Memory Politics in the Former Yugoslavia

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-32
Author(s):  
Vjeran Pavlaković
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
The European Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
War Memory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post War ◽  
Dominant Narratives ◽  
Second World

This article provides an overview of some of the most prevalent topics in post-Yugoslav memory politics as well as on some of the scholars working on these issues, focusing on the commemorative practices of the Second World War and the wars of the 1990s. Thirty years after the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s disintegration, the discourse of post-war memory politics continues to dominate nearly all of the successor states, even though two of them have seemingly left the past behind to join the European Union. While the wars of the 1990s created an entirely new memoryscape in the region, they also radically transformed the way in which each country commemorated the Second World War. Although the article examines in-depth the collective remembrance of sites of memory, such as Jasenovac, Bleiburg, and Knin, trends across the broader region are also addressed. The work of young scholars, as well as experienced researchers, who have introduced innovative approaches in memory studies in the former Yugoslavia, is highlighted to show how new studies focus on the cultural reproduction of dominant narratives in addition to top-down political discourse.

“Product Not Available in Pre-War Quantities – but Quality Remains the Same”: Remarks on Advertisements as Historical Sources

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
German Press ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The article focuses on advertisements as visual and historical sources. The material comes from the German press that appeared immediately after the end of the Second World War. During this time, all kinds of products were scarce. In comparison to this, colorful advertisements of luxury products are more than noteworthy. What do these images tell us about the early post-war years in Germany? The author argues that advertisements are a medium that shapes social norms. Rather than reflecting the historical realities, advertisements construct them. From an aesthetical and cultural point of view, advertisements gave thus a sense of continuity between the pre- and post-war years. The author suggests, therefore, that the advertisements should not be treated as a source for economic history. They are, however, important for studying social developments that occurred in the past.

5. Understanding recent trends in crime

2018 ◽  
pp. 52-63
Author(s):  
Tim Newburn
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Crime Trends ◽  
World War ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Past ◽  
Victimization Surveys ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World ◽  
Western Democracies

What is happening to crime? Are things getting better or worse, and in what ways? ‘Understanding recent trends in crime’ examines recorded crime trends and data from victimization surveys from America, Canada, England and Wales, and Australia. All four Western democracies display similar patterns: rising crime in the post-war years, hitting a peak somewhere between the late 1980s and late 1990s, then falling steeply for the fifteen‒twenty-five years since. This leaves two big questions: why did crime increase in the early decades after the Second World War; and, why has it been declining in the past fifteen‒twenty-five years? The reasons for the post-war crime explosion are discussed.

Media memorial discourses and memory struggles in Slovenia: Transforming memories of the Second World War and Yugoslavia

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-450
Author(s):  
Maruša Pušnik
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
The European Union ◽  
World War ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Daily Newspaper ◽  
The Common ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The radical break between two national contexts in 1991, when Slovenia seceded from Yugoslavia, and Slovenia’s integration into the European Union in 2004, has brought changes to the collective memory of the Slovenian nation. In this article, I investigate how Delo, a major Slovenian daily newspaper, has been involved in memory struggles to present new memorial discourses that are in accordance with the new national politics. A large part of the common Yugoslav past has been reinvented for the present political and ideological purposes of European integration, whereby the Second World War and the Partisan movement, which once signified a common Yugoslav life, have become a contested issue. The focus of the critical narrative analysis is put on those general narrative templates that underlie specific news narratives about the Second World War and socialist Yugoslavia. Over the last 25 years, dominant media have strengthened memory struggles in the Slovenian public realm and have created revisionist narratives of the Second World War and the post-war past.

History, Myth, and Memory: A Biography of a Stalin Portrait

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-84
Author(s):  
Susan Corbesero
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Soviet Leader ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

AbstractDuring the troublous post-war and post-Soviet periods, the iconography of Stalin has served as a powerful interpreter of the past. Since World War II, portraits and attendant mass reproductions of the notorious Soviet leader have conveyed a historical memory that fused the triumphalist mythology of the Second World War and the cult of Stalin. Appropriated for political, national, nostalgic and commercial purposes, these iconic vehicles have functioned as integral “vectors of memory” in times of political change. In that vein, this article traces the remarkably dynamic and influential life of Aleksandr Laktionov's Portrait of I. V. Stalin (1949) in order to illuminate how its meaning and use, past and present, reflects and refracts the political landscape that deploys it.

scholarly journals Resurgence of the past: political and media discourse during the breakup of the former yugoslavia

Linguistica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-151
Author(s):  
Gregor Perko
Keyword(s):  
Hate Speech ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Military Violence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Discourses ◽  
National Languages ◽  
Second World

The wars and conflicts that accompanied the breakup of the former Yugoslavia are inextricably linked to “language”. The “breakup” of Serbo-Croat into several national languages and the determination of Slovenes and, to a lesser extent, Ma­cedonians to restrain the influence of Serbo-Croat on their respective languages ​​was a prelude to the country’s political breakup. Military violence was carefully prepared by linguistic means: hate speech, which quickly turned into war speech, dominated the words of politicians, media, culture and everyday conversation. This would not have been possible without resorting to the past and to the mythologized history of the warring parties (the Battle of Kosovo Polje, Yugoslavia before the Second World War, the Second World War itself). The analysis of the political and media discourses carried out in this study revealed three major types of semantic inversions on which the underlying discursive mechanisms largely rely: diachronic inversions (the resurgence of the terms “Ustashe”, “Chetniks”, “Turks”), semantic and logical travesties (in which terms such as “defend” and “liberate” lose their primary meanings) and semantic asymmetries (the enemy is an inhuman “aggressor” and “slaughterer”, while “our” side is made up of “innocent victims”, “martyrs” or “heroes”). As a result, the terms and utterances used lose their semantic and referential “basis”, so that they can no longer fully function except within the discursive universe that generated them.

scholarly journals The Second World War in Southeastern Europe. Historiographies and Debates

Südosteuropa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Rutar
Keyword(s):  
Public History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Southeastern Europe ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Agendas ◽  
Second World

AbstractIntroducing this special issue on historiographies and debates on the Second World War in Southeastern Europe, the author reflects on the conditionalities of a better balancing of research agendas in terms of the interdependencies between local dynamics and wider scales—be they the regional, national and transnational, or global dimensions of the war. She draws attention to the role the European Union has played in crafting public history, in which processes of ‘internationalizing’ and of ‘nationalizing’ the past have been entangled. She concludes that Southeast Europeanists could greatly enhance international research agendas by taking the lead in fostering a bottom-up, multiscale, and multiperspective history of postimperial, nationalizing societies at war.

Italy and Africa: Post-War Memories of Life in Eritrea and Ethiopia

2020 ◽  
pp. 101-124
Author(s):  
Charles Burdett
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current Events ◽  
War Memories ◽  
Extensive Collection ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

Charles Burdett addresses the representation of the Italian presence in East Africa in the decades following the Second World War, the demise of Fascism and the end of Italian colonialism. The chapter looks in depth at the publications of the former Italian residents of Eritrea and Ethiopia, written memories of life in Africa, commentaries on current events, works of fiction and an extensive collection of photographs. Rather than as straightforward narrations or as transparent reproductions of people’s experiences, these materials are seen as complex evocations of multifaceted psychic realities, intimately bound up with unseen temporal processes. This cultural production is seen as a means of discovering how the past can return to trouble the present and reveal the individual’s unknowing participation in some of the most deeply layered practices of society.

Optimism, Traffic, and the Historic City in Post-War British Planning

Boom Cities ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 14-34
Author(s):  
Otto Saumarez Smith
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Historical Buildings ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post War ◽  
British Planning ◽  
Economic Future ◽  
Historic City ◽  
Second World

The first chapter introduces the way architectural and planning ideas were conceived and perceived as responses to concurrent British concerns and ambitions. A widespread optimism about Britain’s economic future led planners to revise many of their assumptions about planning that had been formed in the aftermath of the Second World War. This chapter stresses the centrality of the growth of traffic for architectural thinking in the period, while also showing how architect-planners were influenced by a cross-cultural reinvestment in distinctly urban values, often centred on the slippery term ‘urbanity’. Planners developed an approach to the buildings of the past, where what was at stake was providing a new environment to a selected number of historical buildings, often at the expense of the more mundane built fabric of cities.

A Five Year Program of Preparation for Mathematics Teachers

1951 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 225-229
Author(s):  
Myron F. Rosskopf
Keyword(s):  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Qualified Teachers ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post War ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Second World

During the past ten years there has been more than usual interest in the problem of teacher training. The shortage of teachers brought on by total mobilization for our participation in the Second World War, the flight from teaching of men and women into industry and government service in the post-war economic expansion, and the increase in the number of children entering the schools of the nation served to keep this problem constantly before those responsible for teacher education. The gap between supply and demand of qualified teachers of science and mathematics is particularly important. All reports that have appeared since 1945 stress the problem of attracting a sufficient number of students into preparing themselves for teaching science and mathematics. In addition these reports give evidence of much dissatisfaction with the present program of teacher preparation. There is need for a new approach both to courses in the sciences and mathematics and to professional courses in education.

The Memory of Europe’s Age of Catastrophe, 1914–2014

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Mercer
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Cultural Struggle ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The enormous death toll of the twentieth-century world wars created a cultural struggle over their meaning. States, institutions, and individuals developed conflicting memories, which shifted with the political trends of the post-war eras. After the First World War nationalist narratives promoted by states did not automatically win unanimous adherence, but the apparently apolitical language of loss and mourning was most successful where the war was least controversial or where national narratives were unavailable. While memory of the Second World War and the Holocaust has often been discussed in terms of forgetting, there was no amnesia but rather a selective appropriation of the past. Myths of victimhood and resistance proved popular across Europe and persisted despite periodic engagements with the past. Germany’s acknowledgement of the Nazi past is the most thorough, while most Europeans states now more easily remember the Second World War than their colonial heritage.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document