the other). The narra ve border is marked. THRESHOLD – Here, narra ves o en coexist, and clash in the same discursive space. The same memory site is disputed, divided between two conflic ng narra ves. The opposed narra ves are both present simultaneously, although usually one overwhelms the other. While in enclaves each narra ve is current and exclusive in one discursive space, in this case narra ves are concurrent in the same space. Discursive spaces are then nonhomogeneous and narra ve borders are fragmented: each site can become a threshold, a passage between interchanging narra ves and temporal lines. FRONTLINE – Two compe ng narra ves are separated by a frontline when they are divided by a neutral discursive space in which compe on for the dominant narra ve is suspended or reduced. In this case we have two narra vely homogeneous discursive spaces in mutual opposi on. The frontline projects a fringe-space, a neutral strip of land in which compe on for the dominant narra ve is suspended. There is an implicitly nego ated space of ‘semio c non-invasion’ (that reenacts a war-line), in which narra ves neutralize themselves out but also overlap. BOUNDARY – In this case, two dis nct discursive spaces project varia ons of the same narra ve (not necessarily with one inver ng the other) in a disputed border space, which differently to a frontline, is not neutral, but ‘polynarra ve’ and bi-perspec val. Unlike with thresholds, here the two narra ves are located within two dis nct ‘cultural spaces’ (in the case of Jasenovac, a Croa an vs. Serbian semiosphere), but s ll compete over the territorializa on of a space in which two varia ons on one narra ve are copresent.

Fig. 6.1 Topology of discursive borders between competing narratives

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Notes 1. An earlier and, in many places, different version of this chapter has been published in Italian in the journal Storicamente (Mazzucchelli, 2017). 2. According to Lotman, collective memory coincides with culture, which, in turn, is a dynamic system (named the ‘semiosphere’), characterized by an internal ‘semiotic dialogue’ among its constituent parts, which generate new meanings. This internal dialogue is based on a constituent ‘asymmetry’: there must be tensions and internal differences, for a culture to be functioning (Lotman, 2005). 3. Semiotics has always had an interest in developing methods to describe the mechanisms of culture and collective memory (see in particular the cited works of Yuri Lotman, but also Umberto Eco (1976), who thought that semiotic theory should be a ‘logic of culture’). Recently, many semioticians have directed their interest towards the new field of memory studies, and many semiotic analyses focusing on cultural memory have appeared. It is impossible to write a comprehensive list of all relevant contributions on the topic: for an extensive semiotic study of sites of traumatic memory see Violi (2017). For an introduction to cultural semiotics see Lorusso (2015). For a semiotic analysis of transformations of memory in cities’ palimpsests in former Yugoslavia, see Mazzucchelli (2010). 4. The terminology refers to Greimas’ generative semiotics: see Greimas, Courtés (1982). For an Introduction in English to Greimasian semiotics, see Marrone (2014). 5. For an extensive definition of the notion, see also her chapter in this volume. For a comparable semiotic approach, see also the notion of ‘PostConflict Culture’ proposed by Demaria (2020). 6. The antagonism between a subject and an anti-subject is one of the key concepts on which the canonic narrative scheme by the Lithuanian semiotician Algirdas Greimas is based. Another basic assumption is that any process of signification always has a deep narrative form. This is not the place for an account of Greimasian theory, for which I suggest Marrone (2014). 7. Enunciation is for Greimas, Courtes (1976) the process by which the deep and abstract narrative level (in which any narration’s basic structure foresees a polemic confrontation between subject and anti-subject) is converted into a more concrete discursive level, through actorialization, spatialization, temporalization. 8. In comparison to the previous version of this writing (Mazzucchelli, 2017), which focused more on the semiotic analysis of some narrative mechanisms of the sites, here I stress more on the comparison between models of narrative borders in an attempt to systematize a typology.

6

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

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Important sources of inspiration for this classification are the topological models of culture proposed by Lotman and Uspenskij (1987) and the essay by Manar Hammad on borders’ spatial models (Hammad, 2015, pp. 125–135). VRS is the acronym for Vojska Republike Srpske, the Army at the time of the self-proclaimed Serb secessionist Republika Srpska). Also the infamous Serb paramilitary unit named the Scorpions was involved in the massacre. In their latest report (2019), the International Commission on Missing Persons reported an approximate number of 8,000 persons missing, while the identified number of victims is 6,982 (6,949 identified by DNA). On 11 July there were 6,572 bodies buried at Potoˇcari (Retrieved from https://www.icmp.int/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/srebrenicaenglish-2019.pdf on 20 April 2020), According to an official report dated 12 February 2000, and commissioned by the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICTY, ‘at least 7,475 persons are missing in connection with the fall of the Srebrenica enclave on 11 July 1995’ (Brunborg & Urdal, 2000). They also state that ‘the actual number of killed and missing is likely to be higher than 7,475 and this figure should be considered a minimum estimate’ (ibid.). Later, the Dutch government commissioned the NIOD Institute a study to investigate the events and the responsibilities of the Dutch battalion. For a study of the events that occurred in Srebrenica, see Duijzings (2007, 2008) (Duijzings was also a member of NIOD commission). ARBIH stands for Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Armija Republike Bosne I Hercegovine), the military force of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, established in 1992. The massacre took place in the town of Srebrenica (the male population had been taken to schools, abandoned warehouses, and other buildings to be killed) but also to the area and the woods nearby. See Pollack (2003). For example, it recently hosted an exhibition titled Srebrenica Genocide, the Failure of the International Community, which stressed the inability of UNPROFOR and the local Dutch battalion to prevent the carnage. The number of casualties is highly contested: according to the Research and Documentation Center of Sarajevo, the original VRS documentation reported 35 military and 11 civilian victims, but the number was then raised first to 995 by the Republika Srpska Commission for War Crimes, while after 2005 Serbian authorities spoke of 3,500 victims (predominantly civilian). For more references and an analysis, see Suboti´c (2009). The monument is made of black marble according to a distinctive stylistic feature of Serb monuments aesthetics, and then conveys also figuratively a distinctive Serbian identity trait.

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18. On this point see also the consideration of Duijzings (2007). 19. Ger Duijzings has focused on the centrality of past in Serbian nationalism and its historical reasons (2007, p. 147). On this see also Gordy 2013 and Moll 2013. 20. See Gordy (2013) for an accurate examination of the political meanings of Bratunac commemoration for Serbs (both in Bosnia and in Serbia) and on the controversies about Srebrenica-Potoˇcari commemorations. A convincing analysis of the conflicts over versions of the past and juridical verdicts about Srebrenica is in Suboti´c (2009). 21. For a detailed account of the post-war situation, see Sivac-Bryant (2016) & Oliver (2005). See also Montanari (2014) for a semiotic survey of Prijedor’s processes of memory. 22. Some exceptions include the Kamiˇcani Memorial Centre ‘Memorijalni kompleks Šehidsko mezarje Kamiˇcani’, near a mosque in Kozarac and a few recent plaques marking the sites of mass graves (one near Omarska in Stari Kevljani, another one in Kevljani, both in the municipality of Prijedor). 23. The site belongs today to the company Arcelor-Mittal. See the interview (in Italian) by Simone Malavolti with Sudbin Musi´c, a member of Logoraša Prijedor’92, https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/aree/Bosnia-Erzego vina/Memorie-divise-i-mondi-paralleli-a-Prijedor-107936 [Last accessed 20 October 2020]. 24. Some have commented that it is like having a monument to fallen German soldiers in front of a Nazi camp (see Brenner, 2011). 25. I am grateful to the historian Simone Malavolti for providing me with information about this exhibition, which has in the meantime been removed and that I did not have the opportunity to visit in person. More details about the vicissitudes of the Kozara Memorial and Mrakovica can be found in Malavolti (2014). 26. Some of the exhibit descriptions (those considered ‘less ideological’) have been preserved in the restored Yugoslav exhibition. 27. For a comprehensive research on this see Makaš (2007) and Makaš’s chapter in this book. See also Mazzucchelli (2010, 2015). 28. Once the Boulevard of the People’s Revolution (Bulevar Narodne Revolucije), it was renamed Street of the Croat Defenders (Ulica Hrvatskih Branitelja b.b.) after the war. 29. This monument commemorates ‘ilegalni’, that is, ‘illegal workers’, that actually had regular jobs in the city but who were funding the Partisan resistance with their income (source: https://www.spomenikdatabase. org/mostar). It has been recently restored after staying in decay for years.

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30. For more on this topic, see the special issue edited by Carabelli et al., (2019), that describes some examples of grassroots movements and practices that are working towards a real reunification and appeasement, discrediting the stereotype of Mostar as an ethnically divided city. 31. One amusing example of the potential of this space to bridge the two sides is the unveiling of a statue of Bruce Lee, commissioned by the organization Urban Movement Youth Club, in 2005, in a park near the Bulevar (Zrinjevac Park). Bruce Lee was chosen as the only remaining unifying symbol for a city in which symbols are so heavy (see Bolton & Muzurovi´c, 2010). The statue has been repeatedly vandalized and was eventually removed, to be re-installed in a more concealed zone of the Park, where it still stands today). 32. Jasenovac’s disruptive potential was feared by Tito himself, the main patron of the construction of a monument commemorating Jasenovac, and the sponsor of Bogdanovi´c’s project. Tito never visited the site, in order to avoid a public endorsement of what was still perceived as an uncomfortable history that contradicted the rhetoric of ‘brotherhood and unity’ promoted by Socialist Yugoslavia. 33. Bogdanovi´c chose not to ‘reconstruct’ the camp following the dominant approach taking in the memorialization of Nazi camps in Europe, and instead marked the probable location of barracks and graves with small mounds and hollows. The nonfigurative semiotic organization and design of the memorial area by Bogdanovi´c sought to transcend the fratricidal conflicts epitomized by Jasenovac. 34. In the prelude to war, Jasenovac was appropriated as a Serb ‘memory sanctuary’ (see Hayden 2013). According to the new director of the Jasenovac museum, Nataša Joviˇci´c (2006), the 1988 exhibition was installed under the auspices of the SANU, the Serbian Academy for Sciences and Arts. 35. Tud-man has long questioned the official death toll prior to the war and in his book he speaks of less than 40,000 victims (for the controversy over the death toll, see Kolstø 2011, Hayden 2013 and Odak & Benˇci´c 2016). 36. See Jagdhuhn’s chapter in this book for a more detailed account. 37. In Joviˇci´c (2006), there is a detailed explanation of the rationale of the new exhibition and its focus on individual victims. Radoni´c (2011) criticizes the new exhibition, described as ‘the most striking example of the Europeanization of the Holocaust’ (p. 362). She convincingly argues that the exhibition does not explain well who the perpetrators were and that the focus on individual victims is not appropriate for correctly framing the history of the camp. A defence of the new exhibition is in van der Laarse 2013. 38. Retrieved from the JUSP website: http://www.jusp-jasenovac.hr/Default. aspx?sid=6711. 39. For the story behind these numbers, see Odak & Benˇci´c 2016.

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40. For proposals theorizing the notion of competing memories, see Saloul & van Henten (2020) & van der Laarse (2013).

References Baillie, B. (2013). Capturing facades in ‘conflict-time’: Structural violence and the (re)- construction Vukovar’s churches. Space and Polity, 17 (3), 300–319. Bolton, G., & Muzurovi´c, N. (2010). Globalizing memory in a divided city: Bruce Lee in Mostar. In A. Assmann & S. Conrad (Eds.), Memory in a global age. Palgrave Macmillan. Brenner, M. (2011). The struggle of memory. Practices of the (non-)construction of a memorial at Omarska. Südosteuropa. Zeitschrift Für Politik Und Gesellschaft, 03, 349–372. Brunborg, H., & Urdal, H. (2000). Report on the number of missing and dead from Srebrenica. The hague: Office of the prosecutor, international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Available at https://www.icty.org/x/file/ About/OTP/War_Demographics/en/krstic_srebrenica_000212.pdf. Carabelli, G., Djurasovi´c, A., & Summa, R. (2019). Challenging the representation of ethnically divided cities: Perspectives from Mostar. Space and Polity, 23(2), 116–124. Dahlman, C., & Toal, G. (2011). Bosnia remade: Ethnic cleansing and its reversal. Oxford University Press. Demaria, C. (2020). What is a post-conflict culture? Temporalities and agencies of post-conflict memories. In C. Demaria (Ed.), Post-conflict cultures: A reader. CCCP Press. Duijzings, G. (2007). Commemorating Srebrenica: Histories of violence and the politics of memory in eastern Bosnia. In X. Bougarel, E. Helms, & G. Duijzings (Eds.), The new Bosnian mosaic: Identities, memories and moral claims in a post-war society (pp. 141–166). Ashgate. Duijzings, G. (2008). Commemorating Srebrenica. In Bad memories. sites, symbols and narrations of the wars in the Balkans (pp. 45–52). Proceedings of the conference ‘Bad Memories’ held in Rovereto on November 9, 2007. Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso. Eco, U. (1976). A theory of semiotics. Indiana University Press. Gordy, E. (2013). Guilt, responsibility, and denial. The past at stake in postMiloševi´c Serbia. University of Pennsylvania Press. Greimas, A. J., & Courtés, J. (1982). Semiotics and language: An analytical dictionary. Indiana University Press. Halilovi´c, H. (2013). Places of pain: Forced displacement, popular memory and trans-local identities in Bosnian war-torn communities. Berghahn Books. Hammad, M. (2015). Sémiotiser l’espace, décrypter architecture et archéologie. Geuthner.

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Hayden, R. M. (2013). From Yugoslavia to the western Balkans: Studies of a European disunion, 1991–2011. Brill. Jovici´c, N. (2006). Jasenovac Memorial Museum’s permanent exhibition: The victim as an individual. Croatian Institute of History, 2(1), 295–299. Kolstø, P. (2011). The Serbian-Croatian Controversy over Jasenovac. In S. P. Ramet & O. Listhaug (Eds.), Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two (pp. 225–246). Palgrave Macmillan. Lorusso, A. M. (2015). Cultural semiotics. For a cultural perspective in semiotics. Palgrave Macmillan. Lotman, J. M. (1990). Universe of the mind. A semiotic theory of culture. LB. Tauris & Co. Lotman, J. M. (2005). On the semiosphere. Sign Systems Studies, 33(1), 205– 229. Lotman, J. M., & Uspenskij, B. (1987). Tipologia della cultura. Bompiani. Makaš, E. G. (2007). Representing competing identities in postwar Mostar (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Cornell University. Malavolti, S. (2014). Memoria e riconciliazione. Il caso della mostra ‘temporanea’ del monte Kozara, Bosnia- Erzegovina. In R. Belloni, M. Cereghini, & F. Strazzari, F. (Eds.), Costruire la pace tra Stato e territori. I dilemmi del peacebuilding. Erickson. Marrone, G. (2014). The invention of the text. Mimesis. Mazzucchelli, F. (2010). Urbicidio: il senso dei luoghi tra distruzioni e ricostruzioni nella ex Jugoslavia. BUP. Mazzucchelli, F. (2013). (Post-)urbicide. Reconstruction and ideology in former Yugoslavia cities. In R. G. Miranda & F. Zullo (Eds.), Post-conflict reconstructions. Re-mapping and reconciliations (pp. 379–401). CCCP Press. Mazzucchelli, F. (2015). Of bridges and borders: Post-war urban geographies in Mostar. In M. Couroucli & T. Marinov (Eds.), Balkan heritages. Negotiating history and culture (pp. 133–159). Ashgate. Mazzucchelli, F. (2017). Semiotiche dei confini e narrative spaziali della memoria in Bosnia Erzegovina: Monumenti, musei, città. Storicamente, 13, 1–35. Moll, N. (2013). Fragmented memories in a fragmented country: Memory competition and political identity-building in today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nationalities Papers, 41(6), 910–935. Montanari, F. (2014). Prijedor 2013. Vuoti di spazio e vuoti di memoria. In N. Savarese & I. Pezzini, (Eds.), Spazio pubblico. Fra semiotica e progetto. INU. Odak, S., & Benˇci´c, A. (2016). Jasenovac–A past that does not pass: The presence of Jasenovac in croatian and Serbian collective memory of conflict. East European Politics and Societies and Cultures, 30(4), 805–829. Oliver, I. (2005). War and peace in the balkans the diplomacy of conflict in the former Yugoslavia. I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd.

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Phillips, K. R., & Reyes, G. M. (Eds.) (2011). Global memoryscapes: Contesting remembrance in a transnational age. The University of Alabama Press. Pollack, C. (2003). Intentions of burial: Mourning, politics, and memorials following the massacre at Srebrenica. Death Studies, 27 (2), 125–142. Radoni´c, L. (2011). Croatia: Exhibiting memory and history at the ‘shores of Europe.’ Culture Unbound, 3, 355–367. Ramet, S. P. (2007). The dissolution of Yugoslavia: Competing narratives of resentment and blame. Südosteuropa. Zeitschrift Für Politik Und Gesellschaft, 01, 26–69. Ricoeur, P. (2004). Memory, history, forgetting. University of Chicago Press. Saloul, I., & van Henten, J. W. (2020). Martyrdom: Canonisation, contestation and afterlives. Amsterdam University Press. Sivac-Bryant, S. (2016). Re-making Kozarac. Agency, reconciliation and contested return in post-war Bosnia. Palgrave Macmillan. Suboti´c, J. (2009). Hijacked justice: Dealing with the past in the Balkans. Cornell University Press. Tunbridge, J. E., & Ashworth, G. J. (1994). Dissonant heritage: The management of the past as a resource in conflict. J. Wiley. Van der Laarse, R. (2013). Beyond Auschwitz? Europe’s terrorscapes in the age of postmemory. In M. Silberman, & F. Vatan (Eds.), Memory and postwar memorials: Confronting the violence of the past (pp. 71–92). Palgrave Macmillan. Violi, P. (2017). Landscapes of memory: Trauma, space, history. Peter Lang. Wagner, S. (2010). Tabulating loss, entombing memory: The Srebrenica-Potoˇcari Memorial centre. In E. Anderson, A. Maddrell, C. M. McLoughlin, & A. Vincent, Memory, mourning and landscape (pp. 61–78). Rodopi.

CHAPTER 7

‘Seeing Red’. Yugo-Nostalgia of Real and Imagined Borders Roberta Altin and Claudio Minca

On 3 November 2012, in the Antonio Gandusio Theatre in Rovinj, Croatia, the documentary Vedo Rosso—Anni ’70 tra storia e memoria degli Italiani d’Istria (Seeing Red—the 1970s Between History and Memory Among the Istrian-Italian Community) was shown for the first time.1 The documentary was directed and produced by Sabrina Benussi who experienced that period as a child and a teenager. It is a rather original and somewhat autobiographic attempt to engage with the everyday life of one Italian minority in Socialist Yugoslavia during the 1970s, the last decade of Tito’s regime.2 It is also an attempt, on the part of the author, to provoke among her local community a first self-reflection on those

R. Altin Department of Humanities, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy e-mail: [email protected] C. Minca (B) Department of History and Cultures, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. B˘adescu et al. (eds.), Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2_7

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years, on their involvement in the rituals of socialism—the cult of President Tito. Her narrative—marked by a pervasive sense of irony—seeks to probe what it meant to be a member of an Italian minority living in a former Italian territory while simultaneously being embedded in the regime’s cosmopolitan rhetoric. Rovinj is today a coastal town on the Istrian peninsula with 14,000 residents. It is a very attractive tourist destination visited for its beaches and the impressive Venetian architecture that characterizes its historical centre. Rovinj also hosts the most important Italian community in Istria and is the location of multiple Italian cultural associations, including the influential Centro di Ricerche Storiche (Centre for Historical Research, founded in 1968 by the Italian National Community and presently sponsored by the EU). This explains why we find investigating Yugo-nostalgia in Rovinj today with reference to the Italian minority to be of particular interest, historically, as well as for its contemporary political implications within the changed Croatian cultural and institutional context. We therefore began this investigation with the broader framework of this book in mind, by asking what can be learned today through analyzing the reception and the effects of the concept of Yugo-nostalgia for an Italian minority living—now, as they did then—not too far away from the Italian border. The chapter also speaks to the broader debate on Yugo-nostalgia as a manifestation of the intangible heritage of Socialist Yugoslavia by engaging with forms of popular culture (including those associated with television and radio programmes, but also popular music) and their role in the revitalization and the reenactment of nostalgic memories supporting specific narratives of belonging and cultural identity (Connerton, 1989; Cvoro, 2014; Mati´c et al., 2004; Velikonja, 2008; Volˇciˇc, 2007). This is why we were particularly interested in the reactions that a film like Vedo Rosso might have sparked among the various strands of today’s Italian minority in Croatia, including various forms of neglect and resistance to any public debate concerning those years and the presumed complicity of the Italian community in Tito’s regime.

Italian Yugo-Nostalgia Bilingualism (Croatian and Italian are the official languages) is formally recognized in Rovinj, as the town is part of a territory that was subjected to several (re-)divisions during the long post- Second World War period. Initially, after the Italian defeat in the Second World War, Istria was

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assigned to Yugoslavia by the Udine Agreement (1954). As a consequence, only a minority of the pre-existing Italian population remained, while a large majority fled in various waves, resulting in an exile described by the diasporic Istrians as l’Esodo (the exodus). This movement has been analyzed in depth by the anthropologist Pamela Ballinger in History in Exile (2003). Many Italian Istrians moved to Italy, and in particular to Trieste (doubling its population with about 125,000 new residents), but also to dedicated refugee camps in other parts of Italy. Others went to Australia, the Americas and other parts of Europe (Cattaruzza et al., 2000). Some 60 years after the ‘exodus’, the ‘abandonment’ of their lands and properties continues to be a source of dispute between Italy and the countries that inherited the territories of Socialist Yugoslavia. Crucially, clashes also exist between the Italians in exile—in Yugoslavia, these were described using the term optanti, that is, those who chose to leave, related to a narrative asserting that it was a matter of free choice, not expulsion— and the rimasti, i.e. those who decided to stay in Istria under the new socialist- and Yugoslav flag. These rimasti are therefore often regarded by the esuli/optanti as communists, or as collaborators. This is despite the fact that many local families were made up of both rimasti and those who were exiled (Ballinger, 2003; Contini, 1997; Crainz, 2005). This post-war division of the peninsula was followed by the collapse of Yugoslavia. The secession in the early 1990s of Slovenia and Croatia, and the years of conflict that followed, brought dramatic changes, including a new division of Istria between these two countries. Technically, this division of Istria, i.e. between a Slovenian and a Croatian republic, existed in Yugoslavia from after the Second World War (1945 Yugoslav administration of Zone B, with the 1954 incorporation of Zone B into Yugoslavia). However, while the division of Istria along these lines preceded the collapse of Yugoslavia, the nature of this border radically changed after 1991. This explains perhaps why the narratives recalling the events of the past six or seven decades are fragmented and highly diverse, depending on the ‘camp’ occupied by those who speak. Yugo-nostalgia is considered in other places and by other communities to be little more than a fascination with the past and its vintage material memories (records, music, symbols, etc.). Yet, here, in Rovinj, and among the members of the Italian community in Croatia, the topic is a minefield, a highly sensitive terrain, and a topic all too often strategically dismissed. Despite the difficulties created by such a complicated set of entanglements with the past and with present-day politics, at its inaugural

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screening the film was apparently very well received by a fully booked theatre, with over 400 viewers. This marked the first attempt at initiating a tentative, scattered, but nonetheless unprecedented public reinterpretation of the ‘Yugoslav years’. The film has subsequently been shown in many different settings in Croatia and Italy. It has managed to create a space in which, at least for many who directly experienced those years as Italians-living-in-Socialist-Yugoslavia, both the nostalgia for a past that will never return and the desire to voice the complicated condition of being a socialist citizen and a member of a minority group regarded as ‘the former enemy’ could be voiced. But it has also become a site for the emergence of family histories related to a place that has changed flags and regimes many times during the past century or so. In my family we were born in the same home, but not in the same nation; my grandmother was born under the Austro-Hungarian empire, worked in Italy, retired in Yugoslavia, and died in Croatia … We are those who were born in Yugoslavia, an extinct country now, we were the children of the roaring 1960s, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones generation (G.D.).

These statements by the director’s elementary schoolteacher in the interview that opens the film are followed by an introduction to a children’s magazine called Il Pioniere (The Pioneer). This magazine is used by the author as a fil rouge running through the entire film narrative. The film is comprised of many interviews with former ‘pioneers’—the Yugoslav youth as incorporated in the rituals and the education of Tito’s regime—merged with an extraordinary assemblage of clips from television programmes, personal footage, family souvenirs, official Party documents, school memorabilia, and sporting events. The sequence is aimed at providing a light but a well-documented approach to the mundane aspects of life in Socialist Yugoslavia (Fig. 7.1). This chapter thus investigates the ‘special effects’ of Yugo-nostalgia among the present-day Italian community in Rovinj. Effects that, precisely because of the proximity to the Italian border, may provide a unique perspective on this form of collective nostalgia. It does so by using the film Vedo Rosso as a primary source around which emotions and feelings have been elicited in ways that may reveal something interesting about the capacity of nostalgia, of Yugo-nostalgia in particular, to contribute to the critical analysis of mainstream historical interpretations of today’s Croatia, with multiple ‘Yugo-nostalgic’ narratives representing

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Fig. 7.1 Cover of Il Pioniere, 1981 (© Edit Publisher, Rijeka)

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a powerful ‘discourse of memory’ among many others (cf. Buri´c, 2010; also Lindstrom, 2006). It especially focuses on the Italian community’s institutional representatives and their strategies of remembering and forgetting the Yugoslav years. In engaging with questions of nostalgia we have been inspired by Svetlana Boym’s distinction between restorative and reflective nostalgia in order to understand collective memories as ‘common landmarks of everyday life’ (Boym, 2001, p. 53; also see Lindstrom, 2006). By assuming Yugo-nostalgia to be a form of active re-elaboration of the past, and of the political and cultural actualization of the past, we therefore begin by asking the following questions: how is Yugo-nostalgia processed by a community that was converted into a minority precisely with their incorporation into the territory of the Socialist Yugoslavia in the 1950s? How are the collective memories of the ‘Tito’ years, and the 1970s in particular, recalled today by people who experienced their youth under that regime, while being exposed to socialist everyday rituals and education and, at the same time, the influence of Western media and Italian culture on the other side of the (soft) iron curtain? Furthermore, how can a documentary such as Vedo Rosso become a vehicle capable of exposing (and sometimes contesting) some of the narratives that serve as the foundations of contemporary claims of identity in an entirely changed political context (that of the Republic of Croatia)? And, finally, how are individual memories entangled in those more politicized collective memories? We have no space here for a full and adequate engagement with the existing vast and rich literature on memorialization and nostalgia, a review of which has already been provided by the editors of this volume in the introduction. Suffice to say that the present literature on Yugo-nostalgia can be considered an important element of such broader processes of memorialization and it therefore represents the starting point for and implicit background to the considerations that follow (on the diverse contemporary manifestations of Yugo-nostalgia see, in particular, Buri´c, 2010; Kovaˇcevi´c, 2008; Lindstrom, 2006; Mati´c et al., 2004; Pauker, 2006; Volˇciˇc, 2007; for an analysis of Yugo-nostalgia in the form of Tito-nostalgia see Velikonja, 2008). In our case, we focus on how the appearance of the documentary Vedo Rosso may have reactivated memories and contemporary interpretations that have remained silent and unnoticed for a very long time, drawing out counter-narratives that resist well-established mainstream interpretations. We are also interested in how ‘personal’ and individual memories

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tend to emerge in the accounts offered by our interviewees, confirming how even institutional memories about the Yugoslav years are always actualized and mobilized by subjective interpretations and influenced by transgenerational discourses. The 12-month-long fieldwork and collection of the textual materials for this chapter took place in 2014. It included several trips to Rovinj, but also to Rijeka and Trieste, in Italy, where the film director lives and where the documentary was shown on many occasions. The ethnographic approach adopted involved about 50 participants and it employed a series of diverse methods. Participant observation and the attendance of numerous public and private film screenings were accompanied by semistructured interviews, focus groups, and video-elicitation (Harper, 2002; MacDougall, 2005; Pink, 2007, 2009). We also collected a large number of photos, analyzed websites, newspaper articles, and archival documents (Banks, 2007; Worth, 1981). In addition, we solicited the opinion of some of the key official institutional sites of the Italian community in Istria, in particular the above-mentioned Centro di Ricerche Storiche and the official publisher of the Unione degli Italiani in Slovenia and Croatia (a legacy of the Yugoslav institutional arrangements to support Italian-speaking residents in the socialist republic), the Edit-Arcobaleno that publishes the daily newspaper La Voce del Popolo and other political and cultural magazines (see focus group and interviews conducted with the Edit ’s editorial staff, Rijeka 26 January 2015). The many interviews appearing in the documentary were also analyzed as part of the narrative proposed by the film director as a form of cultural history. The documentary itself has been treated as a key source since it represents an assemblage of visual materials collected by the film director as part of three years of archival work completed by Tele Capodistria (TV Koper, in Slovenian). This station was established in the 1970s as the official broadcaster for the Italian community in Yugoslavia. It is still active today with programmes in both Italian and Slovenian (Imre et al., 2013, p. 34). The documentary Vedo Rosso was produced with the support of this broadcaster, in collaboration with RAI, the Italian National Television broadcaster, and numerous Italian associations in Istria. It was awarded a prize at the 2013 Trieste Film Festival—Alpe Adria Cinema, a festival focused on films produced in Eastern Europe. As noted above, in the past two years the film has been shown in numerous locations across the transnational border region, including in Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia, with many screenings in Trieste where a large number of Italian Istrians

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fled after the Second World War and where they continue to reside, having a strong influence on the city’s political and cultural life. It was also presented in other Italian cities (Venice, Mestre, Perugia, Pordenone, Ferrara, and Milan), the choice of city often following the traces of the Italian diasporic Istrian communities. All these screenings have provoked highly emotional reactions, with people commenting in tears about the period and related ‘lost’ memories (Pink, 2009). They also provoked tense and often difficult discussions on-site (and in the media, although they are sometimes deliberately ignored by certain newspapers) about the legacy of Yugoslavia, and the re-elaboration of individual and collective positionings in that complex political context and, inevitably, in the present. The film exposes the complications (and complicity) related to individual and family trajectories across the iron curtain border of Italy and Yugoslavia. It is characterized by an explicit self-ironic vein and a degree of disbelief in the Yugoslav regime and its practices. Yet, a sense of soft nostalgia about time and the related youth that will never return prevails (Casellato, 2014). The intersection of these diverse registers is one of the most interesting elements of Vedo Rosso, especially with regard to the lack of self-reflection concerning those years, a lack that seems to characterize the official political and historical narratives provided by the bodies representing Italians living in Istria. Accordingly, the film has been criticized for its ‘light touch’ on major political issues—for example, the censorship, the cult of Tito, the repression of the Italian minority and religious beliefs, etc. After the film showing, some viewers accused the director of representing the Italian community as ‘communist’. Others accused her of exactly the opposite, that is, of reproducing the long-standing bourgeois and nationalist fascist rhetoric that traditionally characterizes the Italian minority and its representatives. The film has managed to provoke some much-needed controversy and public confrontation over the period. Yugo-nostalgia for the Italian community, as it emerged in our study, is a big deal, a terrain still difficult to openly confront, and a land inhabited by ghosts and unspoken and unspeakable truths.

Seeing Red The documentary was used in our research as a provocative tool to stimulate discussion in the interviews and focus groups and to address the question of Yugo-nostalgia (see Bank, 2007; Harper, 2002; MacDougall,

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2005; Pink, 2007). As a well-established method in visual anthropology (Worth, 1981; Banks & Morphy, 1997), this form of video-elicitation has been most recently extended to the new social media and the broader field of visual methodology (Rose, 2012), and includes elements of research co-production and multisensoriality (Garrett, 2011; Pink, 2009). In other words, this project has adopted the film-documentary as a simultaneously direct and indirect source, as a series of public events and as a metaphorical site around which sentiments, individual and collective memories, and political leanings have emerged and have been reinterpreted and actualized. We have found these multiple uses of the documentary very useful methodologically, since they have allowed us to explore how manifestations of controversial memories tend to come together and become conflated when provoked, for example by a document/event/site like Vedo Rosso/Seeing Red. We thus attended six public screenings of the documentary, while recording and directly engaging with the oftenemotional reactions of different viewers. This included those who directly witnessed and participated in some of the key events narrated by the film, and those who belong to later generations and have therefore established a ‘post-memory’ relationship with those socialist years and their practices, but also those who left Istria as part of the post-Second World War ‘exodus’. Using visual elicitation was necessary because the consumption of media products has been recognized as key to the circulation of Yugo-nostalgic sentiments (Imre et al., 2013; Volˇciˇc, 2007; Mati´c et al., 2004). The documentary adopts a self-ironic nostalgic trope about ‘the Tito years’ using the narrative of a young girl (the director herself) who belongs to the first generation exposed to the mass culture circulated via the regime’s television broadcasts, but who also had frequent and intense contact with Italian culture and society (often via Italian television and radio). As reported by La Voce del Popolo (2 November 2012), ‘Vedo Rosso draws an intimate and light-hearted portrait of the Italian community in Istria from the 1970s to the death of Tito in 1980, via the gaze and the memory of the children and the teenagers of the Italian minority’. This generation, born in the 1960s, attended Italian schools in Istria and was trained to comply with the socialist education system and ideological indoctrination. This training was organized around a hierarchy of the role models spanning from ‘the Pioneers’ and the ‘Socialist Youth’, to the ‘League of Communists’:

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Red scarf around our neck, white shirt, and blue skirt. I felt strangely ˇ similar to anybody else, I could blend in with the majority; even the Casna Titova pionirska (the pioneer’s swearing of loyalty to Tito) was translated into Italian (Dabovi´c, 2012).

Most of the interviewees who feature in the documentary are in fact children or grandchildren of the rimasti. Rough (and contested) calculations estimate that around 20,000 people (rimasti) decided to remain under the newly founded socialist regime after the exodus. They are therefore part of a complicated transnational history that has never been entirely pacified, whose often-controversial interpretations still occupy significant space in local non-academic histories and local newspapers on both sides of the border today. Nonetheless, the rimasti have garnered very little attention from academics, except for the work of Pamela Ballinger (2003) and Glenda Sluga (2001), both scholars based outside the region, and both largely ignored or dismissed by local stakeholders. Vedo Rosso features a sequence of local daily scenes from the Yugoslav period. These are comprised mostly of ordinary mundane practices, including a series of consolidated individual and social practices dictated by the Yugoslav version of real socialism, the related consumption styles, and the ideological collective rituals apprehended in school. Viewing past clothing styles and Zastava cars, to name a few highly evocative categories of consumption, stimulated strong emotional reactions in the interviewees. Somewhat repressed expressions of nostalgia emerged, but also strong polemical and critical feelings against the regime’s forms of control and ideological alignment. I suffered under socialism because I experienced it like an imposition to be part of the Pioneers, to become a member of the Socialist Youth […] to be forced to write letters to our dear comrade Tito (I.R., personal communication, 26 January 2015).

The documentary provides a convincing combination of old television news clips, and educational programmes for children and teenagers coupled with contemporary interviews. It provokes the viewer by reelaborating everyday situations and the atmosphere of the period in question. The montage of original archival audio-visual sources indeed offers an insight into the cultural and social practices in Socialist Yugoslavia for this specific community. It provides a first-hand account of materials and

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memories contributing to the cultural histories of the everyday in Istria in the 1970s. While the documentary has no claim over the objective realities of the period investigated, it may be read as an original form of cultural production, a form of interpretative audio-visual self-representation aimed at stimulating various possible individual reconstructions of the memories of those controversial years in Rovinj (Banks, 2007; Ginsburg et al., 2002). Even in the first sequences, a few key tropes seem to emerge clearly. Emphasis is placed by the director on childhood education and the permanent and pervasive training of the young pioneers, who, in a rather touching scene, are asked to ‘be loyal and respect our socialist mother nation, to care for our friendship and always tell the truth’. For the Italian pupils of the day, attending school also meant learning SerboCroatian and the Yugoslav socialist jargon. Tellingly, the first word learnt in Serbo-Croatian was drugarica, that is, female comrade. The former comrade-teacher G.D., in a long filmed interview, ironically recalls how ‘from the first months of school we were organised in ways like those previously adopted by the Fascists’. He stated that what changed was merely the colour of the uniforms but not the practices. Keywords like ‘spring, future, patria, freedom’ were encountered in school and metabolized via endless rituals and events. For example, through writing competitions in honour of Comrade Tito, poems read out loud, public pronouncements and acknowledgments dedicated to the omnipresent Marshal: ‘Thank you comrade Tito..!’ (Fig. 7.2). School textbooks used to claim that ‘the Yugoslav Communist Party was a vital party, driven by a revolutionary geist’, and Marxism and economic self-management were among the key topics taught. Schools provided students with psychological and physical training to prepare for a hypothetical attack – they visited military barracks, shot M48s, and were introduced to the use of landmines and the principles of espionage. The only subject taught in Serbo-Croatian was dubbed ‘National Defence’. It aimed to protect the country from the fascist and capitalist ‘external enemy’. This enemy, rather paradoxically for the Italian minority, meant the former mother country where many relatives resided after ‘the exodus’. Vedo Rosso and our interviews have therefore allowed us to collect and confront memories of an everyday life made up of the collective spatiotemporalities typical of Yugoslav socialist education, interpreted as a sort of secular religion of ‘brotherhood and unity’. The images used in

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Fig. 7.2 Sections dedicated to Comrade Tito, Il Pioniere, 1980 (© Edit Publisher, Rijeka)

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the film show young pioneers in their red uniforms surrounded by red flags and various other choreographed elements, swearing loyalty to the country and its bright socialist future: In our red uniforms for the parade, we used to all go together to the sport grounds, it was a grand event, a true feast … after all, it was nothing but gymnastic exercise, but our movements were harmonized and we were under the impression that we were performing a sort of collective product while we were having a kind of workout together (G.P., in Vedo Rosso)

The typical rhetoric of the socialist regime of the day was thus incorporated via recurrent bodily performances, that is, grand events often choreographed as sport events (Lindstrom, 2006). Most of the interviewees especially remember Socialist Youth Day, celebrated on 25 May, Tito’s birthday, when all schools were closed to allow pupils to attend the collective performances and celebrations: For us Tito was a myth … I still recall the literary competition on TV for his birthday, although I have never fully understood if 25 May was dedicated to the Socialist Youth or to his birthday (S.R., in Vedo Rosso).

A sense of nostalgia for a lifestyle centred on a cyclical calendar composed of recursive collective rituals emerges from the interviews. The explicit use and display of disciplined and trained bodies was an integral part of the visualization of mainstream oversimplified geohistorical narrations of the socialist nation: ‘questions simply were not asked. We were not asking questions, we were doing stuff … everything seemed to be entirely natural’ (S.R., in Vedo Rosso). The uniforms and the corporeal discipline displayed in the documentary that was part of their collective habitus in the Yugoslav era provoked a form of nostalgic heritage (MacDonald, 2013). Tele Capodistria used to give lots of airtime to sports competitions involving the numerous Italian communities in the region, including those of Fiume (Rijeka), Pola, (Pula) and Dignano (Vodnjan). The choreographed images repeatedly showed athletes clad in red, forming the word T-I-T-O with their bodies. Many interviews nostalgically reflect on other everyday practices of the time, including the gatherings and social events of the Italian Community Association, the Italian films and books of the day, and the popular songs and customs. A sense of belonging to the Italian national community that was based in Yugoslavia, in those

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golden Yugoslav days, was coordinated via local practices, and translated into a specifically Italian way of being part of the Yugoslav socialist project. Accordingly, the interviewees recall how songs sang in Italian or even in the local (Istrian Venetian) dialect often referred to the socialist people, their patriotic feelings, and the Partisan epics. Examples included ‘Bandiera Rossa’ (‘Red Flag’, the Italian Communist Party anthem) and ‘Bella Ciao’ (an Italian Partisan song also popular among the Socialist International of the day). During the song festival organized by Tele Capodistria in 1978, children were shown dressed as Partisans while performing those songs, as recalled by a teacher: I experienced the Tito years with enthusiasm: I am a musician; I even composed a few patriotic songs during those days. Being also a teacher, I have always enjoyed the events of this kind, since I trained the children to perform on stage in Rovinj (V.B., personal communication, 18 October 2014).

However, the birth of the ‘free’ Italian private local radios and the transborder trade of the late 1970s had a significant impact on this soundscape, bringing important ‘contaminations’ that introduced, for example, Italian and English progressive rock. Today, the music of those years ˇ acts as a Yugo-nostalgic catalyst (Cvoro, 2014). The musical spectrum from popular antifascist songs (Lindstrom, 2006, p. 240) to Yugo-rock is recalled with a sense of nostalgia by many interviewees (Pauker, 2006). However, the ‘mythological lexicon’ (Mati´c et al., 2004) for Italian Istrians was both a Yugoslav and a transborder one, as music coming from Italy became increasingly relevant, especially among the younger generations. Vedo Rosso clearly shows how Partisan hats and American jeans purchased in Trieste were worn together. Bob Dylan and Bob Marley records were listened to alongside albums by Yugoslav stars. Mirko Cetinski famously interpreted the song ‘Yugoslavia’ in Italian in a video filmed in the Rovinj harbour in 1980, while Goran Bregovi´c, a popular Yugoslav star, was interviewed in Italian in 1978 about his band Bijelo Dugme. The documentary’s interviews eloquently reveal that Italian and Western television, radio, cinema, and even cartoons penetrated the living rooms of Istrian Italians. While loyalty to the Yugoslav project was never explicitly questioned, the television antennas were nonetheless always turned towards Italy. ‘We were always having dinner with

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the news from the Italian national television [on in the background]’, recalled one interviewee. Day after day, this presence created a sense of belonging and a connection to what was happening across the border. The Italian commercials that were dear to Italian children, the consternation surrounding dramatic events like the 1976 earthquake in Friuli, and the 1978 kidnap and murder of Christian Democratic leader Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades terrorist group, all impacted the Italian community in Istria. The cinema in Rovinj, originally named Roma, was later renamed Beograd-Mosca, and it normally featured classical propaganda films on the heroic Second World War Partisans, while at the same time Italian television channels brought the influence of 1970s Western culture to Istrians’ daily lives. The latter introduced forms of consumption and trends, but also ideologies that stirred the political conflict that marked Italian society in this era. The interviews are not only nostalgic, but also manifest critiques of the Yugoslav era. Some individuals recall the authorities’ invitations to denounce suspected ‘spies’ among the general population, the censorship concerning conversations about politics and the Party, but also forms of internal resistance, which occurred within the home, to the mainstream propaganda. As one former student noted, ‘we could not evoke the name of Tito in vain’. Catholic practices were generally allowed and tolerated, even though many counter-nostalgic accounts today argue that religion was banished to the private and domestic realm. Little nostalgia emerges for the forms of discrimination towards the Italians, often suspected of being fascists by default, something inherent in the official rhetoric of the socialist Yugoslav state (Casellato, 2014; Contini, 1997). One interviewee in the documentary reported having been confronted several times with comments in Croatian such as: ‘you little Italian, return to where you came from’. The documentary ends with Tito’s death, in May 1980: We were all speechless, shocked, it felt like someone in our family had died, one of us … the future suddenly seemed uncertain … I clearly recall the funeral, since our teachers brought us to see it on TV … I still recall the long procession of people accompanying his body from the Ljubljana hospital to Beograd where he was buried (S.S., in Vedo Rosso).

Another nostalgic account goes as far as stating that

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for me Tito was like God, I remember when I heard the alarm announcing his death … I cried when he died, I was 18 years old, an adult already, but we were indoctrinated like horses (O.C., in Vedo Rosso).

Yugo-Nostalgia and the Italian Minority in Rovinj From our investigation, what clearly emerges is that various age groups understand Yugo-nostalgia differently. The interviewees who are now in their fifties and early sixties (the same generation as the film director) express nostalgic sentiments frequently intersecting with memories of childhood or, more generally, their youth. Often this nostalgia for their youth is accompanied by memories of the socialist regime as a context in which everyone felt safer and less precarious than today, mainly because of the challenges imposed by contemporary capitalism: What I liked the most back then was the fact that we were often together, we socialized a lot, and many of us were genuinely happy and serene: I remember the social events, I also recall that when Tito died we were singing together one song to commemorate him, we were united, and we danced and sang hand in hand. People were doing things together, many were happy (I.D., personal communication, 18 October 2014).

Such a perception of precariousness has now been made worse by the persistence of the present economic crisis and the sense of uncertainty about the future that it provokes: Under Yugoslavia, once one had finished school, one found a job very easily, while a house could be purchased with very little money. Today there are no jobs, and this is what makes us feel nostalgic for those better times (I.D., personal communication, 18 October 2014; see also Croegaert, 2011).

On the contrary, among the younger generations born after the fall of Yugoslavia, what tends to prevail is a sense of nostalgia manifested via the consumption of and appreciation for the vintage aesthetics of old popular objects from the socialist period, devoid of any clear historical reference or critical reflection (Lindstrom, 2006): ‘Yugo-nostalgia is evident among many in the younger generations, even if they did not experience Yugoslavia, and they know nothing about it since they were too young or not even born’ (T.C., personal communication, 18 January 2015).

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During our fieldwork, we discovered numerous street markets with stalls displaying Yugoslav memorabilia, but also new products, like art objects made from recycled records produced by Jugoton—the largest label and chain record in the former socialist Yugoslavia—or other similar objects ‘made-in-YU’, reassembled into new ‘vintage’ objects (Velikonja, 2008) (Figs. 7.3 and 7.4). Arguably, many of these new Yugo-nostalgic objects tend to recall the Yugoslav music scene (including records, gadgets, etc.). They confirm, even among the post-memory community, the importance of popular ˇ music in the Yugoslav lexicon (Mati´c et al., 2004; Cvoro, 2014). This may also be found in the guise of the recent ethno-music revival: ‘today, the younger generation appreciates folk music, those awful songs from Bosnia that we hated. They do this as a form of contestation, precisely as we used to do with rock music’ (T.D., 26 January 2015). These forms of popular consumption of Yugo-nostalgic merchandise are not necessarily

Fig. 7.3 Representatives of the Italian minority singing during a Socialist celebratory event (Rovinj, 21.09.2014) (© Edit Publisher, Rijeka)

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Fig. 7.4 Recycled Yugo-Objects on sale (Rovinj, 21.09.2014) (© Edit Publisher, Rijeka)

linked to specific memories. However, as noted by Sharon Macdonald (2013) among others, these processes of surreptitious memory tend to build a virtual past, against which such practices may be perceived as real or at least realistic: ‘among the younger ones there is indeed a degree of curiosity about how we lived under communism’ (I.R., personal communication, 26 January 2015). Such manifestations of vintage consumption do not differ much from other more generic forms of Yugo-revival present in other parts and other social groups of the Socialist Yugoslavia, related to popular music and ˇ films (Cvoro, 2014; Imre et al., 2013; Radovi´c, 2014). What is instead specific about the Yugo-memories and the related nostalgia of the Italian community, is that Yugo-nostalgia is mixed up with and pervaded by the Western media’s influence (Volˇciˇc, 2007). If, in general, it may have been the case that ‘While Yugoslavia’s peculiar geopolitical position and relative independence from the Soviet bloc made its media system particularly

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open to Western programs’ (Mihelj, 2013, p. 16), this was particularly true for the Italian communities in Istria, because their antennas captured the television and radio programmes broadcast from Italy, where many relatives resided. Compared with Romania, Bulgaria, and other eastern European countries, this was the big difference, we had the satellite antenna and were able to watch Italian programmes; this gave us a sense of freedom and difference, also compared with other Yugoslav citizens. In addition, albeit with some difficulties, we were nonetheless able to cross the border and go to Trieste as many times as we wanted, to purchase Italian and Western products. This is what made Yugoslav socialism very different from all other forms of socialism. This was indeed a key factor in our identity and wellbeing (D.S., personal communication, 26 January 2015).

The documentary therefore attempts to somehow recompose the abovementioned pluralist and fragmented memories, divided by borders, and the different experiences of the rimasti and the esuli. Consequently, our study confirms the existence of an Italian community in Rovinj that, in light of the Second World War events that divided it between two ideologically ‘enemy’ countries, appears to have been rather inward-looking. This bisected community remains extremely attached to a nostalgic past that is influential in the present-day production and circulation of, often divisive, historical memories. Such divisive memories are based on what Ballinger describes as a ‘politics of submersion’ (Ballinger, 2003, p. 12) that relates to varied forms of contestation and ethnic tensions on both sides of the political spectrum (Pontiggia, 2013, p. 15). For Ballinger (1998), a politics of submersion refers to the witnesses’ views of memory as an indelible imprint whose experiential truth counters the falsities of official historiography. One dominant trope in these narratives among our interviewees is that of trauma, trauma over the historic and ethnic separation from Italy (Accati & Cogoy, 2007; Beneduce, 2010). This is so even though during the interviews we were confronted with the significant presence of mixed marriages and the persistence of domestic plurilingualism. My father has seen all his family depart, and also my aunt, born in 1919, has experienced this loss of italianità and has for long expressed anger towards the political culture of Yugoslavia which, according to her, had deliberated eradicated her family and broader community, but this

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was not the case with my mum, who belonged here (M.P., personal communication, 10 October 2014).

Another interviewee explained: I am the child of a mixed marriage, my father Italian, my mum Serbian, at home we were always very open about what it meant to be Italian; I was brought up in a fundamentally bilingual context, I felt I was Italian even though my mum considered herself Serbian (D.P., personal communication, 26 January 2015).

In this sense, the change in regime after the collapse of Yugoslavia, together with the re-emergence of Croatian nationalism and the introduction of free-market capitalism, have determined what some described as a ‘double defeat’. This is a source of important nostalgic sentiment. On the one hand, there is the defeat of the Yugoslav state project that aimed to protect and recognize its diverse cultural and ethnic components; on the other hand, there is the defeat of socialism and its ideology. The rimasti in Rovinj, who in many cases decided to stay and embrace the new politics, are particularly aware of this notion: I am nostalgic because back then, when we were in our twenties, we had no idea if our friends were Serbs, Macedonians, Croats, [or] Slovenes, we were all the same: Yugoslav. After the 1990s we discovered these differences as they emerged in the civil war: some were enrolled by the Serbs, others would become Muslim, something really shocking … Until then, we, as a minority, felt integrated even if we did not speak Croatian (T.D., personal communication, 26 January 2015).

What emerges here is a nostalgia for the ‘multiethnic unity’ hidden among the red uniforms, shared training, and ideological indoctrination. The Yugoslav myth of ‘brotherhood and unity’ that Tito forged and managed to retain is still very strong today. As a journalist belonging to the Italian minority wrote: I was aware that Yugoslavia was a political experiment aimed at suppressing difference and nationalism … I was born in Rijeka, oh my God, I mean Yugoslavia, in a tense political period when, after the shock of the [Second World] War, peace emerged and was conflated with tiredness, and it was

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not entirely clear if it was real peace or simply the result of the war stress, or of the fear to speak up (Dabovi´c, 2012).

If one reads the academic literature on Yugo-nostalgia, it is remarkable how each and every post-Yugoslav context relies on a set of specific modalities in the nostalgic recomposition of the past, the group investigated here being no exception. Among present-day Italian-speaking Croats in Istria, who are often ex-Yugoslavs, but to some extent also ex-Italians and ex-Austro-Hungarians, the stratification and recomposition of nostalgia is a complex and, in many ways, contradictory process. The very idea of Yugo-nostalgia in the version proposed by Vedo Rosso has contributed to the re-emergence—as if they had been kept hidden in the karst caves dotting this territory—of multiple and contested historical readings of Yugoslavia. This is somewhat of an unfinished project for this Italian minority. The absence of open and negotiated historical re-examinations underpins the controversy and present divisions among the Italian minority in Istria. When dealing with questions concerning Socialist Yugoslavia, we felt on many occasions during this research that we were indeed faced with the fundamental source of the political present for the Italian minority, which included a set of perspectives frozen in space and time. It seems that, for many interviewees, but in particular for those who refused to be interviewed, it was important to neglect the very concept of Yugo-nostalgia. This is because approaching it analytically, and making it part of public debates, may result in the possible subversion of the present political and social hierarchies within the Italian community, and of the narratives on which these hierarchies seem to rely. Yugoslavia is indeed still very much alive among the practices and the implicit political narratives of many key strands of the Italian minority in Istria, and Vedo Rosso has somehow exposed this fact in an innovative and provocative way (Casellato, 2014). Still today, the dominant narrative about post-Second World War Yugoslavia tends to represent the role and place of the Italian minority in Yugoslavia as the result of anti-fascist resistance and the Partisans’ victory. This over-simplified and selective historical narrative has remained apparently intact for an exceptionally long time, with the consequence of neglecting the existence of very diverse and contested understandings of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav period among Italians now living in Istria. ‘Only after the collapse of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s did some of the differences and the ambiguities characterising the members of this

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community in their relationship to communism and antifascism begin to partially emerge’ (V.B., personal communication, 10 October 2014). This explains why Yugo-nostalgia has become such a controversial concept for many, while at the same time it has been embraced by others—also thanks to Vedo Rosso—as an opportunity to attempt to recompose a divisive but nonetheless shared past in ways that may help ameliorate the conflict in the present. The Istrian peninsula, as part of the Marca Giuliana (the Julian March or also the Julian Venetia), as described by Pamela Ballinger (2003, pp. 1, 15 – inspired by the work of the Triestine writer Claudio Magris, 1999), has sought to evoke a shared ‘field of memory’ rather than use terms that suggest (further) partitions and related nationalist claims. For a very long time, it has been a patchwork or, perhaps better, a complex hybrid cultural context. Here, multiethnic and plurilingual realities were often merged or entangled in equally complex relationships marked by long histories. These realities and differences were deliberately protected during the Yugoslav period by policies that provided bilingual schools, and cultural and sports associations. These were often highly successful, thanks to the active and intense participation by the respective community members. In school, one of the four Italian schools in my hometown, we were obliged to read Pinocchio, the Libro Cuore [both ‘classics’ for Italian elementary school children, n.t.] I sweated my way through Petronio’s classic anthologies of Italian literature. I used to watch Italian TV and its beautiful commercials. But my shoes, those uncomfortable and hard Borovo [shoes], they were certainly Yugoslav. The Croatian kids in the street made me equally uncomfortable. They used to make fun of me because I was not familiar with the Croatian declinations. In Fiume I was addressed as mala talijanka, the small Italian; in Piedmont instead, when I visited my grandmother, I was called s’ciavetta (a derogatory term for a Slav), because of my Venetian accent (D.T., personal communication, 26 January 2015).

The border, at the same time, provided an important sense of belonging: Since we felt the Partisan pride of those who knew themselves to be ‘on the right political side’, but also a sense of subalternity typical of those who are exposed to epochal changes with no capacity of actually choosing or even understanding, and this was particularly true for those living in the rural

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areas and with relatively poor schooling (D.T., personal communication, 26 January 2015).

This community, via endless practices of crossing and exchange, nonetheless incorporated the border with its practices of mobility and related porosity into their identity. So, it should not come as a surprise that from the interviews a sense of nostalgia for the old border emerged very clearly. As noted above, a sense of belonging was built day after day via the rituals imposed by Tito’s socialist apparatus, which were conflated with exposure to Italian television channels and forms of consumption and cultural exchange with the mother country enabled by travelling across the border. This mélange of elements seems to have promoted historical interpretations among the Italian community marked by the trope of double abandonment: first by Italy, and then by Yugoslavia (Ballinger, 2003). The latter was the consequence of the collapse of Yugoslavia with the secession of Slovenia and Croatia, sanctioned by the 1991 referendums. On that occasion, the newborn Croatian Republic formally asked the members of the community in question to describe themselves either as Italians (therefore as a minority) or as Croats. This decision forced them to take a radical position even though many, as mentioned above, were part or even born out of mixed families. Being ‘mixed’ in Yugoslavia, according to their narration, never represented a problem, they were simply Yugoslavs. Our youth was shaped by a strong sense of brotherhood, and the feeling that we all belong together to Yugoslavia. Since 1991 the worst thing had been to be faced by people who attended Italian language schools addressing you in Croatian because of the presence of the ‘commission’ on nationality. Before, the Italian minority was much freer (I.D., personal communication, 18 October 2014). I am not Yugo-nostalgic; when the Berlin Wall came down, I was happy since I hoped that our freedom would become greater. However, the contrary occurred, we had to deal with multiple forms of radical nationalism that produced the conditions for the civil war to break out in 1991 and precipitated the various economic crises that have followed (D.P., personal communication, 26 January 2015).

Compared with other regions of Socialist Yugoslavia, the Istrian peninsula was not significantly affected by armed conflict during the Croatian secession; relatively few Istrians were directly involved in combat zones

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compared with citizens from other parts of the country: ‘The secession war here was not felt directly, but many people had to leave because of the war’ (T.P., personal communication, 18 October 2014). The tropes of abandonment and separation, so clearly embedded in the history and the key narratives of the rimasti, resulted in a renewed loss of the home country with the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and another change in citizenship, once again without having moved from home (Ballinger, 2003). Italians living in Istria today often present themselves as survivors of an almost extinct culture, now faced with the extinction of the Yugoslavia communitarian socialist project as well (ibid.). Despite having never left their place of origin, Istrian Italians may be considered somewhat like Internally Displaced People (IDPs). They could be regarded as ‘stationary IDPs’ who remained home while the boundaries and nations around them moved (Salvatici, 2008). Their identity narratives incorporate a sense of loss and abandonment that determines a subtle but very present nostalgia for the patria and the (Yugoslav) past (Audenino, 2015; Malkki, 1995). The sense of belonging for the Italian community is, therefore, a liminal arena based on narratives produced and circulated by those who directly experienced the Yugoslav past. Their form of Yugo-nostalgia, therefore, becomes a filter through which political nationalist readings of the past considered key to the survival of their community are selected.

(Yugo-)Nostalgia as a Practice of Memory Vedo Rosso has provoked an array of emotional reactions among the Italians of Rovinj, possibly because it never claims to describe the facts of the era. Rather it seeks to share individual and intimate memories of Yugoslavia, in a historical moment in which the post-Yugoslav transition seems unending. The fact that Yugo-nostalgia is an important and controversial topic among this community is confirmed by the director of the Centro di Studi Storici’s refusal to discuss this phenomenon with us, claiming that the very concept is alien to the culture of the centre and its affiliates. By the same token, some members of the minority were offended by how Vedo Rosso, according to their reading, depicts the Italians as Communists: ‘the Unione degli Italiani has decided not to circulate the documentary; perhaps they fear the reaction of the Istrians in Trieste’ (T.D., personal communication, 26 January 2015). After the 1954 London Memorandum, on both sides of the border, attempts at reconstructing a ‘true’ interpretation of the historical facts

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have been implemented via an intense and almost obsessive production of books and conferences on the events of the Second World War in Trieste and Istria, and on ‘the exodus’. This film is indeed a document of the political strategies implemented by an Italian community that after the Second World War suddenly became a minority and part of a socialist state. The compromises, the negotiations, and the practices of the decades preceding the collapse of Yugoslavia stem from this previous transition. However, quite explicitly, Vedo Rosso does not intend to propose new historical reinterpretations, nor to resuscitate forgotten histories, but rather to focus on the hybrid and somewhat unique quotidian of the Italian minority in Rovinj during a specific period. At the same time, via a description of some of these practices, the film aims perhaps to help in the process of reconciling a collective memory otherwise divided by the Second World War and by the border (Contini, 1997). In this sense, Vedo Rosso may be seen as an attempt to use Yugo-nostalgia in positive and constructive ways, to analyze and de-dramatize some of the mainstream historical accounts of the period. It urges the viewer to come to terms with a whole set of Yugoslav practices (Hall, 1997), all too often forgotten or deliberately denied in the official accounts claiming historical truth: This film is recent history. Now that the enthusiastic embrace of Italian nationalism of the 1990s has evaporated, the film seriously questions the official accounts that have been elaborated as identity pillars for the Italian community in the post-[Second] World War period and also after the end of Yugoslavia (D.S., personal communication, 26 January 2015).

What is particularly relevant for the main argument of this chapter is that the sapient use of Yugo-nostalgia in this documentary has allowed many exiled Italians to individually recompose what had previously been regarded as entirely divided memories. The documentary’s bottom-up approach has somehow managed to penetrate some of the untouched spaces of memory of this transborder community. These spaces had not been allowed to emerge until now due to the imposition of official accounts and the political radicalization of the parties on both sides of the border. For example, in the official narratives of the Yugoslav state, the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Italians from the Istrian peninsula was simply neglected. By the same token, in Yugoslav cinema and television, the theme of the impending invasion of an external enemy

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was ever-present. The Italians across the border, according to the official narratives of socialist Yugoslavia, therefore, became the capitalist and fascist other, the enemy. Today, the history of the Italian minority in Istria is presented by some as an example of a diasporic community that, despite its separation and political division from the ‘mother’ community provoked by the regime change and related exodus, remains nonetheless marked by a shared identity. Others describe themselves as Italians because of their language and lineage. A sense of a common ‘ethnic’ heritage has become potent among the rimasti (Crainz, 2005; Pontiggia, 2013). Vedo Rosso deliberately challenges these accounts but in ways different from attempts by other revisionist narratives, especially those produced by the new nation-states born out the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The rimasti indeed have recently tried to establish a new dialogue with their diasporic peers, both those near and far. When Yugoslavia collapsed, for example, the Dieta Democratica Istriana (DDI–referred to as the IDS in Croatia, i.e. the party describing itself as representing ‘Istrian special interests’ in the context of the newly formed Croatian state) has proposed an agenda set to safeguard the region with a hybrid Istrian Slavic–Latin identity. This is in clear opposition to the nationalist agenda supported by the Croatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica–HDZ) that governed the country under the leadership of Franjo Tud-man immediately after the secession from Yugoslavia. The DDI’s newly imagined multiethnic Istrian identity largely dwells on the historical legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Italian state that followed. It panders to an idea of a regionally distinct Istrian identity within the broader Balkan ‘patchwork’, which broadens the often orientalist connotations of the projected identity of Yugoslavs who have become migrants within the EU. The addition of this identity to the ‘Balkan panoply’ sits well with EU policies aimed at overcoming all forms of radical ethno-nationalism in an otherwise fraught region. Tito’s capacity to mediate and keep the ethnic tensions within Socialist Yugoslavia under tight control is still remembered by most of our interviewees with nostalgia. Today, the new referent is ‘Europe’, with its brand of a European brotherhood in line with its humanist tradition. This has to some extent replaced Tito’s model: ‘When the European Union arrived, after more than twenty years of border crossing, I was very happy because it made me feel that we were part of something bigger; I have always

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suffered from not being able to go beyond the narrow community of peers’ (S.B., 18 October 2014). The Italian minority in Croatia is weaker politically and numerically smaller than it was during the golden years of Yugoslavia. Istria’s sociolinguistic identity has also been influenced by the presence of new migrants who have come from what used to be southern Yugoslavia (Vojnovi´c, 2015). At the same time, the economic and cultural influence of Italy has declined due to the general economic crisis of the last decade. The Italian schools in Rovinj and Rijeka are now attended by Italians and some Croats–who believe these schools may provide better opportunities in their future–but also by Albanians, Kosovars and Chinese students; new minorities in the Istrian context who compete to a certain extent with the Italians. Some interviewees read these arrivals as a symptom of the end of their community’s cultural homogeneity and a threat to their identity; others, however, believe these ‘new Italians’ may be key to the survival of a declining group, and of its linguistic presence in Croatia: ‘…Perhaps in ten years, they will define themselves as Italians’ (I.R., personal communication, 26 January 2015). The presence of Italian tourists–once a dominant presence in Istria– has become relatively less relevant compared with that of tourists from other European countries. This change requires new linguistic skills for those seeking work in the sector. A sense of decline, risk, and uncertainty accompanies many of the interviewees’ comments about the future perspectives of their community, especially when compared with the past: My opinion is that signs of Yugo-nostalgia are very evident today, also among the younger generations who know nothing about that period, since they did not experience it. Most of the people who express their Yugo-nostalgic feelings are influenced by the present lasting economic crisis in Croatia. In Yugoslavia they felt more secure and protected (T.D., personal communication, 26 January 2015).

Yugo-nostalgia is indeed perceived as an important theme by the media as concerns the Italian minority: We have recently published the declaration of a Russian politician in our newspaper La Voce del Popolo entitled ‘Under Tito we lived very well’. Our Facebook page almost immediately received about 1500 comments, half in Italian half in Croatian; it was an absolute record in terms of contacts. This

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fact shows the importance of the topic (D.S., personal communication, 26 January 2015).

The present notion of hybrid Istrian identity as expressed by the Unione Italiana has become a mix of exclusionary strategies fuelled by claims of territorial belonging, and the desire for recognition of the minority’s need for protection by the EU authorities. It is also driven by the continued arrival of migrants from other backgrounds who further minimize the importance of the Italian community in terms of political influence and numerical clout. Former ‘brothers’ under Tito’s tutelage (like the Bosnians or the Kosovars) are now rebranded as foreign migrants to be kept out of Croatia and Slovenia, in order to maintain the Italian community’s privileged minority status under the European judicial umbrella (Kovaˇcevi´c, 2008; Vojnovi´c, 2015). In conclusion, if we adopt Svetlana Boym’s (2001) conceptualization of nostalgia, what has emerged in our study is the presence of a stream of restorative nostalgia limited to the forms of revivalist consumerism of the newer generations, and the sense of a lost golden age and of its collective practices among some middle-aged interviewees. However, the most significant form of nostalgia for Yugoslavia reflected in the interviews and the secondary sources is of a ‘reflective’ nature. This manifestation of nostalgia, in fact, uses memory and its accounts as a form of strategic reconfiguration of identity borders and bordering. This relies on operations of selective forgetting and selective remembering, in order to define the present and to project possible futures (Anderson, 1991). The role of borders in relation to the historical and geographical memories circulating among the members of this community remains key–despite their disappearance from the Schengen grand European geography. These borders are constantly recalled in redefinitions of a collective self of a minority embedded in a political and economic context set across multiple scales (the Istria ‘region’, two sovereign states, Schengen, ‘Europe’). I do believe that our society continues to work according to myths, and therefore also Tito’s Yugo is an operating myth, exactly like that of a Croatian nation. The ideological indoctrination and the emotional charge are far too strong still today for us to be able to speak with some degree of detachment about Yugoslavianism […] There is a clear need to avoid further division and conflict. After the exodus and the second secession

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and the related new exodus of the 1990s, we have been beheaded (I.R., personal communication, 26 January 2015). I believe the film may be perceived as threatening to some people, because at a certain point we will also have to rethink who we are, as an Italian community, in this new context, but to do that we will have to admit and reflect on the past errors as well. The Italian minority in Istria has not experienced its own grand catharsis yet. Such catharsis is necessary because we have to clean ourselves up from a complicated past and start thinking about how to move on and reinvent new ways of being an Italian minority in this part of the world that has changed so dramatically over the past decades (D.P., personal communication, 26 January 2015).

This deep ‘memory-complex’ (MacDonald, 2013) therefore emerges as an assemblage of practices, objects, affects, and materials of different natures necessary for rethinking a shared and possibly coherent narrative about the past and, especially, to build a positive and constructive sense of the future. Yugo-nostalgic sentiments, therefore, can either be a part of this process of the recomposition of memories and imaginations for the Italian minority, or they can simply become the final stage of the development of an inward-looking identity based on conflicting narratives of the past that may soon disappear together with the representatives of that era and perhaps even the Italian cultural presence in Rovinj and Istria as a whole.

Notes 1. A slightly modified version of this chapter was previously published as: Altin, R. and Minca, C. (2018). The thin red line: memory and Yugo-nostalgia among the Italian minority in Istria. Narodna Umjetnost – Croatian Journal of Ethnology and Folklore Research, 55, 111–133. 2. Film Editor: Associazione culturale Fuoritesto; Scientific Advisor: Alessandro Casellato e Orietta Moscarda. Shooting format: HD; video: Betacam SP PAL – screen ratio 16:9. www.vimeo.com/187190254 (password entry: VEDO ROSSO EN).

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Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Culture representation and signifying practice. Sage. Imre, A., Havens, T., & Lustyik, K. (Eds.). (2013). Popular television in Eastern Europe during and since socialism. Routledge. Kovaˇcevi´c, N. (2008). Narrating post/communism. Routledge. https://doi.org/ 10.4324/9780203895252 Lindstrom, N. (2006). Yugonostalgia: Restorative and reflective nostalgia in former Yugoslavia. East Central Europe. L’europe Du Centre-Est, 32(1–2), 231–242. Macdonald, S. (2013). Memorylands. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/978 0203553336 MacDougall, D. (2005). The corporeal image: Film. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400831562 Magris, C. (1999). Microcosms. Harvill. Malkki, L. H. (1995). Refugees and exile: From ‘refugee studies’ to the national order of things. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24(1), 495–523. https:// doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.24.100195.002431 Mati´c, D., Adri´c, I., & Arsenijevi´c, V. (2004). Leksikon YU mitologije [Lexicon of Yugoslav Mythology]. Postscriptum-Rendum. Mihelj, S. (2013). Television entertainment in socialist Eastern Europe. In A. Imre, T. Havens, & K. Lustyik (Eds.), Popular television in Eastern Europe during and since socialism (pp. 13–29). Routledge. Pauker, I. (2006). Reconciliation and popular culture: A promising development in former Yugoslavia? Loca-global: Identity, security, community, 2, 72–83. www.mams.rmit.edu.au/wcch64c2r40r.pdf. Pink, S. (2007). Doing visual ethnography: Images, media and representation in research. Sage. Pink, S. (2009). Doing sensory ethnography. Sage. Pontiggia, S. (2013). Storie nascoste. Antropologia e memoria dell’esodo istriano a Trieste. Aracne. Radovi´c, M. (2014). Transnational cinema and ideology. Routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9780203752555 Rose, G. (2012). Visual methodologies. Sage. Salvatici, S. (2008). Senza casa e senza paese. Profughi europei nel secondo dopoguerra. Il Mulino. Sluga, G. (2001). The problem of trieste and the Italo-Yugoslav border. University of New York Press. Velikonja, M. (2008). Titostalgia. Peace Institute. ´ Vojnovi´c, G. (2015). Cefuri raus! Feccia del Sud via da qui. Forum. Volˇciˇc, Z. (2007). Yugo-nostalgia. Cultural memory and media in the former Yugoslavia. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 24(1), 21–38. https:// doi.org/10.1080/07393180701214496.

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CHAPTER 8

Long Live Yugoslavia! War, Memory Activism, and the Heritage of Yugoslavia in Slovenia and in the Italo-Slovene Borderland Borut Klabjan

Post-Socialist Memory? Yugoslavia, which in 2018 commemorated its one-hundredth anniversary, no longer exists.1 First Yugoslavia—the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (named the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes up until 1929)—has mostly been forgotten and remains the subject of a few historical works. The second, which became known as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), despite its collapse through a series of bloody wars during the 1990s, is still with us. Relatively little time has passed since the socialist period, and many persons still have a direct or ‘lived’ memory of it. Moreover, its material heritage is part of everyday life all across the post-Yugoslav space. While individual buildings or even entire towns built in Yugoslav times no longer serve as ideological markers, Second World

B. Klabjan (B) Science and Research Centre, Institute for Historical Studies, Koper, Slovenia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. B˘adescu et al. (eds.), Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2_8

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War memorials continue to play this role. These elements continue to evoke the Yugoslav past in the contemporary landscape. They remain sites at which numerous commemorations are carried out and their changing interpretations in the public sphere spark controversies in the Yugoslav successor states and beyond. In this article, I analyze changes in Slovenia’s cultural landscape that began in the 1990s, in order to show different attitudes towards the Yugoslav heritage both in time and space. Second, thanks to a transnational focus on the borderland that is presently shared by Slovenia and Italy, I will argue that the redefinition of collective identities and the reinterpretation of history after 1991 are not solely a post-Yugoslav or Eastern European peculiarity but rather a European phenomenon. Some of the vast literature on the politics of memory in Central and Eastern Europe show the role of this form of construction of collective identities as a specific characteristic of this part of Europe. Specifically, it is regarded as part of the legacy of its recent socialist past (Dobre & Ghi¸ta˘ , 2017; Pakier & Wawrzyniak, 2016; Törnquist-Plewa, 2016; Mink & Neumeyer, 2013; Blacker et al., 2013). Despite the value and the importance of several of these studies, an in-depth analysis of the borderland between Italy and Slovenia demonstrates that it is difficult to consider this phenomenon solely as a process pertaining to post-socialist countries. Reinterpreting the past and assigning new meanings to the Second World War are not practices limited to former socialist states. Similar processes of reinterpreting the past are no less frequent elsewhere, especially in the neighbouring regions that formed a kind of ‘military frontier’ for the West during the Cold War—this includes, among others, the case of the Italo-Yugoslav borderland. The focus of the third and final section is on showing how this is not a linear process that follows rigid geographical divisions. Here, I analyze the attitudes of the Slovene community in Italy towards the SFRY. I demonstrate that its mythicized image is not a result of a new Yugonostalgia, but rather derives from a continuity of myths and narratives developed during the Cold War and retained as part of contemporary local cultural material and intangible heritage.

The Politics of Memory in Slovenia In the 1980s, the monolithic image of the Second World War in Yugoslavia started to crumble, and from 1990 onwards the history, heritage, and memory of the war became a battlefield. On 8 July 1990,

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in a critical period for Yugoslavia, the president of the Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia, Milan Kuˇcan, who would later become the president of the independent Slovenia, shook hands with Ljubljana’s Archbishop Alojzij Šuštar. Some 30,000 people attended a meeting in the Koˇcevski Rog forest, which had been a site of the mass murder of Nazi collaborationist units (the Domobranci, the Slovenian Home Guard, and other, mainly Croatian Ustasha units) in June 1945. This gathering was organized to end the polemics on the Second World Warand of strengthening feelings of national reconciliation. Yet it set the stage for contested commemorative practices that continue to shape political confrontation in Slovenia (Vodopivec, 2006, p. 502). The rhetoric of ethnic exclusivism and national exceptionalism replaced narratives of Yugoslav brotherhood and unity in independent Slovenia. Even if the new country was only marginally involved in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, anti-Yugoslav feelings did not disappear overnight. These feelings took concrete form through the removal of monuments and other symbols, the introduction of new state holidays, and the altering of names that recalled the Partisan heritage and Socialist Yugoslavia. Along with the pluralization of political life, the new political elites called for the democratization of memory and historical revision. While the Partisan veterans’ organization and left-wing parties promoted continuity in Yugoslavia’s anti-fascist myth, extending it to the present, the right and the Catholic Church sought radical reinterpretation. The adoption of the Public Holidays in the Republic of Slovenia Act in 1991 annulled existing legislation. It abolished state holidays that commemorated the former SFRY, while name changes of places, streets, and educational institutions were introduced in 1991 at local level through municipal ordinance.2 Ljubljana changed the squares named after Lenin and Marx, and renamed the central Tito Road as the Slovene Road. Velenje, renamed Titovo Velenje (Tito’s Velenje) in 1981, was given back its original name in 1990. In Maribor, Boris Kraigher Square and several other squares and streets were given new names that recalled people and events related to independent Slovenia. Many schools that had been named after famous Partisans were renamed.3 In Ljubljana, a primary school constructed in 1959 whose name commemorated Boris Kidriˇc, a Partisan leader and an important politician in Socialist Yugoslavia, was renamed to reflect its toponym (Savsko naselje—Sava Quarter) in 1997. One school in Nova Gorica, the town that had been founded on the border with Italy following Gorizia’s return to Italy at the

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Paris Peace Conference in 1947, was originally named in honour of the Partisan division IX Corps. It was renamed to celebrate the nineteenthcentury Slovenian natural scientist and writer Fran Erjavec in 1992 (Širok, 2012). Such changes were not limited to the 1990s, or to a ‘hot’ post-socialist instinct. In 2014 in Komen, a small town close to the Italo-Slovene border, tempers flared when a group of local activists proposed renaming the local elementary school whose name honoured the Partisan hero Anton Šibelja-Stjenka. In their view the school should instead celebrate Max Fabiani, a well-known architect who had also been an important party member in Fascist Italy. The mayor avoided overt conflict by not placing the proposal on the municipal council agenda, but the polemics between supporters of the proposed name change and its opponents caused tension in the local community.4 Such discord is not merely local: in 2009 Ljubljana’s city council attempted to name a street after the former Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito. It was taken to court by the organization Mlada Slovenija (Young Slovenia), the youth branch of the conservative New Slovenia Party. The constitutional court ruled that the city council’s proposal was unconstitutional, because it ‘was contrary to the core values’ on which the Slovenian constitution was based. Citing the fact that all modern European constitutional democracies are based on the promotion of respect for human dignity, human rights, and fundamental freedoms, the court noted that ‘totalitarian regimes in the twentieth century led in Europe to millions of victims and even to systematic violations of human rights’.5 In the aftermath of Yugoslavia’s disintegration, Second World War heritage sites also became sites of contention. Some of them were vandalized. Several red stars disappeared. Other monuments were simply neglected. Slovenia saw no mass demolition of memorials, as was the case in some regions of Croatia (Robionek et al., 2010). But it would be misleading to think that Slovenia experienced no interventions in the ‘Partisan space’. Almost overnight, many busts and portraits of Tito were removed from public institutions. Most famously, the bust of Tito in the entrance hall of the Slovenian Parliament was rapidly sent to the City Museum of Ljubljana (Cigleneˇcki, 2012, pp. 207–210). There was little room for socialist memorials in the new imagination of public space. Many of the memorials that remained provoked long-lasting resentment in local communities. A memorial to the victims of the Second

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World Warin Rodik, a village close to the Italo-Slovene border, was reconfigured through the addition of a plaque that commemorated local victims of the First World War. This memorial, originally constructed in 1945, bears the names of seven young villagers that Wehrmacht soldiers killed in the summer of 1944. Over the following decades the local community rather than state officials had preserved and ritualized the memory of the massacre. The monument in the main square thus embodied local cultural memory. In the charged atmosphere of the 1990s, a group of residents began promoting the idea that all villagers who had lost their lives in both world wars should be remembered. After decades of the forced forgetting of the First World Warand a unilateral focus on the Second World War, some villagers demanded the recognition of losses in both wars. However, conversations with locals during my fieldwork conducted in summer 2015 revealed that many residents believed that alterations to the memorial also reflected other concerns. Politically motivated opponents of the original memorial wanted to delegitimize its message to serve their own political ends. What Tatiana Zhurzhenko (2013) has termed ‘the geopolitics of memory’, resulted at the local level in a balance of political sensibilities. By attaching a plaque commemorating the local victims of the First World War to the original memorial, they minimized the political message of the victims of the Second World War. Because some villagers had considered the memorial a vestige of the communist regime and associated it with the contemporary left, they transformed the monument into a more general site of local collective mourning. Yet the form, time, and space of these operations indicate that what happened in Rodik was not only an expression of mourning but also, even primarily, a form of contemporary political confrontation (Fig. 8.1). The reappropriation of the past in the parts of central Slovenia where collaboration with Nazi and Fascist units had been relatively common has been particularly intense. As Oto Luthar has argued (2013, 887), ‘there is at present almost no place without a memorial or a “parish plaque” dedicated to the Domobranci’, i.e. to the Slovene collaborationist units. The continuing re-emergence of these ‘memory knots’ (Rothberg, 2009), shows that memories not only melted after being frozen, as illustrated by Tony Judt (2002), but that the new geopolitical context enabled the rise of many competitive claims. Having started from the initial request for the recognition of the suffering of ‘all sides’ and all victims of the Second World War and a general effort to democratize memorialization, Slovenia’s public space is now grappling with shifting

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Fig. 8.1 Memorial to the victims of the Second World War in Rodik (Slovenia). In the lower part of the monument a plaque to the victims of the First World War has been added (Photo © Borut Klabjan)

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understandings of victims and perpetrators. Since the 1990s, the call for ‘national reconciliation’ has been lauded by many political parties, the Catholic Church, civil-society organizations, and individuals (Kirn, 2012, p. 254). Following the general decline of communism and its equation with Nazism, Slovenia has witnessed increased rhetoric promoting the paradigm of collaborationist patriotism. As elsewhere in Europe, in Slovenia, collaborationist units, demonized during the SFRY, have gradually been reimagined and portrayed as legitimate defenders of the nation against communism, and in some parts of Slovenia their memorials have replaced Partisan monuments as central sites of memory at a local level. Encouraged by the Resolution on European Conscience and Totalitarianism that the European Parliament adopted in 2009, after long debates the Slovene political elite decided to build a monument (spomenik) in Ljubljana dedicated to all the victims of wars in Slovenia. Constructed in Congress Square, one of the capital’s central squares, it was unveiled in July 2017. Its neutral, unbiased, and conflict-free message was in line with the expectations of the Slovene President Borut Pahor, one of the main proponents of the memorial. At the dedication on 13 July 2017, Pahor and several of the inaugural speakers emphasized the need to overcome past national traumas.6 However, these memorial activities were not aimed at stimulating national reconciliation through critical debate on the complexities of the nation’s past. Rather, it seems that, similarly to what is happening at the European level (Sierp, 2014, p. 107), the aim here was to avoid active confrontation and to create a new form of amnesia through the conscious homogenization of conflicting memories.

Along the Italo-Slovenian Border To investigate what is happening on a European scale it is particularly fruitful to examine the impact of different politics of memory in a transnational context, because border areas are crucial sites for the recovery of memories, their contestation, and renegotiation (Zhurzhenko, 2011, p. 74). The Primorska region (the Littoral), is the westernmost part of contemporary Slovenia. It lies on the border with Italy and is a particularly appropriate location for testing the (im)permeability of national memory cultures. Following the demise of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918, the region underwent several territorial changes: from the annexation to Italy in 1920, and the subsequent harsh policies of anti-Slovene ethnic suppression under Mussolini, to incorporation into the Third Reich

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between 1943 and 1945, when the area experienced a high wartime death rate. If in other regions of contemporary Slovenia, the struggle between the communist-led Liberation Front and collaborationist units was particularly fierce, in this region anti-fascist leaders were able to lean on a widespread underground movement. After the war, Yugoslav, British, and American troops occupied the region. At the Paris Peace Conference, its western part was returned to Italy, while the eastern part was given to Yugoslavia. A third part, including the port city of Trieste, was designated a free territory administered by the Anglo-American and Yugoslav armies up until 1954. The Iron Curtain cut across here during the first post-war years, but gradually tensions decreased at both the state and local levels, with the result that the demarcation line was increasingly one of conjunction rather than rupture. However, as the Cold War took hold, new narratives regarding the Second World War emerged. As we saw, following Slovenian independence in 1991, there were calls for new interpretations of Slovenian history, but visions of its past did not change completely in its western borderland. Why? This is mainly because the end of the Second World War and the Partisan struggle led to the ‘national liberation’ of Slovenes from Fascist Italy and the annexation of most of Primorska to Yugoslavia. Even if the contested cities of Gorizia/Gorica, and especially Trieste/Trst, remained outside its frontiers, after the Second World War, the socialist Slovenia, as part of Yugoslavia, gained a large portion of what Slovenes considered to be their historic ethnic territory. In this context it is unsurprising that post-socialist Koper/Capodistria, the main town on the coast, has retained place names that refer to Tito. Even if changes in toponymy were made across the rest of the region, the main square of Koper is still named after him and the local population often express their aversion to potential changes7 (Fig. 8.2). In the changing geopolitical situation from the end of the 1980s onwards, new historical interpretations emerged. If, in Slovenia, this provoked animated discussion about the ‘atrocities of the communist revolution’, on the other side of the border in Italy, the ‘foibe’ (pits used as mass graves) and the ‘exodus of Italians’ became central elements in the post-Cold War national narrative. Accusations of Yugoslav ethnic cleansing committed against the local Italian-speaking population mounted in the Italian public sphere following Slovenian independence. However, the construction of the image of Italians as victims of the Second World War and its aftermath were not new. This picture appeared

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Fig. 8.2 The plaque on the main square in Koper/Capodistria named after Tito (Photo © Borut Klabjan)

already during the war, when the collapse of Fascist Italy reopened the territorial disputes in the northern Adriatic. The Italian-as-victim image has been supported by Italy’s ambiguous role as the ‘co-belligerent’ of the Allies and continued into the Cold War when Italy played an important role in western geopolitical strategies. Right-wing political parties and organizations especially cultivated the memory of Yugoslav crimes against Italians. In contrast to the situation in the SFRY, such memories of ‘foibe’ and the ‘exodus’ were neither frozen nor submerged in the Italian collective memory. During the Cold War, these memories had little impact on Italian politics, but were a dominant theme of local memory discourses in the region that borders Yugoslavia. Local right-wing and exile organizations based their self-identification on their perception of history according to which national identity was the main reason for the post-war ‘exodus’ from the former Italian provinces (Ballinger, 2003). After the collapse of the socialist world and the demise of the antifascist myth, in Italy these narratives of national tragedy on the eastern border became central to recreating a supposedly lost Italian identity. They were no longer marginalized politically or geographically. In the new political situation, the First Republic had become mired in political chaos. The transformation of the Italian Communist Party, the West’s largest

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communist party, combined with the rise of new political forces such as the regionalist Lega Nord and the populist Forza Italia and the presence of former Fascist Party members in the government led to a weakening of the anti-fascist myth and a revising of the resistance paradigm (Mammone, 2006, p. 217). Not only in Yugoslavia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe but also in Italian society, there was a widespread debate about ‘reconciliation’ and national ‘pacification’. Its aim was to rebuild the country around a revised version of the national past and the ‘eastern border’ helped to cement a narrative of victimhood into the dominant discourse, instead of opening up questions of guilt and responsibility before and during the Second World War (Clifford, 2013, p. 243; Perra, 2008). In this new memory culture, previously marginal commemorative practices turned into national events attended by state representatives. In 1991, the Italian President Francesco Cossiga introduced the ritual of attending the commemoration in Basovizza/Bazovica, a village east of Trieste, on the border with Yugoslavia, in which corpses had been found in a pit after the war, thus elevating it to a ceremony of national importance. His successor Oscar Luigi Scalfaro declared the site a national monument in September 1992, and so the perception of the foiba in Basovizza as a fascist lieu de mémoire slowly dissolved as it was reimagined as a site of national tragedy. Since then it has been propagated as a site of ‘Italian martyrdom’, and as a site of ethnic cleansing committed by Yugoslav communists, which had been silenced for decades due to the international balance of the Cold War (Pirjevec, 2009, pp. 199–208; Verginella, 2010, p. 49). Developments in these public commemorations also reflected changing political calculations. If Italian regional politicians had for the most part supported Slovene (and Croat) independence, the official statement at the level of Italy’s foreign policy was rather ambiguous. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Gianni De Michelis, was sceptical regarding Slovene independence, which Italy recognized only in January 1992, and subsequently blocked Slovenia’s attempted accession negotiations with the European Union in 1993. The attitude of Silvio Berlusconi’s first government (1994) towards Slovenia proved especially harsh (Tesser, 2013, pp. 145– 149). Only after a long dispute, over compensation issues and property restitution to exiles, did Italy lift its veto on the Slovenian accession agreement. If European diplomacy solved the issue at the political level, the controversies resulted in negative feelings present among the population

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on both sides of the border. Together with the escalation of narratives of the past based on the re-evaluation of the fascist period and the criminalization of the Yugoslav Partisans, Italian foreign policy provoked different reactions and was the subject of animated discussion in parts of Slovene society. Moreover, the memory disputes did not end in 2004 when Slovenia joined the European Union. In March 2004, the Italian Parliament passed a law establishing 10 February as Italy’s national Day of Remembrance and the issue of ‘foibe and exodus’ became a focus of Italian national memory accepted by the great majority of political parties (Mattioli, 2011, pp. 157–193). Even if some scholars considered the new law ‘in clear opposition … to the Holocaust memorial day’, (Gordon, 2006, p. 183), its significance is more nuanced and complex. In fact, these new narratives enabled not only the perpetuation of the image of Italians as brava gente and war victims in the general posthumous amnesty, but also the vilification of ‘Yugoslavs’, along with ‘Germans’, who were in turn blamed for the ‘tragedies of the Italian nation’ (Del Boca, 2005; Pirjevec, 2009, pp. 201–230; Osti Guerrazzi, 2010, pp. 240–241; Focardi, 2013). In Slovenia, the centre-left party, the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (LDS), dominated the country’s politics for much of the 1990s, and mostly overlooked historical controversies and bypassed memory questions. However, the impact of commemorative discourse did not stop at the Italo-Slovene border. While entering key Western institutions—above all the EU and NATO—was central to Slovene internal and foreign policy, the new wave of Italian memory had a direct influence on Slovene perceptions of the past. While official memory politics remained mostly passive, groups of activists entered the memory battle. Different individuals and organizations protested the growing Italian victimization narrative. Not only Partisan veterans, but several new organizations were established, in particular the Društvo za negovanje rodoljubnih tradicij organizacije TIGR Primorske (Association for the Cultivation of Patriotic Traditions of the Organization TIGR in Primorska), which organized commemorations, published memoirs and bulletins, and built memorials to preserve the good name of the ‘first anti-fascism in Europe’, with the aim of providing bottom-up protection for what they considered the national interest of Slovenia (Rožac Darovec, 2016, pp. 897–898). Developments in Slovenia mirrored several Italian memory initiatives. The temporal contiguity of national memorial days is no coincidence.

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As previously mentioned, in March 2004 the Italian parliament introduced the Giorno del ricordo (Day of Remembrance). In response, in September 2005, the Slovene parliament introduced the Day of the Restoration of Primorska to the Motherland as a state holiday. Initiatives in both countries sustained these mnemonic strategies and tried to popularize a new vision of the past. Public television and media in general played a central role in these activities, as demonstrated by the success of the film Il cuore nel pozzo (The Heart in the Pit, directed by Alberto Negrin, 2005) and, more recently, by the theatre production Magazzino 18 (Simone Cristicchi, 2014) (Verginella, 2010; Altin & Badurina, 2017). The Italian national broadcaster RAI screened the film in 2005. Often considered of poor artistic value, it shows a highly simplified account of Yugoslav Partisan violence against innocent Italians. The movie was financially supported by the right-wing government and by the minister for communications, Maurizio Gasparri, one of the leaders of the Alleanza Nazionale party, a successor to the Fascist Party. It was first screened as a television series and then as a film on the first official Day of Remembrance. It was viewed by 17 million people.8 It provoked sharp reactions in Croatia, especially in Istria and in Rijeka/Fiume and among Partisan veterans’ associations. In Serbia, the newspaper Vreme emphasized the film’s unilateral political motivation and compared it with the Hungarian rock opera by Gábor Koltay Trianon, a piece showing the general victimization of Hungarians after the First World War. In Slovenia, where the movie was screened two weeks later, many underlined the bad quality of the work. Partisan veterans and left-wing organizations protested, while the right-wing parties used it to criminalize the resistance for internal political purposes. This reopened mutual accusations from the left and right regarding the history of the Second World War in Slovenia.9 The ˇ 2010 Slovenian film Crni bratj e (Black Brothers), can in part be regarded as a response to Il cuore nel pozzo. It tells the story of a group of young anti-fascists from Gorizia/Gorica. However, this film went almost unnoticed. A theatre production that criticized the political background of the film Il cuore nel pozzo (entitled Il cuore nel pozzo—The Movie, director Sebastijan Horvat) was prepared for the Slovene theatre in Trieste but was cancelled and never publicly performed.10 The chronology and the improvized nature of these practices in Slovenia show that rather than being a premeditated memory strategy arising from its socialist past, Slovene memory politics are often a response to nationalist memory practices in Italy. The short-term enthusiasm for

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these initiatives supports this view. Owing to political divisions in 2007, only two years after its establishment, two different commemorations for the ‘Restoration of Primorskato the Motherland’ were organized, which mirrored internal political confrontation between left and right in Slovenia. Initially, the central government had been in charge of the celebration. However, by 2010 it had withdrawn its support. Civic organizations and municipalities thus had to bear the cost of the celebrations.11 The low-level engagement of the central government in these commemorative activities is most probably the consequence of an attempt to mitigate the memory wars at the state level. In 2007, the Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano, termed the Yugoslav resistance as ‘Slavic annexionism’, which provoked admonishments in Slovenia (and even more so in Croatia), yet a few years later in 2010, he met the Slovene President Danilo Türk and the Croatian President Ivo Josipovi´c in Trieste. All three laid flowers on the former Narodni dom (National House), burnt down by Italian nationalists and Fascists in 1920, which is a site of memory for local Slovenes, and at the monument dedicated to the ‘exodus of Italians’ from Istria after 1945. Afterwards, they attended a concert for peace that the conductor Riccardo Muti organized on the main square in Trieste.12 Since that time, a memory armistice named the ‘spirit of Trieste’, has predominated in official narratives, but the image of Italians as victims of Yugoslav Partisan ideological and ethnic violence spread all over Italy, and at the local level different interpretations of the Second World Warcontinue to evoke harsh diatribes.

Yugoslavia is Not Dead! (It Lives on in Italy) These discussions at the local level do not follow linear borders and very often involve both ethnic communities living outside their ‘ethnic homelands’: Slovenes in Italy and Italians in Slovenia (and Croatia). Since the Italian minority is the focus of another chapter in this volume, I will concentrate the third and final part of my analysis on the Slovene community in Italy. Slovenes live along both sides of the Italo-Slovene border. This is not a result of recent migration from Slovenia to Italy (rather, the opposite trend has been observed in recent years) but is instead a consequence of shifting political borders throughout the twentieth century. Among the Slovene ethnic minority in Italy little has changed in terms of their perception of Yugoslavia after its collapse. This is a general observation, and no research has been done on the perception of Yugoslavia

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among Slovenes in Italy. I am aware that considering a community as a homogenous entity could be superficial, however, reflecting on its collective approach to commemorations of the Second World War might be a useful barometer for investigating their sense of belonging. Despite the diversity within the community, for their elite(s), Yugoslavia and Slovenia not only represented the ethnic homeland, but was the source of the legitimation of their political role. Accordingly, the ethnic and political persecution before and during the war, the participation in the resistance and the Partisan victory, despite an ambiguous post-war geopolitical order, remained binding factors for the community (Kacin Wohinz & Pirjevec, 2000, pp. 109–172). This area experienced various waves of Cold War animosity: from being a hotspot in the early post-war years, it later became an example of extraordinary cooperation between ‘East and West’. At the same time, however, the attitude of the Italian authorities towards the Slovene community was often ambiguous and it remained mostly hostile. In particular, a visibility in public space was mostly denied, and memorials to the Second World War often constitute the only external sign of the Slovene community in the public sphere. Numerous local Slovenes fought in the local resistance movement, but it is no coincidence that both cities, Trieste and Gorizia, have never dedicated a central monument to their Partisans. Thus, monuments to the fallen—constructed around the cities in mainly Slovene-speaking areas—represent not only sites of memory and sites of mourning, but are also indicators of political recognition. They became the cornerstones that propped up the myth of Socialist Yugoslavia (Verginella, 2008, p. 43). However, such memorialization practices were not carried out only in Yugoslavia, but all over the Slovene ethnic territory, including what in 1947 became the Free Territory of Trieste (FTT). This territory was divided into Zone A, ruled by the UK and US armies, and Zone B, which was under the control of the Yugoslav administration. Until 1954 it represented a buffer zone and a microcosm of the global Cold War. In this geopolitical context the unveiling of Partisan monuments and participation in Partisan ceremonies were contested acts that supported Yugoslav territorial claims. The Cominform division of the anti-fascist milieu in 1948 additionally complicated the commemorative options in Zone A of the FTT. Stalinists, both Italian and Slovene, who started rejecting Yugoslavia and who considered Tito a traitor, laid claim to these memorials. Tito’s supporters, mostly Slovenes, who were a minority in the left milieu of Trieste yet who relied

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heavily on support from neighbouring Yugoslavia, also claimed them. At the same time, other actors also participated in battles against fascism, including anti-communist Slovenes who emphasized the primacy of the pre-war national, as well as anti-fascist, elements of their struggle. The latter was symbolized by a monument dedicated to three Slovenes and one Croat who were sentenced to death for their anti-fascist activities and shot in Basovizza/Bazovica near Trieste in 1930. This monument, built in summer 1945, reaffirmed the importance of remembering fascism’s brutality against the Slovene population and still constitutes one of the most important sites of memory for the Slovene minority in Italy today (Sluga, 1999, pp. 187–188). Positioned near the location of the recently constructed ‘foiba’ monument, it is at the same time the emblem of a ‘divided region with a divided history’ (Pelikan, 2010, p. 466). In 1954, Zone A of the FTT was returned to Italy, while Yugoslavia retained Zone B, but a formal agreement was only reached in 1975. Meanwhile in Zone A, the new political course between Moscow and Belgrade was having a decisive impact on the local political atmosphere, even if the left had overcome the divisions of the past by the end of the 1960s. Since then, several new monuments have been constructed with the local Partisan associations and committees being the main memory agents. They have used the new Italian law on regional autonomy that permitted local administrations to pass spatial planning acts (Dogliani, 2006, 267). However, from the late 1960s, municipalities with large Slovene populations and a left political majority (as was often the case during the Cold War) also contributed to their construction. These initiatives were able to rely on the support of local boards, which organized voluntary work and collected donations. However, their projects were no longer just a result of voluntary work like most post-war memorials, but were rather the result of more organized celebrations. The municipal memorial park in Dolina, for example, was dedicated to the fallen from the municipality of San Dorligo della Valle/Dolina during the Second World War. It was constructed in front of the new town hall in 1975. Its inscription reads ‘Slava padlim za svobodo—Gloria ai caduti per la libertà’ (Glory to the Fallen for Freedom), and more than two hundred names are inscribed on the base of the monument, while red bricks, set into the pavement, form a large red star (Fig. 8.3). A deeper analysis reveals this memorial park’s multiplicity of functions. It was built not only as a site of memory, but also as a bulwark against

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Fig. 8.3 The memorial to the fallen in the municipality of Dolina constructed in 1975 (Photo © Borut Klabjan)

the physical appropriation of the area through the expropriation of territory. Since the 1950s, urban renewal has involved both suburban and rural areas of Trieste. The city has expanded, and especially its industrial infrastructure. The Slovenes accused both the British and American government of the FTT, and the Italian authorities, of expropriating their land. They considered the construction of new infrastructure a political operation. Since large swathes of the land were still owned by the Slovene population, in their view the aim was to nationalize it and thus reduce the links between the Slovene local population and its territory. The efforts of the Italian authorities were focussed on the area west of Trieste, where they sought to break the Slovene ‘ethnic ring’ around the city. They aimed to form an ‘ethnic corridor’ by the coastline and thus ethnically unite the city with Italy. Such politics of expropriation were considered by the Slovenes to be a continuation of pre-war fascist discriminative policies (Novak, 1996, p. 385). The tactic proved successful. The ethnic structure of the municipality of Duino-Aurisina/Devin-Nabrežina, located between the two ‘Italian’

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municipalities of Trieste to the east and Monfalcone/Tržiˇc to the west, was transformed from a conglomeration of villages that were inhabited predominantly by an ethnic-Slovene population to a predominantly ethnic-Italian population in a few decades. This was in part a result of the Slovenes’ assimilation and of their switching ethnic identifications, but it was also a result of this planning policy. Similarly, for many Slovenes, the expansion of the industrial site, which developed on the southern fringe of the city, did not ‘simply meet the needs of the expanding urban population’ (Hametz, 2005, p. 100). In times when many industrial projects were closed and transferred to other Italian cities, part of the local Slovene society considered the construction of the enormous Grandi Motori factory (today owned by the Finnish corporation Wärtsilä), and the oil terminal belonging to SIOT (Società Italiana per l’Oleodotto Transalpino), the biggest in the Mediterranean, to be ‘real Italian colonies on our Slovene soil’ (Štoka, 1955, p. 86).13 Industrial modernization and territorial expropriation as political weapons were furthered through another form of ethnic management: the construction of new settlements for Italian refugees from Yugoslavia. Italian authorities remodelled the ethnic and political character of the area by settling refugees (with anti-Yugoslav and anti-communist sentiments) in areas with ethnically Slovene and politically left-wing majorities (Volk, 2003). New settlements such as Borgo San Mauro, Borgo San Nazario, and Borgo San Sergio were constructed, while new case popolari (a form of public housing, lit. popular houses) for refugees were constructed in areas considered to be political strongholds for the left. Some recent studies have shown the intertwining of industrialization and ethnic management in South Tyrol and Val d’Aosta, however, a comparative analysis of the Italo-Slovene borderland is still missing (Tragbar & Kossel, 2018).14 Nevertheless, my conversations with local Slovenes over the past years have confirmed their belief that the expropriations made for new factories were not guided solely by economic factors, but also by the explicit aim of detaching them from their land.15 In this political context the construction of the municipal memorial gains a new meaning. It sought to prevent the expansion of industrial plants and to block the construction of new esuli settlements and neighbourhoods. This shows that the purpose, underpinning the memorial was not only for it to be a place of mourning. It also had a contemporary practical function of hemming the construction of exile settlements and industrial sites that were tipping the political and ethnic structure of

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the municipality.16 Together with other buildings, like the town hall and the municipal theatre constructed in the same period, the memorial park played a clear practical role in the present. It formed an ethnic and political ‘chastity belt’, a ‘Maginot’s line’ of memory to prevent the physical loss of Slovene ethnic space. The danger to the preservation of their memory came not only from state institutions but also from ‘below’. Starting mainly in the second half of the 1950s, after Italy’s takeover of the region, there were frequent iconoclastic attacks on Partisan memorials. The vandalizing of Partisan monuments in Italy with fascist and Nazi symbols and slogans tended to occur during times of international tension between Italy and Yugoslavia and in cases of heightened public (political and media) rhetoric, which often accompanied commemorative celebrations. These processes, however, evolved in terms of their social engagement. The local anti-fascist milieu perceived the reactions of the police and of state institutions as having been inadequate. Therefore, volunteer committees were formed to guard the monuments. Again, the local example given is not unique. Similar social mechanisms are visible in the Estonian ‘war of monuments’. In the 1990s Estonia saw attacks on Soviet monuments, and in response members of the Russian minority began guarding them (Burch & Smith, 2007, p. 914). In Trieste, these guardians of memory were members of the local civil-society associations (usually Slovene), local youth organizations, veterans’ organizations or left-wing, usually communist, organizations who, in the nights before the scheduled commemorations, guarded the memorials against possible attacks. The introduction to the leaflet published to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the monument’s unveiling to the local Partisans in the village of Padriciano/Padriˇce contains important features that enable us to understand these social mechanisms: The news that rogues desecrated the monument felt like a bomb attack every time. Fascists obviously know this and this is the reason for their malevolence. We felt like our sacred object was smeared. As fascist attacks followed and the authorities did nothing about it, our men decided to guard the monument in shifts. They guarded it every night after night. One time, I brought my father a cup of warm tea and I felt like a small courier.

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The author, presumably a local young girl, is aware of her nonconventional behaviour, of the discrepancy in time of their acts, and she tries to explain and justify it: This is how we were raised. And that was not 50 years ago. This happened during the 1980s, when Tito was already dead, when the disintegration of Yugoslavia was underway and when the Berlin Wall was about to fall.17

Preserving Yugoslavia (Concluding Remarks) Although there is a growing interest in the Yugoslav past in post-Yugoslav countries, often framed within simplistic narratives of ‘Yugonostalgia’, it seems that this term does not accurately describe the Partisan commemorative practices among the Slovene community in Italy. Not even a supposed form of post-Yugoslavism, a Yugosphere—to borrow Tim Judah’s term—could be entirely claimed (Judah, 2009). Slovenes in Italy do not share most of the memories and experiences of former Yugoslav citizens. While more complex research should be completed, it could be argued that the people gathering at the Partisan monuments on the Italian side of the Italo-Slovene border in the 1990s continued to glorify the Partisan heritage. In contrast with the Yugoslav successor states, continuity rather than change was on the move. They not only accepted the values of their (Partisan) ancestors but they identified with their Partisan parents and grandparents and stressed the importance of this generational transfer to preserve the heritage of Yugoslav anti-fascism (Colangelo, 2000) (Fig. 8.4). Even if it would be misleading to think that crowds of young Slovenes living in Italy attended local commemorations, these practices should be seen more as a continuity in their perception of Yugoslavia rather than a new wave of Partisan rhetoric. Moreover, anniversaries and commemorations confirm the attachment of local communities to the experience of the war and their involvement in the Yugoslav resistance until today. Rather than longing for a lost past, this speaks of their self-identifications that interact and overlap with Yugoslavia and its history. For the same reason attacks against the monuments of ‘Yugoslav’ Partisans did not stop with the fall of the Berlin Wall, nor with the fall of Yugoslavia. In the 1990s the new politics of history was often intertwined with war echoes from the Balkans. The media’s use of narratives of barbarism, ferocity, and backwardness to define the Yugoslav

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Fig. 8.4 Father and son standing by a former Slovene socialist flag in Dolina for the celebration of the Liberation day in Italy on 25 April 2018 (Photo © Borut Klabjan)

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wars provided moral legitimation for new anti-Yugoslav feelings. More recently, overt calls for the marginalization of symbols of Socialist Yugoslavia are not coming only from the far right of the political spectrum, but gradually they have become a common part of the narratives of the majority of Italian political parties. The ban of Yugoslav flags and red stars for the Mayday parade in Trieste in 2017 is just one of the most recent examples.18 In fact, the commemorations for Liberation Day (25 April) in Italy and for Mayday are often celebrated by local Slovenes through the display of the Yugoslav and Slovene socialist flags. This impedes the contemporary observer in their tracing out a clear borderline in both space and time. Clearly, different experiences and identifications are at play in this area. Along the Italo-Slovene border, political, ideological, and ethnic assumptions are blurred, and a more in-depth examination shows how history has constructed entangled and fluctuating ideological mutants beyond state sovereignties.

Notes 1. This work has received funding from the Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS) under the projects J6-9356 Antifascism in the Julian March in Transnational Perspective, 1919–1954, J6-1800 Adriatic Welfare States. Social Politics in a Transnational Borderland from the mid-nineteenth until the twenty-first Century and within the research programme P60272 The Mediterranean and Slovenia. 2. Uradni list RS, n. 112/05 - UPB, 52/10 and 40/12 - ZUJF. 3. Usually, non-political and mainly geographical names replaced previous denominations with the aim of making the public sphere supposedly neutral. As an example, in Ptuj, in northeastern Slovenia, Ivan Spolenjak Elementary School was renamed Breg Elementary School, Tone Žnidariˇc Elementary School became Mladika Elementary School, and Franc Osojnik Elementary School is now People’s Garden Elementary School. 4. ‘Komen: Fabiani namesto partizana?’ Primorski dnevnik, 18 November 2014; ‘Na cˇ elu šole ostaja narodni heroj Stjenka’ Primorske novice, 26 November 2014 (accessed 2 February 2017). 5. The Tito street case, Lidija Drobniˇc and ors in Ljubljana Municipality, Review of the Constitutionality and Legality of Regulations and General Acts, U-I-109/10–11, 26 September 2011, Slovenia. Oxford Public International Law.

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6. ‘Borut Pahor: to je spomenik ljubezni’ Dnevnik, 13 July 2017 (accessed on 28 September 2017). Available at https://www.dnevnik.si/104277 8056. 7. Il Piccolo, 18 July 1996, p. 9; Primorski dnevnik, 4 December 2017, p. 3; Primorske novice, 5 December 2017, p. 5. 8. Il Corriere della Sera, 8 February 2005; Delo, 7 February 2005 (accessed on 22 July 2018). 9. ‘Srce v hlaˇcah’, Mladina, 18 February 2005 (accessed on 22 July 2018). 10. ‘SSG odpovedalo predstavo Srce v breznu’, Primorski dnevnik, 23 November 2012 (accessed on 21 July 2018). 11. Primorske novice, 13 and 14 July 2010. 12. Il Piccolo, 14 July 2010. 13. See also Primorski dnevnik, 2 January 1966, 1–2. 14. For the situation in Valle d’Aosta I refer to a project presented by Elisa dalla Rosa in her poster at the 8th Congress of the Italian Association for Urban History, held in Genoa on 4–5 June 2018 with the title Immigrazione, dinamiche di integrazione e sviluppo economico nella città di Aosta nel secondo dopoguerra (1950–1990). 15. In particular conversations with VC and BK in 2010, and MK in 2012. 16. Conversation with BK in 2011. 17. Ob 50. obletnici odkritja spominske plošˇce na Padriˇcah. Padriˇce 1948– 1998. Padriˇce, 1998, 1. 18. Il Piccolo, 30 April 2017.

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Perra, E. (2008). Narratives of innocence and victimhood: The reception of the miniseries Holocaust in Italy. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 22(3), 411–440. https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcn039 Pirjevec, J. (2009). Foibe. Einaudi. Robionek, B., Müller, N., & Vulesica, M. (Eds.). (2010). Erinnerungskultur in Dalmatien. Vom Partisanenkult zur Repräsentation der Nationalstaatlichkeit. OEZ. Rothberg, M. (2009). Multidirectional memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the age of decolonization. Stanford University Press. Rožac Darovec, V. (2016). Komemoriranje TIGR-a v kontekstu politike spominjanja na Primorskem po letu 1991. Acta Histriae, 24(4), 891–904. https:// doi.org/10.19233/AH.2016.41. Sierp, A. (2014). Integrating Europe, integrating memories: The EU’s politics of memory since 1945. In L. Bond, & J. Rapson (Eds.), The transcultural turn. Interrogating memory between and beyond borders (pp. 103–118). De Gruyter. Sluga, G. (1999). Italian national memory, national identity and fascism. In R. J. B. Bosworth, & P. Dogliani (Eds.), Italian fascism. History, memory and representation (pp. 178–194). Palgrave Macmillan. Širok, K. (2012). Kalejdoskop goriške preteklosti. Zgodbe o spominu in pozabi. Založba ZRC. Štoka, S. (1955). Razlašˇcanje Slovenske Zemlje. Jadranski Koledar, 9, 84–87. Tesser, L. M. (2013). Ethnic cleansing and the European Union. An interdisciplinary approach to security, memory and ethnography. Palgrave Macmillan. Törnquist-Plewa, B. (Ed.). (2016). Whose memory? Which future? Remembering ethnic cleansing and lost cultural diversity in East, Central, and East-South Europe. Berghahn Books. Tragbar, K., & Kossel, E. (2018). Conquest through architecture? Italy’s strategies of appropriation in Alto Adige and the Trentino after 1920. In B. Klabjan (Ed.), Borderlands of memory. Adriatic and Central European perspectives (pp. 187–210). Peter Lang. Verginella, M. (2008). La Slovenia tra memorie ritrovate e storie sottratte. In G. Crainz et al. (Eds.). Naufraghi della pace: il 1945, i profughi e le memorie divise d’Europa (pp. 43–57). Donzelli. Verginella, M. (2010). Tra storia e memoria. Le foibe nella pratica di negoziazione del confine tra l’Italia e la Slovenia. In L. Accati, & R. Cogoy (Eds.), Il perturbante nella storia. Le foibe. Uno studio di psicopatologia della ricezione storica (pp. 25–89). QuiEdit. Vodopivec, P. (2006). Od Pohlinove slovnice do samostojne države. Slovenska zgodovina od konca 18. stoletja do konca 20. Stoletja. Modrijan.

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Volk, S. (2003). Istra v Trstu. Naselitev istrskih in dalmatinskih ezulov in nacionalna bonifikacija na Tržaškem, 1945–1966. Annales, Narodna in študijska knjižnica. Zhurzhenko, T. (2011). Borders and memory. In D. Wastl-Walter (Ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies (pp. 63–84). Ashgate. Zhurzhenko, T. (2013). Memory wars and reconciliation in the Ukrainian–Polish borderlands: Geopolitics of memory from a local perspective. In G. Georges Mink & L. Neumayer (Eds.), History, memory and politics in Central and Eastern Europe (pp. 173–192). Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 9

Religiously Nationalizing the Landscape in Bosnia and Herzegovina Robert M. Hayden and Mario Kati´c

Bosnia’s Partitioned Peoples and Their Corresponding Territories The time since the end of the 1992–95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) might be called a war for memories.1 To the surprise of few who had seriously studied Bosnia or Yugoslavia before the wars of the 1990s, and who analyzed the conflicts in real-time and using mainly sources from the region in the local languages (e.g. Bougarel, 1996; Burg & Shoup, 1999; Woodward, 1995), there has been little ‘reconciliation’, especially and specifically in Bosnia (Hayden, 2011; Kosti´c, 2007). Instead, the elected officials of the various post-Yugoslav states, and especially those of

R. M. Hayden (B) Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] M. Kati´c Department of Ethnology and Anthropology, University of Zadar, Zadar, Croatia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. B˘adescu et al. (eds.), Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2_9

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the three major national communities within that curious constitutional construction called Bosnia and Herzegovina, practice politics premised on the hostility of each nation-state, or ethnonational community, to the others on the territory of what had been the former federation. Considering that relations between the republics of the former federal state had been largely adversarial even in Tito’s day (Ramet, 1984; Samardži´c, 1990) and became completely so after the end of state socialism (Hayden, 1999), it is difficult to understand why anyone would have expected anything different. Bosnia’s specificity lay in its lack of a single majority nation (narod in the local Slavic languages). In all of the rest of Yugoslavia, and for that matter, in most of post-socialist Europe, the construction of a ‘nationstate’ meant that the ‘nation’ (narod), a birth-defined or heritage group (in American terminology, an ethnic group), would become sovereign in its own state (država), leaving minorities, even if citizens, conceptually (and in practice) outside of the sovereign group (Hayden, 1992). One might think of the definition of Israel as a Jewish state in its Declaration of Independence in 1948; it is difficult to argue that non-Jews, even if citizens of Israel, have equal rights or are even part of the sovereign nation, since that is the Jewish people. In this regard, Israel is thus conceptually a classic central or east European nation-state (Avineri, 1996). Bosnia, on the other hand, is not, since its population reliably partitions itself into Self and Other nations (narodi) based on religious heritage (Hammel, 1993): in 1990, Croats (of Roman Catholic heritage), Muslims (of Muslim heritage; after 1994, called Bosniaks [Bošnjaci]) and Serbs (of Orthodox Christian heritage). This self-partitioning has been reliably made since at least the early nineteenth century, and politically, whenever relatively free and fair elections have been held in Bosnia, the population effectively splits into three separate electorates, with one Croat party getting most Croat votes, one Serb party getting most Serb votes, and one Muslim party getting most Muslim votes (Hayden, 2005, 2007). This political self-partitioning certainly occurred at the end of communism and drove the politics that led to war (Burg & Shoup, 1999; Hayden, 1993, 2000), and that have also determined the post-war political reality (Hayden, 2005). Note that in saying that religious heritage defines the peoples of Bosnia, we are not saying that religious belief does so, or that religiosity is necessarily involved. To the contrary, after 45 years of communist rule, most people in Yugoslavia, and Bosnia, were not regular practitioners of

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any of the faiths associated with the three main national groups (Panti´c, 1991)2 –indeed, a grim joke in Bosnia when the war broke out was that ‘We’re fighting because the God you don’t believe in is not the same as the one I don’t believe in’. However, people were born into families that stemmed from these traditions, many had surnames identifiable with a single religious heritage, and followed some customs of food and dress, among other things, linked to the several religions. Such people were, and are, essentially ethnic Muslims, or Serbs or Croats, just as many people are ethnic Jews: largely non-observant but of Jewish heritage and name, and thus regarded by others, and usually themselves, as in some way Jewish.3 In Bosnia, then, to refer to someone as a Bosniak, Croat, or Serb is an ethnic identity that is also inherently linked to religious heritage. The self-partitioning by religious heritage is not only social and hence political, however. There is also a territorial component, as ethnic cleansing turned many formerly heterogenous municipalities and neighbourhoods into ethnically homogenous ones, and these processes are not, by and large, being reversed (Toal & Dahlman, 2011). Not only are electoral politics polarized and polarizing, but so are activities and institutions usually thought to bring people together. A striking example can be seen in football matches, where the national team of Bosnia and Herzegovina is not much supported by many Serbs and Croats in Bosnia, and in fact violence, both symbolic and physical, has broken out between mainly Bosniak supporters of Bosnian teams, and Bosnian Croat and Serb supporters of almost any team playing against Bosnia (see Sterchelle, 2007).4 Further examples can be seen in the responses to the actions of ‘transitional justice’ institutions that deal with crimes from the period of the war, both the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague and local courts in Bosnia. There is almost no agreement on the justice, fairness or appropriateness of any decisions made since the members of each ethnonational community condemn convictions of members of their own group while also condemning acquittals of members of the other groups (Guzina & Marijan, 2013; Ivkovi´c & Hagan, 2006; Kosti´c, 2007). Black humour, however, remains a staple product of the region (Sheftel, 2012), and the 2003 Bosnian film Gori vatra (English title: Fuse) presents a darkly comic vision of post-war Bosnians pretending to cooperate in order to get money from foreigners, while still maintaining the hostilities that led to the war and increased throughout it.

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In post-Yugoslav Bosnia, the ethno–religious–national divisions between Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs are also manifested geographically. The country is divided into two ‘entities’, each of which has almost complete governmental authority since the central government has virtually no authority within the territory of the country. The slightly larger entity, with 51% of the total territory, is the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, originally created under U.S. sponsorship during the war as the ‘Croat–Muslim Federation’. The federation is inhabited overwhelmingly by members of those communities but is also divided into ‘cantons’, almost all of which are also dominated by one group. The other 49% belongs to the Republika Srpska, the population of which is overwhelmingly Serb. However nothing is simple–there are pockets of each entity in which the entity minority forms a local majority, there are mixed territories, and to make it all even more confusing, as a means of countering the effects of ethnic cleansing, people can register as residents of places where they lived just before the war even if they have not lived there for what is now more than 20 years. There is also Brˇcko District, an arbitrary creation by an American arbitrator that is in theory shared by both entities, but in practice is separate and owes whatever stability it has to foreign administrators (Moore, 2013; Parrish, 2010).

Marking Territories of Dominance of the Religion-Linked Ethnonational Communities In such an environment, the religiously marked communities are in constant competition, and marking territory is important for each of them (Hayden et al., 2016). In Bosnia, this marking is a form of war of architecture (Kati´c, 2015). One form of such marking consists of monuments to those killed in the 1992–95 war. The one monument in Sarajevo simply to ‘Victims of the War’ is satirical, and actually not a monument itself, since it is inscribed (in English) ‘Under this stone there is a monument to the victims of the war and the Cold War’–under this stone, not the stone itself, and whoever heard of a monument under a stone? (Worsnick, 2012). The real monuments to the war dead are spread throughout the country, but are separated by ethnonational community, religiously defined, and thus marked religiously. The Bosniak monuments refer to šehidi, an Arabic word incorporated into the Bosnian dialect of former Serbo-Croatian

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by Bosniaks, which means ‘martyrs’, but only indicates Muslims. Such monuments are, not surprisingly, embellished with Islamic symbols. For their part, dead Croat soldiers are commemorated as ‘defenders’ (branitelji) who fell in the ‘Homeland War’ (Domovinskirat ), the same term as that used in Croatia for the 1991–95 war there against the Serbs. The Croat monuments use Roman Catholic imagery and crosses. Serb monuments refer to ‘fallen fighters’ (pali borci) of the Army of the Republika Srpska in the ‘Defensive-Fatherland War’ (Obrambeno-otadžbinskirat ), against Bosnia and Herzegovina, always against Muslim/Bosniak forces and sometimes against Croat ones as well. One will note that the different commemorations employ different terminologies to refer to the victims and to the war itself, and the Serb monuments use Orthodox Christian iconography and Cyrillic script, while both the Bosniak and Croat monuments use the Latin script. To return briefly to football, various football clubs in the region have built their own monuments to their players who died, and these are also marked religiously, with Bosniak-supported clubs referring to dead players as šehidi, for example (Mills, 2012). Thus by glancing at the monuments to the war dead, one knows immediately which religious community is being commemorated. Such monuments may represent current claims to the territory in which they are located or, if the community to which the dead belonged were ‘ethnically cleansed’, an implicit claim to a right of return. Still, as Robert Musil (1987, p. 61) said, ‘there is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument’. Buildings that are used on a regular basis make better markers of landscapes and thus territories, and there is a long history of such marking in the Balkans. The Muslim presence in Bosnia arrived with, and is now regarded as a heritage of, the Ottoman Empire. Throughout the life of that empire, a primary method of marking newly conquered territory as Ottoman space was by converting a large or otherwise prominent church into a mosque – conversely, the expulsion of the Ottomans from the new, Christian-majority states of the Balkans was marked by converting some prominent mosques and tearing down many others (Hayden, 2016). In Bosnia specifically, Sarajevo was key. When the Ottomans arrived, what is now Sarajevo was a small trading settlement with a mainly Christian population (Todorova, 1997). However, beginning with the conquest in 1463, the conquerors built ‘monumental Islamic structures which formed the skeleton of the urban structure, two small neighbourhood [mahalskih] mosques, which were the centres of

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quarters – neighbourhoods, plus cultural-educational- and other institutions, [to form] a city in the service of the Islamic ideology’ (Zlatar, 1991, p. 254).5 According to Zlatar (1991, p. 255), Ottoman figures show that the Muslim population of Sarajevo increased as a percentage, from 27.45% in 1485 to 85.6% in 1516. Not surprisingly, the numbers of mosques, tekijas, and other Muslim religious structures increased, while one Orthodox church from the fifteenth century remained in the centre of the old town, but unadorned and without a bell tower. The large mosques, for their part, were ornate and accompanied by minarets. That the religious buildings of the dominant community were more centrally located, larger, higher, and more ornate is a standard pattern of competitive interaction between religiously defined communities from South Asia through Europe (Hayden & Walker, 2013; Hayden, et al., 2016). Many other Islamic buildings were built during the Ottoman period. A report on damage during the 1992–95 war states that before that war began there were 1149 ‘congregational mosques’ (džamije) and 557 ‘small neighbourhood mosques’ (mesdžidi) and that 80% of the first category and 46% of the second were destroyed in the conflict (Riedlmayer, 2002). All or nearly all of these mosques would have been constructed during the Ottoman period, and other Ottoman mosques had doubtless been destroyed in earlier conflicts. But Christian and Jewish religious buildings also remained in Bosnia during the Ottoman period, albeit subordinated in terms of location, size, and height to Muslim ones. Max Hartmuth has noted that ‘the bulk of Bosnia’s pre-Ottoman architectural heritage […] has survived only in exceptional cases’ though it is unclear ‘whether this was due to the impact of the Ottoman conquest, which has traditionally been assumed to have been catastrophic, the comparably low level of material cultural development of the area before the late medieval period, or the often incisive, frequently destructive interventions to older buildings, especially in the nineteenth century’ (Hartmuth, 2015, p. 2, n.4). Be that as it may, his work also makes it clear that for Christians in Bosnia, as elsewhere in the empire (Gradeva, 1994), getting permission before the Tanzimat even to repair a Christian religious building was time-consuming and cost more in bribes to ‘Muslim dignitaries’ than the construction cost itself, and this was true even in a town with few, if any, Muslim inhabitants (Hartmuth, 2015). Even after the Tanzimat, getting permission to (re)build churches required substantial effort and bureaucracy (see, e.g. Radosavljevi´c & Marinkovi´c, 2008).

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Thus, the Ottomans built many Muslim religious buildings, and often large ones, while restricting the construction of churches, as a means of demonstrating their control over the Christian populations of the Balkans, as well as of the superiority of Islam. This is not to say that churches were not built in Ottoman Bosnia, but it is likely that they were wooden ones, not stone (Ademovi´c & Kurtovi´c, 2017; Foˇco, 2006; Lali´c, 2005). A survey in 1911 found 33 wooden churches in Bosnia, seven from the eighteenth century, 16 from the late-Ottoman period, and 60 from the period of Austro-Hungarian rule (Foˇco, 2006, p. 334). The lack of older churches is generally seen as due to the perishable qualities of wood in a wet environment, but also to the hostility of the Ottoman rulers. There are stories of churches being moved and hidden, sometimes by supernatural means (see Lali´c, 2005, pp. 330–332). The older churches are small (7 × 4 m) and undecorated, though the ones built during the Tanzimat period are larger (Lali´c, 2005, p. 331). There are also wooden mosques in Bosnia, many dating from the nineteenth century (Ademovi´c & Kurtovi´c, 2017; Foˇco, 2006). When Muslim dominance was shaken, however, Christians began to construct stone churches with Ottoman permission, which was granted because the costs of not doing so would be too great. Even so, such churches were outside the centres of the towns and could not have bell towers, as seen in the nineteenth-century churches still standing in ˇ Cajniˇ ce (old crkva Uspenja Presvete Bogorodice, 1857) and Foˇca (crkva sv. Nikole, 1857). However, during the last decade of Ottoman rule in Bosnia, and when that rule had already de facto ended in Serbia, the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral was built (1863–1868) in the centre of Sarajevo, despite the protests of local Muslims (Donia, 2006, pp. 33– 35). Once Ottoman rule, and hence Muslim dominance, ended with the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia in 1878, more churches went up, especially Roman Catholic ones, manifesting the dominance of that faith in the new imperial structure. Thus, the Roman Catholic cathedral in Sarajevo was built in the 1880s, while in other parts of Bosnia, more Catholic churches were constructed. Hartmuth (2015, p. 2, n. 4) says that while ‘the monumentalization of the Bosnian Catholics’ religious infrastructure after 1878, i.e. following the advent of Habsburg rule, has not been adequately addressed in the available research literature. […] truly monumental neo-Romanesque churches are found in Livno, Tomislavgrad, and Široki Brijeg’, in the western part of the country. Serbian churches were permitted but mainly outside of the centres of the towns.

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Following the end of Austro-Hungarian rule and the incorporation of Bosnia into the new Yugoslavia, under the Serbian king, large Orthodox churches began to rise in town centres (Ignjatovi´c, 2007). In Banja Luka, a large Serbian church was built in the 1930s in the new city centre, taller than the Roman Catholic churches nearby and the mosques in the older, Turkish-era town. This large Serbian church was, however, destroyed in 1941 by the forces of the Ustasha state, the ‘Independent State of Croatia’, which was heavily Roman Catholic and violently hostile to Serbian Orthodox Christianity (Duli´c, 2005; Yeomans, 2013). The communist regime, being in principle hostile to religion, did not permit the church to be rebuilt, but the reconstruction was completed by the Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War. The brief account in the preceding paragraphs is meant only to give a sense of the commonplace nature of regimes in Bosnia promoting the construction of buildings of the religion linked to that ruler while restricting such buildings for other religious communities. In each case, the regime marks the landscape with the structures of its favoured religion in order to demonstrate both that religion’s superiority over others and the dominance over the territory and people of the regime. Note that we say ‘dominance’, not hatred, or even hostility. While Ustasha ideology and practice were literally genocidal (Bartulin, 2014; Duli´c, 2005; Yeomans, 2013) and the newly liberated Serbia practised what is now called ethnic cleansing by expelling most Muslims from its territories in the 1860s,6 in most of the region, most of the time, the pattern of life was one of the dominant community tolerating the others, so long as the established dominance was not threatened. What the wars of the 1990s did bring about, though, was probably the most complete unmixing of the major religious-national communities of Bosnia since the consolidation of Ottoman rule. In one way, this might be seen as one of the last steps in unmixing the Muslim and Christian populations of the Balkans that began with the expulsions of many ‘Turks’ from Greece in the 1840s, Serbia in the 1860s, Bulgaria after 1878, Macedonia after 1912, Crete after 1915, the ‘population exchange’ between Greece and Turkey in 1923, and the partitioning of Cyprus from 1964–1974. The expulsion of most of the Serbs from Croatia in 1991 and 1995, many Croats from Vojvodina in 1992, and most non-Albanians from most of Kosovo in 1999 left Macedonia as the only formerly Yugoslav republic other than Bosnia with a single large minority, in Macedonia of Albanians. Yet because Bosnia’s internal lines are not enforced as international

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borders, there is a fair amount of marking of territory dominated by each of the three major religious communities within what is supposedly the single Bosnian state, and ample opportunity for competitive church and mosque building. The rest of this chapter analyzes some such cases. Resetting the landscapes: The intentional destruction of religious buildings in the wars at the end of Yugoslavia. In a situation in which the most important distinguishing factor of the warring communities was religious heritage, it is not surprising that religious buildings were extensively and explicitly targeted, often after the fighting had ended in a locality. While some damage to buildings may have occurred incident to combat, most destruction took place to demonstrate that the targeted group no longer lived in that place. Thus, targeting religious buildings was part of the process that has come to be known as ‘ethnic cleansing’, a translation of the Serbo-Croatian etniˇcko cˇiš´cenje that was used in Bosnia in 1992–1993, originally by Bosnian Serb forces. While there have been a few efforts to analyze the destruction of religious heritage buildings belonging to all sides in Bosnia (Walasek, 2015), most of the reports on the destruction of cultural heritage are partisan, reporting almost exclusively on the losses suffered by only one of the communities in conflict, in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo (see, e.g. Crkvenˇci´c & Klemenˇci´c, 1993; Pajn, 1992; Riedlmayer, 2002). In any event, the result of this planned destruction of other peoples’ religious buildings was that, after the war, there were large areas of Bosnia that had formerly included concentrations of communities who were no longer residing in the places where they had been living before the war and where the religious buildings associated with that group had been destroyed, while the now-dominant community built or rebuilt their own religion’s buildings, often in styles meant to reflect the dominance of the builders’ religious community. On the other hand, we also note (re-)construction of religious buildings where there are no longer people of that religion (see, e.g. Akšamija, 2011), a process in which architecture takes the place of the people unless or until they can go back. We return to this point below.

Manifesting and Contesting Dominance in Post-War Bosnia A finding of the Antagonistic Tolerance project (see Hayden et al., 2016; Hayden & Walker, 2013) is that the primary indicator of dominance is

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centrality, the location of a religious building at or near the centre of a town. Yet, if centrality is held equal for buildings of several religious communities, structural features, especially the height of a building, can be used to assert dominance.7 In Bosnia, minarets are prominent features of mosques and the Ottoman Empire prohibited bell towers on churches, with rare exceptions, through the Tanzimat period (1839–1876), so that once a territory left Ottoman control, bell towers were often added to existing churches (Hayden, 2016). A post-Yugoslav manifestation of asserting dominance through prominent, high-elevation displays of religious symbolism is the large illuminated crosses that were built by Catholic Croats overlooking Mostar, BiH (a city divided between Croats and Bosniaks), and those built by Orthodox Christians overlooking Zvornik, BiH (a Muslim-majority town in 1991, Serb-majority after the war) and Skoplje, Macedonia (a city divided between Orthodox Christian Macedonians and Muslim Albanians); Serbs raised such a cross overlooking Sarajevo in 2014 but it was destroyed by unknown parties a few months later (Eckholm, 2015). Another post-Yugoslav manifestation of assertions of dominance is the extraordinary elongation of the bell towers on Orthodox churches. In Macedonia, Serbia, and Bosnia, the bell towers on new and rebuilt Orthodox churches resemble square-base minarets more than they do bell towers previously seen on Orthodox churches in the region. Examples in Bosnia include the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Banja Luka, the Church of Sts Peter & Paul in Kozluk, and the Church of St Pantelejmona in Bijeljina (Fig. 9.1), among others. Many (re-)built Roman Catholic churches also have elongated towers, such as the Church of the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac in Orašje, Bosanska Posavina, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBH) (Fig. 9.2). An exceptionally striking example is the twin-towered Saborni Hram sv. Presvete Bogorodice in Zvornik (Fig. 9.3), built in 2014 on a site on the west bank of the Drina that had not previously held a church or mosque. On the other hand, this unusual twin-towered Serbian Orthodox church is matched by the twin-minaret Kajserija mosque in Goražde (Fig. 9.4), built in 2009 on the east bank of the Drina on a site that had not previously held a mosque or church. As these buildings indicate, after the war, Zvornik has a 69% Serbian majority, and Goražde has a 94% Bosniak majority. Specific localities manifest processes of demonstrating and contesting dominance that reflect post-war realities. Ethnic cleansing was all about forcing people to leave the places where they had been living and ensuring

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Fig. 9.1 Church of St. Pantelejmona in Bijeljina (Photo © 2020 Robert M. Hayden)

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Fig. 9.2 Church of the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac in Orašje, Bosanska Posavina FBH (Photo © 2020 by Robert M. Hayden)

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Fig. 9.3 Saborni Hram sv. Presvete Bogorodice in Zvornik (Photo © 2020 by Robert M. Hayden)

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Fig. 9.4 Kajserija mosque in Goražde (Photo © 2020 by Robert M. Hayden)

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that they would not wish to return. This process was very ‘successful’ in Bosnia despite the proclamations of the international community from August 1992 onwards that it would not succeed (Toal & Dahlman, 2011). We must note that there are no unanimously accepted figures on how many members of each religious community/ ethnonational group live where in Bosnia after the 1991 census, which had been performed to the highest international standards as part of the April 1991 census of Yugoslavia. With substantial international support, a census was undertaken in October 2013 but as the 1 July 2016 deadline for reporting the results approached, the statistical institutes reporting to political bodies under the control of the several ethnonational communities could not agree on the methodology (see Perry, 2016). The Croat and Bosniak political parties, and the census authorities reporting to them, wanted to apply a definition of ‘usual residency’ that would ignore the answers to questions that indicated that people reported as ‘usually resident’ actually reside and work abroad, and thus would overstate the numbers of people resident in parts of the country. The census authorities in Republika Srpska rejected such a methodology, demanding instead that all of the collected data be included in the analysis. As the statutory deadline of 1 July 2016 approached, the director of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Agency for Statistics, under heavy pressure, decided unilaterally and without the agreement of the Republika Srpska Institute of Statistics, to release the figures favoured by the leading Bosniak and Croat political parties; this action, and those figures, were rejected by the Republika Srpska (see Republika Srpska Zavod za statistiku, 2016). The stakes are important. Since political representation in the postwar period has been allocated in line with the 1991 census, in many parts of the country political officials have been non-residents, elected by other non-residents, on the grounds that they all lived there more than 20 years ago; these people are mainly, but not exclusively, Bosniaks. An accurate census would deprive such non-resident officials of their nonresident voters, to the benefit of those living in those places now. On the other hand, an accurate census would almost certainly show an overall percentage increase in the Bosniak population and a sharp decrease in the percentage of the Croat population, which the Bosniaks want and neither the Croats nor the Serbs wish to see. Yet if even after the 2013 census there is still no consensus on how to count who lives where in BiH, the general parameters of the ethno-religious–national division of territory there remain well understood (see Bochsler & Schäpfler, 2015, 2016).

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This understanding gives all parties the motivation to mark the territories they claim and contest the markings of others.

Creating, Destroying, Recreating, and Claiming Heritage: Case Studies Creating Heritage: Višegrad (Republika Srpska)–manifesting Serbian control in an iconic town of Bosnia ‘The bridge’ became the symbol of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1990s wars, probably because of the importance of Ivo Andri´c’s Nobel prize-winning novel, The Bridge on the Drina. While the bridge usually pictured in the 1990s to exemplify Bosnia was the old bridge in Mostar over the Neretva River, the bridge at the centre of Andri´c’s novel is the sixteenth-century Ottoman bridge on the Drina at Višegrad. By the 1991 census, the population of that town was about 21,000 people, two-thirds of them Muslims. The Bosnian Serb ethnic-cleansing campaign of 1992 drove almost all Muslims from the city, and the results of the 2013 census reported by the central Bosnian statistical agency (and thus not accepted by the Republika Srpska) give a total population of 10,668, of whom 9,388 are Serbs and 1,043 Bosniaks. In terms of marking the territory by dominant religion, Višegrad had two major mosques constructed soon after the Ottoman conquest, one in 1571 at the entrance to the town, and another in 1590 at its centre, near the main market. Both mosques were destroyed in 1992, though both were rebuilt in 2010. Much more visible from the centre of the city, especially from the bridge that is its most prominent and well-known feature, is the Serbian Orthodox Church of the Virgin Mary. It was first constructed in 1886 after Ottoman rule had ended, but was damaged during the Ustasha regime from 1941–1945. The church has been renovated since it has come under the jurisdiction of the Republika Srpska and is now (2017) by far the most prominent building in the city. The 1590/2010 mosque near the centre of town, for its part, is not very prominent, with a low minaret, and in any event, the main square is now called the Square of the Fallen Fighters (Trg palih boraca), the term used to commemorate the fallen soldiers of the Republika Srpska who fought against the Bosnian (almost wholly Bosniak) forces during the war. That square is also marked by a large commemorative statue to ‘the defenders of the Republika Srpska’, from ‘the grateful people [narod] of Višegrad’.

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This statue is a striking (to say the least) modern stylization of what looks like a warrior holding a medieval sword, wearing a cross on his breast, and also wearing the distinctive Serbian military uniform cap used in the First World War and by the Army of the Republika Srpska in the 1990s. The statue itself seems to blend the ‘defenders’ into a continuous historical construct, from the medieval Serb warriors defeated by the Ottomans to the victorious Serbian forces of the Balkans Wars and First World War, to those of the Army of the Republika Srpska. In all of those wars, Muslims (if not always Bosniaks) were among the enemy. It is doubtful that any Bosniak would identify themselves with this image or of the ‘people of Višegrad’ thus represented. The most prominent development in Višegrad since the end of Yugoslavia has been the development of ‘Andri´cgrad’, a kind of theme park dedicated to the work of Ivo Andri´c that the filmmaker Emir Kusturica has had constructed on land reclaimed from the Drina, near the centre of the town. Ostensibly a manifestation of the history of Bosnia as seen in Andri´c’s Bridge on the Drina, the theme park centres on a newly constructed street. Visitors enter through a gate into a stylized medieval castle–the street begins with Ottoman-style buildings, then progresses stylistically through buildings that could represent those built in the Austro-Hungarian imperial period and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, before reaching a central square. Beyond this square the main street continues with buildings in the style of Socialist Yugoslavia, leading to a new Serbian Orthodox Church. The links to Serbian history are explicit in the names of the streets, and in the symbolism of the official opening of Andri´cgrad, which was celebrated on 28 June 2014–the hundredth anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The opening was celebrated with an open-air presentation called ‘Rebellious Angels’, (Pobunjeni and-eli) inspired by Kusturica, in which Gavrilo Princip and the other assassins were depicted wearing angels’ wings–the play was broadcast live on state television stations of the Republika Srpska (the government of which sponsored the event) and Serbia. Andri´cgrad, then, presents Bosnia as inherently Serbian, with its historical progression culminating in a revitalized Serbian Orthodox church. Recreating heritage: St John of Podmilaˇcje Podmilaˇcje near the city of Jajce is one of the most famous Catholic pilgrimage places in Bosnia. Although there are no serious historical

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sources that could contextualize this sacred place, it is safe to say that it has pre-Christian origins. The sanctuary was developed around a spring that was later substituted by the cult of St John the Baptist. Before Communism, and during the period of Yugoslavia, this was a very prominent pilgrimage place, with a stone church. No written source indicates when the church was built but based on its architectural characteristics, historians and art historians place it in the fifteenth century. The church was not destroyed during the Ottoman Empire, but in 1910 (after the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia) it became a lateral chapel for a newly built church. This was a place for sharing the sacred: there are records and oral traditions that this pilgrimage place was visited and worshipped by Muslims and Orthodox Christians in addition to Catholics. In 1993, the Bosnian Serb Army completely destroyed the Podmilaˇcje church, both old and new parts of it. Reconstruction of the church, sponsored by the Bosnian and Herzegovinian Catholic Church together with different donors, local believers, and annual pilgrims, was finished in 2000. The style was not that of the church destroyed in 1993, but rather of the ‘original’ Gothic style church from the fifteenth century (Mari´c, 2004, pp. 482–483). Moreover, just above this reconstructed Bosnian medieval Christian church, the construction of a new monumental shrine began (Fig. 9.5). This new shrine has, according to locals, the tallest church tower in all of Bosnia and Herzegovina, standing at 62 m high (Juka, 2009).8 The (re)construction of this pilgrimage place has two interesting aspects. From one point of view, it is a part of the ‘war of architecture’ in which Bosnian ethno-religious communities are marking landscapes in a struggle for dominance over space (Kati´c, 2015). From another perspective, Podmilaˇcje, with ‘the only pre-Ottoman church still standing’, is considered by some to be living proof of the continuation of Catholic heritage, and thus of Croats as a nation in Bosnia. The shrine is located on the main road from Banja Luka, the capital of Republika Srpska, to Jajce, one of the Bosnian Medieval royal cities, and in these two prominent topos–the monumental new shrine and the old small Gothic church–both visitors and passers-by can easily recognize the historical background of this place and also the presently dominant ethno-religious group.

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Fig. 9.5 Pilgrimage to St. John in Podmilaˇcje in 2015. In the forefront is the reconstruction of the old St. John church, originally from the Medieval period, and in the background is the new church in construction (Photo © 2020 Mario Kati´c)

Contesting Heritage: The Medieval Royal City of Bobovac Bobovac is a medieval royal city of the Bosnian kingdom and was the capital for some of the Bosnian kings, some of whom are buried there. Anyone who wanted to conquer the kingdom marched to Bobovac (And-eli´c, 2004, p. 160). At the end of the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia in 1463, the victorious army of Sultan Mehmet II directed its main force towards Bobovac. They considered this campaign to be the most crucial point in the war, and they conquered the city (And-eli´c, 2004, p. 161). After more than 500 years, different religious, political, and cultural agents are asking the question: whose is this ruined and forgotten city that today is part of ‘Bosnian’ cultural and historical heritage? From local individuals in surrounding villages who bicker over jurisdiction, to religious, political, and cultural elites who accuse each other of the improper

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occupation of this long-ago fallen town–this is no ordinary question. The matter started to become an issue in 2002 when the Bosnian cardinal Vinko Pulji´c established a military pilgrimage of Bosnian Croat members of the post-2005 Bosnian army to, as he calls it, the ‘altar of the fatherland’ (oltar domovine)–the royal city of Bobovac–honouring the death of the Bosnian queen Katarina Kotromani´c Kosaˇca. Queen Katarina was born in 1425 in Blagaj near Mostar. Her father was Stjepan Kosaˇca, a duke of Herzegovina. She married the crown prince of Bosnia, Stjepan Tomaš Kotromani´c, and after his death in 1461 became queen mother to his step-son Stjepan Tomaševi´c and Queen Mara. In 1463 she fled to Rome, apparently taking with her the royal insignia. She died in exile in Rome in 1478. This complicated royal political life was possibly also complicated in regard to religion since she had relatives who were adherents to all three Christian denominations in the region: Bosnian Church, Orthodox Christian, and Roman Catholic. She died, however, a Catholic. The military pilgrimage (Fig. 9.6) is a nostalgic Croatian claim to the medieval Bosnian kingdom–but so is the counter-pilgrimage by Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) that started in 2015. The Muslim Bosniaks do not claim the dead queen as a Muslim but instead deny her identity as a Croat, since she was Bosnian and born into the Bosnian Church, even if she converted at marriage to Catholicism (see Kati´c, 2017). Arguing over the religious (and thus national) identity of a queen who has been dead for over 500 years makes bizarre sense in contemporary Bosnia, where national religious groups ground their present identities in claims about historical contexts and heritage, as a means of arguing for their rights to claim sovereignty over contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosniaks), or parts of it (Croats and Serbs). The Vareš region is notably complicated. Vareš is a municipality around 50 kms from the capital of Sarajevo, and is part of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. By the 1991 census, the population was 41% Croat, 27% Muslim, 14% Serb, and 13% Yugoslavs. The 2013 census released by the Agency for Statistics of BiH gives 61% Bosniaks and 32% Croats. But it almost certainly varies by local settlements–certainly, it did in 1991 but the 2013 figures, for whatever they are worth, are not that finely graded as of yet. If we look at political power, after the war Vareš had a Bosniak mayor from the SDA, but after the last elections, it had a Croat mayor from the HDZ, with even some Bosniak votes in some parts of the municipality. Vareš as a municipality is important in the context of the Bobovac discussion since Bobovac is under the jurisdiction of the Vareš municipality.

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Fig. 9.6 2015 Military Pilgrimage to Bobovac. Behind the military and civilian pilgrims is the Bobovac mausoleum - the only reconstructed building of the old city (Photo © 2020, by Mario Kati´c)

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In Bobovac, the only reconstructed and usable building in the old town is a mausoleum of Bosnian kings and queens, which may be seen as religious heritage. It was excavated and reconstructed by archaeologists under the supervision of Pavao And-eli´c in the late 1960s and was renovated again after the 1990s war by the Bureau for the Preservation of Monuments (Zavod za zaštitu spomenika) of the Ministry for Culture and Sport of the Federation of Bosnia & Herzegovina. Today the mausoleum holds a small exhibition about the city of Bobovac and the kings buried there and is open during the pilgrimage day. Several people and associations have the keys to the mausoleum–the municipality of Vareš, the Croat association Kraljevski grad Bobovac (Royal city of Bobovac), apparently an individual from the village of Kraljeva Sutjeska, ˇ and recently a Bosniak association, Cuvari bosanske krune (The guardians of the Bosnian crown) from the village of Mijakovi´ci near Bobovac. For many pilgrims, the mausoleum is the first stop once they have arrived in Bobovac, and many of them treat it as a sacred place–performing the signum crucis (making the gesture of the sign of the cross across their chests) upon entering, keeping their voices down, and acting very respectfully. Others make jokes, take pictures, drink, and eat as if they were on a picnic. There are always some ‘experienced’ pilgrims who explain the story of the church, kings, queens, and the fight with the Ottomans, to ‘rookie’ pilgrims. As a reaction to the Bosnian Croat military pilgrimage and its expression of a Croat claim on Bobovac, Bosniaks have started to organize their own performance, presenting their narrative and version of the past of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a claim on the present. The Bosniak narrative denies the Croatian character of both the queen and the site, claiming instead that they were Bosnian, and the Bosniaks demand that the lily flag, generally regarded as having been that of the medieval Bosnian kingdom, but since 1990 used exclusively by Muslims as a symbol of Bosnia, be flown instead of the checkerboard design used by both the Republic of Croatia and by Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina. With these demands, the Bosniaks, though defined by their Muslim heritage, explicitly claim as their own the pre-Ottoman heritage of Bosnia and use that claim to delegitimize the Croat position (Kati´c, 2017). The 2015 Bosniak counter-pilgrimage was held only a day after the Croat military pilgrimage. These two organized events invoke the past in different and conflicting ways, but both dispute the present, not the past. Bobovac is a material and tangible remnant (and thus heritage) of a

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medieval Bosnian kingdom, but it is also a contemporary marker of identity and crucial for the claims of ethnonational rights to and dominance in contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina. While both sides structure their presentations as answers to the question of which ethnonational group was in control of Bosnia before the Ottoman conquest of 1463, they are actually contesting control over contemporary Bobovac, and thus of at least this part of central Bosnia. This contestation occurs in the context of the Bosnian state that gained international recognition in 1992, but that has never been fully accepted by many of its putative Croat and Serb citizens who reject what they see as Bosniak attempts to dominate them. The Bosniaks, for their part, claim sovereignty over the entire territory, whether the Croats and Serbs who live there accept that condition or not (Basta, 2016; Hayden, 2005). Foˇca: Five Centuries of Claiming, Destroying, and (Re)creating Heritage The town of Foˇca, on the Drina River like Zvornik, Višegrad, and Goražde, affords us a quick look at five centuries of religiously nationalizing the landscape. Foˇca is at a key location on the trade and communi´ cation routes, where the Cehotina River flows into the Drina (see Hodži´c, 2013). The town was taken by the Ottomans in 1465, and in 1477 plans were made to bring in a Muslim population (Hodži´c, 2013, p. 212). ´ In 1484 a mosque was built on the Cehotina as the nucleus of a new Muslim mahala on both sides of the river. In 1500–1501 the Sultan’s Mosque (Careva džamija) was completed, between the two rivers and in the centre of what had been the centre of the settlement before the Ottomans came (Hodži´c, 2013, p. 214). This mosque was large (10.6 × 19 m) and had a stone minaret. There were two churches recorded in the vicinity of the mosque, which is not surprising since the new mosque was built in the previous, Christian settlement. However, according to a recent author, these churches disappeared, owing to the ‘spread of Islam’ and the fact that ‘Non-Muslims, especially Vlachs [Orthodox] migrated towards newly conquered territories, thereby gaining various advantages given to them by the Ottoman state’, (Hodži´c, 2013, p. 217), although quite what those ‘advantages’ might have been is not specified. In any event, by 1530, a census showed Foˇca as having four Muslim and three non-Muslim mahalas with Muslims being the majority of the population

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(Hodži´c, 2013, p. 219), and by 1585 the population was nearly 100% Muslim (Hodži´c, 2013, p. 217). Early photographs from the mid-nineteenth century show that there were at least 17 mosques in the town. The construction of the Serbian Orthodox churchof St Nikola was permitted in 1857, on a hill outside the centre of the town, and without a bell tower. Following the arrival of Austro-Hungarian rule, a Catholic church was built in the centre of the town, on land donated by Muslims. With spectacularly bad timing, the church was opened in August 1914, but it was used for services until it was badly damaged in 1943. In 1945 the new communist authorities constructed a primary school named after the Croatian Partisan poet Ivan Goran Kovaˇci´c, best known for his poem ‘Jama’, about Ustasha atrocities against Serbs, though, ironically, he was killed by Serb Chetnik forces. New school buildings were built, and so the original school closed. In its place, as of August 2019, a large Hram sv. Sava was under construction next to the Serbian Orthodox church. Thus, the largest, most visible buildings in the centre of Ottoman Foˇca were mosques that displaced churches; in Austro-Hungarian Foˇca the most visible building was the Roman Catholic church; in socialist Foˇca the primary school; and in Foˇca in the Republika Srpska, the Hram of sv. Sava. During the 1992–1995 war the mosques in the centre of the town were destroyed in the process of ‘ethnic cleansing’, though two have been rebuilt with substantial international support–the Careva džamijain 2016 and the Aladža džamija in 2019. Both re-openings were celebrated with the participation of international diplomatic representatives and Bosnian and international Muslim communities. However, during a visit to Foˇca on 25 May 2019, and thus during Ramadan, we found the two rebuilt mosques to be deserted and padlocked, even at what should have been the time for prayers. Thus, the structures had been rebuilt, but seemed to be symbols of past Muslim presence, and dominance, in a town in which Muslims comprised nearly half the population in 1991, but Bosniaks had been reduced to under 8% of the population as of 2013.

Conclusion Our finding that the Bosnian conflict was carried out in part through the marking of territory with the structures and symbols of competing religious communities, both during the war and since its end, should not surprise anyone familiar with the history of the post-Ottoman Balkans

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and specifically that of Bosnia. After all, similar tactics were employed by the Ottomans themselves in their conquest of the region, and by nearly every Christian ruler or state that expelled the Ottomans from territories in Europe: by the Austrians and Hungarians in the eighteenth century, the Greeks, Serbs, Austro-Hungarians and Bulgarians in the nineteenth century, and the Greeks and Turks in the twentieth century, against each other (in Crete, Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus) as well as the Croatian state against Serbs and Jews in the 1940s and the Kosovo Albanian state against Serbs since 1999. Indeed, it was only under communist rule in Yugoslavia that such practices were restrained. Further, the religion-based nationalism at the end of communism was hardly new in Bosnia. The signifiers may have changed between 1875 and 1994, but the signifieds did not: the peoples now calling themselves Bosniaks were formerly called Muslims (Muslimani), the Croats were formerly called Catholics (Katolici) and the Serbs were formerly called Orthodox (Pravoslavci). Considering the nearly universal links between religion and nation in this region, there was never a good reason to expect any other pattern. We thus propose that the most recent episodes of the destruction and displacement of religious heritage in Bosnia has been an example of a highly predictable social and political process during periods of change of political or religious dominance (see generally Hayden et al., 2016), even as it remains morally deplorable, and arguably illegal in many cases. Moreover, the corollary of destruction and displacement, preservation, and reconstruction, has been an increasingly politicized process. If, as we have shown here and in the larger Antagonistic Tolerance project, religious dominance comes to be symbolized through the appropriation of key religious sites, efforts to undo such an appropriation amount not only to denying the dominant party a major symbol of its dominance, but may also be seen as trying to re-establish a dominance that had earlier been overthrown. With this in mind, it is important to recognize that the definition of ‘heritage’ is a political process. Whose heritage, though, and according to whom? In the case studies we have presented above, Serbs in Višegrad, Croats in Podmilaˇcje and Bobovac claim to be restoring their (quite separate) heritages that were disrupted by the Ottoman conquest (and the Serbs and Croats in these cases ignore each other). For their part, the Bosniaks claim to represent a Bosnian identity that is older than the Ottoman conquest even though they define themselves primarily as Muslims and thus trace that identity to the Ottoman conquest. In other

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words, the Bosniaks make their claim on the legitimacy of the very historical process that the Croats and Serbs reject as ensuring their subjugation, which is the Ottoman establishment of Muslim domination over populations that saw themselves as Christian, though adherents to which form of Christianity is itself still debated by all parties. Of course, were all the peoples of Bosnia to recognize themselves as being simply ‘Bosnian’ instead of Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs, there would be no difficulty, but since the only group among them to claim to be advancing that position are also defining themselves as Muslims (and thus Bosniaks) and claiming the superiority of their own status over that of the other communities, there is no reason to expect the Croats and Serbs to accept the Bosniak position. It might be objected that we are writing about the policies and actions of political, religious, and cultural elites since both destroying and (re)creating heritage is a top-down process. Yet these elite-driven initiatives succeed because they gain popular support. Popular success has depended on appealing to only one nation (ethnonational group) and promising to defend those specific people (Croat, Muslim, or Serb) against the other Bosnians (Hayden, 1993, 2000, 2005). To object to focusing on elites that have succeeded in gaining popular support on the grounds that non-elites supposedly do not support them is actually quite illogical. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, then, religious heritage is hardly a neutral category, and the destruction, reconstruction, and contestation over (re)building religious sites is a manifestation of antagonistic relations between the three major ethno–religious–national groups in the country. Bosnia may thus be ‘multi-multi’ (as is said, with some irony, in the country itself), but relations within the territory of this state remain contested, if not openly conflictual, in the realm of religious heritage, and most other areas of public life.

Notes 1. This is a revision of a paper presented at the International Interdisciplinary Conference on Movements, Narratives & Landscapes, University of Zadar, Croatia, 5–7 June 2015 (unpublished). Some of the research reported here was supported by the National Science Foundation Cultural Anthropology Program, grant # 1826892, ‘(Re)Constructing Religioscapes as Competing

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Territorial Claims in Post-War Bosnia & Herzegovina.’ The NSF is not responsible for and does not necessarily endorse our analysis or conclusions. As with pretty much all else in the last years of the former Yugoslavia, religiosity varied between republics and provinces and between the ‘nations and nationalities’ (narodi i narodnosti) in the country. Excellent survey research in 1990 showed that the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina indicated the least religiosity of the people of any republic or autonomous province in the country, but that Muslims indicated slightly higher levels of religiosity than Croats or Serbs. However, in all cases religiosity correlated inversely with educational level. Since religious heritage was the primary indicator of national identity, the researchers saw a link between increasing importance to respondents of national identity and reporting religiosity (see Panti´c, 1991). Intermarriage is often raised to challenge the existence of such groups, but such an empirical challenge does not actually change the identification of the group as such–as Barth pointed out in 1969. In any event, intermarriage in Bosnia was actually rare outside of the major cities, throughout even the socialist period, and even more so now (see Hayden, 2007). Within Bosnia, there are teams that are supported by Croats (e.g. Zrinski from Mostar, Široki Brijeg), teams that are supported by Bosniaks (Velež from Mostar, Sarajevo, Željezniˇcar) and teams supported by Serbs (Borac from Banja Luka); but none of them draws much support from members of the other Bosnian communities. The translation is ours. The article by Zlatar is part of a special issue of the journal Prilozi za Orientalnu Filologiju, published by the Oriental Institute of Sarajevo, on the ‘Islamization’ of Bosnia, published at the end of state socialism in Yugoslavia and in the heart of the development of the various nationalist movements in the country. Ironically and tragically, some of the regions in northern and north-eastern Bosnia that were most brutally ‘ethnically cleansed’ of Muslims by Serb forces in 1992, had such high percentages of Muslims in part due to the removal and settlement there from Serbia of 20, 000–30, 000 Muslim ´ refugees in the 1860s (see Ceman, 2010). The centrality of a settlement may well change through time, as the place develops (see Hayden et al., 2016, pp. 36–44 and 120–126), and when a town divides, newly homogenized neighbourhoods may develop their own centre, but the point remains for local communities at specific moments in time. Veˇcernji List. 2009. ‘Podmilaˇcje kod Jajca dobiva najve´ci toranj u cijeloj Bosni’. http://www.vecernji.hr/svijet/podmilacje-kod-jajca-dobivanajveci-toranj-u-cijeloj-bosni-857058.

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CHAPTER 10

The Politics of the Past in Kosovo: Divisive and Shared Heritage in Mitrovica Mattias Legnér

and Simona Bravaglieri

Introduction Kosovo, which proclaimed its independence in 2008, is the youngest state in Europe. Its path to becoming an independent nation has been uncertain and characterized by a conflict-ridden relationship with its north-east neighbour–Serbia. In this context, culture and heritage have been, and continue to be, at the centre of the dispute between the two states. The conflict has often been understood as one of culture and ethnic identity. References to history and cultural differences are continually made to fuel

M. Legnér (B) Department of Art History, Uppsala Universitet Campus Gotland, Visby, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] S. Bravaglieri Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Polytechnic University of Milan, Milano, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. B˘adescu et al. (eds.), Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2_10

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the conflict and support territorial claims (Herscher, 2010; Herscher & Riedlmayer, 2000; Schwartze, 2013). The development of heritage politics in Kosovo before and after 2008 can be understood as having occurred under conditions characterized by conflict-time, defined not by the presence or absence of violence, but rather by a heightened sense of unease and contestation (Baillie, 2013, p. 301). We argue that heritage that is not useful for actors interested in maintaining conflict-time is forgotten or neglected. This situation prevents the recognition of both pluralities of heritage and the heritage of plurality, which could contribute to building a more democratic and culturally diverse state. Inspired by Lowenthal’s statement that ‘the worth of heritage is … gauged not by critical tests but by current potency’ (Lowenthal, 1998, p. 127), we set out to understand which heritage is considered useful, thus carrying ‘potency’, and which remains of the past are allowed to decay and ultimately disappear. By looking closer at legislation, policies, and urban heritage, we can better understand how the past is used for political aims in Kosovo. The first part of this chapter looks at heritage politics before and after the 1998–1999 Kosovo War. The second part studies the case of Mitrovica, a divided town in northern Kosovo, in which cultural heritage can be found from different historical periods and where it is claimed to represent different contemporary groups in society. Our analysis indicates that the city’s tangible heritage is often ignored since it does not support the notion of a segregated city. Instead, narratives based on historical myths are produced and manifested in memorials and monuments. By looking at choices and difficulties in managing heritage assets, we attempt to understand Mitrovica’s political and cultural situation and how it affects nation-building. We believe that preserving buildings and other remnants from multiple historical layers would help cultivate a peaceful development towards a more tolerant and inclusive heritage politics.

The Kosovo War and Its Immediate Repercussions on Cultural Heritage Historically, Kosovo has been an area where cultures have intersected, and consequently, clashes have also occurred, especially in the relationship between Albanians and Serbs, both in early-modern and modern history. According to the World Fact Book, approximately 93% of the population of Kosovo in 2011 self-identified as Albanian (CIA, 2021). However,

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about half of Kosovo’s pre-1999 Serb population had left Kosovo by that time, a territory that many ethnic Serbs regard as the ‘Cradle of Serbia’, because it was the centre of the Serbian medieval state. In 1945–1963 Kosovo was an autonomous province named the Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija. In 1968, the term ‘Metohija’ was dropped, and the prefix ‘Socialist’ was added, changing the official name of the province to the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo. In 1974 Kosovo was granted a higher level of autonomy in relation to Serbia, as it strove to become a republic of its own within Yugoslavia. This struggle for greater autonomy resulted in an escalating conflict between the Yugoslav government and the Kosovo Albanian movement for liberation. By the late 1970s, Serbia began to seek ways to limit Kosovo’s autonomy, fearing that the province would break free completely. Albanians were increasingly excluded from public office, and Serbian was declared the sole official language (Judah, 2008, p. 57). As separatist movements gained traction, the Serb leader Slobodan Miloševi´c attempted to preserve Yugoslavia by controversially centralizing power in Belgrade. Miloševi´c stressed that Kosovo was the birthplace of Serbia in a famous speech held at the Gazimestan monument in Kosovo on 28 June 1989, which commemorated the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo Polje, in which an Ottoman army is said to have won a costly victory over the Serbian army (Sell, 2002, p. 11). Miloševi´c urged his countrymen to take control of it and populate the area, raising the possibility of armed conflicts in Yugoslavia: ‘we are again engaged in battles and are facing battles; they are not armed battles but such things cannot be excluded’ (Sell, 2002, p. 89). A couple of months earlier, the Serbian Assembly in Belgrade had radically reduced Kosovo’s autonomy (Malcolm, 2002, p. 344). On this occasion, Miloševi´c actively used the past to justify Serbia’s right to Kosovo territory since this was where the patriarchate of the Serbian Orthodox Church had its origins (Herscher, 2010, pp. 73–74). For Kosovo Albanians, his speech was regarded as an attempt to negate their claims to Kosovo. Discriminatory policies directed at Albanians, culminating in the abolition of Kosovo’s autonomous status, led to violent conflict between Serbs and Albanians. Sometimes, Albanian resistance was expressed through the vandalizing of Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries–precisely the type of tangible heritage that the Serbian government claimed had given it the right to rule over Kosovo. After the 1997 financial collapse in Albania, the situation became even more chaotic when border controls between Albania and Yugoslavia stopped functioning. The conflict escalated in the

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late 1990s when the armed Kosovo Albanian opposition began mounting attacks on the Serb police and military. The Serb response was to initiate a counterinsurgency campaign directed at the Kosovo Albanian population. Violence escalated in 1998 when Serb paramilitary forces advanced into Kosovo and forced civilians from their homes and burnt villages. The war was fought along a frontline that moved from house to house, and in some parts of Kosovo, houses were looted, emptied, and burnt to make it more difficult for the Kosovo Albanian population to return after the war. Around 207 of 609 mosques were damaged or destroyed, together with religious schools, libraries, bazaars, and kulla. A kulla is a defensive structure, often a tall masonry tower, found in traditional western Kosovo farms and mainly built during the Ottoman period. More than 500 of the existing 700 kulla were vandalized, looted, and torched in an intentional act of cultural cleansing because the Serb militia perceived them as symbols of Albanian heritage (Herscher & Riedlmayer, 2000, pp. 109–112). Architectural heritage was thus at the centre of the Kosovo conflict and territorial contention. Kosovo became the symbolic centrepiece of Serb nationalist claims. Many Orthodox churches were erected in the twentieth century’s interwar period, and historical churches were restored or replaced. New churches were built on locations at which a church had allegedly once stood, built in the same style as medieval Serbian Orthodox churches but with modern materials and building techniques. According to Panteli´c (1997, pp. 30–33), this building policy was a way of integrating Kosovo into Serbia and making the territory ethnically Serbian. In the 1990s and afterwards, the properties owned by the Serbian Orthodox Church were used to sanction Serb dominance over the province, while Kosovo Albanian heritage was deliberately mismanaged and subsequently targeted during the war (Judah, 2008, pp. 73–78; Malcolm, 2002, p. xxxii).

Consequences for Heritage Politics After 1999 The war came to a forced end due to a NATO intervention in Kosovo, but this did not mean that the destruction of cultural heritage came to a halt. The violence continued after Serb paramilitary forces had moved out of Kosovo, as some Kosovo Serbs were vindictively targeted (Herscher, 2010, p. 124). Extensive demolition of historic buildings also continued because of (often politically motivated) unchecked urban development,

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reconstruction, intentional destruction, and the absence of functioning institutions and laws. After the NATO invasion in 1999, Kosovo came under the governance of the United Nations. The UN Interim Administrative Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), an interim civil administration, was put in place ‘to eliminate ethnic hatred and attempt reconciliation, reconstruction, and political planning’ (Minervini, 2002, p. 572). There were several structural problems in preserving heritage in Kosovo after 1999 due to earlier mismanagement and the chaos of war. First, there was the unresolved conflict between Kosovo and Serbia surrounding the interpretation of the area’s historical origins and responsibility for preserving heritage sites. Institutions were understaffed, and there was little funding for heritage conservation. The level of professionalism was low due to the Serbian government officials’ flight, the politicized educational system, and the patriarchal structure of Kosovar society. When the UNMIK administration took control of Kosovo, the existing Yugoslav legislation on cultural heritage was abolished. New institutions began to be developed, but this proved to be a very slow-moving process that has not attained satisfactory results. In 2006 a new heritage law was introduced by the parliament. In addition to the lack of a functioning law before 2006, poorly developed institutions were working to protect cultural heritage, and these institutions did not cooperate with the various municipalities’ planning departments (Legnér, 2018). As heritage assets were pieces in the power struggle between Kosovo and Serbia, many heritage sites had to be guarded by KFOR troops or Kosovo police, thus restricting access. The violent and destructive conflict of 1999 was followed by an extended period of unrest that Herscher (2010) coined the ‘afterwar’. In the afterwar, there was no peace or even a lack of organized violence, but rather a precarious situation with recurring acts of violence against sites with a heritage value, with mostly Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries and Roma sites being targeted. During the initial years following the war, little international support went to preserving heritage since there was a focus on rehabilitating housing and repairing damaged infrastructure (Pickard, 2008). As a result, heritage was largely ignored in the rebuilding of Pristina and other Kosovo towns between 2000 and 2008. The immediate reason for this was the lack of capacity to protect cultural heritage. The neglect and lack of maintenance during the 15 years of preceding instability also played a role, not to mention the damage inflicted during reconstruction itself in the years following the war (Ljungman & Taboroff, 2011, p. 33).

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In 2000, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) became involved in preserving cultural heritage in Kosovo (Legnér, 2018, p. 4). Sida was also involved in the reconstruction efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Building on that experience, the agency recommended that some municipalities in Kosovo begin integrating conservation into spatial planning. To achieve this aim, they supported higher-education provision within heritage management and economic development stimulated by conservation projects. A Swedish non-governmental organization called Cultural Heritage without Borders (CHwB) acted as a facilitator for Sida in the region (Stengård & Legnér, 2019). In the meantime, the Kosovo–Serbia relationship had experienced severe setbacks, and it had become apparent that the violence affected the possibilities for cooperating with different institutions. In 2004 violence broke out again, this time aimed at the Serbian minority and its cultural heritage. There were two motives behind the targeting of Serbian cultural property in 2004. One was that Miloševi´c had used these sites to make political statements since his regime had supported the construction and restoration of many Serbian Orthodox churches. There was a widespread belief that many of these monasteries had originally been Albanian religious buildings (Morel, 2013, p. 4). The unrest in March 2004 resulted in riots in many villages and towns, which killed 19 people and wounded many, including KFOR soldiers who were trying to protect Serbian communities and heritage sites. Albanians also attacked Roma communities. Morel (2013, p. 4) states that 35 Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries were attacked on 17 March 2004. In the years that followed, there were recurring cases of the intentional destruction of Orthodox sites (Herscher, 2010, pp. 141–148). The UNESCO Cultural Heritage in South-East Europe: Kosovo Protection and Conservation of a Multi-Ethnic Heritage in Danger Mission, was launched to create a dialogue between the two ethnic groups. Later, the significance of heritage, culture, identity, and religion was again highlighted by the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General to Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari, in the Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement. The report proposed special protective zones around 43 religious and cultural sites and included restrictions on access to activities within these zones. The purpose of these zones was to preserve the sites, including the ‘monastic way of life of the clergy, and ensure a sustainable development of the communities surrounding the sites’ (Ahtisaari, 2007, Annex 5, Article 4). International military forces gained the task

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of training the Kosovo police to uphold the security of protected sites (Ahtisaari, 2007, Annex 5, Article 3). As a result, these contested zones– fenced off and guarded by the police or military–have been excised from everyday life (cf. Legnér, 2017, p. 19), threatening their intangible values and sustainability. The Kosovo claim for independence that followed the Ahtisaari plan was not recognized by Serbia and remains controversial. In 2011, the Implementation and Monitoring Council (IMC) was established with the participation of significant stakeholders. Around this time, several laws were adopted by Kosovo regarding cultural heritage: a law on special protected zones (2008), a law on the Serb enclave Velika Hoˇca (2012), and a law on the historical centre of Prizren (2012). These laws were all consequences of the aforementioned comprehensive proposal. Despite their existence, the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, an international organ tasked with overseeing heritage protection, has noted a failure to integrate cultural heritage into urban plans, a lack of political commitment to preservation efforts, limitations in staff capability, and a failure to protect the heritage of the Serbian Orthodox Church from illegal construction (Surli´c, 2017, p. 117). The reconstruction of damaged heritage sites in Kosovo was carried out alongside the development of legislation and institutions. From 2008 to 2011, CHwB became intimately involved in several different projects related to spatial planning and cultural heritage, while the Serbian Orthodox Church proved unwilling to adapt to the new administrative and legal context following Kosovo’s declaration of independence (Ljungman & Taboroff, 2011, p. 33). The heritage process (i.e. redefining significance, revaluing and devaluing assets, restoration, and reconstruction) following a conflict can serve to confirm the identity and historical consciousness of a dominant group, or it can be used to bridge differences between several groups and promote a multicultural, more democratic society (Legnér, 2018, pp. 1–2). CHwB wished to make use of heritage to improve the poor relations between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo. Resistance from minorities has meant that international organizations have, in some cases, opted instead to focus on ‘weak’ groups within the ethnic majority. The heritage process then becomes part of a more extensive process in which the rights of ethnic minorities may be excluded from a territory, and the heritage process thus becomes the extension of a conflict dynamic. This dynamic may be referred to as ‘the ethnification of space’ (Björkdahl,

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2013, p. 211). In this context, the ethnification of space entails reinforcing a process in which the preservation of a site is intimately associated with one particular ethnicity, rather than with the whole of a society. In Kosovo, it was clear that the restoration of mosques and kulla was carried out as compensation for the injustices that Kosovo Albanians had been subjected to by Serbia. International recognition of this injustice, which the Serbian Orthodox Church denied, resulted in the Church refusing to let CHwB repair any of the damaged churches or, indeed, to give international organizations access to areas dominated by Serbs (Interview CHwB, 2016). Mosques, kulla, bazaars, and churches are all part of traditional Kosovar heritage, but new heritage sites have also been created after the Kosovo War to preserve the memory of the resistance against Serbia and to mourn the martyrs of the war. The memorial to Adem Jashari in the Prekaz Valley is particularly significant (Obu´cina, 2011, p. 36). Jashari was a local commander of the KLA guerrillas who fought against a Serbianruled Kosovo. In 1998 police besieged his house, killing him and around 40 members of his family. Today their graves constitute a site of mourning and remembrance of the Albanian resistance against Serb oppression. The house, preserved as a ruin and a visitor centre, supports the narrative of the suffering and victimization of Kosovo Albanians. As Di Lellio and Schwandner-Sievers (2006, pp. 521–522) have observed, this site is a place of dissonant heritage as some Kosovo Albanians do not sympathize with or share the martyr cult of Jashari. Especially women living in towns and in Pristina have been critical of the cult of war and the victimhood it nurtures, since the cult exclusively recognizes the struggle of male fighters. The master narrative has made it difficult to question the patriarchal social order that is still prevalent in today’s Kosovo.

The Case of Mitrovica Historical Development Mitrovica is situated in the most northern part of Kosovo, where the Ibar and Sitnica rivers meet. Modern Mitrovica was established during the Ottoman rule of Kosovo (1455–1912). Historically, mining has been significant in this area, and there are archaeological remains of mining from the Middle Ages near the modern city. The Ottoman Empire

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made Mitrovica a node for trade, an aspiration furthered by the AustroHungarian Empire. It grew into the leading industrial and trade centre in Kosovo after discovering lead there in the nineteenth century. The mining area of Trepˇca (Miniera e Trepçës/ Pydnik Tpepqa) developed in the valley framed by the Ibar and Sitnica (Sitnicë/ Citnica) rivers and transformed the city into a one-company city following the Second World War. Consequently, the city became a socialist town with a mixed population (IKS, 2009a, p. 22). Today some mining continues, but its significance has been dramatically reduced. Since 1999 the city has been spatially divided between the Serb minority population living north of the Ibar and the Albanian majority living south of the river. Parallel administrations have run the north and the south respectively since 2013. The division is visible in the urban landscape in several ways. In the north, quite rundown buildings from the Yugoslav period dominate the landscape, while the southern part is characterized by a booming building sector funded by the international community. Some buildings stemming from the pre-1945 period can be found in the city centre on both sides of the river, severely damaged, entirely refurbished, or just left in ruins. Three bridges traverse the Ibar, crossed by people daily when travelling between work and home or when shopping. There seems to be no unnecessary movement between north and south, and most of the population does not use these bridges in fear of reprisals if they enter a space dominated by the Other. Albanians are afraid of violent encounters if they go north and vice versa. The EU has attempted to better connect the north and the south by rebuilding the bridge located on the city’s central north– south axis, connecting the city’s essential public buildings and gathering spaces (Schwartze, 2013). Historically, the bridges over the Ibar used to integrate residential neighbourhoods located on both sides of the river inhabited by various ethnic groups. Although residents of one ethnicity lived primarily in quarters where it was the majority, the neighbourhood distribution was mixed throughout the city. The 1981 census captured a total population of 52,866; most citizens were Albanians (32,390), followed by 8,933 Serbs and other minorities (1,503 Montenegrins, 4,082 Muslims, 4,299 Roma, 155 Croats, 63 Slovenes, 119 Macedonians, and 295 Yugoslavs) (IKS, 2009a, p. 16). Albanian quarters were historically more numerous in the south, while Serbian quarters were in the north. Albanians have also lived in Bošnjak mahala and Mikro naselje in the north, while Serbs used to

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inhabit the centre of the southern part of the city and the Bair settlement. Despite the latent or overt struggle for domination that has historically marked the relations between residents of different ethnicities, especially between Albanians and Serbs, they maintained contacts, interacted, and mixed before the war. After the conflict, many former residents left the town, and there was an influx of new arrivals into Mitrovica (IKS, 2009a, p. 22). Today, the south is populated by 50,000 Kosovo Albanians and internally displaced people from neighbouring war-damaged villages. The north is populated by approximately 17,000 Serbs, 2,000 Albanians, 1,700 Bosniaks, and several thousand Roma people who live in segregated neighbourhoods (Legnér et al., 2020). Presently, the city is predominantly perceived as ‘divided’. Likewise, as in other cases of divided cities, memory is long in relation to the wounds of war, but short regarding the period of peaceful coexistence that predated it (Baillie, 2013, p. 301). Many of the city’s residents have no connection with its past since they migrated thereafter the 1999 war. Immigrants from the countryside and other municipalities lack traditions of mutual coexistence, for which Mitrovica was once famous (IKS, 2009a, p. 22). In 2013, the same year that the city’s administration became segregated, the European Union decided to reconstruct the Ibar bridge to ease tensions and to reconnect the two parts of the city. The Kosovo government and the international community have spent almost a decade focusing on this particular bridge in Mitrovica and on conflict management, reifying the divided city’s status quo (KIPRED, 2008). Critics call instead for developmental incentives that focus on the common problems, e.g. in education, employment, and poverty reduction (IKS, 2009b). The essential EU contribution to peacebuilding emerged in a top-down decision to make the Ibar bridge a space that links the two cities, resulting in an impasse caused by construction delays. Perpetuating Conflict-Time Through Heritage The EU has made efforts to turn the new bridge into a symbol of reconciliation, but there seems to be little interest from residents to further this aim. The bridge is a way of symbolically addressing the issue of urban division, but it is treated as a non-existent path in everyday life. Many heritage sites attesting to the city’s plural history can be found

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throughout the urban centre, most of them in an urgent state of disrepair. The heritage law protects only a few monuments as listed sites: the Hammam, the Roman Catholic Shën Pjetri church (St Peter), the Great Mosque and its graves, the ruins of the medieval settlement of Trepça, Trepça town (Gjytet), the ruins of the medieval complex of old Trepça, a house located on Ilia Bircani street, the house of Blagoje Ðord-evi´c, and a house on Zelengora street (Republic of Kosovo, 2015). No additional sites have been granted protective status since 1980 (IKS, 2009b, p. 53). CHwB has identified 15 endangered cultural objects in the Mitrovica area, recorded in the Database of Cultural Heritage of Kosovo. However, the city’s cultural heritage is essentially ignored by both city administrations and by the Kosovo government. One reason is the lack of potency of cultural heritage in contributing to the solution of social problems identified in Kosovo. Aspects of the past that offer evidence of a multicultural society in which ethnic communities lived side by side and tolerated each other are systematically ignored in favour of aspects that point to one group’s rightful dominance over the other. Most of these heritage assets have been left to decay and are in various stages of degradation. One could blame the lack of clarity of the 2006 Heritage Law, which led to the overlapping of roles and competencies between administrative bodies, and which was worsened by the spatial division. However, we argue that the deliberate choice of neglect is a significant strategy in conflict-time. The border created in the Ibar river after the 1999 conflict is the most tangible sign of the division, but it is not the only one. The enforced neglect of the city’s plural heritage wipes out alternative narratives of peaceful coexistence, which does not serve the political purposes of the monolithic narrative of a divided Mitrovica. In today’s Kosovo, memories of war and suffering carry much more potency than heritage assets that provide glimpses of a shared past. Since heritage sites do not convey this narrative, actors interested in feeding the conflict between Kosovo and Serbia have erected tangible memory sites that commemorate the war martyrs. Nowhere in Kosovo are these memorials more visible than in central Mitrovica. They ultimately serve to foster the city’s division by presenting selective, one-sided, and opposing versions of ethnic heritage expressed through post-war monuments around the bridge (Legnér, Risti´c, & Bravaglieri, 2020). New monuments are thus created using myths of war heroes that have materialized in tangible memorials located along the city’s north–south axis on both sides of the Ibar bridge. The most prominent memorials are the

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Monument to Prince Lazar—the Serbian martyr of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo–located in the northern part, and the Monument to Isa Boletini, who presently bears the officially recognized title ‘Hero of Kosovo’, in the southern part of the city. Lazar is said to have fought for the independence of Serbia from the Ottoman Empire. He was allegedly killed in an epic battle against the Ottomans on the Kosovo field (Radomirovi´c, 2016). Boletini was an Albanian guerrilla fighter killed in 1916, remembered firstly for having fought against the Young Turks and later resisting a Serb invasion of Kosovo (Malcolm, 2002, pp. 243–261). The creation of memorials operates as a physical reminder of this hostile relationship while also redefining the borders of memory actively. Two parallel and incompatible narratives of suffering are created through them, motivating the spatial division of ethnic communities and the borders’ construction. One result of the Kosovo War and the city’s subsequent division was that heritage became spatially separated from the ethnic group with which it was associated. Heritage appeared, presently referred to as ‘orphan heritage’, owned by people distant from the territories that contain them (Price, 2005, p. 182). Religious sites both in the northern and southern parts of the city have been targeted and destroyed. In 1999 a mosque located just north of the Ibar bridge was razed. After being part of the EU’s negotiations, this space is still a void in the urban centre. Five years later, the church of St Sava, used by Serbs living in the region since its construction in 1921, was burnt during violent riots and later rebuilt. Since 2015, Serbs living in the northern part of the city have visited it a few times each year to celebrate prominent festivities, escorted by police. For the rest of the year, the Sunday service is attended by a handful of people who arrive by bus, while the rest of the religious community gathers in the new church built on a hill in the north. The priest and his family reside next to St Sava. In 2017 they were still the only Serbs living in the southern part of the city. The church and the priest’s residence are supervised by a policeman day and night, surrounded by a protective zone like the ones implemented by Ahtisaari in other parts of the country. This situation clearly shows that sudden outbreaks of violence are still feared, and it also serves as an additional example of urban division in Mitrovica (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353211667). At some distance from St Sava’s church, in the south, there is also a Serb Orthodox cemetery monitored by a security camera, but still showing signs of vandalism with toppled headstones and little maintenance and care. In the north, there is a much bigger Muslim cemetery

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displaying far fewer signs of disrepair. Both cemeteries were damaged during the riots of 2004 and 2008 and seem to have been neglected since. They are frozen in time since those who identify with them are no longer present in this part of the city or do not feel safe enough to visit them. Religious heritage, especially Orthodox churches, has been used in Kosovo to claim ownership of the territory, as in other Yugoslav realities, because they were the only major group of structures that visually embodied the Other (Baillie, 2013, p. 304). As a result, these buildings were the focus of violence and retaliation during and after the conflict. Heritage that could be regarded as shared across the ethnic groups has been neglected and allowed to be forgotten, and has thus been deprived of much of its value and potential impact on social life. One of the areas around Mitrovica with the richest history is the Trepça miners’ village. The area presents traces of the Roman Catholic church of Shën Pjetri, which dates back to the thirteenth century. The church has been listed since 1958 but has been abandoned and is at risk of further degradation (IKS, 2009b). The area attracted Saxon miners and a Turkish colony during the fourteenth century. The modern metallurgical complex, founded in 1930, reached its peak in 1988, at which time it employed almost 23,000 workers (Schwartze, 2013). Trepça was organized as a one-company town and brought facilities and amenities to the city. The mining facility is still used, and squatters have occupied the partially ruined village (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 352934204). The act of inscribing the past in Mitrovica’s public spaces played a role in fostering the city’s interethnic unity before the 1990s. Key streets were renamed to commemorate the most prominent communist leaders and the Miners’ Monument (Monumenti i minatorëve të rënë/ Spomenik rudarima junacima) was erected to commemorate the fallen Trepˇca workers who fought as Partisans in the Second World War. The monument is a 12-metre-tall concrete structure built in 1973 by the architect Bogdan Bogdanovi´c on Kukavica hill, where it is clear to see although not actively commemorated. It is shaped as a minecart resting on two massive columns with a marble tombstone placed on the ground in front of the monument. The stone has inscriptions of the names of Serbian, Albanian, and Bosniak miners killed in the Second World War. The monument was designed to promote Yugoslav ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ by disseminating the myth of a shared sacrifice made by Kosovo’s different ethnic groups during the war.

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One actor in the bottom-up peacebuilding processes is the museum, located on the Ibar bridge’s southern side and funded by the Kosovar institutions. It was first established in 1952 in the Hammam, but in 2009 it was transferred to a building previously used by the Yugoslav army. The museum is actively working to reduce tensions through cultural initiatives, presenting a more diverse heritage different from the historical narrative conjured up by heavily politicized media. The museum organizes different projects for all residents of Mitrovica. The aim is to encourage citizens’ participation and to offer a plurality of interpretations of the city’s past. This attempt can also be seen on the museum’s Facebook page, on which heritage is not labelled ‘southern’ or ‘northern’ (Muzeu, 2020). The museum’s narrative focuses on the shared history of the different ethnic groups characterized, for instance, by the miners’ community and its political resistance in the late twentieth century. Most recently, the memory of the Miners’ Strike in 1989 (Grevës së Minatorëve), in which 400,000 people demonstrated, has received attention as an example of peaceful protest (Obu´cina, 2011, p. 40). The museum collaborates with several NGOs active in the city in celebrating intangible heritage, such as craftsmanship and the city’s strong musical tradition. One example is the NGO GAIA Kosovo, organized in 2019 at the museum Mitrovica: City of Diversity, the final event of the Mitrovica’s Joint Story project, funded by the European Union. Another NGO is Mundesia, which works with groups of mixed ethnicities to empower women and youth to promote cultural diversity (Interview Mundesia, 2017). Besides organizing music and craft festivals, they actively encourage the promotion of shared heritage in the Mitrovica area. School groups and students from the northern part of the country are not officially allowed to visit the museum and may only attend privately. Therefore, fewer visitors come from the northern side of the bridge than from the Kosovo Albanian side. NGOs thus play an important role in stimulating people from both communities to participate. The museum cannot completely avoid divisive elements, such as a highly political statement called ‘The voice of the parents’. In the museum foyer, a banner runs along all the walls and it states the names of Albanians who have disappeared in recent years. In both parts of the city, pupils attend separate schools in which two different and contested stories of Kosovo’s history are taught. In the eyes of local people from different backgrounds, the historical facts presented strongly coincide with political opinions. It has been difficult for the museum to present the social

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and political developments that have followed the Kosovo War. Since the museum is missing some written documentation because of the division, it works with exhibitions of old Mitrovica photographs, and these exhibitions leave space for multiple interpretations. These initiatives are guided by a focus on the future, starting from a diverse past, and without reviving nostalgia of, for instance, Yugoslav history. Both the museum and several NGOs are striving for grassroots peacebuilding through practical engagement and participation, areas in which the international community and the Kosovo government have been unsuccessful. Instead of focusing on victimization and divisive elements from the past, they appear to be making strides towards identifying everyday needs in Mitrovica.

Conclusion: The Kosovo Politics of Conflict-Time Buildings and their historical record have particular importance for producing and reproducing identity because of their perceived permanence (Bevan, 2006, pp. 12–13). This is one reason why architecture has been crucial for nation-building since the nineteenth century. In and around Mitrovica, however, historical buildings have been permitted to decay because they do not seem to play a significant role in constructing ethnic identities. Instead, memorials are erected on both sides of the river to glorify and consolidate a history of violence and victimization. The memorials and their glorification serve as territorial markers demonstrating that the group who identifies with that specific memory remains in conflict with the Other. However, there are many examples of both tangible and intangible heritage that offer evidence of peaceful coexistence and friction in the history of northern Kosovo, as has been exemplified in this chapter. The politicization of heritage in Kosovo has resulted in a mosque or a church no longer just being a place of religious significance. Heritage has become a symbol of a community deliberately targeted and ultimately eradicated. Also, cultural institutions such as museums or libraries have become symbols of memory for such communities and legitimize their continued existence and presence. Cultural heritage is deemed less necessary for its cultural, historical, and artistic values; it has instead become evidence of one ethnic group’s rights in relation to other groups. As the case of Mitrovica has shown, however, there have been grassroots initiatives that look beyond heritage that is highly ‘potent’, i.e. memorials and religious institutions. In so doing, they aim to create a more pluralistic

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narrative of history and of traditions that could potentially speak to several ethnic groups in Kosovar society. These initiatives have in common a lack of government support and a reliance on volunteers and domestic and international NGOs. Mitrovica is a place where the conflict over Kosovo’s past plays out in urban space, and where bottom-up initiatives may resist ethnonationalism and dismantle the barrier to a shared history. Such initiatives serve to fight fear and remind the population of a past in which people of different ethnic origins lived side by side peacefully, with the hope that such conditions can become real again, if people really wish so.

References Ahtisaari, M. (2007). Comprehensive proposal for the Kosovo status settlement. Baillie, B. (2013). Capturing facades in ‘conflict-time’: Structural violence and the (re)construction Vukovar’s churches. Space and Polity, 17 (3), 300–319. Bevan, R. (2006). The destruction of memory. Architecture at war. Reaktion Books. Björkdahl, A. (2013). Urban peacebuilding. Peacebuilding, 1(2), 207–221. CIA. (2021). Kosovo. In The World Fact Book. https://www.cia.gov/the-worldfactbook/countries/kosovo/#people-and-society. 17 February 2021. Di Lellio, A., & Schwandner-Sievers, S. (2006). The legendary commander: The construction of an Albanian master-narrative in post-war Kosovo. Nations and Nationalism, 12(3), 513–529. Herscher, A. (2010). Violence taking place. The architecture of the Kosovo conflict. Stanford University Press. Herscher, A., & Riedlmayer, A. (2000). Monument and crime: The destruction of historic architecture in Kosovo. Grey Room, 1 (Autumn). Inciativa Kosovare pér Stabilitet (IKS). (2009a). An overview of the development of Mitrovica through the years. Inciativa Kosovare pér Stabilitet (IKS). (2009b). Policy briefs. Mitrovica: Two realities. One city. Judah, T. (2008). The Serbs. History, myth and the destruction of Yugoslavia. Yale University Press. KIPRED. (2008, October). Looking beyond Mitrovica bridge: An ‘Ahtisaari Plus’. Package Proposal. Legnér, M. (2017). Securitizing the past: A discussion on the connections between heritage and security. Plural: History. Culture. Society, 5(1), 5–23. Legnér, M. (2018). Post-conflict reconstruction and the heritage process. Journal of Architectural Conservation, 24(2), 78–90.

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Legnér, M., Risti´c, M., & Bravaglieri, S. (2020). Contested heritage-making as an instrument of ethnic division: Mitrovica, Kosovo. In M. Risti´c & S. Frank (Eds.), Urban Heritage in Divided Cities. Contested Pasts (pp. 35–52). Routledge. Ljungman, C. M., & Taboroff, J. (Eds.). (2011). Evaluation of cultural heritage without borders (2008–2011). Sida. Lowenthal, D. (1998). The heritage crusade and the spoils of history. Cambridge University Press. Malcolm, N. (2002). Kosovo: A short history. Minervini, C. (2002). Housing reconstruction in Kosovo. Habitat International, 26(4), 571–590. Morel, A. F. (2013). Identity and conflict: Cultural heritage, reconstruction and national identity in Kosovo. Architecture MPS, 3(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/ 10.14324/111.444.amps.2013v3i1.001 Muzeu. (2020). Muzeu i Mitrovicës—Museum of Mitrovica. https://www.fac ebook.com/muzeuimitrovices Obu´cina, V. (2011). A war of myths: Creation of the founding myth of Kosovo Albanians. Suvremene teme, 1(4), 30–44. Panteli´c, B. (1997). Nationalism and architecture: The creation of a national style in Serbian architecture and its political implications. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 56(1), 16–41. Pickard, R. (Ed.). (2008). Analysis and reform of cultural heritage policies in South East Europe. Council of Europe Publishing. Price, J. (2005). Orphan heritage: Issues in managing the heritage of the Great War in northern France and Belgium. Journal of Conflict Archaeology, 1(1), 181–196. Radomirovi´c, B. (2016, June 28). Knez Lazar je tu da ostane, jer su i Srbi tu da ostanu. Politika. http://www.politika.rs/scc/clanak/358130/U-Kos ovskoj-Mitrovici-svecano-otkriven-spomenik-knezu-Lazaru Republika e Kosovës. (2015). Lista e trashëgimisë kulturore për mbrojtje të përkohsme. Schwartze, E. (2013). Symbols of reconstruction, signs of division: The case of Mitrovica, Kosovo. In M. Gegner & B. Ziino (Eds.), The heritage of war (pp. 219–233). Routledge. Sell, L. (2002). Slobodan Milosevic and the destruction of Yugoslavia. Duke University Press. Stengård, M., & Legnér, M. (2019). Funder and facilitator: Swedish development aid aimed at cultural heritage in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1995–2008. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 25(7), 858–870.

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Surli´c, S. (2017). Constitutional design and cultural cleavage: UNESCO and the struggle for cultural heritage in Kosovo. Croatian Political Science Review, 54(4), 109–125. UNESCO. (2004). Cultural heritage in South-East Europe: Kosovo protection and conservation of a multi-ethnic heritage in Danger. UNESCO. http:// portal.unesco.org/en/files/23707/11011375003Kosovo_Mission_Report_ 2.pdf/Kosovo+Mission+Report+2.pdf

PART III

(Re)Membering: Monuments, Memorials and Museums

CHAPTER 11

The Njegoš Chapel Versus the Njegoš Mausoleum—The Post-Yugoslav Ethnicization of Cultural Heritage in Montenegro Nikola Zeˇcevi´c

Introduction: Reimagining Njegoˇs One of the most important figures in Montenegrin history, whose legacy has been of fundamental importance for Montenegrin culture1 since the nineteenth century, is Petar II Petrovi´c Njegoš. He was both the ruler and the bishop (vladika) of Montenegro, but his political inheritance remains in the shadow of his literary achievements. Despite executing the first military, police, and tax reforms in Montenegro, his written works The Ray of the Microcosm (1845), The Mountain Wreath (1847) and The False Tsar Stephen the Little (1851) left much deeper traces in the collective national memory.

N. Zeˇcevi´c (B) University of Donja Gorica, Podgorica, Montenegro e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. B˘adescu et al. (eds.), Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2_11

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In 2015, the former Montenegrin Minister of Culture, Pavle Goranovi´c, proposed that Njegoš’s birthday (13 November) should be declared a Day of Culture in Montenegro, therein stirring up controversy. This proposal was not supported by the Bosniak party that participated at that time in the Montenegrin government. Some of its prominent members called Njegoš the ‘slaughterer of Islam’ (Jovi´cevi´c, 2016). This attitude is rooted in the tendentious (mis)interpretation of some verses of The Mountain Wreath, such as: Accept the faith of your own forefathers! Guard the honour of our dear fatherland! […] Start tearing down your minarets and mosques. Lay the Serbian Christmas-log on the fire […] Everything has gone the devil’s way. Of Mohammed our entire country reeks. (Petrovi´c Njegoš, 1847, pp. 29, 45)

This new reading of Njegoš conflates Njegoš’s romanticized antiOttomanism with contemporary anti-Islamism. Through such readings, Njegoš is indirectly accused of inspiring war crimes and genocide against Bosniaks (Muslims) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995). One source even proclaimed him a ‘genocidal poet’ (Spahi´c, 1994, p. 29), while another labelled him a ‘source of inspiration for genocidal rampage’ (Muminovi´c, 1995, p. 161). In 2018, several Bosniak organizations from the diaspora sent an appeal to the Montenegrin government to exclude Njegoš’s works from elementary and high school textbooks. For others, Njegoš was and is an essential protagonist in the formation of Montenegrin and Serbian identity. In the mid-nineteenth century, about 99% of the Montenegrin population was illiterate (Hanžekovi´c-Gabrijel, 1938, p. 161), which these authors then suggest implies that Njegoš devoted his poetry to elitist circles in the South Slavic enlightenment movement of that time. It was unimaginable before the dissolution of Yugoslavia, even during the socialist period, to challenge his cultural and political importance to Montenegro. His symbolic value as a national icon correlates with the perceived need of some nations in South Eastern and Central Europe to have a national poet, as a symbol of national pride and cultural development. As Neubauer (2004, pp. 11–12) states: Not all nations have national poets. Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe have surely been poetic icons of their nations, yet their personal commitment

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to their nations’ respective causes was limited. Shakespeare occasionally sounds nationalistic in Henry V, but he generally rises above nationalism […] Dante and Goethe served city states, and in Goethe’s case this choice was partly motivated by his resolute dislike of nationalism, especially during the Napoleonic wars. […] However, a historical process of national awakening was necessary for their ‘consecration’ as prophets, which took place in East-Central Europe during the nineteenth century. All national poets discussed here grew up amidst a national struggle against a foreign suppressor. For the nations of Njegoš and Botev, this was the Ottoman Empire; the nations of Pet˝ ofi, Mácha, and Prešern struggled against the Habsburg Empire; the people of Mickiewicz and Bialik were primarily confronted with the Russian Empire, which also dominated the Baltic area. (Neubauer, 2004, pp. 11–12)

As a national poet, Njegoš was also a part of the ‘territorialization of memory’ that Smith (1996, p. 453) defines as ‘The process by which certain kinds of shared memories are attached to particular territories so that the former become ethnic landscapes (or ethnoscapes) and the latter become historic homelands’. The relationship between Njegoš and Mount Lov´cen2 can further be understood as a form of what Smith refers to as the ‘historization of nature’ (Smith, 2003, p. 134). Njegoš’s legacy has suffered multiple forms of political abuse, in the form of ethnicization. It was used to strengthen Serb identity in the twentieth century, and Montenegrin national consciousness at the start of the twenty-first century.

The Context Behind Contestations Over Njegoˇs The name Montenegro was first mentioned in Slavic and Latin sources in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as a toponym in the principality of Zeta.3 In the fourteenth century, Zeta became independent and was led by the Balši´c and Crnojevi´c dynasties. In the second half of the fifteenth century, the name Zeta began to disappear, and the name Montenegro became dominant. During the reign of Ivan Crnojevi´c, Montenegro gradually lost its independence and became a vassal state. After the exile of Ðurad- Crnojevi´c, the last ruler of the dynasty, Montenegro fell under Ottoman rule in 1496. Nevertheless, Cetinje maintained its status as the political centre of Montenegro, while power and influence began to pass into the hands of metropolitans. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Orthodox Church in Montenegro

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(the Metropolitanate of Cetinje) became increasingly politicized, and a major instigator of the gradual restoration of Montenegro’s independence. This became, especially apparent after the founder of the Petrovi´c–Njegoš dynasty, Metropolitan Danilo, came to power (1697). Coupled with the support of Russia, his ascent enabled the restoration of Montenegro as a Prince-Bishopric (ecclesiastical principality). The last bishop to also wield effective secular power was Petar II Petrovi´c Njegoš, who reigned from 1830 to 1851. The political ideas of Montenegrin metropolitans, though early modern, were also historically reminiscent of the fourteenth-century medieval Serbian Empire.4 This influenced Njegoš in his establishing close diplomatic relations with the Principality of Serbia, with the aim of working on a common national programme. However, after Njegoš’s death and the proclamation of Montenegro as a secular principality (1852), close relations with Serbia began to collapse. The ruling circles in Belgrade were uncomfortable with power being split over two principalities. Although Serbian national consciousness began to flourish in Montenegro at that time, a Montenegrin political identity also started to gain a foothold. Serbia did not favour the rise of Montenegrin statehood, which was internationally verified at the Congress of Berlin (1878). Although they had the same national agenda, which implied the creation of a broader Serbian or Yugoslav state, and shared a common enemy (the Ottoman Empire), Montenegro and Serbia experienced frequent episodes of interstate intolerance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The relationship between the Petrovi´c– Njegoš dynasty and the Serbian dynasties was deeply competitive. After the fall of the Austrophilic Obrenovi´c dynasty (1903), the Russophileoriented Karad-ord-evi´c dynasty came to power. From that moment, the Russian Empire began to insist on the unification of Montenegro and Serbia. Despite resistance from the Montenegrin monarch Nikola, these pressures grew. During the First World War, Montenegro and Serbia sided with the Entente forces. However, after the occupation of Montenegro by Austro-Hungary (1916), King Nikola and his government went into exile. After the end of the war, Montenegro was affiliated to Serbia and thus became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). It so happened that an allied and independent country in the First World War disappeared from the political map of Europe, without its official and legal institutions having been consulted. The new state was unitary and centralized, which implied the disappearance of almost all features of Montenegrin statehood. Montenegro

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was restored just after the Second World War, as a federal state within the Socialist Yugoslavia, and a Montenegrin ethnonational identity was officially recognized. In the Socialist Yugoslavia, Montenegrin ethnonational identity was predominantly perceived as separate and distinctive, yet historically as part of the broader Serbian ethnicity. Montenegrins also felt a strong identification with the Yugoslav supranational identity. Therefore, the majority of the Montenegrin voters (96.8%) opted against leaving Yugoslavia in the first independence referendum (1992). The resulting Yugoslav Federation was comprised of the ‘rump’ of Yugoslavia during the dissolution, which brought Serbia and Montenegro together under Slobodan Miloševi´c’s rule. This entity was plagued by political and economic problems: international sanctions, hyperinflation, the Yugoslav wars, the Kosovo war, NATO bombing, etc. In 1997, the Democratic Party of Socialists (then the ruling party in Montenegro) split into two factions. The pro-West faction was led by Milo Ðukanovi´c, who advocated for a market economy and the preservation of Montenegrin autonomy within the federation. The pro-Miloševi´c faction was led by Momir Bulatovi´c, who called for stronger centralization of the federal state and advocated a conservative economic and foreign policy. Ðukanovi´c’s faction narrowly prevailed in the elections (1997) and in the following years began to distance Montenegro from the politics of Slobodan Miloševi´c and the federal state. Montenegro’s participation in the Yugoslav wars (e.g. the Siege of Dubrovnik) in the 1990s has been nationally recognized as a mistake, with apologies made to Croatian citizens personally in the year 2000 by Ðukanovi´c. During the Kosovo war, Montenegro received a large number of Albanian and Serb refugees, while the government in Podgorica strongly criticized Miloševi´c. For these reasons, Montenegro was significantly spared during the NATO bombings of 1999. Due to high inflation in the country, Montenegro introduced the German mark as its official currency in 1999. It gradually rejected the Yugoslav dinar and eventually switched to use of the euro in 2002. After the fall of Miloševi´c, the authorities of Montenegro announced their intention to lead the country to independence. However, the path to independence also produced a new understanding of Montenegrin identity, which required a rupture with traditional ties to a Serbian identity. The reinterpretation of key historical events helped create the contemporary Montenegrin statehood narrative. Particular emphasis was placed on the events of the First World War,

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and on the creation of the Yugoslav state, with the loss of Montenegro’s statehood highlighted and the lack of recognition given to its autocephalous church. In response, the government supported the activities of parallel institutions (the Doclean Academy of Sciences and Arts,5 and the Montenegrin Orthodox Church6 ) and started referring to the Montenegrin language.7 These shifts have stirred resentment in part of the Montenegrin population. For example, the 2003 census noted that the number of people who declared themselves as Serbs increased (from 9.3% in 1991 to 32% in 2003), while the number of those who declared themselves as Montenegrins decreased (from 61.9% in 1991 to 43.2% in 2003). Yet, in the second referendum (2006), the majority of Montenegrin voters (55.5%) opted in favour of restoring independence. The data from the latest census in Montenegro (2011) remain indicative: 45% of citizens declared themselves to be Montenegrins, while 28.7 per cent regarded themselves as Serbs. In the same census, 42.8% declared their native language as Serbian, while 36.9% declared it to be Montenegrin.8 These figures suggest a strong division in the Orthodox Christian majority in Montenegro, which is reflected in every segment of society—from politics to culture. Although Russia supported Montenegro’s independence in 2006 and was the largest investor in the early post-referendum years, relations between the two countries have soured since Montenegro supported the EU decision to impose economic sanctions on Russia (2014). After Montenegro received a formal invitation in 2015 to join NATO, relations with Russia were further damaged. At the time, opinion polls conducted by the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM) showed a sharp division within the Montenegrin population as regards the nation’s integration into NATO.9 Montenegro officially became a NATO member in June 2017. Since 2010, Montenegro has had a candidate status in the EU accession process. The European Commission has identified Montenegro as possessing the highest levels of preparation among negotiating states. The commission has opened all its 33 chapters with Montenegro. In comparison, Serbia has opened only 18 chapters (out of 34). According to all opinion polls, in recent years, support for Montenegro’s accession to the European Union has been very high (usually above 60%), and there is no noticeable division among citizens in this respect.

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The Making and Breaking of the Old Chapel Mount Lov´cen is an inseparable element of the symbolic, cultural, and political legacy of Petar II Petrovi´c Njegoš. As a Montenegrin ruler and bishop (vladika), he built a chapel in 1845 (or in 1846) on this mountain, which he dedicated to his predecessor Bishop Petar I Petrovi´c Njegoš.10 In October 1851, Petar II Petrovi´c Njegoš passed away. His adjutant Milorad Medakovi´c recorded his deathbed request: ‘I want you to bury me in that church on Lov´cen. […] This is my last wish’ (Durkovi´c– Jakši´c, 1971, p. 47). This request can also be found in a letter written by the priest Vuk Popovi´c (from Kotor) to Vuk Karadži´c, in which he relates Njegoš’s request: ‘I also recommend and surrender you the testament: when I die, you should bury me on Lov´cen near the new church’ (Mijovi´c, 1992, p. 55). Njegoš’s wish was fulfilled in August 1855, when he was finally buried in the chapel at Lov´cen. During the First World War and the conflict between the Kingdom of Montenegro and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the latter’s artillery damaged the chapel at Lov´cen in 1916. On that occasion, Njegoš’s remains were exhumed on the orders of the occupying authorities. As regards the chapel’s condition after having been damaged by AustroHungarian shells, various contemporary records and testimonies are still the subject of great debate. Did the Austro-Hungarian artillery only partially damage the chapel, or was the damage more extensive? Could the original chapel have been preserved and reconstructed, or was the construction of a new one necessary? For the remainder of this chapter, I will explore the implications of Pavle Mijovi´c’s research on this topic. Mijovi´c (1914–1996) is commonly regarded as the pre-eminent scholar on the subject of Montenegro’s cultural heritage. His conclusions have heavily influenced Montenegro’s official cultural policy, especially in the post-Yugoslav period. Thus, for example, the Montenegrin Ministry of Culture has financed the reissuing of Mijovi´c’s prominent books, such as Notorious Legacy (Ozloglašeno nasljed-e); while Matica crnogorska (cultural institution funded by the government) regularly publishes scientific articles and organizes conferences about his life and work. According to the testimony of Jelena Lazarevi´c in 1920, the chapel on Mount Lov´cen was almost completely ruined at the end of that year: If I had not been on Lov´cen, I would not have believed that this was a form of pantheon or a monument worthy of Njegoš’s genius. What I saw

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there was a nearly destroyed cave. Inside, the altar had been crushed and the stones were scattered around […] A part of the roof of the church is still there, above which a cross was raised, and above it a lightning rod. [...] We examined the church, actually its ruins, then we stopped in front of the scattered stones and gazed upon the empty grave. (Lazarevi´ceva, 1921, p. 24)11

Lazarevi´c also wrote a letter to the Ministry of Religion of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in which she states: The tomb on Lov´cen is demolished and no project can be submitted for its repair. We think that […] a loan for building a [new?] monument should be provided, and a date for the transfer of his remains should be determined. (Durkovi´c-Jakši´c, 1971, p. 134)

Pavle Mijovi´c published a volume entitled Njegoševe tužne armonije, in which he included a photograph of the damaged chapel (Fig. 11.1), which was taken by Nikolai Krasnov (the architect behind its replacement) in September 1923. In it, one can see a seemingly intact chapel (from its northern side), with a hole ‘roughly a metre wide’ in the upper part between the door and the east window. However, his photo is unusually opaque, so it does not offer a sufficient view of the condition of the rest of the chapel. Mijovi´c did not publish the other photographs from the Krasnov archive, in which one can see that the front (southern) side of the chapel has been completely destroyed (Fig. 11.2). On the other hand, the deacon Ivan Kalud-erovi´c, a member of the commission that visited Lov´cen in August 1916, reported in the newspaper Crna Gora that the official record regarding the condition of the chapel and of Njegoš’s grave in 1916 states that the commission ‘found the church and the grave in complete order’. However, Kalud-erovi´c commented emotively that ‘there was no Serb; there was not a single Montenegrin soul that was not shaken by the sad news: that the black–yellow barbarism would destroy [author’s emphasis] the Lov´cen chapel and that the bones of the vladika would be removed…’ (Kalud-erovi´c, 1921, p. 1). Dr. Lazar Tomanovi´c gave another account and stated: ‘We found the church open, and there was nothing left of the grave’ (Durkovi´c-Jakši´c, 1971, p. 109). Does this mean that the church was not destroyed, but only damaged? A third witness, Živko Dragovi´c, also left a very stirring exposition in the literary magazine Srpski književni glasnik, but did not explicitly describe the condition

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Fig. 11.1 Njegoš Chapel, from the north side (Photo by Nikolai Krasnov, 1923. Reproduced with permission of the Archive of Yugoslavia)

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Fig. 11.2 The Njegoš Chapel, from the south side (Photo by Nikolai Krasnov, 1923. Reproduced with permission of the Archive of Yugoslavia)

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of the chapel: ‘the grave remained open. Storms were flaring over Jezerski vrh [the peak on which the chapel is situated], and thunderstorms were ruining the church over Njegoš’s empty grave’ (Dragovi´c, 1925, p. 522). From Dragovi´c’s testimony, we can conclude that the original chapel was not completely destroyed. However, in Nikolai Krasnov’s photographs from 1923, it seems that the lightning rod had been destroyed, and therefore we can query whether the previously spoiled chapel had been further damaged by lightning storms. A report for the Ðuro Pejovi´c parish from October 1921 states: ‘The chapel is in a bad condition; and if it remains in this condition during the winter […] it will fall apart’ (Durkovi´c-Jakši´c, 1971, p. 154). In August 1925, the Ministry of Religion decided that the chapel should be repaired (Vuksan, 1926, p. 14). The funding for the restoration was to be provided by the personal funds of King Alexander Karad-ord-evi´c. However, the original chapel was not repaired, its remains were rather demolished, and in September 1925, a new chapel (with a similar form and dimensions) was built at the same location. It was designed by the aforementioned Russian architect Nikolai Krasnov. The restoration of the old chapel proposed by the metropolitan Gavrilo Doži´c was not carried out.

Erecting the New Chapel: Suturing Njegoˇs into Serbia According to Pavle Mijovi´c, the new chapel was wider and slightly larger, made of. blocks – from non-Lov´cen quarries and 280 white slabs from the island of Braˇc for the chapel’s floor. The new construction was quite different from its predecessor. Completed with a lofty cupola, the new chapel was completed in the Russian pseudo-classical style, imported into Montenegro by the Russian emigrants Krasnov, Smirnov and Lukomsky. (Mijovi´c, 1992, pp. 110, 111)

Although part of the original chapel’s Lov´cen stone building material was recycled into the new structure, Mijovi´c’s description skilfully ignores its incorporation. The new ktitor’s (founder’s plaque) reads:

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I, Alexander I King of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes […] the leader and beginner of the liberation of Serbia; […] the son of King Petar I, the Great Liberator and the Unifier of our people and the princess Zorka Petrovi´c-Njegoš; renewed this holy temple on Lov´cen, near Cetinje, which has been erected and chosen for his eternal house, by our famous ancestor Petar Petrovi´c-Njegoš, Bishop and Ruler of Montenegro […] which was destroyed in 1916, during the war of liberation and unification. (Vuksan, 1926, pp. 16, 17)

With this inscription it is evident that King Alexander wanted to monopolize the legacy of Petar II Petrovi´c-Njegoš so as to emphasize the Karad-ord-evi´c dynasty’s ancestry, and to present the new chapel as his own endowment. At the same time, he downplayed the fact that the previous chapel was Njegoš’s endowment, dedicated to Sveti Petar Cetinjski. Pavle Mijovi´c further claims that the citizens of Cetinje protested against the erection of the new chapel. However, it turns out that the citizens of Cetinje previously protested against the delay of the transfer of Njegoš’s bodily remains, which had been postponed for years, rather than the erection of a new church (Mijovi´c, 1992, pp. 104, 108) Although King Alexander was greeted in Cetinje, in much more reserved and colder manner than in other places in Montenegro (Stojadinovi´c, 1963, p. 212) and although ‘excessive police precautions’ were taken, in that sense (Mili´cevi´c, 1925, p. 3), there was no mention of any protests or incidents. According to the Ministry of Religion’s Archive of Yugoslavia (Džakovi´c, 1926, pp. 3–11), the protests were over who received an invitation to the inauguration ceremony and luncheon. This issue led to a confrontation between Metropolitan Doži´c and the president of the Cetinje municipality Mr. Miloševi´c. On this occasion, Milutin Tomi´c, a member of parliament, wrote to the Minister of Religion, Miloš Trifunovi´c, and accused the Montenegrin metropolitan Gavrilo Doži´c (who later became the Serbian Patriarch) of advocating ‘Montenegrinism’, stating ‘He is a committed separatist’! (Tomi´c, 1926, p. 2). Other contemporary periodicals do not mention any protests by the citizens of Cetinje in relation to the construction of a new chapel. However, locals would not have regarded the stone from Braˇc and Venˇcac as ‘overpowering’ the Montenegrin stone from Lov´cen’s ‘ethnic’ quarry. One might assume that, had anyone recognized the political (or hegemonic) purpose of new chapel, it would have been the members of the Montenegrin Party (MP),12 which had representatives in the parliament

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of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. However, analysis of the assembly stenographs reveals that the MP did not oppose the construction of the chapel. On the contrary, they designated the postponement of the transfer of Njegoš’s bones a ‘national shame’ (Vujovi´c, 1981, p. 270). King Alexander was even greeted, during the inauguration ceremony, by prominent representatives of this party. Only two representatives of the MP, Dr Sekula Drljevi´c and Mihailo Ivanovi´c, abstained from attending the ceremony, because of their strong anti-dynastic political stances. Yet, a text published in the party’s newspaper Crnogorac, before the ceremony, insisted that the transfer of Njegoš’s bodily remains should be carried out ‘only by those who fought for Montenegro, and not by those who attacked and blamed the ruling house of Petrovi´c’ (Vujovi´c, 1981, p. 270). However, neither Drljevi´c nor Ivanovi´c spoke negatively in public about the chapel. Although their contributions to the National Assembly were extremely critical of the government and the Karad-ord-evi´c dynasty, they said nothing about the chapel. Based on this analysis, it appears that Mijovi´c engaged in a retrospective construction of history to claim that the citizens of Cetinje rebelled against the construction of the new chapel. Specifically, using a conceptual framework developed in the late-twentieth century, he passed sentence on events from the start of the century. Skinner labels the retrospective construction of history the ‘mythology of prolepsis’. He asserts that: confusions arise most readily, of course, when the historian is more interested – as he may legitimately be – in the retrospective significance of a given historical work or action than in its meaning for the agent himself […] The characteristic, in short, of the mythology of prolepsis is the conflation of the necessary asymmetry between the significance an observer may justifiably claim to find in a given statement or other action, and the meaning of that action itself. (Skinner, 1969, pp. 22, 23)

Historians have engaged in this practice of loading particular categorical or conceptual frameworks onto earlier or later historical phases for ideological and nationalistic purposes. The symbolic importance of Njegoš and Lov´cen was reflected in the proposal for the state emblem of the People’s Republic of Montenegro, established after the formation of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. The Constitutional Assembly (31 December 1946) adopted the painter Milo Milunovi´c’s design centred on a stylized representation

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of Lov´cen capped with a chapel. This raises the following question: if Montenegrins had been aware of the ‘anti-Montenegrin and hegemonic dimension of the chapel’, would the Montenegrin communists have put that very same chapel at the centre of the new Montenegrin (socialist) state emblem? This is particularly pertinent when one acknowledges that it was these communists who were the first to affirm a (constitutionally) Montenegrin national identity. Nevertheless, in 1951, the government of the People’s Republic of Montenegro made the decision to demolish the small church (chapel) at Lov´cen, with the aim of secularizing and desacralizing Njegoš the bishop and stressing instead his role as a ruler and poet. Thus, the Yugoslav ambassador to the United States, Vladimir Popovi´c, on behalf of the Montenegrin government, approached the famous sculptor Ivan Meštrovi´c and asked him to design its replacement (Šistek, 2012, p. 123). However, after Meštrovi´c’s untimely death in 1962, plans for the construction of the mausoleum were temporarily suspended. The Czech historian František Šistek notes that: at the turn of the 1960s and in the 1970s, an expert debate between the supporters of the construction of the mausoleum and the supporters of the preservation of the existing chapel, turned into a significant social conflict […] a dispute over the ethnic identity of Montenegrins […] which signalled the polarization of the majority of the Montenegrin population […] Njegoš’s grave on Lov´cen began to be perceived as the key symbol of Montenegrin national identity, as well as an answer to the question of whether the Montenegrins are an independent and equal South Slavic nation or a regional branch of the Serbian nation. (Šistek, 2012, pp. 125,126)

During this period, some Yugoslav communists, including Vladimir Dedijer, Vidoje Žarkovi´c, etc., for the first time put forth the interpretation that the new chapel was a symbol of the destruction of Montenegrin independence. The construction of the mausoleum was opposed by the Orthodox Church in Montenegro (the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral), and by well-known Montenegrin and Yugoslav artists and writers such as: Mihailo Lali´c, Petar Lubarda, Milo Milunovi´c, Ivo Andri´c, Miroslav Krleža, and Meša Selimovi´c. Nevertheless, the mausoleum was completed and opened in July 1974 (Fig. 11.3), while the remains of the previously demolished chapel were relocated to Ivanova Korita (near Cetinje). On the road to the new Mausoleum of

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Fig. 11.3 Njegoš Mausoleum (Reproduced with permission of National Museum of Montenegro)

Njegoš, at Jezerski vrh, a tunnel was installed with over 460 stairs. At the entrance to the mausoleum, two caryatids that represent Montenegrin women were erected. Inside the mausoleum, a sculpture of Njegoš, weighing 26 tonnes was installed. Below it lies a crypt into which Njegoš’s remains were reinterred. On the north side of the monument there is a guvno,13 with a view of Njegoš’s eponymous village—Njeguši and the Bay of Kotor. However, even after the construction of the new mausoleum, the Montenegrin emblem was not changed, the new chapel retained it until the very end of socialist Montenegro. It follows that in the period between 1925 and 1975 the preconditions for a rough-handed and permanent ethnicization of Njegoš were set. This first occurred through the attempt of King Alexander to incorporate Njegoš into his dynastic milieu and the tradition of the Kingdom of Serbia; but it also happened through the communist authorities’ attempt to remove the religious, ecclesiastic component of Njegoš’s personality by

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demolishing the chapel. These events only served to cement the ethnopolitical dichotomy in Montenegro, whose greatest victim has been Njegoš himself. This ethnopolitical dichotomy dates back to 1918 and the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia). Montenegrin society then split into two political and military factions—Greens and Whites. The Greens advocated the equal unification of Montenegro and Serbia into a common state, which implied the equality of the two dynasties. The Whites advocated de jure unconditional unification, or the de facto affiliation of Montenegro with Serbia and the dethronement of the Petrovi´c–Njegoš Montenegrin dynasty in favour of the Serbian Karad-ord-evi´c dynasty. Although the national ideology of the Greens was actually Pan-Serbian, albeit highlighting Montenegrin peculiarities (‘We are Serbs, but we are not Serbians’!), this political division began to acquire ethnonational overtones. This shift began as a struggle to obtain better recognition for Montenegro within the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (and later Yugoslavia) and later developed into calls for independence. This political cleavage began to (re-)emerge in its modern form in 1997 (after the split within the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists). It intensified in 2001, after the fall of Slobodan Miloševi´c, marking the ethnonational ‘division’ between Montenegrins and Montenegrin Serbs. As Ba´ca states: ‘Put more simply, even though the split between Montenegrins and Serbs had begun as political/ideological (rather than ethnic), by 2006 the main ethnopolitical cleavage in Montenegro was (re)articulated in an unusual formula: Montenegrins plus ethnic minorities minus “political Serbs”’ (Ba´ca, 2018, p. 130).

The Post-Yugoslav Ethnicization and Nationalization of Njegoˇs As the secession of Slovenia and Croatia from the Socialist Yugoslavia became imminent, a proposal to demolish the new mausoleum, or to return the remains of the chapel to Lov´cen, was aired by the late Montenegrin Metropolitan Amfilohije. In December 1990, he stated in the newspaper Pobjeda that: ‘Lov´cen should be what it was before […] the church of Sveti Petar Cetinjski must be returned to its place. […] The roof must be returned to Montenegro’ (Mijovi´c, 1992, p. 127). His subsequent public statements echoed these sentiments. For him, the new mausoleum was a ‘dungeon’, a ‘pagan and polygonal monster’,

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a ‘pharaonic zindan (underground gaol)’, and a ‘Nazi-fascist-socialistrealist vision of Ivan Meštrovi´c’ (Amfilohije: Utamniˇcili Njegoša na Lov´cenu, 2013; Amfilohije: Njegoš poˇciva u paganskoj tamnici, 2017). On the other hand, the metropolitan suggested that the former Yugoslav King Alexander should ‘remain listed in gold letters in the history of Montenegro and Serbia, and for the Serbian people in general, as a restorer of the Church of Sveti Petar Cetinjski on Lov´cen’. However, the metropolitan ignored the fact (or is not aware) that the idea of demolishing the church on Lov´cen and constructing a mausoleum was actually King Alexander Karad-ord-evi´c’s initiative, as he invited Ivan Meštrovi´c to design the Njegoš mausoleum (Fig. 11.4). Although the

Fig. 11.4 Proposal for the Njegoš Mausoleum by Ivan Meštrovi´c, as commissioned by King Alexander Karad-ord-evi´c (Source Nova Evropa, 1925)

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former metropolitan, Gavrilo Doži´c, strongly opposed the construction of Meštrovi´c’s design, the main reason why it was not carried out was due to the lack of financial resources. Namely, Meštrovi´c’s project was supposed ˇ c, 1974, p. 15). The king opted to cost 12 million Yugoslav dinars (Caki´ instead for a project that cost approximately 500, 000 dinars (Mijovi´c, 1992, p. 110). Magazine Nova Evropa, which was the first to publish Meštrovi´c’s design in 1925, states: ‘Thus, the artist’s idea will remain for now, and perhaps forever, on paper’ (Nova Evropa, 1925, p. 21). It is important to point out the fact that Ivan Meštrovi´c was a chief sculptor and architect of the major projects of the Karad-ord-evi´c dynasty in the 1920s and 1930s, such as: The Victor (Belgrade, 1928), Monument to Gratitude to France (Belgrade, 1930) and the Monument to the Unknown Hero (Belgrade, 1938). The question is, what would the position of the Montenegrin Metropolitan Amfilohije be if the mausoleum had been constructed under the supervision of King Alexander? The sacral fetishization and ecclesiastical (re)appropriation of Njegoš by the Orthodox Church in Montenegro and its metropolitan is reflected in the canonization of Njegoš in 2013 (with the honorary epithet: Lov´cen’s Visionary of Secrets). The idea to canonize Njegoš was initially raised immediately after his death. The priest Vuk Popovi´c from Kotor wrote about the intention of Njegoš’s family ‘to transfer his remains there, after the third year, and to build a house so the people can stand there. So, it is certain that we will have at Lov´cen in a few years the monastery and a saint’! (Mijovi´c, 1992, p. 62). The late Montenegrin metropolitan Mitrofan Ban also implicitly referred to Njegoš’s holiness. When commenting on the exhumation of Njegoš’s bones in 1916, he asked: ‘Who can guarantee to us that the Austrians will not enter the bones of some Škaljar, [a resident of the village of Škaljari in the Bay of Kotor] instead of the holy bones [author’s emphasis] of Njegoš’? (Kalud-erovi´c, 1921, p. 1). Pavle Mijovi´c, writing on the cultural heritage of Montenegro, criticized the Metropolitan Amfilohije’s call for the restoration of the chapel. He notes: ‘Those who have come from our Montenegrin or Yugoslav periphery […] they want to […] participate in the demolition of the mausoleum, which has a monumental scale […] not to mention the walls of the mausoleum which are 1.30 metres wide, 10.50 metres tall, which are decorated on the outside with Lov´cen stone and inside with a dark granite from Jablanica’ (Mijovi´c, 1992, p. 113). Here, Mijovi´c himself falls into the nationalist trap. While he criticized the use of ‘white slabs

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from Braˇc for the chapels’s floor’, as foreign, non-authentic and nonMontenegrin (Braˇc is an island in Croatia), he simultaneously lauded the use of ‘stone and granite from Jablanica’ in the mausoleum, despite the fact that Jablanica is located in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Other Montenegrin academics highlight the fact that the cross and the sarcophagus of the new chapel were made of stone from Venˇcac (a mountain in Serbia). For them, its use demonstrates ‘the victory of Serbian hegemony and its militarism and clericalism’ (Republika, 2005). These scholars imply that the chapel has anti-Montenegrin political ambitions, based on the geographical origin of its construction materials. In turn, this enables them to ascribe a new nationalistic (counter)narrative to the edifice. It should be noted that the cross and sarcophagus from Venˇcac were made by the ‘Venˇcac-Orašac’ firm owned by Jovan Miloševi´c, whom the state accorded a monopoly for similar commissions across the Kingdom of Serbs, Croat and Slovenes (Durkovi´c-Jakši´c, 1971, p. 237). However, the new chapel’s fresco of Jesus Christ is located above depictions of the four Montenegrin14 saints: St. (Jovan) Vladimir, St. Vasilije Ostroški, St. Petar Cetinjski, and St. Stefan Piperski, by the painter Uroš Predi´c (Vuksan, 1926, p. 17). In 1966, Pavle Mijovi´c personally opposed the demolition of the chapel, and the installation of the mausoleum. The following statement exemplifies Mijovi´c’s later adoption of the nationalist narrative: ‘As a rule, for the appropriation of this [Montenegrin] heritage, unificators15 always find their people among us, as they have found them in Raška’s faction, which enabled Nemanja16 to occupy Vojislavljevi´c’s17 Duklja’ (Mijovi´c, 1992, p. 119). Here, Mijovi´c is drawing on the nationalist construction and myth of Montenegro’s ‘thousand years of statehood’, which suggests an anti-Montenegrin conspiracy that dates back to the twelfth century.18 He goes on to try and redefine Njegoš’s Serbdom19 as being Montenegrin: Njegoš, with the example of Obili´c,20 heroizes Serbs and Montenegrins [...] Njegoš’s ideological and life devotion to medieval Serbdom is bothered by the fact that Serbdom in his time is not as it was in the time of Dušan’s Empire, while his poetical vision suggests that it [medieval Serbdom] is the only salvation. He believes in it firmly in his mind and shapes it into an ideology that should pass through all those who are called to fight for the ‘honorary cross and freedom of gold’. (Mijovi´c, 1992, p. 120)

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Here, Mijovi´c (in the spirit of precursorism) is loading Njegoš’s nineteenth century retroactively onto ‘medieval Serbdom’; as if Serb national consciousness existed in the Middle Ages. In this quoted passage, Mijovi´c ignores that this very type of Serbhood arose in Njegoš’s time, and that Njegoš became one of its biggest propagators. Of course, Njegoš’s Serbdom has no direct connection with later Serbian nationalism, and was in fact much closer to something we can call Serbocentric Yugoslavism. Therefore, he fails to position Njegoš (and his predecessors) ‘in light of that original context’ (Uskokovi´c, 2015, p. 466). Additionally, Boris Buden claims that: for example, they [post-Yugoslav nationalists] directly connect the Emperor Dušan, or […] the Croatian kings, with the social relations of the post-industrial epoch, neoliberal capitalism, globalization, post-communist transition, etc. Not only do these characters belong to the past, they have become predominantly products of imagination, with people referring to them […] as their contemporaries. (Jovi´cevi´c, 2017)

A different theory has been put forth by the Croatian publicist Darko Hudelist in the Serbian weekly magazine Nedeljnik. Drawing on a statement by Ivan Meštrovi´c’s son, he suggests that the main purpose of raising the mausoleum on Lov´cen in 1974 was to assist the permanent separation of Serbs and Montenegrins (Hudelist, 2018, p. 28). However, given that King Alexander previously asked Meštrovi´c to design similar mausoleum, would he—the ‘unifier’ of Serbia and Montenegro—have had this ambition? Mate Meštrovi´c, Ivan’s son, asserted that his father, through the mausoleum, had wanted to raise the national awareness of the Montenegrins. Yet, Ivan Meštrovi´c’s intimate desires and intentions were not related to the wishes of the Montenegrin government. Ivan Meštrovi´c did not finance the construction of a mausoleum, nor did he decide whether or not it would be constructed. The goal of the People’s Republic of Montenegro’s government was to secularize and desacralize the personality of Njegoš. This is indicated in a letter by the prime minister of Montenegro, Blažo Jovanovi´c, to Ivan Meštrovi´c, in which he wrote: ‘We imagine a monument of Njegoš in the form of a splendid and magnificent mausoleum […] We consider that with such a monument, as a great artistic work to the glory of Njegoš, the motives from Njegoš’s and his folk epic suits, and not the ecclesial-religious motives

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[should be the focus]’ (Šistek, 2012, p. 124). But one must ask, might it ever be possible to detach Njegoš’s writing from its sacral dimension(s)? Hudelist furthermore claims that the occupying authorities planned to build a monument dedicated to Emperor Franz Joseph I at Jezerski vrh instead of the Njegoš chapel, a claim that does not correspond with contemporary records. The newspaper from the period of occupation, Cetinjske novine (19 October 1916), did announce that the new authorities had made a plan to build a monument dedicated to the Austro-Hungarian Emperor by the Croatian artist Marko Rašica, which looked out on ‘the Adriatic coast and against the Italian coast’.21 The proposed monument was to: ‘represent the genius of victory and glory. Regarding its high altitude, the genius is shown in a type of tunic with a helmet. Having arrived at the highest peak [author’s emphasis], of Lov´cen he strove to eternity, putting his hands around the sword. At the top of the sword is the F.J.I monogram (the symbol of our emperor) […]’. Therefore, one can deduce that this monument was supposed to be built on the highest peak of Lov´cen i.e. at Štirovnik (1749 metres), and not on the Jezerski vrh (1657 metres) where the Njegoš chapel was located. In support of this claim, it is worth mentioning the auction to assist the ‘fundamental restoration’ of the chapel at Lov´cen, which was proclaimed by the Austro-Hungarian occupying authorities at the end of August 1918. The Montenegrin metropolitan Mitrofan Ban protested against this, by asking the occupying authorities to inform him in detail of what kind of reconstruction was planned. In the civil commissariat’s reply, it is said that the district command issued an order ‘to make repairs to the church on Jezerski vrh, without having the intention of making any changes, but only of returning it to its original state’ (Doži´c, 1925, p. 53). In addition, Austro-Hungary was a signatory of the two Hague Conventions from 1899 and 1907, and official circles in Vienna were aware that the demolition of the chapel as a cultural monument was decisively forbidden by these conventions (Mijovi´c, 1992, p. 102). From this, it is possible to assume that the chapel was partially damaged at that time, and that its repair was possible. However, due to the rapid capitulation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, this never happened. Hudelist further asserts that there was a ‘dissatisfaction’ present among some of the Montenegrin population regarding the construction of a new chapel on Lov´cen in 1925: ‘but somebody was not satisfied […] Montenegrins – pro-independence Montenegrins, Montenegrin nationalists, the Greens and people close to them who wanted an independent

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state of Montenegro […] For them, this new monument on Lov´cen was not a monument to the Montenegrin ruler Njegoš, but a monument to King Alexander and Monarchist Yugoslavia’ (Hudelist, 2018, p. 37). To justify this thesis, Hudelist refers to the views of Savi´c Markovi´c Štedimlija, who advocated the construction of a mausoleum and the demolition of the chapel in his article in the Croatian newspaper Vjesnik (in 1970). However, Štedimlija cannot be related to the Greens as he never belonged to this movement. During the period of the division into Greens and Whites in Montenegro, he belonged to the latter group. Only after 1930 and his relocation to Zagreb did he change his ideas and become a propagator of the idea of Montenegrins as the ‘Red Croats’, the southern variant of the Croatian nation, which then differentiated and became a separate Montenegrin nation (Štedimlija, 1991, p. 42). It follows from above that the Montenegrin Greens did not perceive the new chapel as ‘a symbol of Serbian hegemony’. As Vladimir Dulovi´c states: ‘Analysis of the documents on Njegoš’s celebration [during this period] shows that the chapel is popular and ranked as one of the important places linked with Njegoš’s life. It was not once referred to as “Alexander’s chapel” or at all in any negative context, the most fascinating thing being that its religious component is completely overshadowed by its national importance’ (Dulovi´c, 2013, p. 5). Likewise, a large number of people who had opposed the demolition of the chapel in the 1970s did not attribute their opposition to a kind of symbolic demolition of Montenegrin Serbdom. Rather, they opposed the demolition of a religious object, or the religious dimension of Njegoš and his legacy.

Conclusion: Njegoˇs Beyond the Greater Serbian and Montenegrin Nationalist Narratives Post-Yugoslav initiatives for the restoration of the memorial chapel within the mausoleum complex are problematic for several reasons. Any hybrid upgrade of the mausoleum as a cultural monument would violate the complex’s authenticity and artistic value. The mausoleum is not an ‘ethnonational monster’. It neither affirms Montenegrin national identity nor derogates the Serbdom of Montenegro. In my opinion, it is a high-quality artistic creation that emphasizes the political and cultural dimension of Njegoš’s personality. The demolition of the chapel during the 1970s violated the religious component of Njegoš’s legacy. However, it is not

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possible to turn back time to correct errors from 1925 and 1974. Any further demolition would also be unacceptable and would merely result in the further politicization of Montenegro’s cultural heritage. Therefore, a multi-layered approach should be taken to Njegoš’s complex legacy, which should be treated cautiously. Not because he is a ‘Montenegrin’ or ‘Serbian’ poet. Any nationalist appropriation and disintegration of Njegoš into a Montenegrin nationalist or Greater Serbian advocate is only an attempt to move Njegoš to the cultural periphery of Europe. On the other hand, if one accepts the challenge of grappling with contestations over his legacy that will lead to one’s disengagement from that cultural periphery.

Notes 1. I use the term ‘Montenegrin culture’ conditionally, as I treat any concept of a national culture as a political and ideological construct. I agree here with Gellner’s claim that the national cultures that nationalists ‘claim to defend and revive’ are often their own inventions (Gellner, 2008, p. 55). 2. During Njegoš’s life, Lov´cen was the largest mountain within the area of what was known as Old Montenegro. The mountain lost its geographical pre-eminence after the territorial expansion of Montenegro, under his two successors, but it gained a cult significance with the building of the chapel dedicated to him at one of its peaks. 3. Some put forward the contested claim that the name Montenegro was used earlier (Nikˇcevi´c, 2002, p. 77–78). The name Zeta was first mentioned in the eleventh century and it initially represented a geographical area in the medieval state of Duklja, led by the Vojislavljevi´c dynasty. Official Montenegrin historiography insists on continuity between contemporary Montenegro and medieval Duklja (which existed from the ninth or tenth to the twelfth century). In the twelfth century, Duklja came under the rule of Nemanji´c and became one of the administrative provinces of their state. 4. See, for example: Kratka istorija Crne Gore (1835), Gligor Stanojevi´c (1978), Petar II Petrovi´c Njegoš (1984), Jevto M. Milovi´c (1987), etc. 5. The Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts is the most prominent academic institution in Montenegro, founded in 1973. It is the only internationally recognized national academy. The Doclean Academy of Sciences and Arts is a non-governmental organization that has acted as a parallel academy for Montenegrin scholars since 1999. 6. The Orthodox Church in Montenegro is the only canonical Orthodox Church in the country. It has been a part of the Serbian Orthodox

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7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

Church since 1920. Before this period, it was de facto independent and autocephalous under the Metropolitanate of Cetinje. A religious organization called the Montenegrin Orthodox Church has also operated in Montenegro since 1993. However, it is not canonical, and it is officially unrecognized in Orthodoxy. There are four languages that have been standardized on the basis of the Serbo-Croatian language: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. These are four standardised variants of one polycentric standard language that are mutually intelligible. Montenegro adopted a new constitution in 2007, in which Article 13 states that the official language in Montenegro is Montenegrin, and that the Cyrillic and Latin script are equal. It also states that the Serbian, Bosnian, Albanian, and Croatian languages are also in official use. National minorities in Montenegro make up approximately 20% of the population. They include Bosniaks (8.6%), Albanians (4.9%), Muslims (3.3%), Romani (1%), and Croats (0.9%). https://www.cedem.me/political-public-opinion/summary/33-politicalpublic-opinion/1699-citizens-attitudes-on-nato-integrations-july-2015 (accessed on 04/05/2019). Better known as Sveti Petar Cetinjski (1748–1830). All quotations from Serbo-Croatian language (Bosnian-CroatianMontenegrin-Serbian) have been translated by the author of this chapter, except quotes from Gorski vijenac (originally translated by V.D. Mihailovich). The Montenegrin Party—often referred to as the Federalist —was founded in 1923. It was the legal face of the political struggle for the equality of Montenegro within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Guvno: a small horizontal round plateau, usually fenced with stone; a threshing floor, a place of gathering. A symbol of community in Montenegro. In the Orthodox Churches, according to the model of religious nationalism, some of the saints are ethnicized or nationalized. Although phyletism is officially proclaimed as heresy, it remains distinctly present in Orthodox Churches all over the world. Those advocating the unification of Montenegro and Serbia. Stefan Nemanja (1113–1199)—Grand Prince of Rascia (Raška), and founder of the Nemanji´c dynasty. The Vojislavljevi´c dynasty—the rulers of Doclea (Duklja), during the eleventh and twelfth century. Duklja was a medieval South Slavic state that existed from the ninth (or tenth) to the twelfth century, in the area of present-day southeast Montenegro and north Albania. Raška existed during eleventh and twelfth century, in what is presently southwest Serbia, northeast Montenegro

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and east Bosnia and Herzegovina. Different romanticized and nationalist narratives define Duklja and Raška as state predecessors of modern Montenegro and Serbia respectively. In this sense, the aforementioned narratives attempt to explain the contemporary Serbian–Montenegrin identity dispute, by implying continuity with the conflict between Raška and Duklja at the end of the twelfth century. 19. Serbdom or Serbhood was the term that Njegoš used to describe political areas in the Balkans with religious, ethnic and legal relics from the former Serbian Empire: e.g. ‘Oh my dark day! Oh my black destiny! Oh my wretched Serbdom snuffed out!’ (Petrovi´c Njegoš, 1847). Over time, this term has been redefined, and today it refers to a modern Serbian national and political space, and it is usually synonymous with Serbian nationalism. 20. Miloš Obili´c is a prominent figure in Serbian epic poetry who is mostly associated with the Battle of Kosovo (1389), as an alleged participant and as the assassin of Sultan Murad I. In Njegoš’s poetry he was represented as the symbol and model of heroism: ‘O you, Miloš, who does not envy you? You are the victim of your noble feelings, you, a mighty military genius, a terrific thunder that shatters crowns!’ (Petrovi´c Njegoš, 1847). 21. In that period, the Kingdom of Italy had already joined the Entente Powers.

References Amfilohije: Utamniˇcili Njegoša na Lov´cenu. (2013, 11 November). Veˇcernje novosti. http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/planeta.300.html:463078-AmfilohijeUtamnicili-Njegosa-na-Lovcenu Amfilohije: Njegoš poˇciva u paganskoj tamnici (2017, 21 August). Vijesti. https://www.vijesti.me/vijesti/drustvo/67933/amfilohije-njegos-poc iva-u-paganskoj-tamnici Ba´ca, B. (2018). Forging civic bonds ‘from below’. Montenegrin activist youth between ethnonational disidentification and political subjectivation. In T. Trošt & D. Mandi´c (Eds.), Changing youth values in Southeast Europe: Beyond ethnicity (pp. 127–147). Routledge. ˇ c, K. (1974). Njegošev spomenik. Matica. Caki´ Doži´c, G. (1925). Oko prenosa Njegoševih kostiju. Letopis M. Srpske, 306(1), 51–53. Dragovi´c, Ž. (1925). Raskopavanje Njegoševa groba i prenos njegovih kostiju sa Lov´cena na Cetinje. Srpski književni glasnik, XVI (7), 519–522. Dulovi´c, V. (2013). Mount Lov´cen and Njegoš between “Alexander’s Chapel” and “Meštrovi´c’s Mausoleum”: Symbolic orientation and re-orientation in Montenegro in the socialist era. In U. Brunnbauer & H. Grandits (Eds.), The

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ambiguous nation. Case studies from Southeastern Europe in the 20th century (pp. 233–260). Verlag München. Durkovi´c-Jakši´c, L. (1971). Njegoš i Lov´cen. Pravoslavlje. Džakovi´c, M. (1926, March 3), Zapisnik sjednice Glavnog odbora za prenos Njegoševih kosti [Record from the session of the Main Board for the transfer of Njegoš’s bones], Arhiv Jugoslavije, Beograd (br. fonda: 69, br. fasc.:145/224). Gellner, E. (2008). Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Hanžekovi´c-Gabrijel, M. (1938). Junak pera: Književna studija o Mi´cunu M. Pavi´cevi´cu. Zagreb: [publisher not identified]. Hudelist, D. (2018, May 3). Bitka za Lov´cen: Meštrovi´c i Njegoš. Nedeljnik, 28–37. Jovi´cevi´c, D. (2016). Kome smeta Njegošev dan? Radio Slobodna Evropa. https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/njegosev-dan-praznik-u-vrtlogu-pol itike/28203918.html Jovi´cevi´c, D. (2017, 8 June). Kad cˇ ujem kultura, stavim šlem na glavu [Interview with Boris Buden]. NIN . http://www.nin.co.rs/pages/article.php?id= 109938 Kalud-erovi´c, I. (1921, 14 June). Prenos Njegoševih kostiju s Lov´cena na Cetinje. Crna Gora, 43, 1–2. Kratka istorija Crne Gore. (1835). Grlica. Kalendar crnogorski. Mitropolitska knjigopeˇcatnja. Cetinje (pp. 55–87). Lazarevi´ceva, J. (1921). Crna Gora, beleške s puta: u septembru i oktobru 1920. Odbor kraljice Jelene. Mijovi´c, P. (1992). Njegoševe tužne armonije. PEN Centar. Mili´cevi´c, Ž. (1925). Cetinje u išˇcekivanju Kralja. Politika. 6251 / September 19 (p. 3) Milovi´c, J. (1987). Petar I Petrovi´c Njegoš: 1780–1820. Istorijski institut SR Crne Gore. Muminovi´c, R. (1995). Fenomenologija srpske genocidne svijesti. MNVS. Neubauer, J. (2004). Introduction. In M. Cornis-Pope & J. Neubauer (Eds.), History of the literary cultures of East-Central Europe: Types and stereotypes (pp. 11–18). John Benjamins Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xix. 62neu Nikˇcevi´c, V.D. (2002). Miscellance slavorum, dokumenti o Slovenima: pars prima. Državni arhiv Crne Gore. ´ (1925, January 1). Njegoševa Nova Evropa (author identified by the initial C). grobnica na Lov´cenu (rad Ivana Meštrovi´ca) Nova Evropa. XI (1). (pp. 21) Petrovi´c-Njegoš, P. (1847). Gorski vijenac. Mekhitarist Monastery of Vienna. (V.D. Mihailovich, Trans.). https://www.rastko.rs/knjizevnost/njegos/nje gos-mountain_wreath.html

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Petrovi´c-Njegoš, P. (1984). Izabrana pisma, Prosveta. Republika. (2005, 22 June). Amfilohijev pohod na Rumiju. ProNen. http:// www.pcnen.com/portal/2005/06/22/amfilohijev-pohod-na-rumiju/ Šistek, F. (2012). Njegoševa grobnica na Lov´cenu. In: Matica (Autumn - Winter Edition). Cetinje, Podgorica: Matica crnogorska. Skinner, Q. (1969). Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas. History and Theory, 8(1), 3–53. https://doi.org/10.2307/2504188 Spahi´c, M. (1994). Komšije. Press Centar Armije Republike Bosne i Hercegovine. Smith, A. D. (1996). Culture, community and territory: The politics of ethnicity and nationalism. Ethnicity and International Relations, 72(3), 445–458. https://doi.org/10.2307/2625550 Smith, A. D. (2003). Chosen peoples: Sacred sources of national identity. Oxford University Press. Stanojevi´c, G. (1978). Mitropolit Vasilije Petrovi´c i njegovo doba, 1740–1766. Narodna knjiga, Istorijski institut u Beogradu. Štedimlija, S. M. (1991). Crvena Hrvatska. Laus: Split. Stojadinovi´c, M. (1963). Ni rat ni pakt. Buenos Aires. Tomi´c, M. (1926, February 28), Gospodinu Milošu Trifunovi´cu, Ministru Vera [Letter to the Minister of Religion Miloš Trifunovi´c], Arhiv Jugoslavije, Beograd (br. fonda: 69, br. fasc.:145/224). Uskokovi´c, V. (2015). Identitet Crne Gore u prvoj olovini osamnaestog vijeka. In D. K. Vukˇcevi´c (Ed.), O identitetu (pp. 465–519). CANU. Vuksan, D. (1926). Spomenica Petra II Petrovi´ca-Njegoša – vladike Rada. Izdanje Glavnog odbora za prenos Njegoševih kosti (1925, 1 January).

CHAPTER 12

The Post-Yugoslav Kaleidoscope: Curatorial Tactics in the (Ethno) Nationalization of Second World War Memorial Museums in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina Nataša Jagdhuhn

Introduction During the military conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia in the 1990s, the ‘battles for memory’ led to the destruction of Yugoslav heritage, including museums dedicated to the Second World War and the ‘people’s revolution’, locally known as People’s Liberation Struggle museums (Muzeji narodnooslobodilaˇcke borbe—hereinafter, NOB museums). These museums were looted, bombed, and sometimes even used as military barracks during the dissolution of Socialist Yugoslavia. Documentary recordings of demolished NOB memorial sites circulated

N. Jagdhuhn (B) Independent Researcher, Berlin, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. B˘adescu et al. (eds.), Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2_12

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through the regional and international media in the 1990s and served as symbols of the war against a ‘common’ memory. At the end of the military conflicts, many of these museums stood in ruins. Some were restored in the mid-2000s, others continue to deteriorate. In the post-Yugoslav transition period, these museums became embodiments of ‘conflict-time’ (Baillie, 2013). In and through them, the history of the Second World War continues to be observed through the lens of the more recent wars of the 1990s. A complete list of Second World War memorial museums, exhibitions, and memorial houses that were looted, demolished, abandoned, or destroyed after the dissolution of Yugoslavia—either regionally or in the individual successor states—has yet to be produced. However, one must ask: why were the NOB museums military targets? The answer to this question demands, above all, a review of the role and function of memorial museums dedicated to the Second World War in Yugoslavia.

People’s Liberation Struggle Museums in Yugoslavia (1945–1990) The purpose of the NOB museums was to collect, research, exhibit, and communicate the history of significant events, institutions, and personalities related to the Second World War in Yugoslavia. They were tasked with ‘promoting and commemorating the leading role of the Yugoslav Communist Party, Yugoslav patriotism, “Brotherhood and Unity”, the moral and ethical message of the revolution and People’s ˇ Liberation War, and the military experience of the NOB’ (Cejvan, 1972, pp. 11–15). While the museums were often opened by the federal government, memorial houses were much more local affairs. They were mostly established by local community authorities, the local Federation of Veterans’ Associations of the People’s Liberation War (Savez udruženja boraca Narodnooslobodilaˇckog rata—SUBNOR)1 branches, or both. The SUBNOR branches ‘competed’ amongst themselves when it came to celebrating the historical achievements during the liberation struggle of a particular village, city, or region.2 Very often, memorial houses and exhibitions were run under the auspices of larger museums (mostly by NOB museums) in their respective areas. The distinction between the memorial houses and memorial exhibitions, in terms of their definitions as types of museum, was never consistent across the former Yugoslavia. While used by local actors as a means to garner Party favour or to suppress alternative memory narratives,

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the memorial houses officially served a primarily pedagogical function. They sprang up ‘spontaneously’, sometimes without state planning or control, and an accurate inventory of their number on the territory of Yugoslavia has never been made. Therefore, by cross-referencing information from different sources,3 the map below (Fig. 12.1) aims to illustrate the number of the NOB museums, exhibitions, and memorial houses, as well as their territorial distribution in Yugoslavia. The process of the musealization of the Second World War in Yugoslavia can be divided into three categories:

Fig. 12.1 Second World War memorial museums and houses in Yugoslavia (© 2018 Nataša Jagdhuhn)

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1. The musealization of the revolution (military–political sessions), which primarily occurred during the 1950s and 1960s. 2. The musealization of the armed struggle (i.e. of places related to the uprisings and battles), predominantly from the 1960s to the late 1980s. 3. The musealization of suffering (the locations of concentration camps and execution sites), for the most part from the mid-1970s until the late 1980s. In 1952, the Associations of Veterans of the People’s Liberation War formed the Committee for the Maintenance and Marking of Historical Sites from the People’s Liberation War (Odbor za obeležavanje i ured-ivanje istorijskih mesta Narodnooslobodilaˇckog rata). First, a decision was made that museums were ‘to be founded on the paths taken to the successful logistical manoeuvres of the Supreme Headquarters, the Central Committee, and Tito, thus [focusing on] the military and political leadership of the People’s Liberation movement in wartime’ (Karge, 2014, p. 102). These early museums were built and modelled according to Marxist-Leninist museology. Their displays were dominated by archival documents, photographs, and handwritten notes, and they also included key Party citations and slogans on the walls. Exhibition spaces often centred on the figures of those designated as ‘people’s heroes’. Tito’s busts and citations were an essential part of NOB museums’ exhibition content. In the 1960s and 1970s, the accent placed on the Yugoslav culture of memory shifted from the glorification of the revolution to representation of the grand narrative of the ‘heroic struggle of the Partisans’. The most significant memorial parks, which contained memorial museums, were constructed during this period: ‘the Battle of Sutjeska’, ‘the Kozara Offensive’, ‘the Battle of Kadinjaˇca’, etc. The spirit of ‘socialist modernism’—the visual marker of the 1948 Tito–Stalin split and a symbol of the Yugoslav specific ‘non-aligned’ position—was spatialized through monumental sculptures in these parks and exhibition complexes. Art installations squeezed out the archival material that had been the typical choice of the museums in the 1950s and 1960s. Oriented towards the future rather than the past, these new museums—through their artistic representations of massive civilian losses—expressed a socialist modernist idiom that alluded to a freedom on which no price could be put. The masterpieces of Petar Lubarda, Krsto Hegeduši´c, Nandor Glid,

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and many other prominent artists, were intentionally created for this type of ‘Yugoslav memorial museum’. Places of civilian suffering also became sites of memorial museums. The Memorial Museum ‘21 October’, commemorates the execution of 2794 mostly local men in retaliation for attacks on German soldiers, and is a good example of how such sites became stages. Here, the most important artists of that time gave recitals, put on dances, and performed dramatic works about the tragedy during the commemoration events. The Memorial Museum ‘21 October’ in the Kragujevac Memorial Park still owns an enviable collection of art works. Such works were used as a means to represent ‘unspeakable’ crimes against humanity. The Memorial Museum ‘Lipa Remembers’ served, on the other hand, as a hybrid space for remembrance and education. The museum contained an exhibition that told the story of the massacre in which the entire population of the village perished on 30 April 1944. An ambient installation (by Igor Emili and Darko Turato) was made from burnt-roof elements, large-scale photographs of children playing, and a series of copies of German helmets. The ground floor of the museum also served as a nursery school. In the ‘musealization of suffering’, explicit images of the victims were avoided. The goal of the Memorial Museum ‘12 February’ in Niš, on the site of the ‘Red Cross’ concentration camp, was to preserve the original appearance of the camp as much as possible. Even the messages carved into the walls were restored with great attention and exhibited behind protective glass. Likewise, in the Memorial Museum of the Banjica concentration camp, the central installation consisted of artefacts that belonged to the camp complex, which attempted to retain the camp’s ‘authenticity’ through a reconstruction of a camp room. In the mid-1980s, when (new forms of) nationalism (re)surfaced in museums on the locations of concentration camps, documentary and photographic material that documented suffering threatened to squeeze out art installations. The last Yugoslav exhibition in the Jasenovac Memorial Site Memorial Museum (hereinafter, Jasenovac Memorial Museum), which opened in 1988, included more archival photos and video material in order to show in detail the fate of the inmates in the concentration camp. These images (photographs and films) of the suffering acted as a substitute for the missing authentic objects and camp buildings that had been demolished. With this exhibition, the ‘forensic aesthetic’ began to dominate. It was introduced through photographic material

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that displayed dismembered bodies and the bodily remains of adults and children. These exhibits reportedly led school children to faint. The Memorial Complex ‘Sremski Front’, also opened in 1988. Yet, it continued to use art as its primary mode of dissemination in order to bypass the historical controversies that raged over the site. The contestation is centred around claims made by some Serbian historians that the Srem Front was a place where young recruits, mostly from Serbia and without military training, were sent, which contributed to the high death toll (see Vajagi´c, 2017, pp. 415–434). The Srem Front Museum’s centrepiece was an ambient installation that I will refer to in this text as the ‘white room’ as it does not have an official title. This art installation was created by Jovan Soldatovi´c, with light and sound effects by Vera Crvenˇcanin and Vuk Kulenovi´c to illustrate the conflict on the Srem Front. It was comprised of thin white figures hunched in fear and horror, and included depictions of the wounded and dead lying on the ground, coupled with the white contours of skeletal animals, various weapons, guns, scattered clothing, branches, etc. Everything was white—a colour that defies the darkness of suffering and pain, while symbolizing purity and chastity. Just like Soldatovi´c’s installation, the official state-sanctioned memory in Yugoslavia viewed everything as a binary: anti-fascism versus fascism. All the non-Partisan military formations that participated in the Second World Waron Yugoslav territory were marked as collaborators or traitors, without any further elaboration or clarification. Thus, the ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy was curated with Partisans representing the heroes, while the others were denoted as the enemy. The fratricidal aspects of the civil war were pushed into the background. The text on a wall panel in the Memorial House of the Battle of Kadinjaˇca explicitly demonstrates this discourse: On the Yugoslav battlefield the fascist occupiers engaged over half a million soldiers and national traitors against the Partisan units. There were fierce battles across the entire Yugoslav territory. In the offensive from July to October 1941, through the actions of the Partisan units, extensive parts of the territory were liberated. Through the connection of the liberated areas of north-west and western Serbia the united liberated territory known as the Republic of Užice was created. On this territory (19,000 km2 ) approximately one million people lived.

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Victims were offered special veneration. Objects that they had with them when they died were often exhibited to provoke empathy. Yet, rather than emphasizing their individuality, victims were generally presented as part of a group: as ‘fallen fighters’ (which meant Partisan combatants) or as the ‘victims of the fascist terror’. This division of the victims into two groups signifies, as Karge (2014, p. 36) claims, a type of ‘ranking’ of the casualties of war according to the meaningfulness of their death. This hierarchy in the memory of the victims is reflected in how famous Partisans were given their own museum exhibits comprised of their portraits and quotations, and even their own memorial houses (e.g. Sava Kovaˇcevi´c, Rade Konˇcar, Ivan Goran Kovaˇci´c, etc.), while the ‘victims of the fascist terror’ were reduced to their inclusion in a victim tally. The only sign of their individual identities was their names, which were engraved in the memorial space itself (The Battle of Sutjeska Memorial House, Museum ‘Kozara in the NOB’, The Museum ‘21 October’, etc.). Although the individualization of victims was not a trend in Europe at the time, in the case of Yugoslavia, this portrayal of victims was strategic. It enabled curators to avoid the attribution of national or ethnic identities to both perpetrators and victims. In the interest of the promotion of socialist Yugoslavism as an identity-forming policy, both the Chetnik resistance at the beginning of the war and the Partisan crimes at the end of the war had to stay outside the scope of the Second World War musealization. NOB museums were employed as a powerful ‘social technology’ in the building of the ‘New Socialist Man’. They were established to aid the development of socialist culture and to forge a Yugoslav ‘landscape of belonging’. Using the Soviet commemoration matrix as a model, NOB museums organized not only exhibitions but also youth meetings, summer schools, Partisan marches, Partisan hikes, etc.4 Thus, the role of the Second World War memorial museums in Yugoslavia was not only educational but also sought to raise the new generation in the spirit of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’. As symbols of Socialist Yugoslavia, NOB museums were targeted by all three of the warring sides in the early 1990s. In the late 1990s, these spaces awaited resignification. By the 2000s, war tensions in the former Yugoslavia began to quell, and the revitalization of these museums began. Yet, the number of memorial museums dedicated to the Second World War that remain in or have been restored to working order after the fall of Yugoslavia has fallen dramatically.

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Second World War Memorial Museums in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina After the Dissolution of Yugoslavia (1991–2020) According to the law named the Yugoslav Agreement on Succession Issues, which was signed by all the successor states of Yugoslavia in 2001, the museums that emerged from the former Yugoslavia (as well as the archives and other forms of cultural property) belong to the successor states on whose territory they are now located. This agreement commits successor states to care for the legacy of the SFRY(Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). However, in practice, each individual state independently selected only those memorial institutions that they regarded to be of national importance—thereby relegating others to the ‘scrap heap of history’. Figure 12.2 shows that, across the region, most of the memorial houses and exhibitions dedicated to ‘national heroes’ have been shut down. That museums are political institutions par excellence is especially clear in the time of transition—during which radical political U-turns can be observed. For this reason, before the ‘post-Yugoslav museal turn’ is analysed through the lens of curatorial strategies, it is necessary, for the sake of providing an understanding of the broader context, to illustrate the political vectors that conditioned the respective post-war curatorial decisions made in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.5 Croatia In Croatia, the fate of the former NOB museums has been mixed. Only three memorial houses have been renovated: the Memorial House of Ivan Goran Kovaˇci´c (2003), the Memorial House ‘Battle on Batina’ (2001), and the Birth house of Josip Broz Tito in Kumrovec. Furthermore, only two memorial houses survived the 1990s as ‘time-capsules’: the Memorial House ‘NOB in Punat’ and the Memorial Collection ‘NOP [People’s Liberation Movement] on the island of Iž’. None of the listed memorial houses employ curators and they can only be visited through prior appointment. An extreme example of not just the destruction but also the brutal ‘reckoning with history’ is the Glina Memorial House (full name: The Memorial House of the Victims of Ustasha Terrorin Glina) that commemorated 1,564 Serbs from Glina and the surrounding area who were killed by the Ustasha in the spring and summer of 1941. It was

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Fig. 12.2 Second World War memorial museums in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina after the dissolution of Yugoslavia (© 2018 Nataša Jagdhuhn)

damaged during the war in Croatia and was (in 1995) renamed Hrvatski Dom/Croatian House.6 The war (1991–1995) and the Tud-man era (1990–1999) were characterized by the systematic destruction and demolition of Second World War monuments that had been built in and for Socialist Yugoslavia. Fieldwork research by anti-fascist organizations in Croatia and academics, which focuses on damage to NOB monuments in Croatia, shows that

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one-third of the monuments dedicated to the NOB and revolution were either destroyed or demolished (Horvatinˇci´c, 2017, p. 272; Hrženjak, 2002). Tud-man’s political agenda of ‘national reconciliation’ led to using a rhetoric that minimized the importance of the victims of ‘Jasenovac’, and on the other hand stirred up sympathy for the victims of ‘Bleiburg’ (where soldiers and civilians mostly associated with the Axis powers were killed by the Partisans in May 1945). The whirlwind of war passed through numerous museums and memorial houses in Croatia,7 but the Jasenovac Memorial Museum was the sole example where ‘the battle for heritage’ took place within its doors. This museum acquired the status of ‘orphan heritage’8 when the new Croatian borders were recognized. It is of exceptional importance to Serbs, and yet the war meant that it suddenly found itself across the border from what became the Republika Srpska, one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to the Jasenovac Memorial Museum (now under the control of Croatia), at the very beginning of the war in Croatia (25 September 1991), the collections of the Jasenovac Memorial Museum were stolen by the Yugoslav People’s Army and Serbian paramilitary units from the Krajina, a Serb-controlled territory in the new, independent Croatia from 1991–1995. First, the collection was taken to Bosanska Dubica, and later to the Archive of the Republika Srpska in Banja Luka, then to Belgrade.9 On 27 November 2000, the museum collections were returned to the Jasenovac Memorial Museum through the Archive of the Republika Srpska due to mediation by the Stabilization Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Matauši´c, 2011, p. 66). The memorial zone, after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, is divided by the state border into two memorial zones that present two different historical interpretations: the memorial zone of Donja Gradina in the Republika Srpska (hereinafter, RS) and the memorial zone of Jasenovac in Croatia (see Mazzucchelli this volume). The Jasenovac Memorial Museum was renovated (2006) while Croatia was preparing its entry into the European Union. Radoni´c (2010, pp. 53– 62) interprets the new exhibition through the prism of the ‘Europeanization’ of memory. She claims that there is a particular matrix of curatorial tactics through which the Holocaust museums create a common identity for the European Union, which rests on the Holocaust as its negative foundational myth. This museological trend is foremost reflected in the individualization of the victims and in terms of a museographic visual language: black walls, narrow dark rooms, neon lighting, etc.

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In the case of the Jasenovac Memorial Museum, the new exhibition, unlike its Yugoslav predecessor, reveals the ethnicity of individual victims. However, controversy remains regarding the number of victims (see Mazzucchelli this volume). The new, permanent exhibition shows a list of dates, names, and details for 83,145 victims—this is the minimum number of victims that could be identified. The greatest flaw in the ‘globalization’ of the Jasenovac Memorial Museum is that it obscures the specificity of the historical context of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska—NDH) and its concentration camps. Firstly, the Jasenovac Memorial Museum’s rebranding as a Holocaust museum eclipses the persecution of Serbs at the site (Radoni´c, 2010, p. 56). In turn, the exhibits fail to expose and therefore openly condemn the perpetrators who ran the camp (with the exception of the display of a few tools used to murder prisoners). The only other restored NOB museum in Croatia is the Memorial Museum ‘Lipa remembers’, which is presently known as the Memorial Centre Lipa Remembers (now a subsidiary of the Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral in Rijeka). It was renovated in 2015 as a ‘bottom-up’ initiative of the Alliance of Anti-Fascists of Liburnia, the local board of Lipa village and the municipality of Matulji. This is the only museum space dedicated to the Second World War within all the successor states of Yugoslavia, which deliberately and consciously chose a self-reflexive method for revitalizing their museum display. The memorial centre—as a meta-museum—performs its history through turning its Yugoslav-era display into a ‘social artefact’. It serves as a warning that the museum itself is a place of history-making. The Memorial Room ‘Museum of the Victory’, in Šibenik, is the only newly opened exhibition space dedicated to the history of the Second World War. Having noted that in post-indepedence Croatia, there was not a single independent Second World War memorial museum dedicated to the mass participation of the Croatian population in the Partisan movement, the Association of Anti-Fascist Fighters and the Anti-Fascists of Šibenik founded a memorial room symbolically called ‘The Museum of Victory and Liberation of Dalmatia’ in 2016. This memorial space, with collections acquired from private collectors, has not acquired official museum status from the state authorities. In response to its lack of recognition, its founders dubbed it a ‘museum’.

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Croatia’s largest political party, the Croatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica—HDZ), have used memory politics, and continue to use10 rhetoric that tries to envision the communist and fascist periods in Croatia as ‘equal’ totalitarian regimes. In practice, these synchronous pasts have not been merged. Annually at the Bleiburg commemorations, one can see various symbols of the Ustasha being brandished by the participants (see Pavlakovi´c & Paukovi´c, 2018 for a further discussion). On the other hand, several thousand people each year ritually visit the birthplace of president Josip Broz Tito (in Kumrovec’s memorial zone) on the date of his birthday (25 May),11 singing Partisan songs, and carrying Yugoslav flags and other symbols of the SFRY (see Frykman this volume). Meanwhile, the commemorations at Jasenovac regularly serve as an arena for the expression of a contested memory. From 2016–2019, this manifested itself in the site not being able to facilitate a united commemoration (i.e. the official Croatian state’s commemoration of the victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp was boycotted by representatives of the Serbian and Jewish communities). Serbia The fact that the war of the early 1990s did not directly play out in Serbia meant that there were no cases of significant museums being destroyed or looted by military units. The exceptions are two museums located close to the Croatian border: the Museum of the Srem Front, which was damaged in 1992–1993 and renovated in 1994 (Suboti´c et al., 2004, p. 8), and the Museum of the Battle of Batina, where Serbian military units were stationed during the war, which was renovated in 2017. The number of independent memorial museums dedicated to the Second World War in Serbia have remained unchanged since the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Of the memorial houses, only the ‘Partisan base’ in ˇ Vrbas and the Memorial House ‘Janko Cmelik’ in Stara Pazova remain active. In addition, two memorial houses that did not exist during the Yugoslav era have opened: the Museum of the Victims of the Raid in ˇ Curug (in 2013) and the Memorial House at Ravna Gora (in 2000). Both these museums serve pedagogical functions but do not employ professional curators. They are not under state protection. The museum in ˇ Curug was initiated by the ‘Racija 1942’ (‘Raid 1942’) Association and the Memorial House at Ravna Gora was founded and is funded by the Serbian Renewal Movement Party (Srpski pokret obnove).

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Slobodan Miloševi´c’s rule (1989–2000) was characterized by the neglect of the Second World War memorial museums in Serbia. Wartime expenses and international sanctions meant that museum finances were reduced to the point that they only covered the employees’ salaries. On the other hand, this period witnessed the establishment of two new institutions of memory in Belgrade: the Museum of Genocide Victims (1992) and the Museum of the History of Yugoslavia (1996).12 The very founding of these two museums indicates most vividly the ambivalence of Miloševi´c’s memory politics. On the one hand, the Museum of Genocide Victims embodies the narrative of the suffering of Serbs in the twentieth century, and on the other hand, the founding of the Museum of the History of Yugoslavia represents a desire to portray Serbia as the (only) inheritor of both Yugoslav state projects. After the fall of Miloševi´c’s regime, many institutions remained closed to visitors (e.g. the 7 July 1941 Museum, the entire memorial complex in Stolice,13 and the Museum of the Pioneer and Youth Movements of Yugoslavia). When the democratic opposition gained power in 2000, the museum narrative of the Second World War was ‘updated’ with the addition of exhibits dedicated to the contested ‘second resistance movement’—the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army led by Draža Mihailovi´c. This phenomenon can be seen in the 21 October Museum (2003), the Museum of the Banjica Concentration Camp (2001) and the 12 February Memorial Museum in Niš (2013). Yet at these institutions, the question of the nature of the relationship between the Chetnik and Partisan movements has been left untouched. The only museum department whose display was completely renewed and reconceptualized (2016) was the memorial for the Užice Republic. The new exhibition shows the role of the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland (Jugoslovenska vojska u otadžbini, hereinafter JVuO) in the liberation of Užice, in parallel to the Partisan detachments. On the other hand, the Museum of the Battle of Batina, the only museum that was completely renovated (2017) did not adopt the dominant Serbian revisionist historiography that seeks to equalize the Partisan and Chetnik resistance movements. In Serbia, the U-turn in memory politics after the dissolution of Yugoslavia is manifest in three crucial changes. First, during the wartime years of the 1990s, a reading of the Second World War, in which Serbia and Serbs were portrayed as martyrs, was employed. This open foregrounding of the ethnic identity of the victims, prevalent in the political speeches held at annual commemorations, contrasted with Yugoslav-era

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practices at these museums. This shift was also furthered through the introduction of Serbian Orthodox religious services and the building of churches or chapels within the perimeters of the previously secular ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ memorial parks (e.g. Šumarice and the Srem Front). Second, after the Miloševi´c era, the memorial museums began to emphasize the participation of the JVuO in the armed resistance to the occupying forces during the Second World War. It must be stressed that all the aforementioned institutions that incorporated the Chetnik movement into their museum ‘stories’ did so in an exclusively affirmative way. Not one single museal institution historiographically expounded the role of the JVuO through the entire Second World War in a more systematic way so as to explore both the history of its clashes with the occupiers at the very start of the war—the year 1941 is the focus of all the abovementioned museum displays—but also all the forms of its collaboration with the occupiers for the remainder of the war. Finally, the post-dissolution museal transition is characterized by the erasure of the spaces of memory that were dedicated to the ‘people’s ˇ cak revolution’. For example, the Museum of Revolutionary Youth in Caˇ ‘was sold to a local businessman’ (Markovi´c, 2006), the Museum of the Party’s Illegal Printing Offices and the 4 July Museum (Department of the City Museum of Belgrade) were (via a court decision) returned to the family that owned the houses before the Second World War. In spite of the fact that these buildings were listed national monuments, ‘these common goods were returned to private ownership’ (Vasiljevi´c, 2012, p. 42). Bosnia and Herzegovina In Bosnia and Herzegovina, all the independent memorial museums of the Second World War have been restored, but not a single memorial house (see Fig. 12.2). The reconceptualization of these museums depend on which post-Dayton entity they find themselves in: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina or the Republika Srpska). In the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ‘the old [Yugoslav] official narrative of the Second World Warhas been accepted in a biased way, depending on how important it was for the promotion of the continuity of Bosnian-Herzegovinian statehood’ (Karaˇci´c, 2012, p. 24).

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The Museum of the First Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (Antifašistiˇcko vije´ce narodnog oslobod-enja Jugoslavije – AVNOJ) Session (in Biha´c) is representative of this ambivalent relationship towards the period of history to which it is dedicated. On the seventy-fifth anniversary of the first AVNOJ session, organized at the museum and financed by the Biha´c town council, the president of the League of Anti-Fascists of South-East Europe, Hakija Abdi´c, claimed: No matter how important AVNOJ is to the creation of the modern state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is just as important for the creation of all states that were created after the break-up of former Yugoslavia. It is precisely for this reason that AVNOJ is our shared heritage and a vision of our future. We have no right to renounce AVNOJ for by doing so we would disavow our state today.14

The Museum of the Second AVNOJ Session (in Jajce) has been reincarnated as ‘a place of integration under the umbrella of transnational identity that today means a common origin of citizens of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia’ (Jagdhuhn, 2016, p. 117). The historical exhibition spaces of both AVNOJ museums were reconstructed in such a way as to simulate the type of museum displays that were customary in Yugoslavia. During the Yugoslav era, the Museums of the First and Second AVNOJ Sessions were used as places for fostering patriotism, and as stages for speeches by high-ranking Party officials. In present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, the museum successors of the AVNOJ museums continue to be used as political platforms, primarily by the Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which envisions itself as the direct heir to the values symbolized by former NOB museums.15 On the other hand, the Memorial Museum of the First ZAVNOBIH (Zemaljsko antifašistiˇcko vije´ce narodnog oslobod-enja Bosne i Hercegovine/the State Anti-Fascist Council for the People’s Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina) Session, located in Mrkonji´c Grad (presently in Republika Srpska), has been declared a national monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Commission for the Maintenance of the National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2002)—but in spite of this, it has not been restored. The Republika Srpska authorities are not interested in its renovation as it is a (former) symbol of Bosnia and Herzegovinia— which the Republika Srpska is only reluctantly part of today. Instead,

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the leaders of Republika Srpska are in favour of commemorations at the Mrakovica Memorial Complex.16 This museum has been renovated in such a way as to shift the focus from the NOB in Kozara to the mass civilian casualties in the Bosanska Krajina region during the Second World War. During the commemorations at the Memorial Park Kozara, political representatives of Republika Srpska give fiery speeches. On such occasions, echoing practices in Serbia, the Second World War is ‘ethnicized’ by constructing a martyrdom-based narrative through the drawing of historical parallels between the suffering of Serbs in the Second World War and in the war of the 1990s. The narrative of the NDH’s killing of Serbs has been canonized as a form of negative foundation myth for Republika Srpska. The commemorations for the victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp, which are organized by the memorial zone of Donja Gradina (where the hyperbolized figure of 700,000 victims is still displayed) also highlights this discourse (see Mazzucchelli this volume). Speeches by the political leaders of Republika Srpska and representatives of the Serbian government are delivered at these events, which are poignantly marked by the absence of political representatives of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Dayton division of Bosnia and Herzegovina brought peace in 1995. Over the following decades, the synchronous pasts on display in the Second World War museums and other mediums (such as school textbooks, memorials, and popular media) are portrayed in ways that have allowed the inter-ethnic conflict to continue. The fact that the two entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina have yet to reach an agreement over the date of a public holiday on which they can jointly celebrate the statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina is indicative of the ongoing memory battles.

Kaleidoscopic Revisions Today, across the former Yugoslavia, the majority of Second World War memorial museums contain (parts of) exhibitions that were conceived in the Yugoslav period. At the same time, most now incorporate contested ethnonational historico-visual discourses. By examining the overlapping curatorial tactics, through which the Second World War memorial museums have been redefined in all three successor states, it is possible to detect five dominant clusters of curatorial interventions: ‘decommunization’, the rebranding and commodification of museums, the establishing of historical continuity between the Second World War and the wars of

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the 1990s, the introduction of religious rituals, and the deliberate act of leaving exhibitions from the Yugoslav period intact. a. Decommunization With nationalism replacing supranationalism as the binding ideology of the respective successor states, there was a perceived need to ‘cleanse’ museums of explicit references to the ideology of the Yugoslav Communist Party (Komunistiˇcka partija Jugoslavije— KPJ). This can be observed in the renovations of the permanent exhibition of the 21 October Museum in Serbia, and the Jasenovac Memorial Museum in Croatia. In both cases, lists of victims’ names were introduced, which resulted in a need to recount the official number of losses established in the Yugoslav era: this led to their radical reduction. After the Second World War the authorities drew their legitimacy, in part, from narratives of mass resistance and great suffering, thus they tended to exaggerate the number of victims. The SFRY also used strategies to Yugoslavize the victims by downplaying their ethnic identities (Ristovi´c, 2013, p. 140) and ‘balancing’ the number of victims belonging to different ethnic groups. The controversial revision in victim numbers during the late 1980s was a key part of the ‘memory wars’ that preceded the disintegration of the SFRY and lingered in its aftermath, as successor states sought to secure new ethnonational narratives. One of the main postulates of ‘post-1989 museology’, or ‘democratic museology’, is the individualization of victims.17 At the Memorial Centre Lipa Remembers, for example, the curatorial team aspired ‘to free the exhibition from the communist-era idea of the “victim”’.18 This liberation from Yugoslav-era museology is also apparent in the straightforward erasure of war slogans used by KPJ leaders, which had been a part of Second World War exhibitions in Yugoslavia. In the case of the permanent exhibition Foˇca in the NOB, for example, the curator stated that the Second World War exhibition has essentially remained the same, only that ‘We got rid of the slogans and glorifications of the Yugoslav Communist Party [in 1998]’.19 Similar statements have been made by other curators involved in the transformation of permanent exhibitions dedicated to the Second World War. However, there are two exceptions. In the

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Museum of the Second AVNOJ Session, one can still see the political slogans (Long live the People’s Liberation Front of all the Peoples of Yugoslavia! / Long live the Red Army! / Salutations to our great allies, the Soviet Union, England, and America! / Long live Comrade Stalin, etc.) because the AVNOJ-stage is replicated, based on historical photographs of the Second AVNOJ Session. The Museum of the Battle for the Wounded on Neretva was redesigned using an exhibition plan from 1970. In this way, Yugoslav museological methodology itself is musealized. The aim was to show the Partisans’ struggle against the German, Ustasha, and Chetnik units as it was done during the Yugoslav era. The museum director during the guided tours emphasized that this approach was pursued as a response to historical revisionism regarding the Ustasha and Chetnik forces in contemporary Croatia and Serbia, and as a response to the demolition of NOB memorial sites during and after the wars of the 1990s. b. Rebranding The rebranding and commercialization of the former NOB museums are another de-/re-ideologization tactic employed. Under pressure from the local authorities, several former NOB museums have been turned into regional museums (zaviˇcajni muzeji): the Museum of the ‘NOB period in Foˇca’ (today the Museum of Old Herzegovina), the Museum of the Battle for the Wounded on Neretva and the Museum of the First AVNOJ Session (renamed the ‘Permanent Display of the Museum of the First AVNOJ Session’, today part of the Una-Sana Canton Museum). The municipal authorities have dissociated themselves from socialist-era heritage. This was achieved through renaming the institutions, adding ethnographic displays, or both. This change in the museums’ status is not only a form of de-ideologization but also concerns the way the history of the Second World War has been reimagined within ethnonationalist frames. These institutions have been decontextualized from an all-Yugoslav frame of reference by placing an emphasis on the particular region in which they are located. The commodification of heritage can be traced through the cultural events that Second World War memorial museums now host. For example, the Biha´c Creative Republic Session has, since 2015, gathered at the Museum of the First AVNOJ Session ‘leading regional experts from the creative and communication industries,

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including people from the business world as well’,20 while the OK Fest music festival has been held annually at the Sutjeska National Park since 2014, and the National Park Kozara has hosted the music spectacle ‘Kozara at Heart’, since 2017, etc. The foundations of the commercial events—superficially unencumbered by any politico-historical content and primarily produced for entertainment value—should also be understood as part of the global trend in museum institutions in the twenty-first century to assert themselves as part of the experience economy. c. Creating continuity Several post-dissolution renovated Second World War memorial museums have retained their Yugoslav-era Second World War exhibitions in their original form, but have also added exhibitions dedicated to the wars of the 1990s. Two of the most characteristic examples are The Museum of the Battle of the Wounded on the Neretva, at which the IV Corps of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina exhibition21 was opened on 17 November 1995, and the Museum of Old Herzegovina where the Memorial Room of Fallen Soldiers and Civilian Victims of the Defensive Patriotic War was established in 1998. In both cases, the same curatorial tactic was applied: a certain ethnic group (Bosniaks in Jablanica and Serbs in Foˇca) was represented as the victims across both wars, but also as combatants on the ‘right side’ during both the Second World War and the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995). In other words, at each museum, the dominant ethnic group of the area has attempted to appropriate the anti-fascist Yugoslav tradition, and to proclaim itself as its rightful successor through the medium of a museum exhibition. It is important to stress that, unlike the Bosnian-Herzegovinian and Croatian contexts, in Serbia, there is not a single museum exhibition dedicated to the 1991–1995 wartime period. However, there are museum displays dedicated to the 1999 NATO bombings of Serbia, though these do not place the bombings within the context of the war in Kosovo. Such displays can be seen in the Military Museum in Belgrade and as part of the permanent exhibition of the Memorial House of the Battle of Kadinjaˇca. At the latter, an exhibition entitled The Užice Region during the NATO Aggression has been presented (since 1999) in the same building adjacent to the still-intact display of the Worker’s Battalion and the Battle of

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Kadinjaˇca, which was erected during the Yugoslav period. Using the same discourse, characteristic of the Yugoslav museological matrix that was discussed at the beginning of this text, both exhibitions position Serbia as the victim of foreign aggression. d. Sanctification During the Yugoslav period, religious activities within NOB museums were strictly frowned upon. In contrast, the introduction of religious celebrations into the Second World War commemorations is a common trait of memorial museums today, especially in Serbia and the Republika Srpska (the liturgies are an integral part of the commemorations in the Šumarice Memorial Park, where a church has also been built, in the Kadinjaˇca Memorial Complex, Memorial Complex 12 February). In 2005, at the Srem Front Memorial Complex, a Serbian Christian Orthodox chapel was crammed into the ‘Alley of the Meritorious’ entrance where the names of ‘fallen fighters of the NOVJ’ (the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, Narodnooslobodilaˇcka vojska Jugoslavije), the Red Army, the Bulgarian National Army, and the Italian Brigade are listed. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the introduction of religious rituals into Second World War memorial museums is found exclusively in the Republika Srpska. In 1993, a monumental wooden cross was placed at the entrance to the Kozara Memorial Complex to mark the occasion when the Patriarch of the Serbian Christian Orthodox Church conducted a service for the fallen victims of Kozara during the Second World War. Such Orthodox services are also held during the commemorations in Donja Gradina, and in 2018, a foundation stone was put in place for the construction of a church in the Sutjeska Memorial Zone. e. Exhibition as artefact Almost all of the active and mothballed Second World War memorial museums—in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina—retain parts of, or entire exhibitions from the Yugoslav period in a ‘petrified’ state (e.g. the Museum of the Second AVNOJ Session, the Museum of Old Herzegovina, the Museum of the Battle for the Wounded on Neretva, the Memorial of the Battle of Kadinjaˇca, and many more). Due to the lack of political consensus concerning Second World War heritage in the

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‘region’, new governments are (still) bypassing former NOB museums. Consequently, some of these ‘time-capsule’22 museums and exhibitions have been shielded from change since the dissolution of Yugoslavia (cf. Frykman this volume). This means that they preserve ‘the order and knowledge formations’ (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2000) of the SFRY. The willingness not to hide the state of a museum’s Heimatlosigkeit ,23 or to preserve it as an artefact, encourages visitors to regard the museum as a medium in its own right i.e. to unmask the knowledge production behind the displays. Visitors are stimulated not (just) to study the Second World War but also to explore how this period was supposed to be remembered in Socialist Yugoslavia. As a consequence, these ‘frozen’ displays either provoke a feeling of nostalgia or, alternatively, mobilize a critical review of these institutions of memory as vehicles of socialist indoctrination. ‘We need to maintain the museum in the condition in which it was conceived in Yugoslavia, so that museologists do not build any more [ideological] museums of this type’, explained the current director of the Museum in Prijepolje in reference to the Museum of the Pioneer and Youth Movements of Yugoslavia.24 Elsewhere, gatherings and reunions that feature old Yugoslav songs and flags are still organized in Second World War-related museums by various anti-fascist associations. Such events are (strategically) perceived by the ‘regional’ media as ‘nostalgic pilgrimages’.25 Actually, what is observed is a much more complex phenomenon in which some (particularly older individuals) engage in Yugonostalgia, while others use the museum spaces as sites of a specific form of cultural protest. Such counterinitiatives consist of group visits to the museum on important dates related to key events of the Second World War. Others gather on the dates of the former public holidays of the SFRY (25 May, 29 November, etc.) from all parts of the former Yugoslavia. They dress up for the occasion in Partisan and Pioneer uniforms, and wear the various medals, badges, and other symbols of the NOB. These cultural performances appropriate Yugoslav-era heritage in the museums of the Second World War as a form of resistance ‘against current injustices on the one hand, and against condemning the past and compulsory amnesia on the other’ (Velikonja, 2017, p. 9).

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In Place of a Conclusion The relation of the state to the heritage of the Second World War, in Yugoslavia as well as in the successor states that are addressed in this text, was and remains a question of the highest national importance. The Memorial Museums of the Second World War are places in which the history of political formations of identity have left clear traces. Through the historicization of those traces, the different roles that the heritage of the Second World War have performed in Yugoslavia can be observed. These include the legitimization of the socialist government established after the war, the promotion of an anti-fascist narrative as the cohesive element of a supranational community, and the building of socialist culture. In the mid-1980s, and particularly in the first half of the 1990s (during the wars), the change in the political climate redirected the increasingly polarized interpretations of the Second World War. Historical sources were questioned for their ideological links to the KPJ, while anti-fascist rhetoric and the identities of victims were ethnicized, nationalized, or both. Ultimately, the political, social, cultural, and economic transformations that the successor states underwent turned the Yugoslav-era museums, designed as symbols of social and national equality, into notquite- ‘empty’ signifiers—but often unwanted ones. During the wars that resulted in the dissolution of Yugoslavia, inflammatory monoethnic and martyrological interpretations of the Second World War were mobilized; often using the museums themselves as stages. The conflicts in and around them ‘heated up’ the dissonance associated with them, and ultimately shaped and complicated the process of their redesign and re-narration. The transformation of Second World War memorial museums, after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, reflects the ongoing contestations around the musealization of this period. Each successor state seeks to distance itself from selected elements of the KPJ interpretation of the Second World War deeply embedded in former NOB museums, which do not fit with their respective contemporary identity narratives. Furthermore, each successor state positions their ‘own’ dominant ethnic group as both the perpetual victim, and simultaneously as the rightful armed heroes who resist(ed) and combat(ed) vilified foes. As this chapter has shown,26 most museums do not have new permanent exhibitions but rather ‘assemblages of exhibitions’ that originate

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from the selection and reorganization of the ‘waste’ of the Yugoslav-era museums. Interventions have often been minimal, and no commentary is provided about their coexistence with earlier elements. To suture the Second World War with more recent history, mandatory curatorial tours are often conducted through the exhibitions, religious rituals are carried out, and new churches are added to the memorial parks. The aesthetic and discursive codes of ‘Yugoslav museology’ are simulated in the new parts of the museum to provide a sense of continuity. The curatorial tactics used to translate the museums from supranational to ethnonational spaces of memory represent a modality of the de-Yugoslavization of the museal field.

Notes 1. The Associations of Veterans oversaw veterans’ social benefits (pensions, disability benefits, flats, health care, social welfare, education, and employment) and nurtured the ‘tradition of the NOB’ (by building monuments, marking graves, issuing commemorative medals to war heroes, listing victims, establishing museums, etc.). 2. For a definition of memorial houses see Maliˇci´c (1984, p. 57). 3. The most relevant list of museums and museum exhibitions for Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Yugoslav period, was made by Dušan Otaševi´c in his dissertation ‘Memorial Museums and Their Recent Histories’ (1988) and Zlatko Maliˇci´c in his master’s thesis ‘Collections of Recent History in Museums and Collections in Bosnia and Herzegovina’ (1984). The Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments in Belgrade, whose registers of historical sites linked to the NOB and ‘people’s revolution’, represent the most systematic lists of memorial institutions and areas in Serbia placed under the protection of the state. In 1988, the Museum Documentation Centre in Croatia conducted the most complete analysis and cataloguing of museum collections, museums, museum exhibitions, and memorial houses, whose content is linked to the workers’ movement, NOB and post-war developments on the territory of the Republic of Croatia (and they published the results in the magazine Muzeologija 26). Even though, occasionally, there were attempts to make an official list of museums established in the second Yugoslavia (in 1962, the Association of Museum Societies of Yugoslavia through its publication ‘Museums in Yugoslavia’ or in 1980, the Federal Administration for International Scientific, Educational, Cultural and Technical Cooperation, Belgrade through its publication ‘Important Cultural Institutions in Yugoslavia’) a comprehensive lexicon of museum institutions on a

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4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

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federal level was never produced. Taking all of this into account, and by consulting all the listed sources, the maps (Figs. 12.1 and 12.2) above should not be taken into account as final and complete lists of Second World War memorial exhibitions, houses, and museums in Yugoslavia. It is highly probable that in a village, hamlet, or local community somewhere, there were Second World War exhibitions and museums, which have not been listed here. Some examples are the Partisan March to Sutjeska in 1958, the ‘Moving Along the Trail of the Supreme Headquarters in the Fifth Offensive’ Partisan March in 1963, the ‘Along the Revolutionary Paths of the Party’ Partisan March in 1969, and many more. Because of the lack of sources in the literature on the museal landscape of Kosovo after the break-up of Yugoslavia (before and after the declaration of Kosovo’s independence) the territory of Kosovo is excluded from analysis, both in the part of the text that deals with the Yugoslav period and the part that deals with the post-Yugoslav context. Hrvatski Dom was the name given to the building built in 1911 as a symbol of the Croatian Peasant Cooperative, and it was demolished in 1976. On the war history of some of the memorial houses, exhibitions, and museums, see Lešaja (2012, pp. 373–381). Here I am borrowing the concept of ‘orphan heritage’ from Jon Price. See Price (2005, pp. 181–196). For more information consult the official website of the Jasenovac Memorial Site: http://www.jusp-jasenovac.hr/Default.aspx?sid=5056 (accessed on 19 October 2017); also see Matauši´c (2011, pp. 65–66). In 2017, the HDZ government established the Council for Confronting the Consequences of the Rule of Undemocratic Regimes (Vije´ce za suoˇcavanje s posljedicama vladavine nedemokratskih režima), see: https://vlada.gov.hr/UserDocsImages/Vijesti/2018/02%20velja%C4% 8Da/28%20velja%C4%8De/Dokument%20dijaloga.pdf (accessed on 5 January 2020). Tito’s birthday was actually 7 May, but it was celebrated in Yugoslavia on 25 May as Tito’s symbolic birthday, in a reference to the Raid on Drvar (the operation that was launched on 25 May 1944). In 2017, the Museum of Yugoslav History changed its name to the Museum of Yugoslavia. The memorial complex in Stolice (the Museum of Military Advising in Stolice and the Museum of Republics and Provinces), is not open to the public; all the pavilion buildings are overgrown with grass and weeds. See article (unknown author) published on the online portal Oslobod-enje, available at: Oslobod-enje online, 26 November 2017, https://www.oslobo

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16. 17. 18.

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20.

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djenje.ba/vijesti/bih/u-bihacu-obiljezena-75-godisnjica-avnoj-a (accessed on 18 May 2018). In his pre-election campaign while running for membership of the Bosnia and Herzegovina presidency in September 2014, Bakir Hadžiomerovi´c (SDP, Socijaldemokratska partija Bosne i Hercegovine/Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina) addressed his potential voters from the Museum of the Second AVNOJ Session. The first speech at the reopening of the Museum of the First AVNOJ Session, in 2013, was given by Hamdija Lipovaˇca (SDP). For more on the process of the reconceptualisation of the memorial complex at Mrakovica see Zulumovi´c and Šahovi´c (2015, pp. 218–224). The ‘re-humanization’ of the victim is particularly notable in Holocaust museums. See, for example, Young (1993, pp. 337–342). Directly paraphrased from the document ‘The museological concept of the permanent exhibition’ (Perinˇci´c, 2013, p. 12). The document is part of the museum archive of the Memorial Centre Lipa Remembers, and I was given access to it when visiting the museum in 2016. Danko Mihajlovi´c, curator of the Museum of Old Herzegovina, interview, 16 October 2015. From a comparison of the synopsis of the Foˇca in the NOB exhibition published by Kojovi´c (1978, pp. 46–131) with the current exhibition, it can be concluded that the following slogans were removed: Long live the People’s Liberation Front of all the Peoples of Yugoslavia! / Long live our heroic People’s Liberation Partisan and Volunteer Army of Yugoslavia! / Long live the heroic Red Army! / Salutations to our great allies, the Soviet Union, England, and America! For more on the events of the ‘Biha´c Creative Republic’, see the official web page of the festival http://www.kreativnarepublika.com/ (accessed on 4 January 2020). ´ In the words of Camil Cero, the author of the exhibition The IV Corps of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, this exhibition was opened on 17 November 1995. At that point, it was the only exhibition in the spaces of the Museum of the Battle for the Wounded on Neretva that had been devastated and abandoned in the war (1992–1995). The permanent exhibition was restored in 2013 and it related to the battle in the museum’s ´ title. From an interview with Camil Cero, 15 October 2015. I developed the concept of the museums as a ‘time-capsule’ in my dissertation ‘Broken Museality: Reframing World War II Heritage in the Post-Yugoslav Transition’, using this as a designation for all intact NOB museums and exhibitions that ‘swam’ unchanged into the new sociopolitical context of the Yugoslav successor states, and as such have been open to the public for almost three decades. I also spoke about this phenomenon at the conference ‘Reluctant heritage: Revisiting museums

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and memory sites in Central and Eastern Europe in a transnational perspective’, which was held in Bucharest, 4–5 November 2016. The term Heimat is a German word that could be translated as a ‘place of belonging’. Heimatlosigkeit would mean a state of broken relationship between individuals, or between an object of heritage, and its space of belonging. Paraphrased from Slavoljub Pušica’s speech at the panel discussion ‘Muzeji kao mesta (za)kljuˇca(va)nja,’ which I organized on 2 September 2016, at Šabac Library, Serbia. See, for example, the following news articles: Matijevi´c, J. (2015) ‘I 29. novembar prohujao je sa “Jugom”’, veqepnje Hovocti, 29 November, available at: http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/reportaze/aktuelno. 293.html:578892-I-29-novembar-prohujao-je-sa-Jugom (accessed on 4 January 2020); Mijatovi´c, V. (2013) ‘Dan republike – praznik koji je nadživeo državu’, veqepnje Hovocti, 29 November, available at: http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/reportaze/aktuelno.293.html: 465996-Dan-republike---praznik-koji-je-nadziveo-drzavu (accessed on 4 January 2020); Sabli´c, S. (2008) ‘Rod-endan bez slavljenika’, Politika, 29 November, available at: http://www.politika.rs/sr/clanak/65241/Pol itika/Rodendan-bez-slavljenika (accessed on 4 January 2018), etc. This article is based on a working paper for the ‘Museum Professionals in Dialogue’ XI workshop, held at the Historical Museum of Serbia, 7–9 June 2017, rewritten for the purposes of this book. The results of the research presented in this paper are partially taken from my dissertation ‘Broken Museality: Reframing World War II Heritage in the Post-Yugoslav Transition’, defended on 21 January 2020. This particularly applies to the maps (Figs. 12.1 and Fig. 12.2) that are taken from the manuscript of the unpublished PhD thesis.

References Baillie, B. (2013). Capturing facades in ‘conflict-time’: Structural violence and the reconstruction of Vukovar’s churches. Space and Polity, 13(3), 300–319. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2013.854996 ˇ Cejvan, I. (1972). Tradicija NOR i revolucije i uloga muzeja. Pamphlet. Belgrade. Horvatinˇci´c, S. (2017). Spomenici iz razdoblja socijalizma u Hrvatskoj – prijedlog tipologije (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Sveuˇcilište u Zadru, Zadar. Hrženjak, J. (Ed.). (2002). Rušenje antifašistiˇckih spomenika u Hrvatskoj 1990– 2000. Savez antifašistiˇckih boraca Hrvatske. Jagdhuhn, N. (2016). Museum (re)public. Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta, LXIV (1), 105–119. https://doi.org/10.2298/GEI1601105J

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Karaˇci´c, D. (2012). Od promoviranja zajedništva do kreiranja podjela. Politike sje´canja na partizansku borbu u Bosni i Hercegovini nakon 1990. Godine. In D. Karaˇci´c, T. Banjeglav, & N. Govedarica (Eds.), RE:VIZIJA PROŠLOSTI. Službene politike sje´canja u Bosni i Hercegovini, Hrvatskoj i Srbiji od 1990. godine (pp. 17–89). Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/ bueros/sarajevo/09702.pdf Karge, H. (2014). Se´canje u kamenu – okamenjeno se´canje? Biblioteka XX vek. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. (2000, September 29). The museum as catalyst [Keynote address] ICOM Sweden Museums 2000: Confirmation or challenge. Stockholm, Sweden. https://www.nyu.edu/classes/bkg/web/vadstena.pdf Kojovi´c, D. (1978). Muzeološka obrada i prikaz djelatnosti rukovodstva NOP-a Jugoslavije u Foˇci od 25. januara do 10. maja 1942. Godine (Unpublished master’s dissertation). Sveuˇcilište u Zagrebu, Zagreb. Lešaja, A. (2012). Knjigocid: Uništavanje knjiga u Hrvatskoj 1990-ih. Profil. Maliˇci´c, Z. (1984). Zbirke novije istorije u muzejima i zbirkama u Bosni i Hercegovini (Unpublished master’s dissertation). Sveuˇcilište u Zagrebu, Zagreb. Markovi´c, S. (2006, September). Vranje: još malo pa ništa. Revija Kolubara. http://revija.kolubara.info/sh/149/dodatak/1419/Kulturna-ba% C5%A1tina-u-turisti%C4%8Dkoj-ponudi.htm?st-text=1%22 Matauši´c, N. (2011). Jasenovac: The brief history. Jasenovac Memorial Site. Otaševi´c, D. (1988). Memorijalni muzeji najnovije istorije (Unpublished doctoral Thesis). Univerzitet Edvarda Kardelja, Ljubljana. Pavlakovi´c, V., & Paukovi´c, D. (2018). The controversial commemoration: Transnational approaches to remembering Bleiburg. Politiˇcka Misao: cˇasospis za politologiju, 55(2), 7–32. https://doi.org/10.20901/pm.55.2.01 Perinˇci´c, T. (2013). Memorijalna zbirka ‘Lipa pamti’. Muzeološki koncept stalnog postava. Pomorski i povijesni muzej Hrvatskog primorja, Rijeka. Price, J. (2005). Orphan heritage: Issues in managing the heritage of the Great War in Northern France and Belgium. Journal of Conflict Archaeology, 1(1), 181–196. https://doi.org/10.1163/157407705774929006 Radoni´c, L. (2010). Univerzalizacija holokausta na primjeru hrvatske politike prošlosti i spomen-podruˇcja Jasenovac. suvremene TEME, 3(1), 53–62. https://hrcak.srce.hr/62812 Ristovi´c, M. (2013). Kome pripada istorija Jugoslavije? Godišnjak za društvenu istoriju, 20, 133–143. http://udi.rs/godisnjak/godisnjak-za-drustvenu-ist oriju-god-xx-sveska-1-2013/ Šahovi´c, D., & Zulumovi´c, D. (2015). Changing meaning of second world war monuments in post-Dayton Bosnia Herzegovina: A case study of the Kozara monument and memorial complex. In M. L. Stig Sørensen & D. Viejo Rose (Eds.), War and cultural heritage: Biographies of place (pp. 208–224).

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Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO978110744491 1.009 ˇ Suboti´c, V., Cavaljuga, M., & Panovi´c, Z. (2004). Spomen obeležje Sremski Front. SUBNOR Srbije. Vajagi´c, P. M. (2017). Kultura se´canja – Sremski Front. Vojno delo, 3, 415–434. https://doi.org/10.5937/vojdel01703415V Vasiljevi´c, M. (2012). Potencijal ‘biografskih’ pristupa muzejskim predmetima: sluˇcaj muzeja ilegalnih partijskih štamparija u Beogradu (Unpublished master’s dissertation). Univerzitet u Beogradu, Belgrade. Velikonja, M. (2017). When times were worse, the people were better. The ideological potentials and political scope of Yugonostalgia. In M. Slavkovi´c & M. Ðorgovi´c (Eds.), Nostalgia on the move (pp. 7–13). Muzej Jugoslavije. Young, Y. E. (1993). The texture of memory: Holocaust memorials and meaning. Yale University Press.

CHAPTER 13

Locating Memorials: Transforming Partisan Monuments into Cultural Heritage Jonas Frykman

The victims commemorated by Partisan monuments in Croatia were not denoted as belonging to any specific ethnicity or nation. Instead, they were inscribed as part of the international anti-fascist movement that was both ‘domestic’ as well as imposed from abroad. Often, these monuments were adorned with the red star that reminded onlookers that these sacrifices had been made for ‘socialism the Yugoslav way’–with its promise of a future that did not include a detour around any ‘national’ past. They stand in contrast to the monuments commemorating the 1990s Croatian War of Independence that bear Christian crosses and the national coat of arms.1 During the dissolution of Socialist Yugoslavia, Partisan monuments began to represent a state and political system against which the new Croatian nation was defining itself. Consequently, many of these monuments, as Dubravka Ugreši´c (1998) has written, seemed to be spoils from a sunken ‘Atlantis’, devoid of the context that once gave them life and purpose.

J. Frykman (B) Division of Ethnology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. B˘adescu et al. (eds.), Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2_13

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But as a reaction to the nationalist surge in contemporary Croatia, some of these monuments that seemed to be slipping into oblivion have been mobilized again. Partisan monuments in Croatia are impregnated with an imposed history, and at the same time bear memories of personal and collective suffering. A decade-long path of studies took me to different parts of Croatia to study their shifting fates (Frykman, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2012; Frykman & Gilje, 2003; Frykman & Mathiesen Hjemdahl, 2011). In this chapter, I focus on three contrasting examples: Pisak in Dalmatia– ˇ where a destroyed monument was restored in 2015; Ciže in Istria–where a counter-monument was erected around the turn of the millennium; and Kumrovec in Zagorje–the birthplace of Tito where celebrations of his life still take place.2

From Politics to Heritage Between 1945 and 1990, thousands of Partisan monuments were erected commemorating the suffering, terror, and violence of the Second World War.3 At places where Partisan struggles had been fought or other historic events had taken place, monuments were erected, designed by renowned artists in a ‘socialist modernist’ style. Such monuments ‘were not only modernist, but they contained their own peculiar typologies: monumental, symbolic (fists, stars, hands, wings, flowers, and rocks), bold (sometimes structurally daring), otherworldly and fantastic’, write Kirn and Burghardt (2016). A growing interest in these memorials of the antifascist struggle has prompted renewed interest from museums, artists, architects, and scholars (cf. Inappropriate monuments n.d.). Attention from scholars is always important, but what cultural processes make such material objects matter to people and communities; how do monuments become sensitized? There is always a complex chain of affects and emotions (Frykman & Povrzanovi´c Frykman, 2016), of economic, political, and above all, local factors behind such a revival. During my fieldwork in Istria, it was the most common memorial forms that caught my attention. They were known in almost every town or village and were made up of memorial plaques on which the names of people fallen in combat were listed, and simple sculptures made by often local artists who were less influenced by socialist modernism. These Partisan monuments had a recognizable realistic form that was easy to

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understand and they alluded, in contrast to the edifices mentioned above, to events and people that were primarily locally known. What is now hanging in the balance is the future of these innumerable memorials. They run the risk of slowly perishing. This is odd since there is a growing interest in socialist art and monuments in other European countries. As memorials from the Second World War , why should they not share the attention given to similar monuments spread across Europe? Could it be possible to include them in the growing battlefieldtourism phenomenon? The dilemma they impose is that they cannot really be pieced together to help build a coherent national past. They stand as mementos from a state that is no more–Socialist Yugoslavia–and a political system that once was, i.e. socialism. Adding to the dilemma is that the story the monuments tell tends to unite them with the very same neighbours from which Croatia liberated itself in the Croatian War of Independence. For the iconic monuments built in a ‘socialist modernist’ style, this renewal in battlefield tourism has already begun. The more unassuming, monuments, on the other hand, are likely to be less of a draw for tourism. It is in such a humble, local context that the future of most Partisan monuments will be decided. What memories and emotions do they evoke, and what path are they following? What capacity do they have to stir the heart and activate the head, and make people and organizations visit them on anniversaries and other days of importance?

Between Progress and Destruction In the words of Kirn and Burghardt, many of the artistic monuments are ‘evocative: they could be ambassadors from faraway stars, witnesses of an unrealized future, or spectres that continue to haunt the present’ (2016). Verdery (1993) has described how the massive monuments were the genre most used by regimes in other parts of Eastern Europe–to derive strength from the many deaths and draw hope of redemption through the promise of socialism’s eternal progress. Monuments were a form of media through which the past was used to construct the present in Socialist Yugoslavia. Partisan history was a dominant theme in films, school education, and the raison d’être for many organizations and associations. Excursions to places of remembrance were arranged by schools, trade-unions, veterans’ associations, and every so often were the result of private initiatives. The particular

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role of the monuments, however, was not educational as much as affective and emotive. Through them, the subjects’ identity became welded together with topography; ideology was to be embodied, interpellated by landscape and the emotionally loaded and sacred medium of the soil (Appadurai, 1996; cf. Kayser Nielsen, 2007). Decisive Partisan offensives were commemorated through monuments, museums, ceremonies, and films.4 Concentration camps and sites of mass executions also became prominent sites for Partisan monuments and associated commemorative practices. Plaques or monuments were erected to ensure that these offences would never be forgotten–and to serve as reminders about who the executioners and the liberators were. In every town, streets and squares were named after folk-heroes and prominent politicians with roots in the Partisan resistance. The Second World War-based Yugoslav identity was certainly contrastive, constituted in opposition to fascism.5 After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many East European countries were able to transform what had been framed as ‘victories of communism’ into part of a grand national liberation narrative. This was not so in Croatia since the state to be remembered was disintegrating, and what was once the central government in Belgrade in the 1990s turned the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) against the seceding republics (cf. Radan, 2002; Žani´c, 2007). In Croatia, sentiments run high since independence was gained after a war that was among the fiercest in Europe since 1945. The Partisan monuments had been intended to symbolize and sustain a continuity of memory, but what should be done with all those inscriptions and statues that celebrated the victory of a state that only a few remained devoted to and even fewer wanted to see monumentalized? The 1990s war gave new unpredicted meanings and visibility to Partisan monuments (Frykman, 2004). After decades of having been taken for granted as parts of town or village life, they were now re-seen by many as a form of harassment by an illicit system and thus attacked. In 2001, an inventory was made by the Association of Anti-fascist Fighters of Croatia (Savez antifašistiˇckih boraca i antifašista Republike Hrvatske— SABH) of the number of monuments that suffered war damage in or outside of combat zones during the 1990s. For SABH these memorials clearly represented anti-fascism and acknowledged the ‘brotherhood and unity’ message of the socialist state. Of the roughly 6,000 Partisan memorials identified, 731 monuments and 2,233 statues, busts, and tablets were listed as damaged or destroyed. They assert that ‘The destruction and desecration was carried out with the aim of overlooking the crimes

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committed against Serbs, Croatians, Jews, and others (by the fascists) … The monuments were demolished with explosives, they were shot at, lifted and torn down with cranes, and transported to garbage disposal areas’ (2001, p. 348).6 Many memorials bear traces of damage. Decades of neglect further show the workings of time, weather, and wear. Inscriptions on the pedestals are now overgrown with moss, letters on plaques have eroded, busts of ‘heroes’ sprayed with graffiti (Frykman, 2007). Standing at squares and cemeteries, they often look abandoned as if brooding over a promised future that lasted for no more than 45 years. Once having a natural place in local life as meeting points or places for a variety of ceremonies, now they are on the verge of being cut out of memory as spoils of history (cf. Nora, 1989). However, several Partisan monuments have been maintained and restored by locals, relatives of victims, veterans, or some combination of these.

Bracketing Long before the dissolution of Socialist Yugoslavia and the war in Croatia started in the 1990s, many of these monuments had been ‘bracketed out’ from their political context. This happened not only because of the time that had passed, but also because of their association with the hazardous life of any imposed memory (Frykman, 2005). Acknowledged interpretations, analyses, and histories connected to them, permeated the public sphere, and therefore also ran the risk of making them obsolete. Like most of the socialist realist iconography that was ‘intended to galvanize and inspire the masses [they became] … symbolic of external control’ (James, 1999, p. 291). Paradoxically this has paved the way for them to be invested with new meanings, imaginaries, and practices today. The term ‘bracketing’ is used here to describe areas of culture that are pending: in waiting mode, and thus deprived of their initial intentions (Frykman, 2005, p. 42). In the 1990s, the memorials had lost not only their obvious symbolic meaning–they also played a less certain role in the lives of individuals and communities. They were no longer ‘worlding’ (Heidegger, 1962). ‘Worlding’ implies that objects are handled as familiar, taken into use as tools or parts of everyday life–they make sense in an almost pre-reflexive manner. But when war broke out and the state and its ideology became inimical, these monuments stood as exponents of a vanishing trick, almost as when a person has died and the clothes and

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objects belonging to her are left behind, saturated with a void that one has to realize is forever (see Frykman & Povrzanovi´c, 2016). On the other hand, this shift enabled them to be appropriated for other uses. When there is an infrastructure controlling the correct veneration of monuments, their interpretation is supposed to be unambiguous. Nevertheless, Moriarty (1999), has questioned any one-way didacticism of monuments and proposed that we do not have to accept their messages or iconography in the way they were intended to be understood. ‘We can choose to disagree, we can interpret [them] creatively’ (ibid., p. 661). Cohen’s idea of ‘personal nationalism’ (1996) describes how ideology and symbolism are uncritically regarded as putting words and images into people’s minds, yet also evokes the individual’s own interpretations. ‘We watch these rites and, as individuals, in interpreting them we remake them in the sense that we are able to make of them … We hear the voices but listen to ourselves [emphasis added]’ (1996, p. 807). Partisan memorials no longer have the power to invoke the socialist future of a bygone state. Their role in evoking cultural and personal identity was increasingly dependent upon whether they could be seen to be referring to matters of selfhood. What could they tell people about the fate of their sons and fathers, their relatives, friends, fellow villagers, and community? Life in Socialist Yugoslavia was not so much life under a certain regime or socialist ideology–it was, as a matter of fact, their life and their experiences. ‘To live is to live locally, and to know is, first of all, to know the place one is in’, writes Casey (1996, p. 18). To understand the uses of Partisan monuments, therefore, one can benefit from looking at their ‘lives’ in a local context.

Local Culture Local culture is, as Jackson (2003) points out, a capability that is not ‘located in the individual or in the environment, but a potentiality that is realized and experienced variously in the course of our interaction with others, as well as our relationships to the everyday environments and events in which we find ourselves’ (2003, p. xiv). In The Human Condition (1958), Arendt explores the agency of memorials that sustain and transform local life and politics. Memorials participate in producing what she calls a space of appearance; a space where citizens gather to bring up and discuss matters of social and political importance. Through the presence of persons and objects, monuments and statues, any opinion will be

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deeply anchored in previous decisions, existing habits, and projected into a reachable future. Arendt claims that any continuity without objects is unguided continuity. ‘The whole factual world of human affairs depends for its reality and its continued existence, first, upon the presence of others who have seen and will remember, and second, on the transformation of the intangible into tangibility of things’ (1958, p. 95). Through this reciprocity, the space of appearance becomes invested with the power of the past in containing the gleam of the momentous. Objects in such spaces of appearance are neither projections nor representations, but agents. Instead of being passive tokens, monuments take part in the usual power struggles between political factions, ethnic enclaves, family groups, individual plans, and a variety of ideological and commercial intentions. Bergholz (2010), studied how the erection of a memorial plaque to fallen combatants in the Serbian village of Brezna in the 1950s caused not only division and conflicts in the village, but also lawsuits and the expulsion of dissidents. In the village, the line between the royalist Chetniks and the Partisans (and their supporters) was constantly blurred, sometimes cutting through family and kin. But here, only the Partisans were to be recognized while their Second World War adversaries were to be forgotten. In the village, it had been a tradition to commemorate everyone who had died in war: The enemy now included former neighbours, and sometimes even members of the same families. How could traditional approaches to remembrance, which had always stressed the imperative to remember all fallen soldiers from the local community, be practiced in this radically new context. (ibid., p. 38)

In many places within Croatia, there were similar porous borders between those fighting on the winning side and those branded as adversaries. Often, mere chance and the geography of place in which you were living could decide one’s ‘side’. In Italian-occupied Istria, people were forced to join the local fascae, yet in Italian-ruled Dalmatia, many were made members of the local fascae or the Ustasha movement. When paying homage to or just seeing the monuments or memorials to those who were on the winning side, the fate of kin and relatives who were not commemorated also made itself felt.7 The three cases presented below will give substance to how precarious the situation was in different settings, how monuments in themselves

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seemed replete with agency, and how being part of local life made them into templates for a wide variety of purposes. In the summer of 2015, a destroyed Partisan monument in the village of Pisak in the vicinity of Omiš in Dalmatia, the southern region of Croatia, was restored and inaugurated with great attention from the media and local politicians. It turned out to be the most obvious instance in the post-Yugoslav Republic of Croatia hitherto of how to convert a monument from being a political statement into being a legacy and symbol of a vibrant community–and a potential tourist site. In the autumn of 2001, an illicit ‘counter-’monument that had been ˇ erected in Ciže, Istria was discovered. Istria is a region where ‘national belonging’ had changed four times during the twentieth century. This prompted a strong resurgence in the importance of local and regional identity within the post-Croatian War of Independence context.8 Within a clearing among the pine-trees, a cross and headstones with Italian names commemorated people killed by the Partisans in 1945. This was the first memorial devoted to the alleged fascists in the region, and it was soon condemned by the local association of anti-fascist combatants in the district, and partially dismantled (Frykman, 2004). Today, more memorials of this sort are being proposed by the diaspora and local political representatives in Istria. In 1953, the birthplace of Josip Broz Tito in the village of Kumrovec in the North-Western region of Zagorje in Croatia was opened as a museum, exhibiting both traditional peasant culture and his humble origins. Not a site of Partisan victories or fascist atrocities, the very place gives depth to how identity became welded into topography. In Socialist Yugoslavia, schoolchildren and citizens alike made pilgrimages to the house and the surrounding ethno-village. While it was more or less a no-go area during the war in the 1990s when nationalist feelings were running high, it has again become a frequently visited place. It wavers between being, on the one hand, a tourist attraction as a museum, and on the other, a historically grounded stronghold for political observance and nostalgia for times passed. This coexistence has proved problematic since every visit also might imply an homage to the no longer existent Yugoslav federation.

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Pisak–Pride and Partition Local Care The beautiful tiny village of Pisak is situated on the Dalmatian coast a few miles south of the town of Omiš. Tito’s birthday on 25 May was celebrated in Socialist Yugoslavia as Dan mladosti (Youth Day). On that date in 2015, more than 300 people were bussed from Omiš to join the locals to celebrate the inauguration of a newly restored Partisan monument (Fig. 13.1). Overlooking the sea from above, the central figure in this semicircular monument is a larger-than-life-size fisherman with a rifle over his shoulder, surrounded by ten bronze plaques decorated with 37 figures. They depict the pre-Second World War (pristine) village life followed by the Partisan struggle for liberation. On the plaques, fishing is depicted, collective work in the vineyards of the families of the fallen, care for the

Fig. 13.1 Uzelac)

Restored partisan monument at pisak (Photo © 2015 Kristina

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wounded soldiers, provisions of munitions, the transport of combatants, the capture of enemies, and the destruction of roads and telecommunication poles–and a scene in which the whole local SKOJ (Savez komunistiˇcke omladine Jugoslavije–League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia) joins the Partisans. The names of the eight local fallen Partisans are inscribed on a separate plaque and the base of the statue bears a poem: They carried in their hearts a handful of this soil, their white Pisak and the blueness of the sea; and they gave everything--their lives and dreams, to the beloved homeland--to the light of its dawn.9

The mayor of Omiš and a local dignitary gave short speeches, food and drinks were served, and the local, as well as national press, covered the event. It was the first instance of a local Partisan monument in Croatia not only being totally restored, but also publicly relaunched. Until 2013, the ruling right-wing party in the region, the HDZ (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica), had made prospects for restoration difficult. The project was, after all, celebrating the victorious Partisans in a region where the political balance for a long time had been delicate. Not until the political majority shifted to a local and non-aligned party, were all formal obstacles to the monument’s reconstruction overcome. Seventy years after the end of the Second World War the monument still had political potential. Money for the restoration had been collected over the years in the village and the surrounding area. The project stirred up so much attention that even the mayor of the capital of Zagreb made a donation. Monument Under Attack The reason for the restoration harks back to 1992 when the country was at war. At that point, the monument had been standing in place for only 15 years. It was erected in 1977 and was financed through local donations. Although the war had reached a temporary ceasefire in 1992, the city of Dubrovnik had been under siege, Zadar and Šibenik had been attacked, and a substantial part of Krajina and the Dalmatian hinterland was controlled by the JNA. The impact of the war was intensely felt and it affected everyday life across Dalmatia. One night in 1992, someone, allegedly from a nearby village, put enough Semtex explosive around the waist of the statue to blast it apart, leaving only the legs standing. ‘We know a lot about who did it – their

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exact names – cannot be told … you know how it works like in the mafia, the omertà law’, said a retired female villager. And even if the perpetrators were identified, who would punish them for violating a Partisan monument? ‘In the nineties, there was no will from the authorities to prosecute them–locals know who did that, but it was no one from Pisak’, she explained. After the Croatian War of Independence, the local anti-fascist association hoped that the reconstruction would bridge the divide between the groups of contemporary sympathizers of the Ustasha on the one hand, and Yugo-communists on the other. Instead, some people who felt ‘provoked’ by the glorification of the Partisan struggles threatened to destroy the monument yet again, the same informant stated. ‘It mirrors this classical division in our society … This division goes like 50–50 for and against’, said another Pisak informant. The situation remained so sensitive that when the fieldworker in 2015 asked whether all villagers were happy to unite around the issue of the reconstruction, she was suspected by the local nationalists to be working undercover for the ‘Yugonostalgics’. She was asked: ‘Are you checking on us’? Misgivings of this kind made their way into a reinterpretation of the historical context for the monument in a way that better matched the current social and political situation. Although living in a vibrant tourist region, Dalmatians see themselves as being far away from the centre of power. In the words of one of the main initiators of the restoration, who also happened to be the author of the original monument: The situation is as follows: in Croatia, the society invests money and effort to reconstruct the monuments of those who tortured and destroyed this land and people, like Venetians, Turks, and Romans, while those monuments that represent something that is most precious in the history of the Croatian nation, are destroyed and removed.10 I mean, you destroy your own monuments, heritage and you reconstruct something that belongs to foreign rulers. The state and the parliament are the ones to be blamed for that … In Croatia, it is always about the elections – who will win and who will gain more votes.

The New Context ‘I hope something will change’, the man continued, with reference to the excitement and contestation the restoration had stirred. So, what

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might such change imply for the future of the Pisak monument? Current Croatian heritage politics seeks to embrace the potentials of tourism , according to the Ministry of Culture. The Tito-era is being increasingly included in heritage itineraries and popular culture in Croatia and abroad. The cultural administration in the nearby town of Omiš, as well as the local anti-fascist association, are looking forward to including the monument in Pisak in a hiking tour following in the footsteps of Tito’s Partisans. An agency, Pana Comp from Serbia organizes a ‘Tito Tour: Tito’s Partisan Trails’ in cooperation with a tourist operator in Sarajevo: ‘A one-week tour of combined ex-Yugoslav countries covering Tito’s footsteps – a package which celebrates the life of former Yugoslav president Marshal Josip Broz Tito’.11 They have appropriated the name Tito’s Partisan Trails that was previously used to denote the organized school ‘pilgrimages’ to Partisan memorial sites in Socialist Yugoslavia. The fact that some of these places in Bosnia-Herzegovina like Mostar, Jajce and above all Višegrad (close to Kusturica’s Me´cavnik) were scenes for relentless killings during the wars of the 1990s is not mentioned in the marketing material. In Višegrad alone, more than 2000 Bosniaks were murdered during the civil war–many of them thrown from the UNESCO-protected Bridge over the Drina. The memories from these events, close in time, are an open wound and have not yet turned into history or heritage (Nikoli´c, 2012). The bridge in Mostar has remained at the centre of severe cla shes between locals with diverging national and political allegiances. The monument in Pisak however, is slowly shedding its Partisanpolitical message to orbit towards representing something more easily palatable to contemporary viewers–the well-known history of the ‘small guy’ fighting despite overwhelming odds and the resilience and pride of the local community. When the fieldworker, Kristina Uzelac, took three of her friends from different parts of Europe to see the monument in Pisak, they were duly impressed by its size and aspects, but also captivated by its pronounced message. One of them hugged the barefooted fisherman and started to sing the socialist anthem The Internationale, simultaneously ‘personalizing’ and internationalizing a memorial that used to be sacrosanct for a village and citizens of a polity that no longer exists. This, he said, was to become his new Facebook profile photo. The Pisak story points to the cultural transformations that monuments today are going through. After becoming an object whose destruction enabled the settling of local conflicts subdued for many decades, it now

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serves to (once more) construct local and individual pride. Due to its size, beauty, and location, the monument in Pisak seems to be on its way to becoming a tourist destination.

ˇ ze–A ˇ Ci Counter-Monument Inclusive Monuments The region of Istria, unlike Dalmatia, was not directly affected by the war in the 1990s. No battles, sieges, or material destruction occurred there. A regionally-based political party, the Istrian Democratic Assembly (IDS–Istarski demokratski sabor), has dominated here since Croatian independence, pitting Istrianity against national or ethnic belonging. Partisan memorials, as well as assemblies constructed by other rulers in Istria, could be interpreted as a form of symbolic violence ensuring the rulers’ legitimacy and political dominance (Bourdieu, 1977; Müller, 2004).12 Being used to the comings and goings of different sovereigns, practically no statues were maimed and no plaques torn down by locals here in the 1990s. Public clashes between nationalists and socialists that could be seen in Pisak and elsewhere during the Homeland War were relatively sparse in Istria. Instead, many monuments over the years had been allotted a pronounced function as agents in town and village life featuring in the cycle of annual events, adopted as components of the local culture and architecture. When working the fields, transporting the harvest of grapes, meeting at the café, travelling to Sunday mass in church, people were bound to pass a memorial of some kind. The children in the centre of the Istrian town of Pazin, for instance, attend a school named after the local anti-fascist hero, Vladimir Gortan, play in the nearby ‘Park of Liberation’ where they are surrounded by statues of (socialist) Yugoslav and local heroes, and shop around the Trg slobode ‘Freedom Square’ with its dominant busts and statues celebrating the victory over fascism (Frykman, 2007). These objects have been accepted as parts of an emplaced identity, intertwined with bodily movements and everyday tasks and practices, and thus have become the bricks and mortar of peoples’ lifeworlds. These monuments are perhaps not things that are thought about or reflected on, but rather things that people organize their daily lives with (cf. Frykman & Gilje, 2003). Partisan monuments in certain places in Istria are integrated into the annual calendric rhythm of national and religious holidays. On All

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Saints’ Day, when the dead are remembered, the Partisan monuments are also adorned. They are central on Anti-Fascist Struggle Day, which is celebrated on 22 June, and in the villages like Veprina´c some also gather around the memorials on 5 August–the day marking the victory in the Homeland War. On such occasions, the monuments function as important places for commemorating lost loved ones and for marking anniversaries. ‘The Partisan monuments are for remembering the people from here, no matter in what war they were fallen victims’, said a member of the local anti-fascist veterans’ organization in Veprina´c. A journalist captured their importance as local temporal markers in an interview: After Christmas, Carnival, and Easter comes the tourist season, followed by harvest and grape picking and then in October, the time of the Rommel Offensive13 … and it is not just about gathering there, there’s always some food and drinks … And on those occasions, people use rhetoric that is not part of their everyday narrations – about hated enemies, distraught criminals, innocent victims, and at the end, it has become part of the folklore.

A Heritage-Hungry Region The constant influx of year-round tourists, mainly from nearby Italy, Germany, and Austria, sets Istria apart from Dalmatia where seasonal tourism dominates. This has made the region ‘heritage hungry’ (Lowenthal, 1996). The question has been raised of whether Partisan monuments could be included in the ‘Following in Tito’s Footsteps’ tours mentioned above. Local rituals might reflect patterns that keep communities together, but they seldom address the outer world. Why should they not be ‘consumed’ as part of history, as yet another lieux de mèmoire? Hitherto, such suggestions have been met with surprise from the regional cultural administration—‘Tourist routes for what? Partisan monuments – no way’! retorted the tourist administrator in the central town of Pazin when I brought up the matter in 2004. But the process nevertheless seems to be slowly underway, forced upon the region by its vicinity to the neighbouring countries, and also by the practices of exiled families in search of relatives who died here during the Second World War. In Pazin, Jules Verne Day has been hosted annually since 1998 on 28 June in Kaštel–the famous Habsburg castle that dominates the city. The place dramatically features in one of Verne’s books, Mathias Sandorf

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(1885). In the book, and the live performance at the annual festival, the protagonist escapes from the castle through a deep gorge called Pazinska jama or Foiba di Pisino. Informants from the tourist office told us in 2015 that a counter-narrative about the cave’s Second World War victims had started to gain a foothold. A Dutch tourist came to my office with a guide saying that Pazin has a dark history from World War Two when around 1000 people were thrown into Pazin Cave. And the woman said, ‘I am afraid of that place!’ The first thing that comes to mind when you mention foibe is ‘how many dead people are there’? An Italian teacher with his class showed them around – ‘Foiba di Pisino! Come una grande foiba! Quanti morti!’14

The spell of the cave, and especially the word foiba (cave in Italian), is the basis of an alternative history among former Istrian inhabitants of Italian origin living in exile (Ballinger, 2003). After the Second World War, between 100, 000 and 350, 000 people–almost half of the Istrian population–became refugees (exiles–esuli), or were killed in what has been described as ethnic cleansing.15 From abroad–Italy, South America, Australia, the US–these esuli have been making fruitless efforts to regain homes and properties in Istria. Ballinger (2003) recounts stories of how the victorious Partisans settled accounts with alleged fascists–they simply threw them into the foibe, dead or alive. Most of these killings allegedly took place between May 1945 and December 1947. Italy coined the verb infoibati (en-caved) to describe the acts and has since 2005 hosted a national remembrance day for the victims. Very few reminders of these atrocities are found at the sites of these alleged war crimes. At the beginning of the new millennium and especially after Croatia gained EU membership in 2013, a number of esuli have started to symbolically reclaim ‘lost territory’ through commemorations at the gravesites. They have thus conversely made the Partisan monumentsstand out as a mockery of the suffering that the other party had been exposed to. Grief in the Landscape The first inconspicuous counter-monument to the infoibati victims was ˇ privately inaugurated on 10 February 2001 in Ciže, close to the road between the administrative centre of Pazin and the spectacular hill town

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of Motovun, one of the most renowned Istrian tourist destinations. On this occasion, speeches were delivered by dignitaries from Trieste, Italy. Family members were relieved to finally have a place to commemorate the victims without fear of retribution or recrimination (Frykman, 2007). Twenty little white, rough-hewn stones adorned with Italian names were erected. In the centre of the memorial grove, an altar was constructed with the Latin inscription, Fiat voluntas tua (Thy will be done). The cross of resurrection stood to the right of the altar and to the left there was a marble plaque with a poem in Italian: You did not hear the cries / of spouse or mother / when darkness fell upon you / and the horror /A pain, bereft of word and end / became the lot of us / who stayed behind, / by force dispersed / around the world.16

This memorial commemorated the execution of a truck full of Italians, according to the local version of events (Frykman, 2007). All of them were young men from the surrounding towns and villages who were killed on 10 May 1945–one day after the official peace agreement. Brought from prison in Pazin they were thrown into small foibe and left to die. Initially, the regional association responsible for safeguarding the Partisan heritage, the Istrian Savez boraca protested and claimed that the erection of this monument was an outburst of revisionism: an attempt at rewriting history. Honour was unduly rendered to those who had committed war crimes, they wrote (see Frykman, 2004, 2007). The people that may have been thrown into the foibe were all well-known fascists and therefore undeserving of commemoration, they continued. ‘Nevertheless, all these charges were just verbal attacks. They had some press-conferences, meetings in which they elaborated on why things like ˇ Ciže shouldn’t happen, but they no longer have any social power to influence the authorities and force them to ban the monument’, stated ˇ a local journalist who had been following the Ciže case. Shortly after the inauguration, the cross in the memorial grove was knocked over and the headstones scattered–only to be later restored. Today, other similar memorials can be found in the region. In certain parishes ‘lapidaries’ have been arranged. Old tombstones and plaques, including those bearing the names of Italian soldiers from the First and Second World Wars, as well as those fallen in Ethiopia, have been assembled near the outer walls of local cemeteries as focal points for commemoration.

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In 2014, a group of politicians addressed the Istrian parliament requesting that a memorial plaque be erected by the cave in Pazin. They asked for public recognition of the fact that a number of soldiers from the occupying armies were executed there at the end of the Second World War and thrown into the abyss. The outcome of their plea remains to be seen. These new ‘monuments’ stir unsettled conflicts, but they are hardly included in the local calendric cycle of celebrations or recognized by the locals. They will have to rely on other actors to ensure their maintenance. The existing ones exert a strong influence, not so much through their ‘message’ but rather through their tenacity. By and by they have become at one both with the physical and social environment. They are conceived of by locals as ‘important anchors that helped constitute a familiar, secure, comprehensible landscape’ (James, 1999, p. 307). In Istria, the Partisan monuments have begun to blend in with a multitude of remnants from other epochs. Local identity here was often conceived as being ‘against the centre’, in opposition to the rulers. Perhaps this was the reason why personal loss and grief could more easily enter the space of appearance. This became especially visible when the victims of the Homeland War were able to be commemorated at the old Partisan monuments, as mentioned above. The influx of tourists from other parts of Europe over the years also impelled people to gain a sensitivity towards these new trends. In Pisak, the monument was a source of local pride, but also an expression of symbolic violence. While commemorating fallen locals, the monument stood as an invocation of ‘conflict-time’ (Baillie, 2013). It was deliberately re-erected in opposition to a competing ideological faction. Memories of the Homeland War are still active, and the inclination to maintain a polarized worldview is politically motivated. The location in Dalmatia where the village is situated is far from borders with other postYugoslav successor states. Tourism is organized around the sun and sea, leaving local life undisturbed for the rest of the year. Hence, the Partisan monuments in Dalmatia and Istria described above fit into quite different regional cultures.

Kumrovec: From Political Memorial to Museum Monuments are meant to reinforce that which is unstable by making lasting statements. To remember, however, is so much more than to be made aware of a certain occasion, polity or person. As discussed above,

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the place and the cultural context that surrounds a monument is its space of appearance constantly interfering with politics and everyday lives. So far, little has been said about how such a space can be ‘worlding’, e.g. how it could be filled with a self-evident presence in people’s everyday lives. By looking at the annual celebration of 25 May (Youth Day) in Kumrovec , we can get a glimpse of how both past and future were reenacted through monuments and rituals and at the same time invested with new meanings, emotions, and importance. The Village Being Tito’s birthday, 25 May was celebrated in Socialist Yugoslavia with a relay race through the country that ended in Belgrade with the handing of the baton, štafeta, to Tito in person. Celebrations took place all over the country on that date. In Kumrovec , parades were held, but the day was also a time for family outings to which children came dressed in their pioneer attire and mothers and fathers could meet old friends and comrades from the war over a coffee, a beer, and a hot štrukla cake. Here in the small Croatian village that almost borders with Slovenia, Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) was born. In 1946, his childhood house was turned into a museum. In the 1960s the whole village was turned into an open-air museum, designed to support the myth ‘about the poor lad who from his early days had felt the weight of exploitation and almost every day suffered from hunger’ (Žani´c, 2007, p. 51). The great leader’s life is here made one with a topography that had a pronounced emotional appeal. To highlight this, a larger-than-life statue of Tito, created by the renowned Croatian sculptor, August Augustinˇci´c, towers beside his humble house.17 His rustic cradle has been transformed into the centrepiece of affectionate adoration directed at Tito, the object simultaneously demarcating the genesis of Socialist Yugoslavia (Mathiesen Hjemdahl & Škrbi´c Alempijevi´c, 2006). During the communist-era, Kumrovec was intended to be a political space where citizens could experience how they were not only part of a state but also its countryside, with farmhouses, cattle, streams with fish, and quacking geese–and a folk that was as genuine as the leader himself. The Arcadian village was surrounded by a series of new buildings with outright ideological purposes–the Political School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, a large hotel, the

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villa where Tito was to stay when visiting, and several buildings for youth activities. A vast cobblestone parking area was laid out for the tour buses and cars that arrived from across the federation. To paraphrase Althusser (1971), Kumrovec was a place in which people living in the Yugoslav republics could be interpellated as citizens of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, through the soft power of the homestead and countryside. The Celebrations When the fieldwork was carried out in 2004, the fascination with those ‘glory’ years still lingered in the village and was transmitted through the many material objects inscribed with the old magnetism. However, the grass was growing in the cracks between the cobblestones in the parking areas, the sculptures and monuments–apart from the one of Tito himself– stood unattended, left to decay. Maintenance of the numerous political buildings was neglected, and staff budgets were cut. The concept of ‘bracketing out’ had achieved a very material meaning in Kumrovec . The name of the village was erased from maps and the road signs that could have directed visitors were removed. The regional road administration found them superfluous and excursions from Zagreb to Kumrovec were no longer arranged (Hjemdahl & Škrbi´c Alempijevi´c, 2006). What happened in Kumrovec a decade after the Homeland War reflected how the (socialist)Yugoslav past had moved underground in the 1990s to be stored in the freezer of history (Bet-El, 2004; Škrbi´c Alempijevi´c & Oroz, 2017), or left to caution citizens in the new nation-state of Croatia. The celebration on 25 May in 2004 was spontaneous although a bit precarious since outbursts of ‘Yugo-nostalgia’ were berated as the socialist Yugoslav past had become ‘demonized’ (Kirn, 2014). Was this place safely mollified or did it still exert the power to interpellate? People from different parts of the country and nearby Slovenia arrived in buses and private cars. Dressed in their Sunday best or in old uniforms, the majority were greying and they carried sticks for support. Enthusiastic youngsters in pioneer caps and T-shirts with the leader’s portrait showed that Tito had entered a new career as an icon in contemporary pop culture–at least in Slovenia (Abazovi´c & Velikonja, 2014). Red banners were flown, images of Tito adorned fresh posters, brass bands played, and speeches were given at the foot of the monument to accompany the

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laying of wreaths bearing the socialist red star. For a brief moment, those coming to Kumrovec could re-enact the state of Socialist Yugoslavia as the ‘good old days’. From the outside, it all seemed to be a script well known to anyone wanting to pay homage to a great socialist leader–if it had not been for its carnivalesque character. This was a military parade mixed with a celebration of folklore, a village festival, and a masquerade. The researchers met old combatants on a nostalgic trip to pay respect to their regiment and great commander, members of choirs took this opportunity to perform songs from the old repertoire, accordion players led community singing, and elderly women went behind the statue to rub the hands of Tito saying, ‘this is for Radenkovi´c, this is for Majda who could not come’, treating the Marshal as their patron saint. Toddlers sat on their father’s or perhaps grandfather’s shoulders with the red pioneer scarf bound around their necks, and wine sellers were capitalizing on the day by fastening Tito labels onto their red-wine bottles, sold to tourists from near and far. The intentions of the participants, their practices, and backgrounds all pointed in such a variety of directions that they could not be exhausted by the performance of a political manifestation (Frykman & Mathiesen Hjemdahl, 2011). Embodiment and Heritage In all its variety, the celebration has also shown how memories of the Yugoslav days were something embodied and now released on Youth Day. The people present discovered how that era, which had been bracketed out, was still part of their habitus. The era was (re)incorporated as part of personal history and thus as part of a lifeworld that, on this particular day, once again made sense. Such memories are never easily communicated by verbal representations, but lie dormant as potentialities, ready to be brought forth like photographic negatives in a darkroom or objects removed from a freezer melting–with the difference that at the moment of realization their content was tainted by the subsequent individual, family, and local experiences. Six months after the fieldwork in 2004, on 27 December the statue of Tito in Kumrovec was destroyed by a bomb. President Stjepan Mesi´c strongly condemned the assault: ‘Josip Broz Tito was a part of Croatian history and this should not be concealed […] [The attack was] also an attack on Croatian culture because the monument to Tito was designed by the great Croatian sculptor, August Augustinˇci´c’ (Hina, 27 December

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2004). Shortly thereafter the statue was restored and today Tito once again looks out over Kumrovec from his pedestal beside the house in which he was born. He is now part of history and cultural heritage, but the bombing also suggests that he remains a salient symbol of contemporary contestations and a reminder of other futures that might have been. This statue, like many monuments from that era, has the potential to harbour a strange mix of personal history, political resentment, and total dullness. The village remains a stage on which a multitude of messages are relayed. On Youth Day in 2012 for example, the singer Damir Avdi´c performed a song with the lyrics: ‘Brotherhood and unity is over. It is time for us to get to know one another as we really are’ (cf. Nikoli´c, 2012, p. 94). Škrbi´c Alempijevi´c and Potkonjak (2016, p. 110) write: Even in the mainstream political discourse, there is no consensus on Tito’s role in Croatian history, and both present and past usages of his name reflect this. Sometimes he is called a communist villain, a butcher of Croats, an anti-Croat, a Yugoslav dictator … In other cases, Tito is defined as a supreme leader of anti-fascism and a fighter for freedom. For some people, he is primarily ‘a very cool guy’, both good and bad, and a truly impressive historical figure.

Partisan Heritage and Versatile Heritage The study of Kumrovec has added something to the understanding of the afterlife of Partisan monuments: something that was not so apparent ˇ at the sites of Pisak and Ciže. People from different parts of the former Yugoslavia gathered in Kumrovec to celebrate not only the birth of Tito and the former federation, but more so to relive some important parts of the(ir) pasts. Even if the anniversary in 2004 reminded locals and revellers of how it used to be when the parking lot was filled, with people marching and red banners flapping in the wind, the atmosphere was more reminiscent of a jolly marketplace than a place of political interpellation. When Kumrovec was marketed by the Tourist Board of Zagorje in 2017, the celebration of 25 May was renamed ‘The Day of Youth and Joy’ and the village was presented as an ethno-park with a wide range of cultural programmes, including old customs and crafts, sporting games and musical events (Visit Zagorje, 2017). Yet, the restoration of the blown-up statue of Tito demonstrates how vulnerable this image is and how easily old conflicts flare up again. Kumrovec , as well as Pisak

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ˇ and Ciže, show how Partisan memorials are still in flux. They reflect the past through the present and will do so as long as they are ‘worlding’ in people’s minds and bodies. ˇ The cases of Pisak and Ciže, however, demonstrate some interesting differences in connection to local entanglement. The proximity of the battles of the Homeland War reactivated the Partisan monument in Pisak, rendering it a provocation. Old antagonisms were rekindled, invested with emotional power, and re-imbued with the potential to provoke the community. For as long as contrasting political ideologies were salient in the village, the monument remained a reminder of the conflict. Yet, here a few years later, local people hoping to boost tourism connected to their monument embraced the village’s Partisan heritage despite attempts to bracket out this period at the national level. Istria stayed out of most of the troubles in the 1990s and thus local identity remained more inclusive. Partisan monuments were abundant, but also blended in with memorials from many different epochs. Istria is not only the Croatian region with a long history of linguistic, cultural, and ethnic diversity, but is also the most prominent destination for international tourists. Three quarters of them come from the countries that had occupied the region during the Second World War : Italy, Germany, and Austria. Recognition of this complex history meant that the demands of the esulito have the deaths of their kin recognized were met with some understanding. The addition of memorials dedicated to the victims from their ‘side’ could contribute to the conversion of the Partisan monuments into heritage, from a time that has now been turned into ‘distant’ history. As for the compelling presence of the absent enemy, whether those were Italian fascists, German Nazis, or simply men and boys from the home village enrolled by the wrong fraction, oblivion no longer seems to be an option. Almost three decades after its secession from Socialist Yugoslavia, the Slovenian government symbolically overcame the dichotomy between a righteous friend worthy of commemoration and an unjust foe destined for perdition. On Congress Square in Ljubljana, a ‘post-conflict’ monument was inaugurated in July 2017, commemorating ‘all victims of war and war-related violence’. Prime Minister Miro Cerar gave a speech on the occasion saying that the monument was a ‘warning that we need to cultivate forgiveness and seek reconciliation, both within us and towards others’, ‘to learn from the past which mistakes must not be repeated’ (Sta, 2017). Yet, as a reminder that conflict-time is not over, protests were heard from the left, which regarded the monument as a

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form of ‘political opportunism’, and from the right where it simply was described as a ‘distortion of truth’ (ibid.).

Notes 1. For a historical overview of the ‘HomelandWar’ see Povrzanovi´c and Frykman (2008). 2. The ethnographic fieldwork was conducted by Jonas Frykman in Istria ˇ between 1999 and 2005, and additionally in Ciže and Pisak by Kristina Uzelac in 2015. In Kumrovec a group of students from the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Zagreb worked for one semester in 2004 under the joint guidance of Kirsti Hjemdahl and Nevena Škrbi´c Alempijevi´c (see Frykman & Hjemdahl, 2011; Hjemdahl & Škrbi´c Alempijevi´c, 2006). 3. Officially they are called the Monuments of the People’s Liberation Struggle (spomenici NOB-a), referred to as Partisan monumentsin this text. 4. see Tomasevich (2001) and Goldstein (1999). 5. According to Kirn (2012, p. 252), present-day Croatia defines itself in binary terms, standing up against an enemy labelled—‘the “communist beast” from the East’. 6. According to the publication Rušenje antifašistiˇckih spomenika u Hrvaskoj 1990–2000 this physical demolition was followed by a general purge of emblems from the previous era: ‘Antifascism was taken out of textbooks, and books, works of art, museum collections and records were destroyed’. According to the authors, this certainly related to the new political composition of the ruling fractions with roots in the fascist Ustasha party, which was in power during the Second World War. They claimed it was done by ‘the remaining members of the defeated forces, neo-Nazis and a number of emigrants returning’ (ibid., p. 348). 7. The Ustasha was the name for the fascist movement behind the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska–NDH). This was the puppet state that ruled Croatia during the Second World War from 1941–1945. 8. The greater part of Istria was under Habsburg control until 1919 and after the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo it fell under Italian control; from 1943 it was under German control and after the Second World War it fell under Yugoslavia’s jurisdiction until 1991 when it recognized as a part of Croatia. The phrase ‘to be under [a state]’ (biti pod [državom]) is a frequently used phrase in the region. 9. Nosili su u srcu šaku zemlje ove, svoj Pisak bijeli i modrinu mora; i dali su sve–živote i snove, domovini dragoj–svjetlu njenih zora. Author: Jure Franiˇcevi´c-Ploˇcar.

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10. See Goldstein (2006) for an overview of the history of the Dalmatian coast. 11. http://www.panacomp.net/balkan-tours/. 12. For a discussion of the politics of dead bodies in Romania, see Verdery (1999) and for the uses of similar arguments among the Istrian esuli in Italy, see Ballinger (2003). 13. The Rommel Offensive in Istria took place in the autumn of 1943 after Italy had surrendered. German troops invaded Slovenia and Istria and ruthlessly eliminated Partisans and members of the civil resistance (Goldstein, 1999). 14. The cave of Pazin! Like a huge cave/grave. How many dead! 15. The number is heavily debated; among the Italians in exile a higher figure is mentioned (Ballinger, 2003), while a lower figure is mentioned by contemporary historians in Istria (see Frykman, 2004; Nikoˇcevi´c & Škrbi´c, 2001). 16. Non Udiste Pianto Di Madre E Di Spose / Quando L’orrido Buio / Straziava Le Vostre Vite / Un Muto Ed Inesausto Dolore / Accompagna La Vita / Di Quelli Che Sono Rimasti / E Il Destino Ha Disperse Nel Mondo Caterina Magro. 17. Copies of this well-known monument can be found in many places in the former Yugoslavia.

References Abazovi´c, D., & Velikonja, M. (2014). Post Yugoslavia. New cultural and political perspectives. Palgrave McMillan. Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (Notes towards an investigation). In Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays. Monthly Review press. Appadurai, A. (1996). Sovereignty without territoriality: Notes for a postnational geography. In A. Yaeger (Ed.), Geographies and identity (pp. 40–58). Michigan University Press. Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago University Press. Baillie, B. (2013). Capturing facades in ‘conflict-time’: Structural violence and the reconstruction of Vukovar’s churches. Space and Polity, 13(3), 300–319. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2013.854996. Ballinger, P. (2003). History in exile. Princeton University Press. https://doi. org/10.1515/9780691187273. Bergholz, M. (2010). When all could no longer be equal in death. The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, 2008, 1–63. https://doi.org/ 10.5195/CBP.2010.152.

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Bet-El, I. R. (2004). Unimagined communities: The power of memory and the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. In J. W. Müller (Ed.), Memory and power in post-war Europe: Studies in the presence of the past (pp. 206–222). Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812507. Casey, E. (1996). How to get from place to space in a fairly short space of time. Phenomenological prolegomena. In S. Feld & K. Basso (Eds.), Senses of place (pp. 13–52). School of American Research Press. Cohen, A. (1996). Personal nationalism: A Scottish view of some rites, rights and wrongs. American Ethnologist, 23(4), 802–815. https://doi.org/10.1525/ ae.1996.23.4.02a00070. Frykman, J. (2001). Place for something else. Analyzing a cultural imaginary. In J. Frykman & P. Niedermüller (Eds.), Articulating Europe: Local perspectives (pp. 47–68). Museum Tusculanum Press. Frykman, J. (2004). The power of memory: Monuments and landscape in Croatian Istria. In K. Kärki (Ed.), Power and control: Perspectives on integration and multiculturalism in Europe. The Population Research Institute. Frykman, J. (2005). Bracketing. Ethnologia Europaea, 35(1–2), 47–52. https:// doi.org/10.16995/ee.977. Frykman, J. (2007). Partisaner i parentes. In J. Frykman & B. Ehn (Eds.), Minnesmärken: Att tolka det förflutna och besvärja framtiden (pp. 89–112). Carlssons. Frykman, J. (2012). Berörd. Plats, kropp och ting i fenomenologisk kulturanalys. Carlssons. Frykman, J., & Gilje, N. (2003). Being there: New perspective in phenomenology and the analysis of culture. Nordic Academic Press. Frykman, J., & Mathiesen Hjemdahl, K. (2011). A troubled past. Fieldworking in a contested place. Journal of Comparative Social Work, 2, 1–12. Frykman, J., & Povrzanovi´c Frykman, M. (Eds.). (2016). Sensitive objects. Affect and material culture. Nordic Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.21525/kri terium.6. Goldstein, I. (1999). Croatia: A history. Hurst & Company. Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. Harper & Row. Inappropriate Monuments/Neprimjereni spomenici. (n.d.). Facebook [Home]. Retrieved January 12, 2020, from https://www.facebook.com/Neprimjereni spomenici/info?tab=page_info. Jackson, M. (2003). Existential anthropology. Events, exigencies and effects. Berghahn Books. James, B. (1999). Fencing the past: Budapest’s statue park museum. Media Culture & Society, 21(3), 291–311. https://doi.org/10.1177/016344399 021003001.

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Kayser-Nielsen, N. (2007). Monument på väg: Kulturarvets bruk och identitetens Topografering. In J. Frykman & B. Ehn (Eds.), Minnesmärken: Att tolka det förflutna och besvärja framtiden (pp. 141–168). Carlssons. Kirn, G. (2012). Transformation of memorial sites in the post-Yugoslav context. In D. Suber & S. Karamani´c (Eds.), Retracing images: Visual culture after Yugoslavia (pp. 251–282). Brill. Kirn, G. (2014). Transnationalism in reverse: From Yugoslav to post-Yugoslav memories. In C. De Cesari, & A. Rigney (Eds.), Transnational memory: Circulation, articulation, scales (pp. 313–339). De Gruyter Berlin/Boston. Kirn, G., & Burghardt, R. (2016). Yugoslav Partisan memorials: Between revolutionary aesthetics and ideological recuperation. Manifesta Journal around Curatorial Practices MJ16. https://www.manifestajournal.org/iss ues/regret-and-other-back-pages/yugoslavian-partisan-memorials-betweenmemorial-genre. Lowenthal, D. (1996). Possessed by the past. The Free Press. Mathiesen Hjemdahl, K., & Alempijevi´c, N. Š (Eds.). (2006). O Tito kao mitu. FF Press. Moriarty, C. (1999). The material culture of great war. Review Article. Journal of Contemporary History, 34(4), 653–662. Müller, J. W. (Ed.). (2004). Memory and power in post-war Europe: Studies in the presence of the past. Cambridge University Press. Nikoˇcevi´c, L., & Škrbi´c, N. (2001). Österreich-Mythen in Istrien. Istrien: Sichtweisen. Kittseer Schriften Zur Volkskunde, 13, 61–70. Nikoli´c, D. (2012). Tre städer, två broar och ett museum. Minne, politik och världsarv i Bosnien och Hercegovina. Lunds Universitet. Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper. Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire. Representations (Berkeley, Calif.), 26, 7–24. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928520. Panacomp Wonder Land Travel. (n.d.). Balkan Tours. http://www.panacomp. net/balkan-tours/. Povrzanovi´c Frykman, M. (2008). Staying behind: Civilians in the post-Yugoslav wars 1991–95. In N. Atkin (Ed.), Daily lives of civilians in wartime twentiethcentury Europe (pp. 163–193). Greenwood Press. Radan, P. (2002). Break-up of Yugoslavia and international law. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203278710. Rušenje antifašistiˇckih spomenika u Hrvatskoj 1990–2000. (2001). Savez antifašistiˇckih boraca Hrvatske. Škrbi´c Alempijevi´c, N., & Oroz, T. (2017). In the cradle of heroes: Memoryscapes and mnemonic practices. In Hrvatsko Zagorje // Changing memoryscapes: Social (re)construction of places of memory. Zagreb, Hrvatska. Škrbi´c Alempijevi´c, N., & Potkonjak, S. (2016). The Tito affect: Tracing objects and memories of socialism in postsocialist Croatia. In J. Frykman & M.

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Povrzanovi´c Frykman (Eds.), Sensitive objects: Affects and material culture. Nordic Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.21525/kriterium.6.e. Sta. (2017, July 14). Pahor: war victims’ memorial will promote peace, reconciliation. The Slovenia Times. http://www.sloveniatimes.com/pahor-war-victimsmemorial-will-promote-peace-reconciliation. Tomasevich, J. (2001). War and revolution in Yugoslavia: 1941–1945. California University Press. Ugreši´c, D. (1998). The Culture of lies. Antipolitical essays. Phoenix House. Verdery, K. (1993). Nationalism and national sentiment in post-socialist Romania. Slavic Review, 52(2), 179–203. https://doi.org/10.2307/249 9919. Verdery, K. (1999). The political life of dead bodies. Columbia University Press. Verne, J. 1885. Mathias Sandorf . Bibliothèque d’éducation et de recreation. Visit Zagorje. (2017). Day of Youth and Joy—Zagorje Story. Visit Zagorje. http://visitzagorje.hr/en/post/day-of-youth-and-joy/. Žani´c, I. (2007). Flag on the mountain. A political anthropology of the war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Saqui Books.

CHAPTER 14

Vukovar’s Memorials and the Making of Conflict-Time Britt Baillie

Introduction: The Battles for Vukovar The iconic battle for Vukovar in the autumn of 1991 was the first largescale combat engagement to take place on what became the Croatian front. In 1991, no other European city since the Second World War had sustained as much wartime destruction as Vukovar (Karaˇc, 1997, p. 48). The siege was the harbinger of the attacks on Sarajevo, Mostar, and other urban centres. The pyrrhic three-month engagement pitted the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) and Serb paramilitary forces against approximately 2000 predominantly Croat branitelji (lit. defenders). Casualty figures are heavily contested but Chapman (2014) estimates that the Croatian side suffered approximately 1,500 military casualties, 1,131 civilian fatalities, and 2,600 missing civilians, with the JNA and Serb paramilitary forces suffering 1,180 losses. Official Croatian statistics add that 22,061 Croats

B. Baillie (B) Centre for Urban Conflicts Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. B˘adescu et al. (eds.), Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2_14

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and other ‘non-Serbs’ were expelled and approximately 10,000 taken prisoner at the end of the siege (Vlada Republike Hrvatske, 2003, sect. 2). 18 November, the day that Croatian forces surrendered, was declared a Croatian national ‘Remembrance Day’ holiday in 2019. Zapamtite Vukovar (Remember Vukovar) has become a national mantra. Today, Vukovar is the city in which the most entrenched interethnic divisions, and the highest levels of contestation in contemporary Croatia are found. Croatian citizens regard Vukovar as being ‘trapped in wartime’ (Skoko & Bagi´c, 2007). Populated by the highest concentration of Croatian War of Independence memorials in the country, Vukovar has become a ‘museum city…reified and frozen in pain, sadness and victimhood’ (Naef, 2016, p. 237). While the architectural heritage of the city attests to its historical plurality, new memorials seek to ethnicize space. Here, rival communities of remembrance each focus on their own victims, present the ‘other’ as perpetrators, and rarely cross established commemorative boundaries (Pavlakovi´c & Paukovi´c, 2019, p. 23). It is estimated that roughly 80% of the residents of Vukovar have at least one great-grandparent who is of another ethnicity (Tauber, 2001, p. 2). Yet, the siege rendered conflict norms, a lack of trust beyond coethnics, stronger than coexistence norms. The Vance Peace Plan did not end, but rather ‘froze’ the conflict and resulted in Vukovar becoming part of an internationally unrecognized Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK). This precipitated a ‘no war, no peace’ situation in which the belligerent parties bided their time. Croatia took most of the RSK by force in Operations Flash and Storm in 1995 resulting in the exodus of 150,000– 200,000 ethnic Serbs.1 These operations are celebrated nationally as the moment when Croatia was liberated. However, due to fears of reprisals from Serbia just across the Danube, the area around Vukovar was subject to the 1995 Erdut Peace Agreement and the UN’s ‘peaceful reintegration’ of Croats back into the city (1996–1998). Vukovar is thus unique in the Croatian context in that it retained a large proportion of its pre-war Serb population.2 However, the ‘peace’ has not succeeded in ‘settling’ the relationships between Vukovar’s constituent ethnic groups. In 2019, Milorad Pupovac, the president of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) in Croatia, accused the Croat mayor of Vukovar of inciting violence, stating ‘there are people who are constantly stoking up an atmosphere of war and who treat and portray any demands by the Serb community for rights that belong to them under the constitution, law and international agreements as an attack on the constitutional order

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and aggression’ (HINA, 2019). In June 2020, sparked by ongoing ethnic divisions, supporters of the GNK Dinamo (Zagreb) and FK Partizan (Belgrade) football clubs violently clashed in Vukovar using flares, clubs, and other weapons (HINA, 2020). In September 2020, the ‘Father and Son’ statue was erected to honour both Igor Kaˇci´c, the youngest victim of the Ovˇcara massacre that took place on the edge of Vukovar and his father Peter Kaˇci´c, the commander of the branitelji in the city’s Sajmište suburb who was killed during the siege. For Irena Kaˇci´c, their mother/wife, ‘time has healed nothing and changed nothing’ (Clark, 2013, p. 133). The annual commemorations anchored by Vukovar’s memorials ‘do not offer any mechanisms for overcoming the traumatic past but merely re-establish year after year, the already prevailing war-related identity of the town’ (Banjeglav, 2019, l. 5537). They keep the city in the noman’s-land of time between wartime and peacetime. Here, the concept of ‘post-conflict’ is a misnomer. In Vukovar, wartime bleeds into the ‘postconflict’ periods producing what I call ‘conflict-time’ (Baillie, 2013a). This is not a condition exclusive to the former Yugoslavia, an indication of what Kaplan (1993) problematically referred to as ‘Balkan ghosts’ that cannot be laid to rest. Rather, in circumstances where peace is seen as a promise suspended, which exists on paper but is only partially realized on the ground, or when questions of ‘which’ and ‘whose’ peace persist (Gusic, 2017), conflict continues to inform spatial and social configurations. Memorialization and heritagization in such circumstances often become processes through which a volatile and unstable conflict-time is (re)produced: transmuting armed conflicts into ongoing memory wars. The Vukovar Tourism Board (n.d.) claims that the ‘Vukovar area has always been an intersection of roads, the place where different cultures meet, but also a battleground in wars’. The city’s mosques and synagogue did not survive earlier regime changes. The descendants of the historic communities they once served no longer reside in the city. While Croatia’s historic battles are alluded to in contemporary portrayals of the city,3 a 2012 survey of residents revealed that Serb respondents primarily valued Vukovar as an anti-fascist city (referring to the city’s Second World War legacy which they regard as having set the stage for what they call the Grad-anski Rat (Civil War) of the 1990s) (Žani´c, 2014, p. 49). Croat residents however predominantly regard it as the ‘Hero City’ of the ‘Homeland War ’ (another name often used by Croats for the Croatian War of Independence). This chapter will therefore explore how Vukovar’s Second World Warand Croatian War of Independence memorials have

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been (de)mobilized to perpetuate conflict-time. It will begin by providing a chronological introduction to Vukovar and its memorialization from the Second World War until the siege in 1991. This will be followed by thematic sections which detail key patterns, cleavages, and shifts in the post-1991 commemoration of the city’s wartime past.

From War to War: Engaging Narratives of Continuity On 6 April 1941, Axis powers invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. On 10 April, an Ustasha government was set up in the newly formed Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska—NDH). Arrests of ethnic Serbs, Jews, Roma, and suspected communist sympathizers were made in the Vukovar area soon after. Following a summary hearing without adequate representation, the accused were often taken to the transit camp on the grounds of Vukovar’s Eltz Manor, or executed at Dudik on the southern edge of the city (see Baillie, 2019). The Ustasha Minister of the Legislative Commission, Milovan Žani´c stated ‘there is no method that we as Ustasha will not use to make this country truly Croatian and clean it of Serbs…’ (quoted in Sindbæk, 2012, p. 31). Although the Communist Party’s Second Congress had been hosted in Vukovar in 1920, support for the Partisans within the city itself was initially limited (Majski, 1985, p. 29). However, Serbs residing in the NDH began to swell the ranks of the Partisans as they fled ‘the Ustasha terror’ (Pavlakovi´c & Perak, 2017, p. 274). By the end of the war, although estimates vary wildly, Sindbæk (2012, p. 34) asserts that approximately 300,000 or 15% of the NDH’s Serb population had been killed. After the Germans surrendered on 8 May 1945, battles continued in Croatia and Slovenia, where the Partisans faced resistance from members of the Croatian Ustasha, Croatian Home Guard, Slovenian Home Guard, and other anti-Partisan forces who were attempting to retreat to Austria. Tens of thousands of ‘traitorous collaborators and reactionary counter-revolutionary forces’ were killed after the surrender (Sindbæk, 2012, pp. 41, 84). Industrialization, urbanization and memorialization programmes made Yugoslav cities like Vukovar ‘machines’ for producing socialist subjects (Thaler et al., 2012, p. 120). Citizens were encouraged to reject the fascist and ‘fratricidal’ struggles of the Second World War and instead embrace peaceful and interdependent coexistence

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with other ethnic groups to achieve what the regime dubbed ‘brotherhood and unity’. With this aim in mind, ‘The Communist government took the most bitter fighters of the civil war and planted them in the middle of Eastern Slavonia’, in and around Vukovar (Miloš Vasi´c, quoted in Glenny, 1996, pp. 107–108). Draža Mihailovi´c, the leader of the Chetniks, went into hiding domestically and evaded capture until 13 March 1946. As late as 1952, the Yugoslav government reported Chetnik formations at the borders (Ramet, 2006, p. 189). Ante Paveli´c, leader of the Ustasha, fled to eventually establish the Hrvatski oslobodilaˇcki pokret (Croatian Liberation Movement) in Argentina. Momˇcilo Ðuji´c, a Chetnik commander born in what is today Croatia, fled to the USA where he founded the Ravna Gora Movement of Serbian Chetniks. In 1957, Blagoje Jovovi´c, a Chetnik in exile, shot Paveli´c who succumbed to his wounds two years later. Many residents of Vukovar took advantage of Tito’s open border policy and became guest workers abroad where they encountered Chetnik or Ustashe narratives (see Hockenos, 2003). For the exiles and their allies, the war was not over. The Partisans, as the victors of the Second World War, dominated the official narrative. The Savez udruženja boraca narodnooslobodilaˇckog rata (Association of Fighters of the National Liberation War) became the army that served in the ‘memory wars’ that were unfolding. Tito stated, ‘Your task is to be on the front lines everywhere and to continue nurturing our tradition everywhere, to preserve the great accomplishments of the National Liberation Struggle’ (quoted in Peitler-Selakov, 2014, p. 30). The association was very efficient in its work, erecting almost three monuments and memorials per day for a sixteen-year period (Bergholz, 2007, p. 65). The hegemonic Partisan narrative was not solely propagated by the state, but shared through a wide spectrum of the populace, ‘for whom the war turned into an autobiographical point of reference and point of departure’ (Yeomans, 2019, p. 163). Yet, counter-memorialization took place beyond the borders of Yugoslavia while the graves of Ustashas and Chetniks within the SFRY continued to attract clandestine commemorative activity (Bergholz, 2007, p. 88; Pavlakovi´c, 2010, p. 134). In turn, some Partisan memorials were vandalized, destroyed; or deliberately neglected (Bergholz, 2007, pp. 76, 91). In Vukovar, the memorial area marking the Dudik mass graves, for example, was damaged and had fallen into disrepair by the mid-1970s, which prompted officials to call for its replacement ˇ (Baillie, 2019; Cehaji´ c, 1975, p. 5).

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The unsettled nature of the legacies of the Second World War underpinned the Croat nationalist revival of the 1960s known as the Croatian Spring. Overt nationalist graffiti began to appear in Vukovar’s public spaces during this period (Teacher, Interview, 12 August 2008). In the crackdown that followed, it is estimated that 50,000 members of the League of Communists of Croatia lost their Party cards, 12,000 people were fired, 2,000–5,000 people were imprisoned, and 50,000 students were listed as ‘class enemies’ (Ramet, 2006, p. 307). Internationally, Croatian separatists on average committed one act of terror every five weeks between 1962 and 1980 (Toki´c, 2020). Such acts included the 1971 assassination of the Yugoslav Ambassador to Sweden, the 1976 hijacking of TWA flight 355 and the associated New York city bomb attack, the 1976 attempt on the life of the Yugoslav vice consul in Dusseldorf, the armed seizure of the Yugoslav mission offices to the UN in 1977, etc. (Hockenos, 2003, p. 63). Anti-Yugoslav Serbs also carried out several acts of terror during this period. For example, Nikola Kavaja, a central figure in the Serbian Homeland Liberation Movement, was convicted of bombing a Yugoslav consulate’s home in Chicago. In 1979, he hijacked an American Airlines flight that he intended to crash into the headquarters of the Yugoslav Communist Party (Alter, 2013). The need to counter nationalist resurgences put memorial constructions back onto the Yugoslav state’s agenda ‘at a time when the achievements of the revolution were in need of reiteration’ (Mills, 2012, p. 545). By 1990, within the county of Vukovar, there were 25 monuments dedicated to the National Liberation Struggle, 51 busts, 44 memorial plaques, and the Dudik Memorial Park in addition to 14 known mass graves dating from the Second World War (Vukovar Anti-Fascist Union, quoted in Bošnjak, 2009). The participation of large numbers of Serbs in the Partisan movement resulted in their (perceived) overrepresentation in the local administration, the police, the Yugoslav Army, and the Party (Pavlakovi´c, 2014, p. 362). For Croatian revisionist scholars like Cviki´c, memorialization ‘enabled the Serb ethnic minority in the Vukovar municipality to smoothly develop its ethnic identity, which continually empowered the totalitarian communist elite with the selective memory of the trauma of the collective victimhood of the Ustasha terror’ (2016, p. 251).

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(Re)activating Rankling Pasts The power struggles that followed Tito’s death in 1980 were fuelled by a process of re-memorialization that enabled the (partial) whitewashing of the Ustashas and Chetniks, and reconfigured them as ‘patriotic’ or ‘anti-communist movements’ by their respective proponents (Pavlakovi´c, 2019). Revisionists sought to reconcile their Partisan and nationalist histories to unite ‘their’ people against the ‘other’ (Banjeglav, 2012). In 1981, Tud-man was tried and imprisoned for, among other things, denying the official number of victims in Jasenovac. Meanwhile, Serbs began organizing mass rallies at Second World War memorials in Croatia, such as Petrova Gora, Jasenovac, and Srb, stressing the Ustasha crimes against their co-ethnics while re-actualizing senses of threat and victimization. The Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU Memorandum), which was leaked in 1986, stated that Serbs in Croatia faced ‘unprecedented danger’, as victims of (ongoing) ‘cultural genocide’ (SANU, 1986, p. 62). The Croatian Democratic Union won the 1990 parliamentary elections. Croat nationalists revived slogans and symbols once employed by the Ustasha and calls for independence gained pace. On 1 April 1991, after months of rising tensions and armed clashes between ethnic Serbs and Croatian police in Pakrac and Plitvice, Borovo Selo (a predominantly ethnic Serb village on the outskirts of Vukovar) was barricaded. On 14 April, the founder of the Serbian Radical Party (and later Deputy Prime Minister of Sebia, and convicted war criminal) Vojislav Šešelj and other Serb nationalists held a rally calling for areas with large numbers of Serb in Croatia and Bosnia to unite to form an enlarged Serb state within the Yugoslav federation or a ‘Greater Serbia’. Mounting tensions prompted Serb paramilitary groups to amass in the village. Josip Boljkovac, (the Croatian Minister of Internal Affairs in 1991), claimed that ‘Gojko Šušak [the former Croatian Minister of Defence], Branimir Glavaš [a member of the HDZ who was found guilty of torturing Serbs during the Croatian War of Independence] and Vice Vukojevi´c [a member of the HDZ] shot Armbrust anti-tank weapons at Borovo Selo to start the war’ in mid-April 1991 (Radaljac, 2014). Their alleged attack happened amid what is purported to have been an ongoing ‘terror campaign’, which included the unlawful arrest, torture, disappearance, and murder of Serbs, by the convicted local Croat war criminal Tomislav Merˇcep and his collaborators.4 The dominant Croatian

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narrative refutes such claims and asserts that ‘Greater Serbian’ ambitions were being pursued through the arming of ethnic Serb paramilitary forces who were operating in the area coupled with the Serbization of the JNA to suppress legitimate Croatian attempts at securing independence (e.g. Nazor & Mari´c, 2018). On 1 May 1991, four Croat policemen entered Borovo Selo to provocatively replace the village’s Yugoslav flag with a Croatian flag. Two were captured. A Croatian police rescue party of approximately 150 officers was sent in after them the following day. Twelve police officers were killed in the skirmish that ensued. High-ranking Croat politicians joined the commemoration of this event as early as 1993 (Žani´c, 2017, p. 103). Immediately after the UN’s attempts to ‘peacefully reintegrate’ Croats back into the area (1996–1998), a memorial was erected on public property at the edge of Borovo Selo (Baillie, 2013b, p. 122). The memorial was vandalized shortly thereafter. In 2002, a new memorial to the policemen was erected in the very centre of Borovo Selo. In May 2012, the Croatian Association of Special Police added a new plaque onto the 2002 memorial that states ‘On 02.05.1991 in Borovo Selo Serbian terrorists [sic] treacherously ambushed [policemen] and executed a massacre’. In 1991, both Croat and Serb paramilitary formations were officially regarded by Yugoslavia and the international community as ‘terrorists’. However, Croatian independence transformed the former (in the eyes of Croats) into branitelji. While the deaths that occurred in Borovo Selo on that fateful day are abhorrent, the use of the term ‘terrorists’ on the memorial in Borovo Selo masks the proto-army nature of the Croatian police force and the actions of Croatian paramilitary forces prior to the siege. In turn, it delegitimizes any fears that local Serbs had regarding the return of anti-Serb violence, which some had personally experienced under the NDH. Many of the societal cleavages that underpinned the battles of the Second World War were reopened by the events of 1990. Polls conducted in 1990–1991 revealed major cleavages among Croatian Serbs, with approximately a third supporting the nationalist politics and a third opposing (Hayball, 2015, p. 40). Up to 40% of some JNA units reportedly defected during the siege of Vukovar, and failure to report once drafted became widespread (Cigar, 1997, p. 38). Yet, self-styled Chetnik paramilitary units and Hrvatske obrambene snage (HOS) paramilitary forces were among the combatants in Vukovar. The latter’s abbreviated

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title mirrored that of the Croatian army under the Ustasha, i.e. Hrvatske oružane snage (HOS). Their flag bore the slogan Za dom spremni—a salute actively used in the NDH.

The Fray to Stay Full military victory, an unconditional surrender, or the signing of peace treaties are often regarded as marking the official end of the war. In Vukovar, numerous official ceasefires were negotiated during the siege and then violated. Such ‘paper’ mechanisms ceased to be regarded as binding. Despite the conquest of the city on 18 November 1991 by the JNA and Serb paramilitary forces, the ‘end-state’ was unstable, and conducive to renewed conflict (Cigar, 1993, p. 327). Initially, the narrative of the ‘liberation’ of Vukovar was used to rally the ‘rump of Yugoslavia’ for the ongoing war efforts. A Belgrade-based travel firm organized Tours of Warning that showed visitors how the ‘Ustasha fighters’ had ‘forced’ the JNA to destroy Vukovar (Šulc, 1991, p. 18). RSK officials focused on erecting and preserving ‘monuments to the fallen fighters, anti-fascists from the Second World War, this war’s fallen soldiers and victims of terror from both the fascist wars’ (Bali´c, 1997, p. 129). Socialist-era memorials designed to encourage ‘brotherhood and unity’ in the aftermath of the fratricidal conflicts of the Second World War were reimagined by the RSK ‘exclusively as a symbol of Serb victimization that legitimized the violent rebellion’ against a separatist Croatia (Pavlakovi´c, 2013, p. 904). To propagate the JNA account of the siege, an exhibition entitled Vukovar 1991: Genocide against the Cultural Heritage of the Serbian Nation ran in Paris from 26 to 29 May 1992, but was closed due to international outrage (Pavi´c, 1996, p. 138). The RSK’s battle to ‘hold’ the recently ‘won’ territory took place on all fronts. Croat heritage sites were targeted for destruction in the aftermath of the siege (see Baillie, 2011). Designs were launched to transform Vukovar into a new ‘capital of the Serbian territory on the right bank of the Danube’ (Klemenˇci´c & Schofield, 2001, p. 26). The highly unstable economic status of the RSK meant that few of its plans materialized. However, a handful of memorials to fallen Serb soldiers were erected in Vukovar and the surrounding villages while officials announced intentions to establish a ‘war museum’ in the city (Kusti´c, , 1996, p. 194).

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The Fight to Return The Croatian War of Independence was memorialized in Croatia as soon as it had begun. Croats forcibly displaced from Vukovar by the siege played a critical role in this early memorialization. Through memorials they erected in Koprivnica, Trogir, and Zagreb and the work of the Vukovar Museum in Exile, displaced Croat Vukovarians battled against the relativization of their status as victims, refuted the RSK/JNA counternarratives, demanded the right to return home, and fought to make Croatian territory ‘complete’ (Žani´c, 2017, p. 100). The Wall of Pain (Zidboli) in Zagreb became the primary wartime memorial of the fledgling Croatian state. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a special United Nations rapporteur for human rights in the former Yugoslavia, stated that ‘one cannot really know the actual truth about concentration camps, prisons, and murders because Croats say the one thing, while Serbs say another’ (quoted in Raos, 2012, pp. 362–363). In response, displaced Vukovarians and Croats from other combat areas began bringing bricks from a local factory on which they inscribed a name. Eventually, it consisted of 13,650 bricks: red bricks bore the names of the missing, while black bricks bore the names of those who had died in the ‘Croatian War of Independence’. A national icon, and a rallying point in the nation’s capital, this grassroots memorial became a locus for daily candle lighting and flower laying. Annually, it became the primary location at which the fall of Vukovar was marked. The excessive use of force by the JNA and Serb paramilitaries paired with the war crimes committed in the immediate aftermath of the siege of Vukovar swung international opinion. Early memorialization efforts like those described above were essential to this campaign. Tud-man, in a speech entitled Rat c´ e uskoro završiti [The war will end soon], declared, ‘This is how we successfully turned the international community to our side, and finally achieved international recognition for Croatia’ (quoted in Sebatovsky, 2002, p. 47).

Peaceful Reintegration? The area around Vukovar was subject to the 1995 Erdut Peace Agreement and the UN’s peaceful reintegration of the city (1996–1998) in which the territory was to be integrated into Croatia and the resettlement of displaced Croats (without a mass exodus of Serbs) was to be encouraged.

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Yet, by 14 February 1996 an estimated 15,000 Serbs had fled to Serbia. In 1998, the exodus continued with 25–30 Serbs leaving Eastern Slavonia a day (Klemenˇci´c & Schofield, 2001, p. 39). In 1996, the prime minister of the Republic of Croatia sent a letter to UNTEAS’s General Klein asking him to prevent the announced celebration of what the Serbs called the Day of Liberation of the City (Žani´c, 2017, p. 106). That year, dogged by security concerns, 250 Croats were permitted to visit graves in Vukovar for the first time since the siege (Žani´c, 2017, p. 77). The Joint Implementation Commission on Education and Culture, which brought together Croatian and RSK officials, was established that year. Serb officials refused to go to Zagreb to meet with their Croatian counterparts and the Croats refused to enter the former RSK (Mazza, 1997, p. 6). The commission achieved little ‘joint’ work as the Croatian authorities insisted that ‘All the interventions made during Serbian occupation and provisional UNTAES administration, will be cleared and their eligibility will be determined from the point of view of Croatian regulations’ (Vukovarske Novine, 12 February 1997, p. 8; quoted in Žani´c, 2017 p. 156). Rather than concluding the memory wars, the UNTAES period served as a mustering point for its next stage.

‘A White Cross Sends a Warning’: Memorializing Croat Narratives In 1998, returning displaced Croats held their first commemoration in Vukovar under the remit of the Croatian state. The Association of Croatian War Veterans asked the city’s Serbs ‘not to go out into the streets on this day of the greatest sorrow of the Croatian people’ (HVIDR, 1998 quoted in Banjeglav, 2019, p. 2019). Every year since then, Serb– Croat relations, and the potential for reconciliation, have been tested by these annual commemorations. In 1999, the first official annual ‘Procession of Memory’ marked the route between the hospital and the new cemetery, and symbolically retraced the steps of many of the Croats who had been displaced or killed at the end of the siege. Annually, participants file past Vukovar’s iconic war-wounded water tower that has been conserved in its ruined state, and which encourages people to ‘remember the conflict by mimicking its own wartime appearance’ (Schellenberg, 2015, p. 21). In the immediate post-UNTAES phase the procession drew

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approximately 3,000 participants; by 2012 it was attracting an estimated 60,000 (Banjeglav, 2019). ‘Homeland-War’ memorials were inserted to ‘order’ the spatial chaos of the ruinscape that the war had made of Vukovar. The memorials were erected in an ethnically mixed city in which people were once again sharing the same space, but not the same experiences of war. To counter any lingering relativization of responsibility, these memorials ascribe accountability for the crimes committed in 1991 to the collective ‘Serb aggressors’ (Baillie, 2013b, p. 126). The narrative of the ‘Serbian aggression’ homogenizes all ethnic Serbs, negates any in-group contestation, eliminates the responsiveness of Serb actors to events on the ground, and denies the ‘intense fear’ that Serb communities felt. In turn, it semantically exonerates Croat branitelji (lit. defenders) from any role in precipitating the war, and enables any of their (alleged) provocations or crimes to be dismissed or passed off as ‘mistakes’ or ‘blunders’ (see Hayball, 2015). Croat nationalist scholars maintain that alternative accounts distort the facts, relativize the responsibility for the war, and attempt to equalize guilt (Nazor & Mari´c, 2018, p. 35). Indeed, the Declaration of the Homeland War states that ‘the Republic of Croatia led a just and legitimate, defensive and liberating, not an aggressive and conquering war against anyone, in which it defended its territories from Greater Serbian aggression within its internationally recognized borders’. It paints Croatia as exclusively a victim; it places the blame for the beginning of the war solely on Serbia; it ignores that there were elements of civil war; and it denies any official Croatian involvement in Bosnia despite ICTY rulings contradicting this (Pavlakovi´c, 2014). In 2003, the annual Procession of Memory was entitled ‘A White Cross Sends a Warning’. The white cross in question is located just off Vukovar’s central square, at the confluence of the River Vuka and the Danube (which is divided by the contemporary border with Serbia). This memorial incorporates Glagolitic script, which also features on the Baška tablet (ca. 1100 AD). The Baška tablet is significant because it bears the first known usage of the term ‘Croatia’ in Church Slavonic. The white cross also features an interlace used on medieval Croatian funerary monuments. Together these design elements situate the siege of Vukovar as the ultimate battle for what Tud-man called the ‘thousand-year dream for an independent Croatian state’ (see e.g. Banjeglav, 2019). The white cross was donated by the ‘Croatian Navy, military district Pula’ (MCDRV,

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n.d.). The memorial is dedicated to ‘the victims for a free Croatia’ and serves as a ‘warning’ to the Serbs across the river and in the city (MCDRV, n.d). It marks a front line in the memory wars between the Croats and the Serbs, made physically manifest by memorials (Baillie, 2013b; Kardov, 2007, p. 75). Vukovar’s ‘Homeland-War’ memorials actively Croatized spacesstaking claim to territory in this contested city (Kardov, 2007). Mirroring Partisan memorialization strategies, Croatian veterans have become the primary memory agents within the city, responsible for the erection of many of the city’s memorials. A 2012 statute charges the Memorial Centre of the Homeland War, Vukovar (MCDRV), located in the repurposed JNA base, to connect and maintain key memorial locations in Vukovar and the surrounding area. Funded by the Ministry of Croatian Veterans, the centre now manages and maintains a memorial network that spatially binds the city to the battlefield that it became, reifying the front lines as part of contemporary divisions. In 2014, Croatia launched an education programme that entails twoday-long visits by 8th graders to Vukovar, initially funded by the Ministry of Croatian Veterans. It is expected that 40,000 students will visit the city annually (MCDRV n.d.). The centre aims to teach the ‘values of the Homeland War’ to ‘educate about coexistence, understanding and tolerance’ (MCDRV n.d.). It remains to be seen if this can be achieved when the narratives of veterans are foregrounded to the extent that other voices are rendered marginal. Many locals do not feel served by the city’s war memorials. Indeed, heritage managers have begun to refer to these new monuments as ‘donations which are impossible to decline’ (Karaˇc et al., 2008, p. 1094). A resident noted, ‘They [the government] just want to make Vukovar a museum. I am not a living sculpture walking around telling everyone what happened’ (Tourist Guide, Interview, 2008). The conflict-time that these memorials perpetuate only serves the needs of certain protagonists. Indeed, Dežulovi´c (2014) writes in his award-winning article ‘Vukovar: A Life-Size Monument to a Dead City’: There is no other purpose in Vukovar besides the ceremonial one […] Vukovar is just a conserved ruin of its former 1991 self, a preserved corpse. A depository of candles and wreathes without any purpose other than the protocolary reverence and the drilling of patriotism into people’s heads to

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which – fearing the symbolic power of the town – everyone acquiesces without asking unnecessary questions.

‘Vukovar Will Never Be Bykobap’: Rejecting Unwanted Pasts After the Croatian War of Independence, the new state sought to transition from single-party socialism to democracy, from a largely nationalized economy to market liberalization, and from a union with other formerYugoslav nations to membership in the EU. All of these processes have been intimately entwined with attempts to move from wartime to peacetime. The post-reintegration Vukovar is situated on the cusp of two countries, and is a city claimed by two groups. Consequently, the need for abjection the unattainable desire to expel those things that threaten a boundary—was high. Not a single RSK memorial survived the return of Croat refugees unscathed (Baillie, 2013b, p.119). Contested symbols erected by RSK officials such as the four c’s (representing the slogan camo cloga Cpbina cpacava / Only Unity Saves the Serbs) on the cross on the Serbian Orthodox church and the šajkaˇca (Serbian military hats) that adorned the headstones in the Military Cemetery, were removed by Croat city officials (Kardov, 2007, p. 72). Other memorials were spirited away (see Baillie, 2013). The RSK was symbolically purged from Vukovar. The Vukovar Anti-Fascist Organization estimates that 80% of the county’s socialist-era monuments and memorials were destroyed or removed by 2009 (Bošnjak, 2009). Despite attempts by anti-fascist organizations and local Serbs, the Dudik mass-grave memorial complex remained in ruins, and was partially converted into a football club by Croat veterans (Baillie, 2019). This shifted in 2013, on the eve of Croatia’s EU accession, when a Zagreb-based activist group, Ars Publicae, pushed for and secured its partial reconstruction just as the memory wars were about to escalate once more. The controversial 2011 census (published at the end of 2012) reported that 34.87% of city’s population was Serb. The Croatian Constitutional Law on National Minorities stipulates that in instances where a minority makes up more than a third of the population, they are entitled to their script and language being used in public. In September 2013, protesters spearheaded by the Croat veteran group Stožer za obranu hrvatskog Vukovaru (Headquarters for the Defence of Croatia) tore down the new signs on governmental buildings that bore both the Latin (used primarily

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by Croats) and Cyrillic (used primarily by Serbs) alphabets. A veteran exclaimed ‘This is a provocation! They are even waging war in peacetime’ (quoted in Sokoli´c, 2019, p. 132). In particular, the idea that the texts in, on, or referring to the city’s ‘Homeland-War’ memorials would have to be featured in Cyrillic caused dismay (Žani´c, 2014, p. 46). In November 2013, right-wing parties on the city council voted for changes that proclaimed Vukovar a ‘space of special piety’, exempt from Croatian minority-rights legislation because of what it suffered during the siege. Ivan Penava, elected mayor in 2017, has refused to introduce bilingualism, despite several court decisions ordering him to do so. He has repeatedly argued that the lack of bilingualism in Vukovar is a kind of legitimate collective punishment directed at the Serb community in Croatia for the crimes committed during the war in the 1990s (Vukobratovi´c, 2020).

Forgetting the ‘Other’ Victims Clark (2013, p. 119) claims that Vukovar’s memorial boom has produced ‘divisive and exclusionary memorials [that] critically ignore fallen and missing Serbs – the forgotten victims of Vukovar’. The first official Croatian memorial to Serb victims of the Croatian War of Independence was erected in 2010 in the Dalmatian hinterlands after a previous unofficial cross erected in 2004 was destroyed (Pavlakovi´c, 2019). Although an increasing number of memorials to non-Croat victims are beginning to appear in other parts of Croatia, this recognition of the suffering of the ‘other’ remains rare (Pavlakovi´c, 2019). Even when memorialization has been achieved, acceptance of the narratives of the ‘other’ by the majority are far from assured. Indeed, many memorials commemorating Serb victims have become the targets of media attacks, vandalism, or destruction. A Serb resident of Vukovar noted ‘All Serbian victims are seen as aggressors, and their commemoration is regarded as some sort of nostalgia for the RSK’ (A4-HR interview, 2017 quoted in Miloševi´c, 2019, l. 2224). Penava asserted that he would have ‘nothing against’ the 2018 proposal to erect a memorial to Serb victims of the conflict in 1991 in Vukovar, provided that the SDSS would acknowledge that the Croatian War of Independence was ‘a consequence of Greater Serbian aggression’ (HINA, 2018). He went on to assert that ‘Milakovi´c [leader of the SDSS] is implementing the Greater Serbia programme also known in public

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as SANU’s memorandum 2’ (HINA, 2018). Penava’s 2020 defection from the HDZ to the Homeland Movement suggests that a polarization exists not only between Vukovar’s Serbs and Croats, but also increasingly between local-, national-, and international-level memory agents.

Central vs. Local Control of Memory Narratives In Vukovar, the local Croat veterans and bereaved population’s need for victim and heroic recognition at times clashes with top-down or international calls for recognition of the plurality of victimhood, and/or reconciliation. In 1996, before displaced Croats had returned to Vukovar, the Croatian government began to try to regulate the outputs of the nation’s post-war memorial boom (Pavlakovi´c, 2019). At their behest, by 2015, 68 of Slavomir Drinkovi´c’s standardized black obelisks adorned with doves marked 114 mass graves of victims of ‘Greater Serbian aggression’ across the country. Indeed, one obelisk marks the notorious mass grave on the outskirts of Vukovar at Ovˇcara at which approximately 200 ‘non-Serbs’ taken from Vukovar Hospital were executed in November 1991. In 2005, under the direction of officials in Zagreb, the bricks of the grassroots Wall of Pain were removed by the authorities and buried in the Mirogoj Cemetery, which sparked numerous protests. Above it, a new, formalized memorial bearing the names of the missing was erected. In 2008, the Ministry of Croatian Veterans began co-financing memorials stipulating that recipient memorials were ‘not allowed to contain meanings or symbols contrary to the constitutional principles and democratic values of the Republic of Croatia’ (see Pavlakovi´c, 2019). However, in the symbolic ‘crucible of the nation’, veterans continue to stake their claims to control Vukovar’s past. Grassroots memorials often augment the ‘official’ memorials as locals and national actors play a ‘tug-of-war’ over the meanings of Vukovar’s losses. The politician Vladimir Šeks stated: The Homeland War, in which the Croatian people battled for their freedom, was a three-part war for Croatia – a war with the Serbian aggressor, a war with the international deniers of Croatian independence, and a war with domestic revisionists and falsifiers of Croatia’s path to statehood, independence, and victory in the imposed, justified, defensive, and liberating Homeland War. The first war was waged with weapons, the second with diplomacy, and the third with a promotional campaign. The Croatian people won the first two wars, but the third is still being fought.

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It is up to us to finish it as we did the first two – with victory. (Veˇcernji List, 2011)

In 2013, the ‘Procession of Memory’ was renamed ‘Vukovar – a space of special piety’ a title that it has retained ever since (Miloševi´c, 2019). That year, protesters began to march before the officially sanctioned procession began, effectively splitting the gathering into two and forcing state representatives to the rear. A veteran argued that ‘Cyrillic in Vukovar is a grenade from Zagreb directed at Vukovar. Zagreb is attacking Vukovar’ (Sokoli´c, 2019, p. 133). In November 2020, Peneva began raising ‘V sculptures’ at the entrances to Vukovar bearing the text ‘place of special homeland piety’ beneath a cross. These boundary markers carve out the entire city as a space in conflict-time, symbolically divorced from both the politicians in Zagreb as well as the Serb-dominated villages that neighbour Vukovar‚ and from Serbia across the Danube.

Conclusion: Memorials and the Matter of Time War memorials are quintessentially ‘about time’ (Levinson, 1998, p. 31). By turning the complex spatial and temporal phenomenon of war into ‘lieux de mémoire’ (Nora, 1997), memorials seek to address the ontological uncertainty that war has created. They are often erected between wartime and peacetime when everything is in flux, open to question, uncertain, and confusing. Paradoxically, their physical intervention into such space keeps the war a part of the present and the quotidian. As processes of reconstruction erase visible traces of wartime from landscapes that have been at the epicentre of armed conflict, memorialization reinserts visible public reminders of war into these same spaces, which gives the past a new material form. War memorials highlight periods of conflict and simultaneously distract the gaze from a heritage that attests to plurality. They exist in time but also outside of time because they are built and preserved to be physically insusceptible to time’s ravages. Memorials remind us that history is unfinished rather than bygone (Burghardt & Kirn, 2014, p. 103). The continued proliferation of memorials indicates an ongoing faith in their ability to mediate history and memory. They are often purported to be a symbolic means of recognizing victims and achieving closure, which thus enables a (re)turn to ‘peacetime’ norms. Yet, as the Black Lives Matter and #RhodesMustFall movements have poignantly reminded us,

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memorials are also mobilized to condone physical, symbolic, or structural violence in the present. Thus, memorials often fail to release societies from cycles of violence fuelled by the legacies of past conflicts (Viejo-Rose, 2011, p. 47). In Vukovar, wars spill beyond tidy temporal boundaries. ‘The past is not yet over’ (Suboti´c, 2012, p. 100). The intertwined legacies of past wars provide ‘templates’ that continue to affect everyday life, national identity, EU, and bilateral relations. Rather than facilitating a transition from wartime to peacetime, the war memorials in Vukovar help to perpetuate conflict-time. In the immediate aftermath of the siege, the RSK further damaged the heritage associated with Croats to retrospectively ethnically cleanse the city which they had already purged of Croat residents. They erected memorials and mobilized Serb heritage to supplant the heritage of the ‘Other’ in an attempt to symbolically appropriate the city. Since Vukovar was integrated into Croatia, memorials have been erected to Croatize the space and serve as a ‘warning’ to the ‘Other’ (Baillie, 2013b). Collectively, under the control of the Ministry of Veterans‚ they form a memorial ‘frontline’. This cultivates and consolidates the conflict and presents barriers to reconciliation (Fyfe & Sternberg, 2019). Simultaneously, this network of memorials carves the city out of time and space, and sets it aside as a ‘place of special piety’ sacralized by its wartime past. Vukovar remains a contested border city without the walls, buffer zones, or divisive infrastructure that characterizes other iconic divided cities. The fluid border in the formidable Danube between Croatia and Serbia is easily traversed by fishing boats and day trippers. The ethnically mixed city is easily reached and used in quotidian routines of both neighbouring Serb and Croat villages. The city is also a battleground in national and local attempts to mobilize it for quite different political aims. Memorials are therefore activated by various actors to stake claims and to spatially reinforce the borders around and through the city (Baillie 2013b). Mirroring their ‘mission’ under the SFRY, veterans, who have suffered greatly, have become the dominant actors in the erection and maintenance of the city’s memorials. They use memorials as weapons in the current memory wars. Memorials erected after the Second World War foregrounded the multiethnic and anti-fascist nature of the Partisan forces and downplayed the fratricidal nature of the conflict. However, Vukovar’s Second World War memorials also served as tacit reminders of the collective victimhood of Partisan supporters and/or ethnic Serbs. Memorials

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erected or appropriated around the time of the Croatian War of Independence followed international practices of individualizing victimhood to reverse the trend of presenting anonymized (often exaggerated) victim figures (see Jagdhuhn and Mazzucchelli this volume on victim figures at Jasenovac). However, the memorials erected after the Croatian War of Independence fail to individualize guilt homogenizing the ‘perpetrators’ as ‘the fascist Ustasha’ or ‘the Greater Serbian aggressors’. Although attempts have been made to problematize or pluralize these categories, they are often dismissed because they are seen to relativize guilt. In 1997, a team of European cultural experts visited Slavonia and proposed the creation of a Museum of Reconciliation and Peace, and an educational reconciliation centre based in Slavonia (Landry, 1998, pp. 39–41). The former branitelj and SDP representative Željko Sabo was elected mayor of Vukovar in 2009. During his tenure, he pushed a pro-EU agenda through which he sought to reposition Vukovar as a city characterized by ‘peaceful reintegration’ and ‘brotherhood and unity’. He supported the reconstruction of the Dudik memorial complex as well as the opening of a new school in which the city’s Serb and Croat pupils would be taught using the same curriculum. The idea for a memorial park dedicated to this theme was again floated in 2010 under Sabo, and although the city hosted an open competition for its design, it has yet to be realized. In Vukovar, heritage today is a battlefield for negotiating difference, identity, authority, and superiority rather than a domain concerned with the technical management of physical objects. At present, there is a lack of appetite for recognizing the suffering of the ‘Other’ or the crimes of co-ethnics. Memorials from previous eras that attest to the victimhood of the ‘Other’, or heritage that hints at periods of peaceful coexistence have been demobilized or downplayed. Attempts to establish a new peace park or museum have drifted into obscurity‚ regarded as externally imposed visions or Yugo-nostalgic longings. Unless the city’s memorials and heritage sites can be reconfigured as spaces of agonism where synchronous pasts can be explored and discussed, Vukovar will continue to be mired in conflict-time. Acknowledgements The research for this paper has been conducted during research periods at the Capital Cities Institutional Research Theme, University of Pretoria; The Wits City Institute, the Conflict in Cities and the Contested State ESRC Large Grant Project (RES-060-25-00150), University of Cambridge;

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The Centre for Urban Conflicts Research, University of Cambridge; and the Terrorscapes Research project, VU Amsterdam/the University of Amsterdam. Special thanks go to Nikolina Bejlo Komši´c, Željko Troha, and Andrej Edelinski for assistance with translation.

Notes 1. For estimates of civilian deaths and the number of people who have left the Krajina, see, for example, Gotovina et al. (IT-06–90), http://www.icty. org/case/gotovina/4 (accessed 19 March 2019). 2. How many ethnic Serbs are registered in, as opposed to actually residing in Vukovar, is the subject of fierce debate. The current mayor, Ivan Penava, has expressed concerns that the census, on the basis of which the legal minimum of a 30 per cent Serb presence was required in order to introduce Cyrillic on official signage, was illegitimate. See for example https://glashrvatske.hrt.hr/en/news/domestic/vukovarmayor-opposes-courts-decision-on-serbian-cyrillic/ (accessed 5 July 2020). 3. For example, the Sinjska Alka is an equestrian event that commemorates the Croatian–Venetian victory against the Ottomans in 1715. In 2017, a commemorative event entitled Sinjska Alka was hosted in Vukovar to fuse these two symbols of ‘patriotism and honourable military tradition’ (see Miloševi´c, 2019, p. l. 6342). 4. See https://trialinternational.org/latest-post/tomislav-mercep/, https:// www.telegraf.rs/english/2466173-vukovar-is-a-place-of-suffering-of-twopeople-linta-croatian-victims-have-been-recognized-serbian-are-being-neg ated, http://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/021 017ED.htm (accessed 10 July 2020).

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Index

A Adriatic coast/littoral, 195, 280, 287 Ahtisaari, Martti (Special Envoy of the Secretary-General to Kosovo), 252, 253, 258 plan, 253 Ahtisaari plan, 253 Air Serbia, 47 Albania/Albanian(s), 7, 9, 18, 114, 116, 119–121, 125, 183, 224, 239, 248–250, 252–256, 258, 260, 271, 290 Alexander the Great, 112, 114, 117 Alleanza Nazionale, 200 All Saints’ Day, 78, 336 American Airlines (hijack), 356 Americas, the, 159 Amfilohije, Montenegrin Metropolitan, 282–284 And-eli´c, Pavao (Bosnian lawyer, archaeologist and historian), 49, 233, 236 Andjeli´c, Slavomir (curator), 38

Andri´c, Ivo (Nobel prize winning writer), 230, 280 ‘Andri´cgrad’, 231 The Bridge on the Drina, 230, 231 Anglo-American forces/administration, 196 Antagonistic Tolerance (project), 223, 239 Antifašistiˇcko vije´ce narodnog oslobod-enja Jugoslavije/AntiFascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) Museum of the 1st AVNOJ Session, 309, 312, 319 Museum of the 2nd AVNOJ Session, 309, 312, 314, 319 Antonio Gandusio (theatre), 157 ARBIH, Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 77, 151 Archduke Franz Ferdinand (Austro Hungarian ruler), 231 Architecture Baroque, 34

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. B˘adescu et al. (eds.), Transforming Heritage in the Former Yugoslavia, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76401-2

377

378

INDEX

Brutalist, 111–114 Byzantine, 29, 34, 35 ‘Disappearing’, 40, 44, 49 modern/-ist/-ism, 30, 44 Ottoman, 36, 220 renaissance, 29, 48 socialist, 44, 113 Soviet, 40, 43, 45, 174, 206, 301 Arendt, Hannah ‘space(s) of appearance’, 328, 329, 339, 340 The Human Condition (1958), 328 Argentina, 355 Armbrust anti-tank weapons, 357 Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBIH), 135, 136 Association of Anti-fascist Soldiers of Croatia (SABH), 326 Associations of Veterans of the People’s Liberation War, the Committee for the Maintenance and Marking of Historical Sites from the People’s Liberation War (Odbor za obeležavanje i ured-ivanje istorijskih mesta Narodno-oslobodilaˇckog rata), 298 ‘Atlantis’, 323 Augustinˇci´c, August (sculptor), 340, 342 Australia, 159, 337 Austro-Hungary/AustriaHungary/Hungarian empire, 15, 160, 182, 255, 273, 287 rule, 221, 222, 238 secession (style), 31 Axis powers, 304, 354 B Baillargeon, Taika, 46 Bair, 256 Balkan/s

‘atavism’, 12 ‘Corridor’, 204 ‘ghosts’, 353 ‘time’, 12 Ballinger, Pamela (historian), 159, 166, 175, 178–180, 197, 337, 346 Balši´c dynasty, 269 Baltic states/countries, 269 Bamiyan Buddhas, 6 Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag), 170 Banja Luka Archive of the Republika Srpska, 304 Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, 224 Churches, 222, 224 Banjica, 44 concentration camp, 299, 307 Memorial Museum, 299, 307 Basovizza (Basovica), 198 monument, 1930, 203 Batina, Battle, 302 Museum, 306, 307 Beatles, the, 160 Belgrade/Beograd Association of Belgrade Architects (Društvo Arhitekata Beograda, DAB), 42 Austrian bombing, 30 Belle Époque quarter, 37 Blokovi (NGO), 44, 140 Centre for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD), 48 City Hall, 45 Cooperative Bank, 48 Cultural Centre, 44, 45 Cultural Heritage Preservation Institute, 44, 50 Cultural Heritage Without Borders, 48, 89, 252 Dah Theatre, 48

INDEX

Dvorištance (café), 48 ‘4th July’ Museum, 308 Generalštab complex, 27, 42 General Staff of the Yugoslav Army, 27 gentrification, 48 Geozavod building, 47–48 Grupa Spomenik (Monument Group), 43, 48, 259 heritage, 9, 16, 17, 28–33, 35–37, 40, 43–45, 47–50 Kalemegdan Fortress Military museum, 37, 43 Kralja Milana, 43 Kustosiranje (heritage project), 44 Ministry of Defence of Yugoslavia, 27, 42 Ministry of Internal Affairs, 118 Ministry of Space, 48 Museum (city), 16, 35–37, 43, 313 Museum of Contemporary Arts, 43 Museum of Genocide Victims (1992), 307 Museum of Party’s Illegal Printing Offices, 308 Museum of the History of Yugoslavia (1996), 307 Ne da(vi)mo Beograd (‘We do not let Belgrade d(r)own’), 48 Nemanjina avenue, 27 New Belgrade (Novi Beograd), 30, 35, 37, 40, 44 October Salon (55th, 2014), 44, 45 Ottoman, 7, 29, 30, 36, 49 Palace of the Federation/Palace of Serbia and Montenegro/Palace of Serbia, 38, 40 regeneration (urban), 48 REX (active civic group), 44 Savamala, 47–49 Savski Venac district, 30 Semlin district, 30

379

SIV (Federal Executive Council) Hall of Yugoslavia, 38 Skadarlija district (Bohemian quarter), 37 Spasimo Generalštab od profitera (Let’s save the Generalštab from profiteers), 44 Stare Slike Novog Beograda (Old Photos of New Belgrade, Facebook site), 44 St Sava (Temple), 34, 258 tourism, 325, 334, 336, 339, 344 urban overhaul, 29 Waterfront project (Beograd na Vodi), 47–49 Zaha Hadid tower, 43 Zavod za zaštitu spomenika kulture grada Beograda, 236 Zemun district, 30 Bella Ciao (film), 170 Benussi, Sabrina (film director), 157 Beograd-Mosca (cinema, formerly Roma), 171 Bergson, Henri (philosopher), 42 Berlin Wall, 179, 207, 326 Berlusconi, Silvio (Italian president), 198 Biha´c, 309, 312, 319 ‘Creative Republic Session’, 312 Bijeljina Church of St. Pantelejmona, 224 Bijelo Dugme, 170 Bilingualism, 158, 365 Black Lives Matter (movement), 367 Blagaj, 234 Blagojevi´c, Ljiljana (architectural historian), 29–31, 34, 43 Bleiburg, 304, 306 Bobovac Bosnian royal city/capital (Kraljevski grad Bobovac), 233, 236

380

INDEX

conquest by Ottomans, 220, 230, 233, 237, 239 pilgrimage, 236 royal mausoleum, 65, 236, 280, 282–286, 288 Bogdanovi´c, Bogdan (architect, Mayor of Belgrade, writer), 8, 9, 143, 145, 153, 259 Boletini, Isa (Albanian nationalist and commander from Kosovo), 258 Boljkovac, Josip (Croatian Minister of Internal Affairs), 357 Borba (anti-Fascist organization), 303, 364 Borgo San Mauro, 205 Borgo San Nazario, 205 Borgo San Sergio, 205 Borovo, 178 Borovo Selo, 357, 358 Bosanska Krajina (region), 310 Bosnia and Herzegovina Agency for Statistics, 229, 234 Brˇcko District, 218 cantons, 75, 218 Census (2016), 98, 229 Church, 87, 94, 221–224, 231, 232, 234, 236 Commission for the Maintenance of the National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 309 ‘Croat–Muslim Federation’, 75, 218 Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 9, 73, 75, 94, 96, 98, 218, 224, 234, 308, 310 football matches, 217 Ministry for Culture and Sport of the Federation of Bosnia & Herzegovina, 236 Republika Srpska, 9, 63, 68, 70, 75, 134, 135, 138, 144, 218, 219, 222, 229–232, 238, 304, 308, 309, 314

Bosniak (Bošnjak), 9, 55, 61, 63, 66, 68, 69, 75, 77, 84, 86–90, 93, 95, 97–100, 132, 134, 135, 137–143, 216–219, 224, 229–231, 234, 236–241, 256, 259, 268, 290, 313, 334. See also Bosnian: Muslim Bosnian architecture, 220, 232 bell towers, 94, 221, 224 minarets, 92, 94, 100, 220, 224 Catholics, 221, 232 Church, 87, 92–94, 100, 220–222, 224, 231, 232, 234, 236 courts, 217 Croats, 2, 6, 30, 55, 68, 84, 87, 88, 91–93, 95, 97–100, 132, 143, 216–218, 222, 224, 229, 232, 234, 236, 237, 239, 240 customs, traditions, 169, 217, 343 ˇ Cuvari bosanske krune (The guardians of the Bosnian crown), 236 Jews, 7, 217, 239 Muslim džamija, 238 Islamic symbols, 219 mahala, 237, 255 mahalskih, 219 mesdžidi, 220 monuments, 66, 143, 219–221 Šehidi (martyrs), 218, 219 spread of Islam, 237 tekijas , 220 Orthodox Christians (Pravoslavci), 224, 232 post-Yugoslavia, 3, 10, 11, 16, 17, 19, 34, 112, 177, 180, 189, 190, 207, 215, 218, 224, 273, 288, 296, 302, 318, 320, 339

INDEX

religious heritage/belief, 9, 91, 216, 217, 223, 236, 239, 240 Sarajevo, 6, 9, 16, 18, 63, 68–70, 73, 218, 219, 221, 224, 231, 234 self-partition, divisions electoral voting, 217 ethno-religious, 232 political, 216, 217 religious, 216, 217, 232 Serbs Army of the Republika Srpska (Vojska Republike Srpske, VRS), 219, 231 Defensive-Fatherland War (Odbrambeno-otadžbinski rat), 219 monuments, 18, 19, 42, 132, 135, 136, 139, 141, 143, 144, 218, 219, 236, 309 pali borci (fallen fighters), 219 Serbian Orthodox Church, 224, 230, 231, 238, 249–254, 364 Vlachs, 237 Bošnjak mahala, 255 Bourdieu, Pierre (sociologist), 3, 14, 335 Boym, Svetlana (comparative slavic literature scholar, writer), 162, 184 Braˇc (island), 277, 278, 285 Brane, 108 Branitelji, 219, 351, 353, 358, 362, 369 Bratunac, 136 Bregorvi´c, Goran (Bosnian/Yugoslavian recording artist), 170 Brezna, 329 Britain/British, 77, 196, 204

381

‘brotherhood and unity’, 7, 114, 140, 153, 167, 176, 191, 259, 296, 301, 308, 326, 343, 355, 359, 369 Buden, Boris, 286 Buha, Aleksa, 33 Bulatovi´c, Momir (Montenegrin politician), 271 Bulgaria/Bulgarians, 175, 222, 239 Byzantine architecture, 29, 34, 35 empire, 29, 34, 35 C ˇ cak Caˇ Museum of Revolutionary Youth, 308 ˇ Cajniˇ ce, 221 old crkva Uspenja Presvete Bogorodice, 1857, 221 Carnival, 108, 336 case popolari (public housing), 205 Catholic(s)/Catholicism (Roman), 92–95, 99, 100, 142, 171, 191, 195, 216, 219, 221, 222, 224, 231, 232, 234, 238, 239, 257, 259 ´ Cehotina River, 237 Sultan’s mosque (Careva džamija), 237 Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (CK), 40 Centro di Ricerche Storiche (Centre for Historical Research), 158, 163 Cerar, Miro (Slovenian prime minister), 344 Cetinje, 269, 270, 278–280, 290 Cetinski, Mirko, 170 Chetniks, 7, 329, 355, 357 Chicago, 356 China/Chinese, 183

382

INDEX

Christmas, 78, 268, 336 Cityscapes, 2, 29, 31, 34, 49, 94, 99 ˇ Ciže, 345 memorial, 324, 330, 335, 337, 338, 343, 344 Clausewitz, Carl von (military theorist), 15 Cold War(s), 2, 12, 196–198, 202, 203, 218 blocs, 7, 12 East/West cooperation, 113, 190, 202 Cominform/cominformists, 202 Communism/Communists/Party Communist Party Second Congress, 354 decommunism, 311 League, 40, 165, 356 Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement. See Ahtisaari plan Conflict-time, 2, 3, 12, 13, 15, 18, 19, 32, 43, 132, 148, 248, 257, 261, 296, 339, 344, 353, 354, 363, 367–369 Congress of Berlin (1878), 270 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003), 3 Cossiga, Francesco (Italian president), 198 Crete, 222, 239 ˇ Crni bratj e (Black Brothers, film, 2010), 200 Crnogorac (Montenegrin newspaper), 279 Crnojevi´c dynasty Ðurad-, 269 Ivan, 269 Croatia/Croats/Croatians Anti-Fascism Day (22 June), 336

Association of Anti-fascist Soldiers of Croatia (SABH), 326 Association of Special Police, 358 branitelji (‘defenders’), 219, 351, 353, 358, 362, 369 Constitutional Law on National Minorities, 364 Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), 6, 135, 217 Cristicchi, Simone (Italian singer and composer), 200 ‘Croatian Spring’, 356 Croatian War of Independence, 19, 323, 325, 330, 333, 352, 353, 357, 360, 364, 365, 369 Declaration of the Homeland War, 362 elections, 216, 234, 333, 357 HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union), 182, 306, 357 Home Guard, 191, 354 ‘Homeland War’, 132, 219, 335, 336, 339, 341, 344, 353, 362, 363, 366 Independent State (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH), 7, 99, 222, 305, 354 language, 7, 158, 179, 364 League of Communists, 40 Liberation Movement (Hrvatski oslobodilaˇcki pokret ), 298, 302, 355, 356 Partisan(s), 7, 39, 42, 140, 170, 171, 177, 178, 191, 192, 195, 196, 199–203, 206, 207, 223, 238, 259, 298, 300, 301, 304–307, 312, 315, 318, 325, 326, 329, 330, 332–334, 338, 354, 356, 368 ceremonies, 202, 326, 327 memorials/monuments, 8, 19, 37, 143, 195, 202, 206,

INDEX

207, 323–328, 330–337, 339, 343–345, 355, 363 police, 97, 98, 356–358 Procession of Memory, 361, 362, 367 secession, 8, 159, 179, 282 ‘shifting fates’, 324 ‘sunken Atlantis’, 323 symbolism Christian crosses, 323 National coat of arms, 323 red flag, 169, 170 ‘terrorists’, 358 tourism, 325, 334, 336, 339, 344 Croatia, Independent State of, 7, 99, 222, 305, 345, 354 Crvenˇcanin, Vera (film director), 300 ‘cultural grammars’, 14 Cultural Heritage without Borders (CHwB), 48, 89, 252–254, 257 ˇ Curug ‘Racija 1942’ (‘Raid 1942’) Association, 306 Museum, 306 Cyprus, 222, 239 Cyrillic (alphabet), 219, 365, 367

D Dalmatia/Dalmatian(s), 305, 324, 329–333, 335, 336, 339, 346, 365 Danube, River, 29, 352, 359, 362, 367, 368 Database of Cultural Heritage of Kosovo, 257 Dayton Agreement/Accord (1995), 9, 58, 135 Dedijer, Vladimir (Partisan, Yugoslavian Politician), 280 De Michelis, Gianni (Italian foreign minister), 198

383

Diaspora/diasporic communities, 114, 268, 330 Dieta Democratica Istriana (DDI), 182 Dignano, 169 Dobrovi´c, Nikola (architect), 42, 46 Dolina/San Dorligo della Valle memorial park, 203 Domobranci Home Guard (Domobranci). See Slovenia/Slovenian/Slovenes Donja Gradina, 146, 314 Memorial zone, 144, 146, 304, 310 Doži´c, Gavrilo (Metropolitan, Serbian patriarch), 277, 278, 284, 287 Dragovi´c, Živko, 274, 277 Drina, River, 224, 230, 231, 237, 334 Drljevi´c, Sekula (Montenegrin politician), 279 Drugarica (‘female comrade’), 167 Društvo za negovanje rodoljubnih tradicij organizacije TIGR Primorske (Association for the cultivation of patriotic traditions of the organization TIGR in Primorska), 199 Država (national sovereignty), 7, 216, 305, 345, 354 Dubrovnik, 271, 332 siege, 271, 332 Dudik Memorial Park, 356 Dusseldorf, 356 Dylan, Bob (musician), 170 Ðuji´c, Momˇcilo (Chetnik commander, Serbian Orthodox priest), 355 Ðukanovi´c, Milo (President of Montenegro/Montenegrin faction leader), 271 Ðuro Pejovi´c, parish, 277 E Easter, 336

384

INDEX

Edit-Arcobaleno, 163 Eltz Manor, 354 Emili, Igor (architect), 299 Erdut Peace Agreement (1995), 352, 360 Erjavec, Fran (writer), 70, 192 Ethiopia, 338 Ethnicity/ethnic divisions cleansing (etniˇcko cˇiš´cenje), 1, 8, 57, 58, 68, 83, 84, 138, 145, 196, 198, 217, 218, 222–224, 230, 238, 337 ethnocentricity, 32 homelands, 201, 269 violence, 1, 201 Ethnography/ethnographic, 18, 163, 312, 345 ethno-music, 173 Europe/European Central, 268, 269 Eastern, 175, 190 ‘Fortress’, 2, 37 Western, 36 European Union (EU), 88, 93, 182, 198, 199, 256, 260, 272, 304 ‘Euroremont’ (Euro-Repair), 40

F Fabiani, Max (architect), 192 Facebook, 44, 108, 183, 260, 334 Fascism, 34, 38, 145, 203, 326, 335 anti-fascism, 199, 207, 209, 300, 326, 343 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), 38, 77, 114 Ferrara, 164 First Conference of Non-Aligned Countries (1961), 38 First World War, 6, 19, 29, 37, 63, 193, 200, 231, 270, 272, 273 Fiume, 169, 178, 200. See also Rijeka

Flags, 160, 209, 306, 315 Foˇca Aladža džamija, 238 Careva džamija, 237, 238 crkva sv. Nikole, 1857, 221 Hram sv. Sava, 224, 238 Roman Catholic church, 238 sv. Nikola, 30, 38, 238 Fortress Europe, 2 Foucault, Michel (philosopher), 14, 15 ‘4th July’ Museum, Belgrade, 308 Franz Joseph 1 (Austro-Hungarian emperor), 4, 287 Friuli earthquake (1976), 171

G GAIA Kosovo (NGO), 260 Gasparri, Maurizio (Italian Minister for Communications), 200 Gazimestan, 249 Genocide, 9, 60, 68, 134, 135, 140, 142, 268, 307 cultural, 6, 357 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 43 Germany/German(s), 7, 145, 152, 199, 299, 312, 320, 336, 344–346, 354 German mark, 271 Glagolitic script, 362 Glavaš, Branimir (Croatian Politician, HDZ), 357 Glid, Nandor (sculptor), 298 Glina Hrvatski Dom/Croatian House, 303 Memorial House of the Victims of Ustasha Terror, 302 Goranovi´c, Pavle (writer), 268

INDEX

Goražde, 237 Kajserija mosque, 224 Gori vatra (Fuse, film, 2003), 217 Gorizia (Gorica), 191, 196, 200, 202 Gortan, Vladimir (Croatian anti-fascist), 335 Grandi Motori, 205 Greece/Greek, 114, 121, 222, 239 Gruevski, Nikola (Macedonian prime minister), 107–112, 114–120, 122, 123

H Habsburg monarchy/empire, 2, 6, 7, 15, 34, 195, 221, 269 Hague Convention(s) 1899, 4, 287 1907, 6, 287 Article 27, 4 Article 4 (2), 5 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954), 4 Second Hague Protocol (1999), 5 Hague, the, 6, 217 Hammam, 257, 260 Hegeduši´c, Krsto (painter), 298 Heimatlosigkeit , 315 Helsinki Committee, 32 heritage ‘abject’, 40, 45 ‘Authorized Heritage Discourse’ (Smith, 2006), 3 commodification, 312 difficult heritage, 13 dissonant heritage, 134, 254 ‘heritagization’/‘heritagized’/ ‘reheritagized’, 3, 4, 10, 11, 13–15, 353 memorial sites, 144, 295, 312

385

religious, 4, 6, 9, 10, 16, 18, 31, 84, 91, 216, 217, 223, 236, 239, 240, 259, 261 war heritage, 13, 17 Herzegovina, 7, 8, 10, 16, 18, 19, 55, 58, 63, 65, 70, 72, 83, 84, 87–89, 93, 94, 96–100, 131, 132, 148, 216, 218, 219, 230, 232, 234, 236, 237, 252, 268, 285, 295, 302, 304, 308–310, 312–314, 317, 319 High Contracting Party (ies), 5 History in Exile (2003), 159 Holocaust, 199, 304, 305 Horvat, Sebastijan (theatrical director), 118, 200 HOS. See Hrvatske obrambene snage; Hrvatske oružane snage Hrvatska demokratska zajednica, Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), 182, 234, 306, 318, 332, 357, 366 Hrvatske obrambene snage (HOS) Croatian paramilitary, 358, 359 Hrvatske oružane snage (HOS), 359 Hrvatski oslobodilaˇcki pokret (Croatian Liberation Movement), 355 Hudelist, Darko (journalist), 286–288 Hungary/Hungarians, 4, 7, 29, 96, 124, 177, 200, 221, 232, 239, 270, 273, 287 Hypo Alpe Adria (bank), 40

I Ibar, River, 254–258, 260 Il cuore nel pozzo (The Heart in the Pit, film, 2005), 200 Industrialization, 205, 354 Internally Displaced People (IDPs), 180, 256

386

INDEX

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), 6, 75, 86, 134, 151, 217, 358, 362 Iron Curtain, the, 162, 164, 196 Islam, 15, 66, 221, 268 Israel/Israeli, 216 Declaration of Independence (1948), 216 Istria/Istrian esuli, 159, 175, 205, 337, 344, 346 infoibati, 337 l’Esodo (the exodus), 159 Istrianity, 335 Italian community/minority diaspora, 330 ‘national belonging’, 330 optanti, 159 partition, borders. See Istria/Istrian: Zone A, Zone B rimasti, 159, 166, 175, 176, 180, 182 Savez boraca, 338 Unione degli italiani, 180, 184, 189 Zone A, Zone B, 159, 202, 203 Istrian Democratic Party (IDS), 182, 335 Italo-Slovene borderland, 205 Italy/Italian Communist Party Anthem, 170 Community Association, 169 Day of Remembrance (Giorno del ricordo), 63, 199, 200 esuli, 159, 175, 205, 337, 344, 346 films, 169 First Republic, 197 ‘foiba/foibe’, 196–199, 203, 337, 338 Forza Italia, 198 language, 179 Lega Nord, 198 ‘martyrdom’, 198, 310

minority, 157–159, 164, 165, 167, 172, 176, 177, 179, 181–183, 185, 201 National Community, 158, 169 RAI Radiotelevisione italiana, 163, 200 society, 171, 198 tourism, 158, 183, 336, 338, 344 TV, 163, 178 Ivanova Korita (song), 280 Ivanovi´c, Mihailo (Montenegrin politician), 279 Iž, island, 302 NOB memorial collection, 302

J Jajce, 231, 232, 309, 334 ‘Jama’ (poem), 238, 337 Jankovi´c, Mihailo (architect), 37 Jasenovac, 7, 144–147, 304–306, 310, 311, 357, 369 Concentration camp, 7, 140, 306, 310 Memorial Museum/Zone, 299, 304, 305, 311 Jews, 7, 146, 216, 217, 239, 327, 354 Jezerski vrh (peak), 277, 281, 287 Josipovi´c, Ivo (Former President of Croatia), 201 Jovanovi´c, Blažo (Montenegrin prime minister), 29, 286 Jovovi´c, Blagoje (Chetnik who mortally wounded Ante Paveli´c), 355 Judah, Tim (journalist, writer), 207, 249, 250 Judt, Tony (historian), 193 Jugoslovenska narodna armija (JNA). See Yugoslav National Army

INDEX

Jugoslovenska Vojska u Otadžbini (JVuO), Chetnik Army in the Fatherland, 307, 308 Julian March, 178 Julian Venetia, 178 K Kaˇci´c, Irena, 353 Kadinjaˇca, Battle, 298, 300, 313 Memorial House, 314 Kalud-erovi´c, Ivan, 274, 284 Karad-ord-evi´c family, 7, 270, 277–279, 282–284 Karadži´c, Vuk, 273 Kavaja, Nikola (‘Tito’s hunter’), 356 Keraterm, 139 Kidriˇc, Boris, 191 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, 6, 30, 189, 270, 274, 279, 282, 285 Kirn, G., 10, 195, 324, 325, 341, 345, 367 Klein, Jacques Paul (Secretary Under General of the UN), 361 Koˇcevski Rog, forest, 191 Koltay, Gábor (Hungarian composer), 200 Komen, 192 Konˇcar, Rade, 301 Koper (Capodistria), 163, 196 Koprivnica, 360 Kosaˇca, Katarina Kotromani´c (Bosnian queen), 234 Kosaˇca, Stjepan (father of Queen Katarina), 234 Kosova/Kosovo/Kosovars Battle of (1389), 258 KFOR (Kosovo Force-NATO), 251, 252 War (1998–1999), 39, 248 Kostunica, Vojislav (prime minister), 34

387

Kotor, Bay, 273, 281, 284 Kotromani´c, Stjepan Tomaš (a crown prince of Bosnia), 234 Kovaˇcevi´c, Sava, 42, 162, 184, 301 Kovaˇci´c, Ivan Goran (Croatian Partisan poet), 238, 301, 302 Kozara ‘Kozara at Heart’, 313 Memorial Park, 298, 310 museum, 298, 301, 314 in NOB, 301, 310 Kozarac, 139–142, 147, 152 Kozluk Church of Sts. Peter & Paul, 224 Kragujevac Memorial Park, 299 ‘21st October’ Museum, 299 Kraigher, Boris, 191 Krajina, 6, 8, 304, 332, 352 Kraljeva Sutjeska, 236 Krasnov, Nikola(i) (Russian/Tsarist architect), 30, 274, 275, 277 Kravica, 136, 137 Kristeva, Julia, 43 Kristi´c, Radislav (general), 6 Krleža, Miroslav (artist), 280 Kruni´c, Spasoje (architect), 43 Kuˇcan, Milan (Slovenian president), 191 Kukavica hill, 259 Kulenovi´c, Vuk, 300 kulla, 250, 254 Kumanovo, 119 Kumrovec (Tito’s birthplace), 302, 306, 324, 330, 340–343 Kusturica, Emir (filmmaker), 231, 334 ‘Rebellious Angels’, (Pobunjeni and-eli, 2014), 231 L Lali´c, Mihailo (writer), 221, 280 Landmines, 167

388

INDEX

Latin (alphabet), 148, 219, 269, 338, 364 La Voce del Popolo (newspaper), 163, 165, 183 Lazarevi´c, Jelena, 273, 274 Lazar, Prince, 258 League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia (SKOJ, Savez komunistiˇcke omladine Jugoslavije), 332 Le Corbusier (architect), 29 Leftist Movement Solidarnost , 116 Lenin (Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov), 191 Lenka, 116 Liberation Day (25th April), Italy, 209 Libro Cuore (publishers), 178 Liburnia, 305 ‘Lipa Remembers’ (memorial museum), 299, 305, 311 Livno, 96, 97, 221 Ljubica, Princess ‘Coffee with’ weekly event, 35 Residence, 35 Ljubljana city council, 192 City Museum, 192 Congress Square, 195, 344 London Memorandum (1954), 180 Looting, 250, 295, 296, 306 Lotman, Jurij M. (Estonian semiotician and cultural historian), 14, 18, 131, 133, 150, 151 Lov´cen, Mount Njegoš, church/chapel Štirovnik (peak), 287 Jezerski vrh, 277, 281, 287 Lowenthal, David (historian), 248, 336 Lubarda, Petar (painter), 38, 280, 298 Lukomsky (Russian architect), 277

M Macdonald, Sharon (anthropologist), 13, 169, 174, 185 Macedonia/Macedonians defacing monuments/architecture, 119 diversity, 120 Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization–Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE), 113, 115, 118, 121–123, 125 neoliberalism, 115 President’s Citizen’s Liaison Office, 108, 119 #Protestiram/Protestoj, 119–121 Šarena Revolucija, 108–112, 117, 119, 120, 122, 123 Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), 108, 118, 120, 121 socialist revolution, 38, 119 Special Prosecutor Office - Charlie’s Angels (SJO), 117, 119, 121 special Riot Unit, 108 Mafia, 333 ‘omertà’ law, 333 Magazzino 18 (theatrical production, 2014), 200 Magris, Claudio (writer), 178 Majda, 342 Mara, Bosnian queen, 234 Marca Giuliana, 178 Maribor, 191 Marley, Bob, 170 Marx, Karl Heinrich, 191 Marxism, 167 Massacre(s), 61, 68, 70, 135, 136, 193, 299, 353, 358 Mathias Sandorf (Jules Verne novel, 1885), 336 Mayday, 209

INDEX

Mazowiecki, Tadeusz, 360 Medakovi´c, Milorad, 273 mehana (Balkan restaurant), 38 Mehmet II, Ottoman Sultan, 233 memorialization, 17, 18, 56–58, 66, 68, 72–74, 153, 162, 193, 202, 353–357, 360, 363, 365, 367 memorials, 8, 14, 17–19, 56, 98–100, 132, 135, 136, 138, 139, 144, 147, 190, 192, 195, 199, 202, 203, 206, 248, 257, 258, 261, 310, 324, 325, 327–330, 335, 336, 338, 344, 352, 353, 355, 357, 359, 360, 362–369 memory cultural, 2, 133, 193 divisive, 131 memoryscapes, 2, 18, 132, 134, 141, 147 narratives, 17, 56, 72, 133, 138, 148, 296, 366 Merˇcep, Tomislav (Croat paramilitary leader), 357 Mesi´c, Stjepan (former Croatian president), 342 Mestre, 164 Meštrovi´c, Ivan (sculptor/architect) Monument to Gratitude to France, 284 Monument to the Unknown Hero, 284 The Victor, 284 Meštrovi´c, Mate (son of Ivan Meštrovi´c), 286 Metropolitan Danilo, 270 Migrants/migration, 15, 16, 182–184, 201 Mihailovi´c, Draža (Chetnik leader), 307, 355 Mijakovi´ci, 236 Mijovi´c, Pavle (1914–1996) (Montenegrin cultural historian)

389

Matica crnogorska, 273 Njegoševe tužne armonije, 274 Ozloglašeno nasljed-e, 273 Mikro Naselje, 255 Milakovi´c, Srd-an (SDSS leader), 365 Miloševi´c, Slobodan (Serbian/Yugoslav president), 9, 31, 34, 40, 42, 45, 47, 249, 252, 271, 278, 282, 285, 307, 308, 365, 367, 370 Milunovi´c, Milo (painter), 279, 280 Miners’ Strike (Grevës së Minatorëve), 260 Ministry of Veterans (Croatia), 368 Mirogoj Cemetery, 366 Miscevic and Wenzler (Croatian architect firm), 113 Mitrofan Ban (Montenegrin metropolitan), 284, 287 Mitrovica/Mitrovicë Blagoje Ðord-evi´c, house of, 257 Hammam, 257, 260 Ibar, river, 254–258, 260 Miners’ Monument (Trepˇca), 259 Miners Strike, 260 Monument to Isa Boletini, 258 Monument to Prince Lazar, 258 Museum, 18, 260, 261 Orthodox Cemetery, 258 Shën Pjetri Church (St. Peter), 257, 259 St. Sava Church, 34, 258 Mitrovi´c, Mihaljo (architect), 42 Mlada Slovenija (Young Slovenia), 192 modernism, 28, 30, 37, 40, 43–45, 298, 324 Montenegro/Montenegrin(s) census (2003), 272 Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM), 272

390

INDEX

Democratic Party of Socialists, 271, 282 Doclean Academy of Arts and Science, 272 Doži´c (Metropolitan), 277, 278, 284, 287 Ðuro Pejovi´c, parish, 277 ethno-national identity, 57, 182 EU, 2, 158, 182, 184, 255, 256, 258, 272 ‘Greens’, 282, 287, 288 independence, 9, 11, 38, 122, 269–272, 280, 282, 287 language, 272 Matica crnogorska (magazine), 273 ‘medieval serbdom’, 286 Ministry of Religion, 277, 278 Montenegrin Party (MP), 278, 279 NATO, 9, 31, 271, 272 Nikola (monarch), 270 Orthodox Church, 269, 272, 280, 284 Ottoman empire/rule, 6, 270 People’s Republic, 279, 280, 286 Petar II Petrovi´c Njegoš (r. 1830–1851), 267, 270, 273 political/national identity, 270, 271, 280, 288 Prince-Bishopric, 270 ‘Red Croats’, 288 ruling dynasties Balši´c, 269 Crnojevi´c, 269 Karad-ord-evi´c, 278, 279, 282, 284 King Aleksandar Karad-ord-evi´c, 277, 283 Obrenovi´c, 270 Petrovi´c – Njegoš, 9, 267, 270, 273, 278, 279, 282 Russian relations, 270 secular principality (1852), 270

Serbian relations, 268, 270–272, 283, 288, 289 Serbs/Serbdom, 6, 270, 272, 279, 282, 285, 288 statehood, 270, 271, 285 ‘Whites’, 282, 288 Zeta, 269, 289 Moro, Aldo (Italian Prime Minister, killed by Red Brigades), 171 Moscow, 37, 203 Mosques, 29, 57, 89, 92–94, 220– 222, 224, 230, 238, 250, 254, 268, 353 conversion, 219 destruction, 6, 9, 87 Mostar Bridge, 9, 86–88, 95, 230, 334 Bulevar, 143, 144 ‘museum city’, 352 Motovun, 338 Mrakovica, 140, 310, 319 Mrkonji´c Grad, 309 Mundesia (NGO), 260 Musealization of the armed struggle, 298 of the revolution, 19, 298 of the struggle, 298, 312 Museum of Reconciliation and Peace, 369 Museum of the Pioneer and Youth Movements of Yugoslavia, 307, 315 Museums of the revolution, 19 Musil, Robert (writer), 219 Muslims, 7, 9, 66, 75, 78, 93, 98–100, 115, 143, 216, 217, 219, 221, 222, 230–232, 234, 236–241, 255, 268, 290 Mussolini, Benito (Italian fascist dictator), 195 Muti, Riccardo (conductor), 201

INDEX

Muzeji narodnooslobodilaˇcke borbe (People’s Liberation Struggle Museums, NOB Museums), 295–298, 301–303, 305, 309, 311, 312, 314–317, 319 N Napolitano, Giorgio (Italian president), 201 Narod (nation), 7, 11, 216, 230 Narodni Dom (National Hall, Trieste), 201 narodnooslobodilaˇcke borbe, People’s Liberation Struggle (NOB), 295, 296–298, 301, 302, 304, 305, 309, 311, 312, 314–317, 319. See also Museums of the revolution ‘Naša zemlja’ (Our land), monthly feature in Primorski dnevnik, 209, 210 ‘National Defence’, 167 National Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, 31, 32, 42 Nationalism, 2, 8, 12, 47, 93, 120, 143, 152, 176, 179, 181, 182, 239, 269, 286, 290, 291, 299, 311, 328 Nazi(s)/Nazism, 8, 30, 38, 140, 145, 152, 153, 191, 193, 195, 206, 344, 345 Nedeljnik (magazine), 286 Negrin, Alberto (film director), 200 neoliberalism, 47, 115 Neretva, River, 89, 230 Battle of the Wounded, 312–314, 319 Neskovski, Martin (Macedonian unlawfully killed by police), 117, 118 New York, 356

391

Nezavisna Država Hrvatska (NDH). See Croatia, Independent State of Nicholas II (Russian tsar), 4 Niš ‘Red Cross’ concentration camp, 299 ‘12th February’, 299, 307 Njegoš, Petar II Petrovi´c (Montenegrin prince/bishop) anti-Muslim, 47 burial, 273 exhumation, 284 genocide, 268 mausoleum(s), 280–286, 288 remains, 267, 273, 277–281, 284 Serbdom, 285, 286, 288, 291 ‘Visionary of Secrets’, 284 Njeguši, 281 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), 9, 31, 122, 199, 250, 272 ‘aggression’, 313 bombings, 27, 40, 45, 47, 49, 271, 313 Nostalgia, 160, 162, 164, 166, 169–172, 174, 182, 184, 261, 315, 330, 365 counter-nostalgia, 171 Yugo-nostalgia, 158–160, 162, 164, 172, 174, 177, 178, 180, 181, 183, 185, 190, 207, 315, 341 Nova Gorica, 191

O Obrenovi´c, Miloš (Serbian prince), 35, 36, 270 ‘OK Fest’ (music festival), 313 oltar domovine (altar of the fatherland), 234 Omarska, 139, 142, 152 Omiš, 330–332, 334

392

INDEX

‘Only Unity Saves Serbs’ (samo sloga Srbina spasava, motto), 364 Operations (military), 61, 70, 184, 193, 318 Flash, 352 Storm, 8, 352 Orašje (Bosanska Posavina) Church of the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac, 224 Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), 95, 253 Orthodox Church, 84, 89, 94, 115, 259, 289, 290 Montenegrin, 269, 272, 280 Serbian, 35, 222, 224, 230, 231, 238, 249–254, 290, 314, 364 Ottoman(s) Bosnian, 92, 100, 220, 221, 224, 230–233, 236–239 empire, 4, 7, 15, 115, 219, 224, 232, 254, 258, 269, 270 rule, 114, 221, 222, 254, 269 ‘space’, 219 Ovˇcara, 353, 366 P Padriciano/Padriˇce, 206 Pahor, Borut (Slovene president), 195 Pakrac, 357 Palast der Republik (GDR), 43 Pani´c, Taras (deputy director of the Serbian Directorate for Property), 42 Paramilitary (formations), 8, 11, 70, 77, 134, 136, 138, 139, 141, 145, 250, 304, 351, 357–359 Paris Peace Conference (1947), 192, 196 Partisan (s) commemorations, 199, 202, 206, 207, 209, 306, 337

heritage, 8, 19, 37, 191, 207, 223, 315, 334, 338, 343, 344 IX Corps, 192 monuments, 143, 202, 206, 207, 323–328, 330–333, 335–337, 339, 343–345 ‘space’, 143, 192, 206, 305 Patriotism/patriots, 117, 195, 296, 309, 363, 370 Paveli´c, Ante (Ustasha leader), 355 Pazin Foiba di Pisino (cave), 337 Jules Verne Day (28 June), 336 Kaštel, 336 Park of Liberation, 335 Pazinska jama (precipice), 337 Trg slobode (Freedom Square), 335 Peaceful reintegration (of Vukovar, under UN auspices), 8, 352, 360, 369 Peneva, Ivan (Mayor of Vukovar), 367 Perugia, 164 Petar II Petrovi´c Njegoš (Montenegrin vladika, prince/bishop) The False Tsar Stephen the Little (1851), 267 The Mountain Wreath (1847), 267, 268 The Ray of the Microcosm (1845), 267 Petrova Gora, 357 Pinocchio, 178 Pioniere, Il (The Pioneer, magazine), 160 Pisak, 335, 345 monument/memorial, 324, 330, 331, 333–335, 339, 343, 344 Pisino. See Pazin Plitvice, 357 Pobjeda (newspaper), 282 Podgorica, 271 Podmilaˇcje, 231, 232, 239

INDEX

Church of St. John the Baptist, 232 pilgrimage centre, 231 Podrecca, Boris (architect), 42 Popovi´c, Vladimir (Yugoslav ambassador to the US), 280 Popovi´c, Vuk (priest), 273, 284 Pordenone, 164 Potoˇcnjak, Vladimir (architect), 37 Prijedor, 138–141, 147 Prijepolje, 315 Primorska (Slovenian Littoral), 195, 196, 199–201 Primorski dnevnik (Slovene newspaper), 209, 210 Princip, Gavrilo, 231 Pristina/Prishtinë, 251, 254 progressive music/rock, 170 Pula/Pola, 169, 362 Pulji´c, Vinko Bosnian cardinal, 234 pilgrimage, 234 Punat, 302 Memorial House, 302 Pupovac, Milorad (President of SDSS), 352 R Radenkovi´c, 342 Rašica, Marko (artist), 287 Rat c´ e uskoro završiti (The war will end soon) speech, 360 Ravna Gora, 306, 355 Rebellious Angels (Pobunjeni and-eli, theatrical presentation), 231 Rebranding/renaming, 37, 192, 305, 310, 312 Reconciliation, 84, 87, 89, 136, 139, 143, 191, 195, 198, 215, 251, 256, 304, 344, 361, 366, 368, 369 Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse), 171 Red Flag. See Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag)

393

Republic of Užice, 300 Republika Srpska Krajina, Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK), 6, 8, 352, 359–361, 364, 365, 368 economy, 364 Republika Srpska (RS) Archive, 304 census (2016), 229 Institute of Statistics, 229 Resolution on European Conscience and Totalitarianism (2009), 195 Revolucionarna organizacija Julijske krajine T.I.G.R, Revolutionary Organization of the Julian March T.I.G.R (TIGR), 199 # Rhodes Must Fall, 367 Rijeka, 163, 169, 176, 183, 200, 305 Rodik, 193 Rolling Stones, the, 160 Roma (cinema, later Beograd-Mosca), 7, 114, 145, 146, 171, 251, 252, 255, 256, 354 Roma (ethnic group), 255 Roman Catholic Church, 238 Romania/Romanians, 175, 346 Rome/Romans, 34, 84, 219, 221, 224, 234, 257, 259, 333 Rommel Offensive, 336, 346 Roses (Sarajevo roses), 56, 59, 60, 63, 71, 74 Rovinj, 157–160, 163, 167, 170–172, 175, 176, 180, 181, 183, 185 Russo–Turkish War (1877–1878), 4 S Sabo, Željko (former mayor of Vukovar), 369 Samostalna demokratska srpska stranka, Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS), 352, 365 SANU (Serbian Academy of Science and Arts)

394

INDEX

Memorandum (leaked 1986), 357 Sarajevo Archduke Franz Ferdinand (assassination), 231 mosques džamije, 220 mesdžidi, 220 tekijas , 220 Orthodox Church, 220, 224, 231 Ottoman occupation/conquest, 86 Roman Catholic Cathedral, 221 roses, 56, 59, 60, 63, 71, 74 Serbian Orthodox Cathedral, 37, 221 ‘Victims of War monument’, 67, 73, 218 Šarena Revolucija (2016, Colourful Revolution), 108–112, 116, 119, 120, 122, 123, 125 Sava Quarter (Savsko naselje), 191 Savez Antifašisti cˇ kih Boraca i Antifašista Republike Hrvatske, Association of Anti-fascist Soldiers of Croatia (SABH), 326 Savez komunistiˇcke omladine Jugoslavije, League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia (SKOJ), 332 Savezno izvršno ve´ce, Federal Executive Council (SIV), 30, 37, 38, 40 Savez udruženja boraca Narodnooslobodilaˇckog rata, Association of Fighters of the National Liberation War (SUBNOR), 296, 355 Scalfaro, Oscar Luigi (Italian president), 198 Schengen, 2, 15, 184 ‘2nd Resistance Movement’, 307 Second World War, 3, 7–9, 11, 16, 19, 30, 34, 42, 93, 119, 132, 134, 137, 141, 142, 144, 145, 147, 158, 159, 164, 165,

171, 175, 177, 181, 190–193, 196, 198, 200–203, 255, 259, 271, 295–297, 300, 301, 303, 305–308, 310–318, 324–326, 329, 331, 332, 336–339, 344, 345, 351, 353–359, 368 Seeing Red. See Vedo rosso (Seeing Red, documentary film) Šeks, Vladimir (Croatian politician), 366 Selimovi´c, Meša (Yugoslav writer), 280 Semiotics, 13, 14, 16, 18, 131–135, 138, 141–144, 147, 150, 152, 153 Semtex, 332 Serbia/Serbian Army, 61, 231, 249, 304 Croatian Serbs, 358 Directorate for Property, 42 Docomomo International (Modernist architecture preservation group), 43 ‘First’, 28, 29, 32, 33, 36, 45, 48, 251, 307 Greater Serbia, 7, 289, 357, 358, 362, 365, 366, 369 Greater Serbian aggression, 365 heritage policies/strategies, 29, 32, 33 Ministry of Interior, 42, 45 Nationalism/nationalists, 32, 43, 140, 250, 285, 286, 289, 357 Orthodox Church, 35, 222, 224, 230, 231, 238, 249–254, 290, 314, 364 ‘Second’, 28, 32, 33, 45, 310 Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU), 32, 33, 357, 366 Serbian Homeland Liberation Movement, 356

INDEX

Serbs, 8, 35, 238, 249, 254, 255, 270, 272, 278, 282, 285, 286, 307, 356, 357, 361, 362, 364 soldiers, 252, 359 Serbian Academy of Science and Arts (SANU), 32, 33, 357, 366 Serbo-Byzantine, 29 Serbo-Croat(-ian), 167, 218, 223, 290 Šešelj, Vojislav (President of the Serbian Radical Party), 357 ‘7th July, 1941’ Museum, 307 Šibelja-Stjenka, Anton (Partisan hero), 192 Šibenik, 305, 332 Sinjska Alka, 370 Široki Brijeg, 221 Šistek, František (Czech historian), 280, 287 Sitnica, river, 254, 255 SIV. See Savezno izvršno ve´ce, Federal Executive Council (SIV) Škaljar, 284 Skopjani, 107, 112, 113, 115, 116, 119 Skopje Faculty of Architecture First Archibrigade, 116 First Architectural Uprising, 116 Freedom Square, 116, 335 graffiti, 136, 327, 356 Guardians of the Park, 116 Orthodox church, 35, 115 popular/urban revolt/protests, 111 project, 17, 109, 111, 112, 115, 116, 122 Singing Skopjani, 116 Trade Unions Chapter, 116 urban politics, reshaping, 109–111, 119 Slav/Slavic

395

annexionism, 201 Slavophiles, 32 South Slavic nations (narod), 11, 216 ‘Slava padlim za svobodo - Gloria ai caduti per la libertà’ (Glory to the Fallen for Freedom), memorial inscription at Dolina, 203 Slavonia, 355, 361, 369 Slovenia/Slovenian/Slovenes collaboration, 191, 193, 195 constitutional court, 192 Day of the Restoration of Primorska to the Motherland (state holiday), 200 Home Guard (Domobranci), 191, 193, 354 in Italy, 163, 190, 196, 200–203, 207, 209 language, 216 Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (LDS), 199 migration, 16, 184, 201 MVAC. See Home Guard New Slovenia Party, 192 Parliament, 192, 195, 278 Primorska, 195, 196, 199–201 Republic of Slovenia Act (1991), 191 Young Slovenia (Mlada Slovenija), 192 socialism/socialist architecture, 17, 30, 37, 43–45, 113, 114 international socialist(s), 45, 170 realism, 30, 45 Socialist Youth, 165, 166, 169, 332 Società Italiana per l’Oleodotto Transalpino (S.I.O.T.), 205 Socijaldemokratska partija Hrvatske, Social Democratic Party of Croatia (SDP), 319, 369

396

INDEX

Socijalistiˇcka Federativna Republika Jugoslavija, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), 10, 11, 114, 189–191, 195, 197, 302, 306, 311, 315, 341, 355, 368 Soldatovi´c, Jovan (artist), 300 Soros Foundation, 118 South Tyrol, 205 Soviet bloc, 45, 174 Srb, 357 Srebrenica, 8, 56, 68, 69, 73, 134–139, 141, 147, 151, 152 Srem Front, Memorial Museum, 300, 306, 308, 314 ‘White Room’ installation, 300 Srpski književni glasnik, magazine, 274 Stalin, Joseph/Stalinism/Stalinists, 7, 30, 37, 298 Stara Pazova ˇ ‘Janko Cmelik’ Memorial House, 306 Štedimlija, Savi´c Markovi´c (Montenegrin writer), 288 Stolice, Memorial complex, 307, 318 Stožer za obranu hrvatskog Vukovaru (Headquarters for the Defence of Croatia, Vukovar), 364 Stranka demokratske akcije, Party of Democratic Action (SDA), 234 Šumarice, 308, 314 Šušak, Gojko (Croatian Minister of Defence), 357 Šuštar, Alojzij (Archbishop of Ljubljana), 191 Sutjeska Battle, 298, 301 gorges, 42 Memorial House/zone, 301 National Park, 313 Sveti Petar Cetinjski, 278, 282, 283

Sweden, 356 Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), 252 Swedish National Development Agency (SIDA), 252

T Tange, Kenz¯ o (Japanese architect), 113 Tanzimat (period of Ottoman reform), 220, 221, 224 tekija (s), 220 Tele Capodistria (television broadcast), 163, 169, 170 territorial marking, 13, 133, 142 ‘terrorists’, 358 Tesla, Nikola (inventor), 38 The Human Condition (Arendt), 328 Third Reich, the, 195 Tito, Josip Broz (Marshal, president) Birthday (May 25) Dan mladosti (The Day of the Youth), 331 Štafeta (birthday race baton), 340 ‘Comrade’, 166, 167 cult, 158, 164 Kumrovec, 302, 306, 324, 330, 340–343, 345 ‘Partisan Trails’, 334 Road (Ljubljana), 171, 191, 192, 195, 344 statue, 340, 342, 343 Tito-Stalin split (1948), 7, 30, 37, 298 ‘Tito Tour’, 334 Tomanovi´c, Dr. Lazar, 274 years, 158, 162, 165, 170, 207, 355 Tomaševi´c, Stjepan (crown prince of Bosnia), 124, 234

INDEX

Tomi´c, Milutin (Member of Parliament, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes), 278 Tomislavgrad, 221 Trepˇca, 255, 259 Trianon (rock opera), 200 Trieste (Trst) concert for peace, 201 Duino-Aurisina/Devin-Nabrežina district, 204 ‘ethnic corridor’, 204 ‘ethnic ring’, 204 Film Festival – Alpe Adria Cinema, 163 Free Territory (FTT), 202, 204 infrastructure, 19, 204 Monfalcone/Tržiˇc district, 205 ‘spirit of’, 201 Zone A, 202, 203 Zone B, 159, 202, 203 Trifunovi´c, Miloš (Minister of Religion, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes), 278 Triglav, 30 Trnopolje, 139–141 Trogir, 360 Trump, Donald (US president), 28 Tud-man, Franjo (former Croatian President), 145, 182, 303, 304, 357, 360, 362 Turato, Darko, 299 Türk, Danilo (Slovene president), 201 Turkey/Turks, 88, 222, 239, 258, 333. See also Ottoman(s): empire TWA flight 355, 356 12th February, Museum (2013), 299, 307 ‘21st October’, Museum (2003), 299

U Udine

397

Agreement (1954), 159 Ugreši´c, Dubravka (writer), 323 UN Interim Administrative Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), 251 Unione degli Italiani, 163, 180 United Arab Emirates (UAE), 47, 93 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), 3, 5, 6, 88, 89, 94, 142, 252, 334 United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNPROFOR), 70, 134, 135 United Nations Transitional Authority in Eastern Slavonia (UNTEAS), 361 United Nations (UN), 8, 135, 136, 251, 352, 356, 358, 360 United States of America (USA), 93, 280, 355 Urbanek, K., 112 Urbanization, 354 Uš´ce office tower/shopping centre, 40 Ustasha fasciae, 329 Croatian, 7, 145, 191, 222, 238, 302, 306, 312, 329, 333, 345, 354–357, 359, 369 government, 354 ‘terror’, 302, 354, 356 Uzelac, Kristina, 334, 345 ‘Užice Republic’, 307 V Val d’Aosta, 205 Vance Peace Plan (1991), 352 Vandalize/vandalism, 84, 97, 143– 145, 153, 192, 206, 249, 250, 258, 355, 358, 365 Vardar, 30 football club, 117

398

INDEX

Vareš, 234, 236 Vedo rosso (Seeing Red, documentary film), 157, 158, 160, 162–167, 169, 170, 172, 177, 178, 180–182 Velenje (Tito’s Velenje), 191 Velika Hoˇca, 253 Venˇcac, 278, 285 Venice, Venetian, 158, 170, 178, 333, 370 Veprina´c, 336 Verdery, Katherine (anthropologist), 325, 346 Vienna/Viennese, 29, 42, 77, 287 secession (style), 29 Višegrad bridge (over the Drina, UNESCO site), 334 census (2013), 230 Church of the Virgin Mary, 230 mosques, 230 narod, 230 ‘Place of Fallen Fighters’ (Trg palih boraca), 230 VMRO, 113, 115, 121 Vodnjan, 169 Vojska Republike Srpske, Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), 134, 219, 231 Vojvodina, 7, 222 Baroque architecture, 34 Vrbas, 306 Vreme, 200 Vuˇci´c, Aleksandar (Serbian Minister of Defence), 42, 47, 48 Vujaklija, Lazar (painter), 38 Vukojevi´c, Vice (Judge of the Constitutional Court, Croatia), 357 Vukovar Anti-Fascist union, 356 ‘Day of Liberation’, 361

‘Forgotten victims’, 365 ‘Hero City’, 353 ‘Homeland War’, 353, 363 Memorial Centre of Homeland War Vukovar (MCDRV), 362, 363 Ministry of Veterans, 368 ‘museum city’, 352 Museum in Exile, 360 new cemetery, 361 1991 siege, 351, 354 ‘Procession of Memory’, 361, 362, 367 Remembrance Day (18th November 1991), 352 ‘terror campaign’, 357 Tourist Board, 363 Vukovar 1991: Genocide against the Cultural Heritage of the Serbian Nation (Paris exhibition), 359 water tower, 361 Zapamtite Vukovar (Remember Vukovar), 352

W Wall of Pain (Zid boli), 360, 366 ‘Walls in the head’, 2 Wars Agresija na Bosnu i Hercegovinu ([War of] Aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina), 132 Balkan Wars (1912–13), 58 civil, 132, 176, 179, 300, 334, 353, 355, 362 crimes/criminals, 63, 74, 268, 301, 337, 338, 360 Croatian War of Independence, 19, 323, 325, 330, 333, 352, 353, 357, 360, 364, 365, 369 Grad-anski rat, 132, 353

INDEX

Homeland War, 132, 219, 335, 336, 339, 341, 344, 345, 353, 362, 363 Kosovo War 1998–1999, 248 ‘lieux de mémoire’, 367 ‘memory wars’, 201, 311, 353, 355, 361, 363, 364, 368 Odbrambeno-otadžbinski rat (the Defensive and Patriotic War), 132, 219 World War, First, 6, 19, 29, 37, 63, 193, 200, 231, 270, 271, 273 World War, Second, 3, 7–9, 11, 16, 19, 30, 34, 42, 93, 132, 134, 137, 141, 142, 144, 145, 147, 158, 159, 164, 165, 171, 175, 177, 181, 190–193, 196, 198, 200–203, 255, 259, 271, 295–297, 300, 301, 303, 305–308, 310–318, 324–326, 329, 331, 332, 336–339, 344, 345, 351, 353–359, 368 Yugoslav Wars (1990s), 191, 209, 271 Wärtsilä, corporation, 205 Wehrmacht, 193 Western/the West influence, 32, 36, 162, 171, 174 politics, 190, 195, 199 Westernization, 32 White cross, 361, 362 Women in Black, 32 ‘worlding’ (Heidegger), 327, 340, 344 Y Young Turks, 258 Yugoslav Association of Fighters of the National Liberation War, 355 Yugoslavia/Yugoslav ‘Agreement on Succession Issues’ (2001), 302

399

break-up/dissolution, 86, 309, 318 census (1991), 98, 229, 234 Central Committee, 30, 40, 340 Communist Party, 167, 197, 296, 311, 340, 356 consuls, consulates, 356 dissolution, 2, 6, 8–10, 12, 19, 49, 180, 182, 268, 271, 290, 295, 296, 302, 304, 306, 307, 315, 316, 323, 327 ‘external enemy’, 167, 181 Federal, 30, 37, 92, 98, 100, 113, 144, 271, 279 First (1918–1941), 6, 30, 98 former Kingdom of, 2, 3, 5, 6, 11–13, 16–19, 27, 28, 47, 49, 83, 135, 150, 217, 241, 296, 301, 302, 309, 310, 315, 343, 346, 353, 360 IX Yugoslav Army Corps, 192 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, 6, 30, 189, 270, 282 ‘Lexicon’, 170, 173, 317 ‘National Defence’, 167 National Liberation Committee, 30 ‘pioneers’, 160, 165–167, 169 Republican Institute for the Protection of Cultural and Natural Monuments, 317 SIV, 30, 37, 38 socialism, 2, 16, 40, 43, 114, 166, 175, 241, 323, 325 Socialist Federal Republic (SFRY), 10, 11, 114, 189, 190, 197, 302, 306, 311, 315, 341, 355, 368 Socialist Youth, 165, 166, 332 ‘White Yugoslavia’, 282 Yugonostalgia/Yugonostalgic(s), 190, 207, 315 Yugosphere, 207

400

INDEX

Yugoslav National Army, 6, 8, 70, 332, 351, 358–360, 363 Z Zadar, 332 Za dom spremni (Ustasha slogan), 359 Zaev, Zoran (Macedonian politician), 109–112, 118, 120–125 Zagorje, 324, 330, 343 Zagreb, 118, 288, 332, 341, 345, 353, 360, 361, 364, 366, 367 Wall of Pain, 360, 366 Žani´c, Milovan (Ustasha Minister of Legislation), 353, 354, 358, 360, 361, 365 Žarkovi´c, Vidoje (Communist politician, Montenegro), 280

Zavod za zaštitu spomenika (Bosnian Bureau for the Preservation of Monuments), 236 Zemaljsko antifašistiˇcko vije´ce narodnog oslobod-enja Bosne i Hercegovine/The State Anti-Fascist Council for the People’s Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ZAVNOBIH) Memoria museum (1st), 309 Zemun, 30 Zeta, 269 Zid boli. See Wall of Pain (Zid boli) zindan (dungeon), 283 Zvornik, 224, 237 Saborni Hram sv. Presvete Bogorodice, 224