Yugonostalgic Against All Odds: Nostalgia for Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Among Young Leftist Activists in Contemporary Serbia
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Yugonostalgic against All Odds: Nostalgia for Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia among Young Leftist Activists in Contemporary Serbia Nadiya Chushak Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2013 School of Social and Political Science The University of Melbourne Produced on archival quality paper ii Abstract This thesis examines yugonostalgia – nostalgia for the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) – in contemporary Serbia. Yugonostalgia often has a negative reputation – both in academia and in everyday life – as an ‘unhealthy’ or even debilitating fixation on the socialist past. However, this thesis argues that yugonostalgia tells us not only about nostalgic subjects’ attitude towards the past but also about their current concerns. Contemporary Serbia is permeated by discourses privileging nationalistic and neoliberal values. This thesis explores how young people can develop nostalgic attitudes towards the socialist past, even in such an unlikely context. Yugonostalgia is an ambiguous phenomenon, and this ambiguity allows for positive dimensions and uses. To highlight the emancipatory potential of yugonostalgia, this thesis utilises ethnographic fieldwork among young leftist activists in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade. The focus on this milieu demonstrates how yugonostalgia is not simply reactionary but can overlap with and even energize a critical stance towards both nationalistic and neoliberal projects in contemporary Serbia. Additionally, this focus on young activists helps to counter popular negative stereotypes about Serbian youth as either passive victims of their situation or as a violent negative force. Finally, the thesis also adds to our understanding of how the meaning of the ‘left’ is negotiated in post-socialist conditions. Drawing on concept of lieux de mémoire developed by the French historian Pierre Nora, I examine four broad clusters of recurring themes that appear in the yugonostalgic narratives of my Serbian informants. These four themes of national unity, international cooperation, economic prosperity and cultural achievements once constituted the ideological foundations of the Yugoslav state. Today, they take on new significance among young leftist activists. The state ideology of the brotherhood and unity of the Yugoslav nations and the anti-fascist struggle was relevant for my informants in the context of the rise of nationalism in contemporary Serbia. Yugoslav internationalism took on a new significance in the context of Serbia’s relative international isolation and the loss of mobility for its citizens. The ‘Yugoslav dream’, the socio-economic comfort that the citizens of SFRY enjoyed, was attractive in the context of the increased precariousness of life iii in contemporary Serbia but for my leftist informants also provided a compelling example of a fairer and more prosperous economic model than what has resulted from current neoliberal reforms. Yugoslav culture was often portrayed as superior to the cultural life of contemporary Serbia, which has deteriorated under the influence of both nationalism and neoliberalism. Yugonostalgia, then, represents not a retreat from the present, but a rich cultural repertoire for progressive re-engagement with current political questions. In the imagination of these Serbian activists, remembering Yugoslavia is a selective process that reconstructs alternatives to both parochial Serb nationalist identity- making and to the supposedly inevitable and universal logic of neoliberal economic restructuring. iv Declaration This is to certify that: the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD except where indicated in the Preface, due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, the thesis is fewer than 100 000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices OR the thesis is [number of words] as approved by the Research Higher Degrees Committee. Signature: Date: v Preface In 2000 a Croatian director Vinko Brešan produced a comedy called Maršal (translated into English as ‘Marshal Tito’s Ghost’). Events in the film took place on one of the small Croatian islands in the Adriatic Sea. During Socialist Yugoslav times, this island used to be a popular resort. At the time depicted in the film, though, the local economy is stagnating, as a result of dissolution of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), the war and the ensuing economic crisis. Maršal opens with a funeral scene of one of the locals – an elderly man and a member of the small but firm-in-its-beliefs branch of the Communist Party. The solemn performance of The International by his peers is interrupted by an uninvited guest – Josip Broz Tito, life-long President of SFRY, wearing one of his signature Marshal uniforms. Instead of rejoicing at the sight of their leader, elderly Communists stumble in fear (Fig. I) – and the reaction is quite predictable. After all, Josip Broz Tito passed away almost twenty years before. Fig. I. Islander’s shocked reaction to the first apparition of spirit of Marshal Tito (Maršal 2010). During the rest of the film the inhabitants of the island try to make sense of the sudden appearance of Tito’s ghost. Reactions vary. Elderly communist, after overcoming the initial shock and fear, regroup themselves and plan a revolution. Entrepreneurial mayor of the main town on the island jumps at the opportunity offered by the paranormal phenomenon and hopes to revitalise island’s economy, vi attracting tourist from the outside. He enlists help from the locals – recruiting them to perform old partisan songs to the tourists and cater for their other needs. Eventually we realise that Tito’s ghost actually is just an escaped patient of the local mental asylum, who stole Marshal’s uniform from the local defunct Museum of the Revolution. Brešan’s comedy offers us an interesting interpretation of the ways Yugoslav past can be present in the post-Yugoslav present, and how different contemporary agents react to, interact with and make use of it. Some are clearly invested in the interaction with this past. Some – the ones that could be ‘unproblematically’ called nostalgics, and in this movie they are mainly elderly people – truly see it as preferable to the present and are ready to do anything, including initiate an armed revolt, to make it happen again. Others, personified in the film by the mayor, are not personally ‘stranded’ in this Yugoslav communist past, but engage with it actively, adapting it to the capitalist present, trying to turn it into a sellable and profitable commodity. Meanwhile majority of the island’s inhabitants just go on with their usual everyday lives, where Tito’s ghost is just one of the factors that elicit people’s responses. In other words, I take this film to depict what are considered to be the most typical responses to yugonostalgia, nostalgia for Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It is very symptomatic in its general treatment of the Yugoslav past as a spectre that haunts the present. For some people this ghost becomes a salient development, filling in their lives, occupying their concerns and plans for the future. For the others it is just a sporadic occurrence, sometimes delightful, sometimes annoying. And ultimately, the presence of the Yugoslav past is an effect of lunacy. Was Brešan, through the usage of such metaphor, trying to dismiss the Yugoslav past and yugonostalgia in his film? Such explanation seems quite plausible. Disturbing past manifested as a ghost, which is also a product of the insanity, needs to be expelled and overcome, in order for the ‘normal’ life to continue. Ghosts, after all, are often seen as an unwelcome presence and therefore need to be exorcised. If they are not, they haunt the present, burdening the people who see them, stealing vii their time, energy and resources. However, other interpretations are possible as well. Perhaps, the twist revealing that it is up to the patient of the psychiatric institution to stir the languished life on the island makes use of the traditional trope whereby people with ‘deviant’ rationality – children, lunatics, women – are the ones who can see, speak about and enact ‘truth’. More than twenty years ago, on 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell under the hands of the German citizens. This event led to the reunification of the Germany but also was treated as a sign of the wider transformations in so-called ‘Soviet Bloc’, culminating with the implosion of the Soviet Union and the bloody dissolution of Socialist Yugoslavia. This historical momentum was interpreted as an undeniable proof of the flawed nature of the socialist experiment. The history, supposedly, has reached its logical ending: victory of the liberal ideology and capitalist system over their nemeses, socialism and planned economy (see Fukuyama 1992, for the best known, albeit too hasty, celebration of this victory). But the stubborn spectre of communism, just like in Brešan’s film, refuses to disappear. Spectre of communism continues to haunt not only Croatia but also the main focus of this study, Serbia (see Fig. II), as well as other former Yugoslav countries, and broader post-socialist region. It is spray-painted on the walls and buildings. It lurks in the art galleries, pages of fictional and academic books, on theatre stages and tribunes of the public forums. It watches citizens watching it on the TV screens. It gathers under its flags protesters, some of them, seemingly paradoxically, wearing fashionable