Yugoslav Metanarrative and Contemporary Yugonostalgia in Western Balkan Countries

Abstract

The article discusses the features of the Yugoslav metanarrative and its transformation, the activities of mnemonic actors in its formation and the use of its individual elements after the collapse of the SFRY. As an analytical tool, the concept of a metanarrative is used, which is understood as the mechanism for translating ideological elements of the past into everyday reality and representing norms and values that are constitutive for the political regime using a certain set of symbolic means. Like the metanarrative in the former USSR, the Yugoslav metanarrative was aimed at achieving a high degree of political and ideological control of public opinion or at replacing it with directive ideological principles. Within the framework of this model, social communication and public debate cannot fully fulfill the function of developing national identity and forming new frames for interpreting political problems. The metanarrative contributed to the formation and strengthening of several types of identities, including the identity of representatives of the “titular nations” and ethnic minorities. The destruction of the metanarrative meant the impossibility of maintaining its integrity, the withering away of many components, but the survival of other components, which can retain their significance for certain types of identity. The article shows how the activity of mnemonic leaders of the republics of the former SFRY, in the formation and reproduction of a positive or negative perception of the past, affects the formation of various competing projects of national identity and their configuration in the present. The features of Yugonostalgia that determine the possibility of their use by various political forces in their interests are revealed. It is concluded that the variability of the attitude to the Yugoslav socialist past and its use in political rhetoric in the countries of the Western Balkans is primarily due to the peculiarities of ethnic and religious divisions, the role of the former union republics as part of the SFRY, pre-war Yugoslavia and other state entities, the history of independence and subsequent development.