In the second part of the chapter, the discussion moves from the individual to a more collective level. At the end of the quoted conversation, the women refer to the poor economic situation Mostar faces today. As with the destruction of good neighborliness, good family life was severely disrupted and families often broke up as a result of the war.
Many members of the immediate family, such as children, spouses and siblings, died during the war; most of the deaths were caused directly or indirectly by the war. Many of them never returned to BiH, especially the children and grandchildren of the First Yugoslavs. To further reveal the specifics of the first Yugoslav generation, two people, Danica and Armeni, and their narratives will be presented in the following sections.
When Danica and I sat together, she liked to talk about the beautiful Mostar of that time, when she was young. In contrast, in conversations with the younger generations, it seemed self-explanatory to them (and to me) that the 'war' referred to the war in the 1990s. That the memories of the last Yugoslavs were less marked by the war in the 1990s also became visible when an activity was initiated at Otvoreno srce, asking the participants (including Danica) to name the most important places in BiH and later in the whole of the former Yugoslavia.
Only at the end of the exercise, Adis, who stood a little further away from the others, said that one of the towns is now populated mainly by Serbs, whereas before the war the Muslim population had been the majority.
Armen: A ‘True Mostarian’ Embedded in Local History
I was surprised that this was the only politically critical contribution throughout the exercise, as many of the countries on the chart have seen extreme violence and severe population displacement. However, I had previously listened to politically controversial conversations on Otvoreno srce, when I was surprised how openly people attacked one of the former war parties. While not excluding that this was one of the reasons for the apolitical behavior of the participants, I strongly believe that it is neither the only nor the most decisive reason and that it is primarily related to their generational positioning as will be discussed below.
The second of the three individuals who belonged to the first Yugoslavs that I talk about in this chapter is a man I met during my first visit to Mostar and with whom I maintained contact for several years. During the end of the Habsburg occupation, he was still a child and his father sent him to Austria every summer to improve his German. It was fascinating to see how he brought to life the history of the buildings and places we visited.
The importance of the Old Bridge among members of this generation, regardless of their national origin, suggests that the emotional connection that binds the Armenian to Stari most cannot be simply reduced to his Bosnian identity (Fig. 4.1). From a previous conversation with the head of the Serbian cultural center and from an Orthodox Christmas celebration I had attended, I knew that the Serbian cultural center of Mostar saw itself as a place open to all nations interested in Serbian culture and art. . Summing up, we can say that the narratives of the First Yugoslavs show more coherence and are less fragmented than the narratives of the Late Yugoslavs discussed in the next chapter.
Moreover, they are less permeated by the current dominant public discourses than the narratives of younger generations, the last Yugoslavs and post-Yugoslavs. Due to the far-reaching experiences associated with their age, the first Yugoslavs have a sense of constructed nationality. This more optimistic outlook than their younger fellow patriots is probably related to their experiences in the post-World War II era, when different ethno-national groups found a way to coexist peacefully.
Moreover, the nostalgia among former Yugoslavs for a shared time was less painful than for latter Yugoslavs and gave the former's narratives a potentially optimistic outlook that things would improve. They also felt freer to return to their pre-war homes (even if they were on the 'other side' of town) and to find spaces to cherish the (multinational) past with others of their generation, as in Otvoreno srce or the partisan commemoration day which is the subject of the rest of the chapter. It is certainly not the exclusive privilege of the First Yugoslavs to resist and challenge the national division of Mostar.
Remembering the Partisan Past: Old Form, New Meaning
I later discover that she is 84 years old and head of the local partisan women's organization. The atmosphere is cheerful, with the singers clapping their hands to the rhythm of the song. Someone must have drawn the symbol (closely associated with the Bosnian nation) on the Partisan hero's bust.
Today, Šehitluci is the central place in Mostar commemorating the Bosnian victims of the 1990s war. On the front of the card is a Tito portrait and on the back a 2008 calendar with a logo of the Forum Mladih SDP BiH (Forum of the Young Social Democratic Party BiH). I find it remarkable that the leader of the partisan association is given the opportunity to make a statement to the people of Mostar in this way.
The bus passes through heavily bombed buildings on the Boulevard and then into the Croat-dominated part of the city. She practically shouts the words out the windows, making it clear who she means by "the other side". The procession slowly approaches the top of the memorial as the road is uneven and difficult for the elderly participants.
On the way I take the opportunity to speak to Alija Bijevica, the organizer of the ceremony. But the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina, he says, is that of a secular state joining the European Union. When we enter the black-painted hall, Tito songs occasionally blast from the speakers.
At the end of the speech and three hours of the program, the participants look tired and content to enjoy a drink in the company of old friends. Although the organizers and central figures of the commemoration made it relatively clear in their speeches that fascism/. When the woman on the bus waved her red carnation out the window shouting, "But on the other side, but on the other side, but on the other side."
For example, one of the young lecturers at the Bosniak-dominated university said that she had scheduled the final exams for February 14. February (Avenue of 14 February) was renamed Avenija Kralja Tomislava).12 In Bosniak-dominated Sarajevo, the street in memory of this Croatian medieval ruler was renamed.
Interpretative Templates for Personal Meaning-Making and as Political Tools
In the particular case of partisan commemoration, this is facilitated by new political significance. Although the commemoration is still officially held in memory of the ideals of Brotherhood and Unity, it similarly strengthens a Bosnian national identity. As pointed out in the introduction to this book, there is a difference in the nature of the 'strategies' found in official national narratives and those in personal narratives.
While the former represent a goal-directed narrative, the latter might be better described as a search for a target. While the linking of two chronotopes (Bakhtin 1981), the Second World War and the 1992–1995 war, among the first Yugoslavs, presented in this chapter, is based primarily on personal experiences and aims at a coherent life narrative (see Cave and Sloan 2014) in a public commemorative context, this association easily becomes a political tool. As Dragojevic has shown, personal war memories can be exploited when political actors "can deliberately use symbols or discourse that will sound familiar to those individuals who had personal or family memories of previous cycles of violence" (Dragojevic 2013).
This shows the importance of including how interpretive templates serve individual meaning making and, at the same time and related to the first, how they serve as political tools. Wertsch (2008) distinguishes between “specific” and “schematic” narrative models when analyzing collective memory in post-Soviet Russia. While the former contain specific information about places, dates and actors, the latter are more abstract and can serve as templates for a variety of stories.
Interpretive propositions, as understood here, are closer to Wertsch's schematic narrative propositions, but with a greater emphasis on the aspect of meaning that these propositions offer to individuals. At the individual level, the first Yugoslavs use pre-existing interpretive frameworks around their experiences of World War II and the early years of Yugoslavia to make sense of the recent past. Moreover, the recent war is heralded in clear categories: fascist criminals and victims of fascism, a template borrowed from earlier Yugoslav depictions of World War II.
It shows the entanglement between personal/individual and public/collective representations of the past, between discursive tactics and discursive strategies that transcend different temporalities.
Bibliography
Claiming ownership in postwar Croatia: The dynamics of property relations and ethnic conflict in the Knin region. In The New Bosnian Mosaic: Identities, Memories and Moral Claims in a Post-War Society, ed.
