People or Nation?: Yugoslav Communists and the Muslim Question

• In Event: Rethinking Yugoslav Revolution II: The Politics of Narratives and Images of Yugoslav People’s Liberation Struggle: Past for Future

Abstract

Historically shifting attitudes toward the memorialization and aesthetic representation of the People’s Liberation Struggle (NOB) have always reflected broader social and political change in Yugoslavia and its successor states. This paper examines a number of early 1960s NOB novels by Bosnian writers (Branko Ćopić, Zaim Topčić, Derviš Sušić) and their treatment of Muslims as indexing dynamic negotiations of the “narod” in socialist Yugoslavia. This ambiguous category, variously translated into English as “people” and “nation,” opened up both possibilities and constraints in the Yugoslav political imaginary and approach to the “national question.” The paper considers the relationship between literary figurations of Bosnian Muslims in the People’s Liberation Struggle and their varying theoretical conceptualizations within socialist frameworks of self-determination and self-management.

Author

• Grega Ulen, Tsinghua U (China)