“That Thin Red Line”

Memory and Yugonostalgia among the Italian Minority in Istria

Abstract

This article examines how the documentary Vedo Rosso may be seen as a form of Yugonostalgia on the part of the Italian minority living in Rovinj, Croatia. Based on a textual analysis and video elicitation, this project explores the multiple and somewhat ambivalent ways in which this specific community has reacted to a visual reconstruction of the 1980s under socialism. A combination of interviews conducted by the authors and interviews presented in the documentary enables the reconstruction of a memoryscape influenced by intragenerational factors, as well as by the broader geopolitical changes that have transformed, at several times and in several ways, the Istrian Peninsula and the maritime town of Rovinj in particular. Deeper links between memory and nostalgia were the subject of detailed analysis in what is now vast and rich interdisciplinary literature. This article is an attempt to contribute to the existing debates on Yugonostalgia, in the sense that it shows that Yugonostalgia, as a form of memorialization, represents a complex and articulate way to interpret a mutable and uncertain present on the part of a relatively marginal ethno-linguistic minority in contemporary Croatia.

Keywords: Yugonostalgia, Italian minority, Istria, video elicitation, memory