Yugonostalgia is like a vessel that everyone fills with their own ideas and meanings. What is it and why does it exist? How does it manifest and how do different people experience it? And where is it headed?
Diaspora Voices is an occasional series of conversations with ex-Yugoslavs living abroad.
The country of Yugoslavia may no longer appear on any physical maps, but it remains on many people’s mental maps; though Yugoslavia may be dead forever as a political entity, it lives on as a cultural project.
Few childhood heroes feature as prominently in Central/Eastern Europeans’ imaginations as Winnetou, the Chief of the Apaches AKA the “Red Gentleman”
Art, bravery, and community in the lesser known corner of the former country.
The stronger [the] nostalgia, the emptier of recollections it becomes.
How and when did the world’s fascination with Yugoslav socialist monuments begin?
There are surprisingly few polls across former Yugoslavia tracking people’s perception of that disappeared country and its breakup.
…or A Field Report from the Days of AVNOJ Every last Saturday in November, several thousand people from all across former Yugoslavia gather in Jajce for Days of AVNOJ, an official celebration of Yugoslavia’s founding
Director of Ljubljana-based Institute of Culture and Memory Studies, Tanja Petrović, discusses the new lives of Yugoslav objects, Yugonostalgia, and the political potential of socialist Yugoslavia today.
President Goran Gabrić takes me on a walking tour of Mini Yugoslavia.
Elma Hodžić, curator at the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, discusses the museum’s memory-making activities and Bosnian post-war identity.
Art historian Vladana Putnik Prica of the University of Belgrade discusses inappropriate monuments, foreigners’ interest and generational differences in locals’ perception of spomeniks, and nostalgic songs.
Remembering Yugoslavia started with an idea of covering various aspects of the disappeared country’s memory politics, from Tito to products to architecture.
And, finally, a big farewell kiss to my beloved Yugoslavia. We probably won’t meet again, dear, but nothing will ever replace you in my heart.”
Vlad Beronja and Stijn Vervaet, eds. Post-Yugoslav Constellations: Archive, Memory, and Trauma in Contemporary Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Literature and Culture. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016.
Jurica Pavičić, “HRVATSKA JE IZVUKLA NAJVEĆU DOBIT IZ JUGOSLAVIJE! Vladajuća ideologija drži se mita da je to bila negacija hrvatskog identiteta, a istina je suprotna,” Jutarni List, 2/19/2018 [pdf]
The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly one you can never have.
Rieff, David. In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
Olick, Jeffrey, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy, eds. The Collective Memory Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Kapuscinski, Ryszard. Travels with Herodotus. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
Ugrešić, Dubravka. The Ministry of Pain. Translated by Michael Henry Helm. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.
Luthar, Breda, and Maruša Pušnik, eds. Remembering Utopia: The Culture of Everyday Life in Socialist Yugoslavia. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2010.
Connerton, Paul. The Spirit of Mourning: History, Memory and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
I think that the picture of Yugoslavia, of the life in it, and what kind of country it was will be less and less clear as more and more time passes since its breakup.
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
Todorova, Maria, and Zsuzsa Gille, eds. Post-Communist Nostalgia. New York: Berghahn Books, 2010.
I was about 18 when these Changes happened. I studied hard in school and did all the things I was supposed to do. But it was for nothing.
As I reviewed media coverage of Republic Day in Yugoslavia’s successor countries, I saw parallels with Slovakia in how different generations remember the former country.
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