Restorative and Reflexive Yugonostalgia in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia

• In Event: Past Meets Present: Navigating the Relevance of History in Today’s Context

Abstract

Nostalgia for the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, or rather Yugonostalgia, can be controversial given the region’s recent violent history. Nationalist elites that came to power after the dissolution often left little room in society for political narratives that cast the former Yugoslavia in a positive light. Boym has argued that there are different forms of (yugo)nostalgia. Restorative nostalgia is perceived as a form of truth where the past is “a perfect snapshot.” Reflective nostalgia, on the other hand, sees time as a more flexible construct. It does not concern itself necessarily with truth but with memory. We have analysed how these different forms of nostalgia manifest in three of the former Yugoslav countries, Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia by travelling to a virtual place where Yugoslavia is maintained and cherished: the internet. Here, as Mazzuchhelli explains, Yugoslavia moved from the “geopolitical space” to a “virtual space” where the “socio cultural space of Yugoslavia still exists today and survived the violent dissolution” (2012, p. 4). We set out a survey on some prominent Yugonostalgic social-media platforms which allowed us to pose questions to a wide variety of individuals who share a common interest in, and feelings of, Yugonostalgia. Our respondents experience their Yugonostalgia in interaction with the national identities that co-exist in the social sphere they inhabit offline.

Authors

• Maartje Weerdesteijn, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

• Margareta Blažević, NSCR

• Barbora Holá, The Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR) & Centre for International Criminal Justice, VU University Amsterdam

• Mirza Buljubašić, The Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR); Faculty of Criminal Justice, Criminology, and Security Studies, University of Sarajevo