The Invisible Yet Essential Roles of the Forgotten Socialist and Communist Women in Interwar Yugoslavia

• In Event: Political Thought, Memory, and Biographies from Women’s Intellectual History in East Central Europe

Abstract

This paper explores the invisible yet essential roles of the forgotten socialist and communist women in interwar Yugoslavia, emphasizing the ways in which memory—or its absence—has shaped our understanding of their contributions. Operating under a condition of "double secrecy" since the Obznana decree of 1920/1921, which outlawed communist activities in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (SHS), these women not only had to navigate political repression but also the limitations imposed by their exclusion from formal political rights. Their activism, often conducted in the shadows, raises urgent questions about historical memory: How were these women remembered—if at all? What traces remain of their voices and experiences? How did they themselves construct and preserve their own memories of political struggle? The research emphasis will be on the women in the class struggle, who were often taken for +1: wives and lovers. By focusing on the (absence of) archival materials, the presentation seeks to address the institutional forgetting of women’s roles in interwar political movements and explore the challenges of reclaiming their place in historical narratives. In this way, memory is not only the subject of this investigation but also its method—an act of retrieval that resists erasure and ensures that these women’s struggles are no longer consigned to historical oblivion.

Author

• Manca G Renko, U of Ljubljana (Slovenia)