Original scientific paper
Hayduks, Serfs, Askers and Knights (Symbolical ldentities of the YPA and post-Yugoslav Armies)
Ivo Žanić
Abstract
The paper analyses the construction of communist Yugoslavia symbolic legitimation and its constitutive sources in traditional culture. The new official imagery encompassed and reinterpreted two already historically moulded models: the eastern one (Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro), with its idealized anti-Ottoman hajduk figure, and the western one (Slovenia, Croatia), with its anti-feudal peasant revolts motifs. The third living social memory, that of Moslem Bosniaks, has been systematically excluded. After the collapse of Yugoslavia Serbia and her satellitic "states" in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina pushed forward the same model, Slovenia and Croatia - and their armies - constructed new symbolic proclamations of identity in opposition with communist Yugoslav one, while Moslem Bosniak political elite reduced symbolic identity of the country to Ottoman epoch.
Keywords
the military; identity; social memory; political symbols
Hrčak ID:
202393
URI
Publication date:
10.6.1998.
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