Post-Yugoslav Palimpsests: memory and space in Croatia and Bosnia
By Ljubica Spaskovska & Nick Holdstock
Kumrovec, Josip Broz Tito’s birthplace in Croatia is one of the rare (post)Yugoslav sites of memory (lieux de mémoire) which still figure prominently on the region’s tourist maps. Regularly hosting visitors which, every year on 25 May (celebrated as Tito’s birthday and former Day of Youth) number in the thousands, what is now known as Kumrovec’s ethno-village is more often than not adorned in socialist Yugoslav iconography. Seen here are two visitors wearing Yugoslav pioneer hats and scarves at Tito’s house of birth, caught saluting his statue on an ordinary day in June 2012.
During the last 15 years of socialist Yugoslavia, Kumrovec was the home of the Political School of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia [Savez komunista Jugoslavije - SKJ]. Established in 1975, it was located until 1981 in the now abandoned Spomen dom boraca NOR-a i omladine Jugoslavije [Memorial home of the Liberation War fighters and the youth of Yugoslavia - pictured above), the work of two renowned Yugoslav architects Ivan Filipčić and Berislav Šerbetić. After the School moved to the new purpose-built building designed by another two well-known Yugoslav architects, Danilo Cvjetković and Miomir Lužajić, in 1981, the Memorial home continued working as a hotel. Along with the equally-abandoned Tito’s villa, the three objects (presently in state ownership and in need of major renovation), inspired the establishment of the “K-11” initiative (Kumrovec inicijativa investicija) by the young Croatian architect Robert Loher and the director of Tabor Film Festival, Nenad Borovčak, with the aim of “activating the spatial potentials” of these three abandoned landmarks of Yugoslav architecture (http://www.kumrovec11.org/).
From the most recent documentary account of his life by Croatian director Lordan Zafranović Tito – poslednji svedoci testamenta [Tito - Last witnesses of the testament], to the 700-page new biography Tito in tovariši [Tito and comrades] by Slovene Jože Pirjevec, Josip Broz has hardly been absent from the post-Yugoslav media space or popular and scientific debates. Seen here is a bronze bust of Josip Broz Tito at the library of the Memorial home.
Prominent Yugoslav intellectuals, professors and politicians, such as Slavoj Žižek, Žarko Puhovski, Furio Radin, Milorad Pupovac, Dušan Janjić, Milan Kučan, Kiro Gligorov, Ivica Račan (its President throughout the 1980s), lectured at or were associated with the Kumrovec Political School, which also regularly held international symposia and conferences. Teaching the basics of political science, the history and theory of socialism and Marxism, the School hosted young, promising members of the League of Communists who often had the privilege to attend debates or see film screenings which would normally be considered problematic for the wider public space. Seen here are the ruins of the external amphitheater at the Political School.
Hundreds of books which used to stock the shelves of the Political School library have been lying around, succumbing to rain and snow leaking through the damaged roof. An informal group of students, artists and journalists from Zagreb and Kumrovec launched an initiative for saving the books, initially through an appeal in a YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_7BWQjZnfw). More than 700 books from the School have already been transferred to the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb and some were offered to the participants/visitors of the fifth Subversive Forum/Festival in Zagreb. The academic journal Kumrovečki zapisi [Kumrovec notes] was an official publication of the Political School. Piles of books are still lying scattered around the School.
After the disbandment of the League of Communist of Yugoslavia at its last congress in January 1990, in the second half of the same year the Political School was pronounced bankrupt and was handed over to the Croatian Ministry of Internal Affairs. It functioned as a military training centre, hosting new recruits to the Croatian Army, as well as former French Foreign Legion members. Many of the School’s former employees lost their jobs, while the profile of the School’s attendees radically changed. One can still find a blank certificate awarded by the Croatian Army for “participation in the defence of the Republic of Croatia and attendance of the Centre for military training”.
Throughout the 1990s the School functioned as a refugee centre, housing those who fled the town of Vukovar. Young Croat novelist Ivana Bodrožić reminisces about her own life as a child-refugee at the former Political School in her acclaimed novel Hotel Zagorje. One of the classrooms was used as a space for religious education in the 1990s. The inscription on the wall reads: “Jesus, I trust you”.
The political school is still awaiting a potential buyer or investor. A rumour that the School would be given to the Catholic Church caused a brief media upheaval in 2011, while the Socialist Working Party [Socijalistička radnička partija] publicly demanded to have their alleged ownership of the School restored. Until it becomes resuscitated as a hotel, museum or research centre, this formidable space remains a repository of plural, clashing histories. As Andreas Huyssen notes in his book Present Pasts: urban palimpsests and the politics of memory, “The strong marks of present space merge in the imaginary with traces of the past, erasures, losses, and heterotopias.” The Croatian coat-of-arms is visible at the main entrance to the Political School.
In Sarajevo one still sees posters commemorating the 1984 Winter Olympics, which were held in nearby Jahorina, Yugoslavia’s premier ski resort, nicknamed “Rajska Dolina,” or Heavenly Valley on account of the quality of its snow. When the Bosnian war began the resort received a different group of visitors- Serbian refugees fleeing from Sarajevo into the recently created Republic of Srpska. In the absence of any other lodging, the refugees were housed in hotels in Jahorina or nearby towns such as Pale (where Karadžić and Mladić had their headquarters). On a recent visit to the resort I went into one of the former refugee centres, the Hotel Šator, now completely abandoned. The rooms were full of enigmatic traces of the people who came there with few possessions, and probably left the same way.
During the war, when many were at risk of starvation, the UN forces (specifically the Germans, Americans and French) began dropping food rations. At first these were the Meals, ready to eat (MRE) given to US Soldiers, but it was soon realised that these were unsuitable for two reasons. The first was that the food was too rich for malnourished people, and often made them ill. The second was that one in twelve of the MREs was a ‘pork patty’, and thus forbidden to Muslims. In 1993 the US introduced humanitarian daily rations (HDR) which are vegetarian. Though this was an important shift- and one that perhaps showed a greater awareness of the ethnic and religious differences of the people concerned –it did not, alas, prevent hoarding of the HDRs, nor them being traded on the black market.
The damage to this staircase, and the rest of the building, was not the immediate result of war, but of its economic and social consequences. There has been little investment in the resort since the war, and though the number of visitors has been increasing, Jahorina is far from its Olympic heyday.
This poster exhibits a panoply of symbols and illustrates the ideological background of Serb nationalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The poster was produced by the Serbian Democratic Party, of Serb lands, as the text in the brackets says. The party is usually associated with its former leader, Radovan Karadžić, accused of war crimes, and Biljana Plavšić, convicted of ethnically motived crimes. The caption reads “With tradition into the future!” The computer screen shows portraits of St. Sava, mediaeval Serbian prince and orthodox monk, the founder of the autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church; Nikola Tesla, scientist and inventor, claimed by American, Croatian and Serbian historiographies and Vuk Karadžić, a Serbian enlightenment figure, reformer of the Serbian language and the author of the first Serbian dictionary. These prominent historic figures on the computer screen are set against a child’s right hand showing three fingers, an Orthodox symbol of Trinity, misappropriated by Serb nationalists in the 1990s.
The rooms were full of newspapers, campaign posters and other reminders of the kind of politics that led to the war, and that has arguably hindered recovery since. The cover of the Greater Serbia magazine from Oct 1998 shows Nikola Poplašen, who was the president of Republika Srpska for 6 months from 1998 through 1999. Before his appointment, he was president of the Serb Radical Party, and given to statements like “a strong reliance on tradition is a jumping stone into a modern, civilized society.” He was dismissed from the Presidency of Republika Srpska by Carlos Westendrop, the then top international official in Bosnia, for allegedly violating the Dayton Peace agreement. “President Nikola Poplašen has abused the authority of the office of the president of the republic, ignored the will of the people ... and consistently acted to trigger instability,” Mr Westendorp's spokesman said. Poplašen had refused to appoint the caretaker Prime Minister, Milorad Dodik – at that time a moderate who enjoyed broad support from western officials - to the post permanently.
This calendar from 2001 shows ‘How Children See the Future of Bosnia’. The image of people holding hands surrounded by butterflies is a poignant piece of post-war optimism, which in many cases was eventually vindicated in Jahorina, as many of the refugees returned to Sarajevo after the end of the war. Others have not been so lucky: in April 2012 the UNHCR estimated that 74,000 people remain displaced from the conflict.
Updated on: 8 August 2012
