Forsaken Monuments and Social Change: The Function of Socialist Monuments in the Post-Yugoslav Space

Abstract

In the 20 years since the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the newly emerged states have gone through momentous changes that have dramatically transfigured not only their political panorama but also their landscape, including architecture and population structure. These changes have frequently been accompanied by activities that could be dubbed ``territory marking.'' This marking of territory through oversaturation with group-specific symbols seems to serve two purposes: (1) to mark the territory as ours; and (2) perhaps more importantly, to keep the ethnic other away. We know that this symbolic cleansing of territory is an integral part of any political change. All post-socialist Eastern European countries have gone---or perhaps more appropriately, are still going---through the process of breaking up with the past and orienting toward what was promised and expected to be a better future. However, in the present that frequently appears very different from this wished-for future---if not outright dismal---many start to reimagine the past. In this chapter, we take a somewhat unconventional approach to what constitutes divided symbols in post-conflict settings. Framing the discussion in terms of symbolic power and situating it in the context of symbolic warfare currently taking place on a grand scale in the post-Yugoslav space, we examine what symbolic role monuments erected in the former socialist system serve today. What role do socialist monuments, once signifying shared life of all Yugoslav people purportedly united around the construct of ``South Slavs,'' occupy in the post-socialist landscape marked by actual and symbolic ethnic division?