(Post)-Yugoslav Memory Travels: National and Transnational Dimensions

Abstract

Post)-Yugoslav Memory Travels: National and Transnational Dimensions 1 The breakup of Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav memory regimesThe disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) and the ensuing wars have been life-changing events for those who remained in the region and those who departed to make new lives in Europe and beyond.The reasons for Yugoslavia's violent collapse and the nature of postsocialist transformations have been a common point of discussion in numerous historical and theoretical attempts to reconsider the broader history of Yugoslavia (Glenny 1996;Djokić 2003;Ramet 2005; Bieber et al. 2014).Despite the larger context of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and changes in the global geopolitical landscape, the dismembering of the Yugoslav state and especially the brutality that accompanied it, came as a great surprise.Events such as the three-year siege of Sarajevo and the genocide against Muslims in Srebrenica in July 1995 brought violence that had been considered unthinkable after World War II to Europe.Several decades later, the catastrophic fate and difficult experiences of post-Yugoslav states, continue to provide material for academic and public controversies.The break-up, the war and the region's ethnic nationalisms remain evergreen topics for public, cultural and political discourses in both the formerly warring territories and the rest of Europe.The term "Yugoslavia" has long been used to signify various concepts, ideas, political entities and ideologies.Throughout the twentieth century, Yugoslavia's territory was the site of repeated attempts to implement political projects of identity and nationhood.As Tanja Petrović notes (2012), "Yugoslavia" and "the SFRY" are usually used as synonyms (unless explicitly marked by other adjectives) in the local public discourses in the region.The two notions, however, are not the same.Typically, "Yugoslavia" is intertwined with the ideology of "Yugoslavism"or the Yugoslav ideawhich was a key discursive and imaginative element in the constitution of both the pre-and post-World War II Yugoslav states.While ideological premises fluctuated, the central idea of uniting southern Slavs in a multi-ethnic, supra-national state remained.In its first iteration, the Yugoslav Kingdom's goal was the creation of a unitary Yugoslav nation (Wachtel 1998;Djokić 2003).In its second incarnation, the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, later on SFRY, founded in 1945 under the leadership of Josip Broz-Tito, the idea of building the Yugoslav nation was transformed into

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