The years of World War II—when thousands of Yugoslav workers, peasants, intellectuals and students joined the Communist-led Partisans—provided the foundation for the myth of the post-war Communist regime. Small forests were torn down just to print hundreds of thousands of pages extolling the virtues or condemning the crimes of the Yugoslav Communists in WWII. Memoirs and war diaries, historical studies and exhibitions, popular songs and films all focused on Communism. Even the most popular children’s story from post-war Yugoslavia, Branko Copic’s The Hedgehog’s House, is widely perceived to be an allegory of the partisan struggle against the Nazis. The primary sources from this period are daunting and the hagiography that accompanies them is stifling.
Posts Tagged ‘Yugoslavia’
July 3rd, 2010
The sacred architecture of secular Yugoslavia
posted by James Robertson
Postwar Yugoslavia was confronted with a rather difficult task: How to give meaning to a new state that was simultaneously the protectorate of religious and national difference but also a project that transcended these differences? Bogdan Bogdanovic’s work, largely focused on monuments commemorating the victims of fascism, was ideal for trying to give this project an architectural language.
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