Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T12:49:37.280Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

End of War or End of State? 1918 in the Public Memories of Post-Communist Croatia and Serbia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Tea Sindbæk Andersen*
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Ismar Dedović
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

This article investigates the role of 1918, the end of the First World War, and the establishment of the Yugoslav state in public memories of post-communist Croatia and Serbia. Analysing history schoolbooks within the context of major works of history and public discussion, the authors trace the developments of public memory of the end of the war and 1918. Drawing on the concepts of public memory and historical narrative, the authors focus on the ways in which history textbooks create historical narratives and on the types of lessons from the past that can be extracted from these narratives. While Serbia and Croatia have rather different patterns of First World War memory, the authors argue that both states have abandoned the Yugoslav communist narrative and now publicly commemorate 1918 as a loss of national statehood. This is somehow paradoxical, since the establishment of the South Slav State in 1918 was supposedly an outcome of the Wilsonian principle of national self-determination. In Serbia, the story of loss is packed in a fatalistic narrative of heroism and victimhood, while in Croatia the story of loss is embedded in a tale of necessary evils, which nevertheless had a positive outcome in a sovereign Croatian state.

Type
Special Issue Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for the Study of Nationalities

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agičić, Dajmir and Najbar-Agičić, Magdalena. 2007. “1918. – ostvaranje vjekovnih snova, geopolotička nužnost ili kobna pogreška. Postanak Kraljevstva SHS u hrvatskim udžbenicima povijesti za osnovnu školu.” In Kultura sjećanja. Povjesni lomovi i svladanje prošlosti, edited by Cipek, Timor and Milosavljević, Olivera, 203213. Zagreb: Disput.Google Scholar
Akmadža, Miroslav, Jareb, Mario, and Radelić, Zdenko. 2009. Povijest 4. Udžbenik za 4. razred gimnazije. Zagreb: Alfa.Google Scholar
Assmann, Aleida. 2009. “Canon and Archive.” In A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, edited by Erll, Astrid and Nünning, Ansgar, 97107. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Banac, Ivo. 1984. The National Question in Yugoslavia. Origins, History, Politics. New York: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Bataković, Dusan T. 2005. The Salonica Theatre of Operations and the Outcome of the Great War. Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies.Google Scholar
Brunnbauer, Ulf, ed. 2004. Rewriting History: Historiography in South East Europe after Socialism. Münster: LIT Verlag.Google Scholar
Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Dačić: Srbija je izgubila pobjedu iz Prvog svjetskog rata.” 2013. Dnevni Avaz. November 11. http://www.avaz.ba/globus/region/dacic-srbija-je-izgubila-pobjedu-iz-prvog-svjetskog-rata. (Accessed May 4, 2013.)Google Scholar
Dedović, Ismar. 2012. ”Nyheder fra fortiden – En undersøgelse af Jugoslaviens rolle i nyere bosniakkisk historieskrivning.” Master’s thesis, University of Copenhagen.Google Scholar
Dedović, Ismar. 2018. “Our War? Their War? Which War? Remembering the First World War in the Yugosphere.” Ph.D diss., University of Copenhagen,Google Scholar
Dedović, Ismar, and Andersen, Tea Sindbæk. 2016. “’To battle, go forth all heroes:’ World War 1 memory as a narrative template in Yugoslavia and Serbia.” In Re-Visiting World War 1: Interpretations and Perspectives of the Great Conflict, edited by Suchopoles, Jaroslaw and James, Stephanie, 247270. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Dragović-Soso, Jasna. 2002 ‘Saviours of the Nation:’ Serbia’s Intellectual Opposition and the Revival of Nationalism. London: Hurst & Co.Google Scholar
Dujković, Dunja S., and Dujković, Goran. 2013. Istorija za osmi razred osnovne škole. Beograd: Eduka.Google Scholar
Đurić, Đorđe, and Pavlović, Momčilo. 2012a. Istorija – za treći razred gimnazije prirodno-matematičkog smera i četvrti razred opšteg i društveno-jezičkog smera. Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike.Google Scholar
Đurić, Đorđe, and Pavlović, Momčilo. 2012b. Istorija – za osmi razred osnovne škole. Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike.Google Scholar
Erdelja, Krešimir, and Stojaković, Igor. 2014a. Koraci kroz vrijeme 4. Udžbenik povijesti u četvrtom razredu gimnazije. Zagreb: Školska knjiga.Google Scholar
Erdelja, Krešimir, and Stojaković, Igor. 2014b. Tragom prošlosti 8. Udžbenik povijesti u osmom razredu osnovne škole. Zagreb, Školska knjiga.Google Scholar
Erll, Astrid. 2010. “Cultural Memory Studies: An Introduction.” In A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, edited by Erll, Astrid and Nünning, Ansgar, 115. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Erll, Astrid, and Rigney, Ann. 2009. “Cultural Memory and Its Dynamics.” In Mediation, Remediation and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory, edited by Erll, Astrid and Rigney, Ann, 111. Berlin: De Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstein, Ivo, and Goldstein, Slavko. 2002. “Revisionism in Croatia: The Case of Franjo Tuđman,” East European Jewish Affairs 32 (1): 5264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordy, Eric. 2013. Guilt, Responsibility and Denial: The Past at Stake in Post-Milošević Serbia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herwig, Holger H. 2014. The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Holjevac, Željko, ed. 2012. 1918 u Hrvatskoj. Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska.Google Scholar
Jelavich, Charles. 2003. “South Slav Education. Was there Yugoslavism?” In Yugoslavia and Its Historians: Understanding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, edited by Norman, M. Naimark and Holly Case. Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Judson, Pieter. 2016. The Habsburg Empire: a New History. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolstø, Pål. 2014. “Introduction.” In Strategies of Symbolic Nation Building in South-East Europe, edited by Kolstø, Pål, 118. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Koselleck, Reinhart. 1985. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Krleža, Miroslav. 1995. Hrvatski bog Mars. Zagreb: Zora. First edition published in Zagreb in 1922.Google Scholar
Lampe, John R. 2000. Yugoslavia as History. Twice There Was a Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Krmpotić, Marinko. 2020. “Bjelogrlićeva povijesna saga koja je potukla sve rekorde gledanosti stiže i kod nas.” Novi List, January 21. http://novilist.hr/Scena/TV/Bjelogrliceva-povijesna-saga-koja-je-potukla-sve-rekorde-gledanosti-stize-i-kod-nas. (Accessed May 2, 2020.)Google Scholar
Ljušić, Radoš, and Dimić, Ljubodrag. 2012. Istorija 8 – udžbenik za osmi razred osnovne škole sa čitankom i radnom sveskom. Beograd: Freska.Google Scholar
Ljušić, Radoš and Dimić, Ljubodrag. 2014. Istorija - za treći razred gimnazije prirodno-matematičkog smera i četvrti razred opšteg i društveno-jezičkog smera. Beograd: Freska.Google Scholar
Pintar, Manojlović, Olga, . 2007. “Tradicije Prvog Svetskog Rata u Srbiji.” In Kultura sjećanja. Povjesni lomovi i svladanje prošlosti, edited by Cipek, Tihomir and Milosavljević, Olivera, 155166. Zagreb: Disput.Google Scholar
Mitrović, Andrej. 2007. Serbia’s Great War 1914-1918. London: Hurst.Google Scholar
Newman, John Paul. 2015. Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War: Veterans and the Limits of State Building, 1903-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavlaković, Vjeran. 2008. “Flirting with Fascism: The Ustaša Legacy and Croatian Politics in the 1990s.” In The Shared History: The Second World War and National Question in Yugoslavia. 115143. Novi Sad: Centar za istoriju, demokratiju i pomirenje.Google Scholar
Pavlaković, Vjeran. 2014. “Fulfilling the Thousand-Year-Old Dream: Strategies of Symbolic Nation-Building in Croatia.” In Strategies of Symbolic Nation Building in South-East Europe, edited by Kolstø, Pål, 1949. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Pavlowitch, Kosta. 2003. “The First World War and the Unification of Yugoslavia.” In Yugoslavism: Histories of a Failed Idea 1918-1992, edited by Djokić, Dejan, 2741. London: Hurst & Co.Google Scholar
Petrungaro, Stefano. 2009. Pisati povijest iznova: Hrvatski udžbenici povijesti 1918.-2004. godine. Zagreb: Srednja Europa.Google Scholar
Radojević, Mira. 2014. Istorija - za treći razred gimnazije prirodno-matematičkog smera i četvrti razred opšteg i društveno-jezičkog smera i opsteg tipa i četvrti razred srednje stručne škole za obrazovne profile pravni tehničar i birotehničar. Belgrade: Klett.Google Scholar
Ristić, Katarina. 2014. Imaginary Trials. War Crime Trials and Memory in former Yugoslavia. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar
Ružić, Ivan. n.d. “Odjeci s bojišnice.” Stalni postav Muzej Grada Zagreba [Zagreb City Museum Permanent Exhibition]. http://www.mgz.hr/hr/postav/bojisnica/. (Accessed October 10, 2019.)Google Scholar
Rüsen, Jörn. 2008. History. Narration, Interpretation, Orientation. New York: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Ryan, David. 2000. US Foreign Policy in World History, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Samardžija, Zdenko. 2013. Hrvatska i svijet. Udžbenik povijesti za drugi razred četveorgodišnjih strukovnih škola. Zagreb: Školska knjiga.Google Scholar
Seton-Watson, R.W. 1933. Sarajevo. A Study of the Origins of the Great War. London: Hutchinson & Co.Google Scholar
Simić, Predrag, and Petrović, Ivana. 2016. Istorija 8. Beograd: Logos.Google Scholar
Sindbæk, Tea. 2012. Usable History? Representations of Yugoslavia’s difficult past from 1945 to 2002. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tea, Sindbæk Andersen. 2016. “Lessons from Sarajevo and the First World War: From Yugoslav to National Memories.” East European Politics & Societies 30 (2): 3454.Google Scholar
Tea, Sindbæk Andersen, and Dedović, Ismar. 2020. “Croatia and the First World War. National forgetting in a memorial shatter zone?” In Mobilizing Cultural Identities in the First World War: History, Representations and Memory, edited by Pedriali, Federica and Savettieri, Cristina, 185206. London: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Stojanović, Dubravka. 2009. ”Slow Burning: History Textbooks in Serbia, 1993-2008.” In “Transition” and the Politics of History Education in Southeast Europe, edited by Dimou, Augusta, 141158. Göttingen: V&R Unipress.Google Scholar
Storm, Eric, and Van Ginderachter, Maarten. 2019. “Questioning the Wilsonian Moment: the Role of Ethnicity and Nationalism in the Dissolution of European Empires from the Belle Époque Through the First World War.” In: European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 26: 5, 747756.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tosh, John. 2018. “Historical Scholarship and Public Memory in Britain: A Case of Oil and Water?” In History, Memory and Public Life: The Past in the Present, edited by Maerker, Anna, Sleight, Simon, and Sutcliffe, Adam, 2947. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trošt, Tamara. 2017. “Beyond Ethnic Identity: History, Pride and Nationhood across Socio-economic Lines in Serbian and Croatian Youth.” In Changing Youth Values in Southeast Europe: Beyond Ethnicity, edited by Trošt, Tamara and Mandic, Danilo, 177203. London: Taylor and Francis.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trošt, Tamara. 2018. “Ruptures and Continuities in Nationhood Narratives: Reconstructing the Nation through History Textbooks in Serbia and Croatia.” Nations and Nationalism 24 (3): 716740.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tukalj, Jasna. 2007. “Hrvatska u sastavu Kraljevstva SHS 1918. godine u hrvatskim udžbenicima povijet za gimnazije i srednje strukovne škole (2006/2007).” In Kultura sjećanja. Povjesni lomovi i svladanje prošlosti, edited by Cipek, Timor and Milosavljević, Olivera, 215242. Zagreb: Disput.Google Scholar
Zagreb’s City Museum. 2013. Permanent exhibition.Google Scholar