Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.5673/sip.64.1.4
Myth in Stone: The People’s Liberation Struggle in the Inscriptions on Monuments Commemorating the National Liberation Struggle in Serb Rural Communities in the Pre-War Municipalities of Vukovar and Vinkovci
Mirko Savković
; Odsjek za povijest istočne i jugoistočne Europe, Sveučilište Ludwig-Maximilian u Münchenu (LMU München), Njemačka
Sažetak
This paper examines practices of preserving and reinterpreting the entire body of antifascist
monuments in predominantly Serbian rural communities located within the pre-war municipalities
of Vukovar and Vinkovci. This area is part of the Croatian Danube region and is today
incorporated into Vukovar-Srijem County. Of the approximately 6,000 monuments erected in
Croatia during socialist Yugoslavia, nearly half were destroyed during the Croatian War of Independence.
The extent of destruction varied across different areas, depending on the intensity of
the war and the local demographic structure. Numerous antifascist monuments, often erected at
the initiative of the communities themselves, have been preserved in the predominantly Serbian
rural communities of eastern Croatia that were peacefully reintegrated into the Croatian legal
system at the end of the war between 1996 and 1998. These monuments are generally better
preserved than those in villages where Croats constitute the majority population in the region.
However, their physical preservation does not necessarily entail the preservation of the original
ideas that guided their construction.
The paper explores how these monuments, originally erected to commemorate the common,
multinational struggle of the Yugoslav Partisans against fascism, became objects of nationalist
appropriation, through which antifascism has been reinterpreted as the exclusive heritage of
the Serb community. Such exclusively nationalist appropriation is identified in practices that
emphasise the role of one’s own nation while diminishing or denying the contributions of other
nations to the antifascist struggle. These practices constitute a form of soft revisionism that does
not reject the People’s Liberation Struggle (Narodnooslobodilačka borba, NOB) outright, but
instead appropriates it and employs it in the pursuit of nationalist objectives that are fundamentally
at odds with the principles of that struggle.
The fieldwork for this study was conducted during the summer of 2024, from June to August,
with the aim of documenting and analysing the entire body of monuments associated with the
People’s Liberation Struggle across 29 rural communities in the area under study. The author
comes from the area and the community being researched, which facilitated access to local
sources but simultaneously required additional reflexivity in the interpretation of the findings.
Ključne riječi
nationalist appropriation of antifascism; Croatian Danube region; Serbs in Croatia; memory culture; People’s Liberation Struggle (NOB)
Hrčak ID:
351106
URI
Datum izdavanja:
25.8.2026.
Posjeta: 0 *