Realms of Liberation: Monument-Making and Socialization of Revolutionary Heritage in Socialist Yugoslavia

• In Event: Rethinking Yugoslav Revolution I: Remembering Liberation: Socialist Yugoslavia’s Memorial Complexes and Their Social Roles

Abstract

The paper analyzes monument-making as the socialization of revolutionary heritage in socialist Yugoslavia. In the focus are "memorial areas" (spomen-područja), a new model of the production of revolutionary heritage based on the protection of the "authentic" historical territories and natural environments where the People's Liberation Struggle and the Socialist Revolution took place 1941-1945. The elaborate spatial plans for mountain areas encompassing "liberated partisan territories" (e.g. Petrova Gora, Partizanska Drežnica, Šamarica) aimed at becoming "social monuments" in which original wartime structures and postwar monuments formed unique memorial landscapes, serving as the backbone of memorial practices and tourism development.

Author

• Sanja Horvatinčić, Institute of Art History (Croatia)