Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies

Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies
place and put in the park surrounding the Museum of Contemporary Arts. Municipalities
in Serbia also removed Tito’s monuments and streets named by Tito returned to previous
names (except in Sarajevo and Skopje). All eight cities of Yugoslavia which added Tito’s name
(Velenje, Korenica, Drvar, Vrbas, Užice, Mitrovica, Titograd and Velenje) have dropped its
prefix or returned to the old name (Titograd – Podgorica).
The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina was and is still complex. In cities and regions
where one ethnic army had dominated, the codes and symbols of the “mother-nation”
were adopted and local historical figures, if from a minority ethnic group, removed
from their pedestals, such as the Aleksa Šantić monument in Mostar. Aleksa Šantić was
a poet who already in the 19th century celebrated multiculturalism, and whose poems,
Emina and Stay her, have been celebrated throughout the socialist period as promoting
intercultural sensitivity and understanding. On the other hand, names of streets in Banja
Luka reflect medieval and heroic Serbian history, while traces of Croatian or Bosnian
(Muslim) presence have disappeared from the city (Horozović, 1994).
In Serbia, schizophrenic Milošević policies, praising at the same time socialism and
nationalism, reflected a semblance of continuity, while, in reality, they conquered and
colonized the collective subconsciousness with an idealized past and started to search for new
roots of Serbianhood and new features of identity. So, although the Milošević government
did not create any memory policy, by liberating the field for nationalism and “giving wings”
to nationalism in cultural institutions, they created a platform for anti-cultural behaviour
(Slapšak, 2009 and Kodrnja et al., 2010), where local politicians or opinion-makers
celebrated even fascism (for example Ljotić in Smederevo) or rehabilitated controversial
soldier-politicians like Draža Mihajlović, claiming that they were “judged and killed by
communists just for being Serbian patriots”. Unfortunately, this policy of oblivion regarding
war crimes of Chetniks or the Nedić collaborator forces during the Second World War has
continued after political changes in 2001.
The cities wanting to show their patriotism, started “ordering” monuments from the
sculptor Drinka Radovanović, whose name in artistic circles was unknown, but who
was known among nationalists as a good (realistic) sculptor of historical figures such as
Karađorđe, leader of the First Serbian Uprising against the Turks in 1804. So, monuments
to “people’s heroes” from the Second World War disappeared, replaced by sculptures
of heroes from the First and Second Serbian Uprising against the Turks, and this was
especially reflected by schools, who started quickly, without any outside pressure, to
change their names.
Consequently, through annihilation and appropriation strategies the landscapes in
cities and regions throughout former Yugoslavia changed – new types of monuments,
colours representing the emblem of a nation, flags and names of the streets, squares and
institutions appeared and colonized the collective consciousness and collective memory,
thus contributing to ethnicization of community memories and behaviour.
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