A common past discarded? Histories of the Socialist Yugoslavia in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia (original) (raw)
The abandonment of Communism in Yugoslavia in 1990 was followed shortly afterwards by the break-up of the Yugoslav federal state and the establishment of new more or less national states out of the formerly federal republics. The establishment of formally democratic nation states led to new demands to history: The class based histories of the Communist period were reputed, and new national histories were to be written. How were these histories to deal with the common Yugoslav socialist past? This question was often a delicate one, as several of the republics had only distant experiences of independent statehood. The period as fairly independent republics within Yugoslavia therefore constitutes an essential part of their history as states. On the other hand, the new national histories were to contribute to the consolidation of the new states by legitimising both the establishment of new ideological regimes and new national borders. Yugoslavia’s dissolution process was accompanied by years of warfare in various parts of the former federation. Indeed, the replacing of the Yugoslav federation by national states had cost dearly in most post-Yugoslav republics, though in some states much more so than in others. Thus the new histories had to explain a discontinuous and troublesome very recent past. This article investigates how the common Yugoslav socialist state was represented in the new histories of Croatia, Serbia and, more briefly, Bosnia in the 1990s and early 2000s. The article is based on analyses of schoolbooks of contemporary history and history writing, especially historical syntheses, in Croatia, Serbia and, more briefly, Bosnia. I argue that the early post-Yugoslav representations of Yugoslav history were enveloped in descriptions of internal conflicts, while periods of peaceful coexistence and relative prosperity were downplayed. History writing and education thus contributed to explaining and legitimising the break-up of the Yugoslav federation and to naturalising new national borders.
Sign up for access to the world's latest research.
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Related papers
Historijski zbornik, 2022
With the dissolution of Austria-Hungary and the establishment of the new Yugoslav state, mainstream Croatian historians found themselves in a changed situation, yet their long-lasting subscription to Yugoslavism proved to be a valuable asset in adapting to novel circumstances. They could assume the same important role in nation-building efforts in the new state just as well as in the old one. Ferdo Šišić and Gavro Manojlović are perfect examples in this regard. By examining their life and work, especially in the transitional period, this article looks at the strategies they used to position themselves in the altered political context. The central question it poses is in what ways and to what purposes did they employ Yugoslav ideologemes and their prewar Yugoslav loyalties, and in what degree was their historiographical work the result of the expected political role of academic historiography in the historist tradition. In doing this it supports the views which transcend the simplistic and binary interpretations of Yugoslavism, looking at it as a complex and fluid concept that presented an important political framework for engagement by various historical actors.
Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country (review)
Journal of Cold War Studies
Journal of Cold War Studies 4.1 (2002) 120-122 The wars of Yugoslav succession have resulted in a flood of academic and journalistic publications. With a few notable exceptions, these works have concentrated on contemporary aspects of the conflict, often at the expense of historical analysis of the long-term causes of Yugoslav disintegration. The second edition of John Lampe's Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country admirably fills this gap, providing a reliable, judicious, balanced, and clearly written guide to the histories of the two Yugoslavias -- the interwar kingdom and Josip Broz Tito's Communist Yugoslavia. By adding a new chapter on the wars of Yugoslav succession, Lampe brings his narrative all the way up to the intervention in 1999 by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) against the "rump" Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The book is divided into twelve chapters, each focusing on a distinct period of pre-Yugoslav or Yugoslav history. The...
Croatian Nationalism and the Breakup of Yugoslavia
In: Etudes Balkaniques, 2005, br.1, 3-24., 2005
Irina OGNYANOVA (Institute of Balkan Studies) CROATIAN NATIONALISM AND THE BREAKUP OF YUGOSLAVIA The theme of Croatian nationalism nowadays can not be investigated separately from the more general topic of Central and East European nationalism. Recent events in the region, especially in former Yugoslavia, have reinforced the central importance of nationalism in the history and political evolution of the region. Although by the end of the 20 th century the world had become more united, nationalism became stronger and deeper than ever. Since the destruction of the bi-polar political and ideological model in 1989, the rebirth of nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe was a fact which threatened the peace and security not only in the region but on the whole European continent for almost a decade. The disintegration of three federations (the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) was an evidence of the failure of the 50-year-old communist experiment permanently to suppress national confrontation in the ethnically mixed region of Central and Eastern Europe with the help of the federative political system. With the fall of communism, national confrontation reemerged and led to the immediate fragmentation of these multinational states. Nowhere has the resurgence of nationalism been as dramatic, as in the lands of former Yugoslavia. The various wars on its territory in the 1990s had a profound effect on European and world events, proving that the Balkans will continue to matter in a variety of ways to Europe and the rest of the world, and therefore deserve close outside attention. The Serbo-Croatian war, the violent war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the dangerous ethnic conflicts in Kosovo and Macedonia, need to be scientifically explored. Yugoslavia, twice born and twice dead, has gone to its second grave in a storm of inter-communal warfare, vicious mutual atrocities, and brutal "ethnic cleansing" that created more than two million refugees. This has shocked the world and recalled memories of the worst European experience in the 20 th century-the Second World War. All that just showed that the phenomena of ethnicity and nationalism did not lose its importance in South Eastern Europe. Nationalism which led to numerous national conflicts has been a leading and predominant ideology and political practice in the region since the 19 th century because of unsolved national problems.
Kern (2016) Towards a Synthesis in Research on the Dissolution of Yugoslavia
The argument presented in this paper points out how several prominent and very different explanations of Yugoslavia's dissolution are not incompatible but revealingly complementary instead. By reconciling different approaches to the study of Yugoslavia's dissolution and relating their arguments to each other this paper aims to explore the possibility of a modest synthesis in scholarship on the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
Nations and Nationalism, 2018
While the (mis) use of history to fuel particular constructions of the nation is well‐documented in the literature, the ways in which nationhood narratives and national ideologies evolve and transform over time are rarely explored. When ruptures – such as state failure or civil war – occur, interpretations of history and nationhood narratives cannot be completely rewritten. Rather, they need to follow up upon previous, established versions, relying on anchoring motives that offer a minimum level of continuity. Relying on a systematic analysis of over forty years of history revisionism in Serbia and Croatia (1974 to 2017), I demonstrate the discursive ways in which nationhood narratives evolved over time and space: from the dismantling of the former common Socialist narrative, replacement with new ethno‐national narratives, the bumpy transformations through the democratic transitions, to the gradual consolidation into the ‘new’ reconstructed nationhood narratives prevailing in the two countries today.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.