According to Gabriella Elgenius, the societal significance of holidays lies in the preservation of collective memory. Annually repeated shared rituals reinforce the memory of those events and ...personalities that are expected to be familiar to all the members of the community, in effect pushing all other ones into the shadow of collective forgetting. What is more, the emotionally charged commemorations remind members of the community about their social ties and shared history, reinforcing their national identity. The same process occurred in the newly-formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, where the key players exploited national ceremony to implement their (re)interpretations of the past (as the dark age of national dispersion and slavery to foreign masters) and their new agenda for the future. The Unification Day, celebrated on 1 December, as well as the other state holidays, were supposed to contribute to the formation and reinforcement of the narrative image of a community that defined itself as Us and feels like One. The purpose of the Unification Day was to stage national unity and collectively express the will to belong to a firm and lasting community, in order to make sense of the death of past martyrs who gave their lives for Vidovdan ideals. A nation-state cannot exist without national unity. Regretfully, the ruling elites in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes failed, for various reasons, to nationalise the collective memory of the past and construct an efficient, internalised nationalist ideology. Thus, the Kingdom entered history as the single nation-state without its own nationalism, which meant it was missing the greatest mobilisation force, one that in the modern period has proved itself stronger than geography or religion and more stable than political and economic interests. Even though at the end of the war the citizens of the newly established kingdom were all rooting for Yugoslavia, the new nation-state failed to create the Yugoslavians as a people. It would seem that up until King Alexander’s declaration of dictatorship it had channelled its powers, and even its violence, mostly into the creation of the Serbs.
As a Slavic-speaking religious and ethnic "Other" living just a
stone's throw from the symbolic heart of the continent, the Muslims
of Bosnia and Herzegovina have long occupied a liminal space in the
...European imagination. To a significant degree, the wider
representations and perceptions of this population can be traced to
the reports of Central European-and especially Habsburg-diplomats,
scholars, journalists, tourists, and other observers in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This volume assembles
contributions from historians, anthropologists, political
scientists, and literary scholars to examine the political, social,
and discursive dimensions of Bosnian Muslims' encounters with the
West since the nineteenth century.
Nevesinjska puška najavila je početak oružanog ustanka u Hercegovini 9. srpnja 1875. godine. Hercegovci, koji su zbog svog pastirskog načina života sa svojim stadima redovito pohodili planinske ...krajeve, znali su gdje pronaći zaklon i kako preživjeti s oskudnim sredstvima. Za trajanja ustanka svojim su se planinskim utočištima koristili za napade na osmanske postrojbe, muslimanska sela i karavane trgovaca. U tek nekoliko tjedana uspješno su izolirali vojne posade u Hercegovini, uništili određene komunikacijske pravce te razorili i opljačkali stanovita „turska” sela. Nekih mjesec dana kasnije ustanak se proširio na Bosnu, gdje je bio ograničen na pravoslavno stanovništvo, dok su ga u Hercegovini vodili katolici. Premda je započeo kao seljačka buna, hercegovački ustanak prerastao je u povijesni događaj od golema značaja. Otvorio je tzv. istočno pitanje i pobudio veliko zanimanje europskih novinara, političara i široke javnosti. Zbivanja su s velikim zanimanjem ponajprije pratili slavenski žitelji susjednih zemalja. Za njih su se njihova slavenska „braća”, koja su bila izvrgnuta „turskom” ugnjetavanju, nedvojbeno nalazila na pravoj strani povijesti. Kako bi im pružili pomoć, osnovali su mnogobrojne odbore u Hrvatskoj, Dalmaciji, Slavoniji, Srbiji, Crnoj Gori, ali i slovenskim zemljama. Ti su odbori prikupljali, novac, hranu, lijekove i oružje, a slali su čak i dragovoljce kako bi se borili na strani ustanika. Među prvima koji su odgovorili na poziv Majke Slave bio je i Friedrich Hubmayer, mladi slovenski nacionalist iz Ljubljane. U Hercegovini je svoje „švapsko” ime promijenio u slovensko prozvavši se Miroslav Hubmajer te se proslavio kao ustanički vođa Crni Miro. Zbog svoje neustrašivosti uživao je veliko poštovanje i ubrzo se prometnuo u jedno od najpoznatijih lica ustanka. 1870-ih godina svojom je slavom uvelike natkrilio svoje slovenske suvremenike. Novine su redovito izvješćivale o njemu i njegovim pothvatima, a 10. listopada 1875. godine u bečkom glasilu, Humoristische Blätter, izašao je njegov portret, djelo glasovitog češkog slikara Karela Klíča, dok je u božićnom izdanju tjednika The Illustrated London News iz 1875. godine objavljen rad posebnog ratnog dopisnika i ilustratora, Meltona Priora. Na Jamničkoj skupštini održanoj 16. i 17. prosinca 1875, Crni Miro izabran je za glavnog zapovjednika bosanskog ustanka glasovima predstavnika svih bosanskih ustaničkih skupina. Glavni suparnik na izborima bio mu je Petar Mrkonjić (pseudonim Petra Karađorđevića), koji je 1903. godine proglašen kraljem Srbije. Pobornici Petra Mrkonjića skovali su mnoge spletke protiv Hubmajera. Nakon stvaranja prve jugoslavenske nacionalne države na čelu s kraljem Petrom, zapao je i u nemilost povjesničara. S gledišta metodološkog pijemontizma, tj. naturalizacije ideološke pretpostavke da se u srpskom narodu ne može početi ni dogoditi ništa što nije poteklo iz „Pijemonta”, a koja je bila popularna među srpskim novinarima i povjesničarima, Crni Miro bio je bio je suvišna povijesna ličnost. Autori koji su metodološki pijemontizam prigrlili kao svoje stajalište brkaju srpski nacionalni interes sa svrhom ispisivanja povijesti, tako da metodološki pijemontizam u njihovim radovima odražava i pojačava njihovo poistovjećivanje sa srpskim (vjerskim) ekskluzivizmom.
A human being is a symbolic creature and, to the same extent, an active inventor of otherness. Europe and Turkey, The West and the Balkans, are infinitely exploitable symbols. Any symbol, inherently ...polysemic and socially construed, is continuously contested and negotiated. The image of the Turk as a ruthless plunderer is still vivid in European collective memory. Although it occasionally still verges on ethnic mythology, it clearly belongs to a past where, along with the plague and famin.
The takeover of power in Yugoslavia was carried out by the Communist Party in full accordance with the textbooks of the Bolshevik Party schools for establishing of the proletarian dictatorship. In ...this spirit, a state established after the Second World War was formed, whose declared aim was to change the regime and establish a new social order. The first priority on the list of the leaders of the socialist revolution was the liquidation of the occupying forces and their domestic collaborators. In order to consolidate its power, the revolutionary power included in their number not just those who actively assited the occupying forces, but also those who were not in favour of the regime and did not actively fighty on the side of the partisans. The iron fist of vengeance thus struck thousands and thousands with all its might. However, the firmer was the Communist Party’s grip on power, the greater was the weight of its internal opposition. It became a real danger after the split between Moscow and Belgrade in 1948. This is why the regime dealt with them mercilessly. A new series of mass arrests, convictions and deportations followed. Initially, Tito’s regime responded to criticism from Moscow by radicalising the Stalinist line in eliminating the last vestiges of “capitalism” in Yugoslavia. Eventually, however, Yugoslav ideologues developed a new tpe of socialist system – Titoism. The showcase item, born out of creative opposition to Stalin and the Soviet system and fit for new ideologisation was workers’ self-management. Paradoxically, how this new system works, the regime tested in practice on the Goli Otok island and other “work sites” scattered around the state were so-called Stalinists were deported in order to be re-educated.
The article is devoted to the Ethnographic Exhibition and the Slavic Congress of 1867 that took place in specific circumstances, political and scientific situation. It contains information about the ...objects put on the Exhibition and the way they are presented, shows the role the Exhibition played in the development of ethnographic studies and popularizing the knowledge of ethnography. However, the Author is primarily interested in the political impact of the Exhibition and the Congress important to formulate and popularize the idea of Panslavism, strengthen Russian nationalism and create national movements among southern Slavs. The text does not represent Polish viewpoint, but Polish issue is addressed a few times in it.
The Vidovdan assassination in Sarajevo, in 1914, was used by the Asutro-Hungarian authorities as a trigger for the war against Serbia. Citizens of the Dual Monarchy, with the help of media ...propaganda, and police repression and censorship, made in less than a month a long way, filled with emotions, which culminated in acceptance and even conviction that the relations with Serbia should be „clarified“. In all Austro-Hungarian cities and towns, the image portrayed by contemporary press was image of spontaneous popular enthusiasm for the war. Of course, war propaganda used black-and-white technique to present the situation at the battlefields, desctribing “our heroes! Fighting courageously against “Serbian savages”. However, the reality was not as black-and-white as presented by propaganda. Thus, during the Battle of Cer, the soldiers of the 28th Prague Regiment refused to fight against their “Slav brothers”. At the command to attack the Serbian position, they left their weapons aside and marched towards the Serbian entrenchment singing “Hey, Slavs!” Even more, the battle lines of the opposing armies were not made exclusively from the members of one nation. So, it happened that one of the first Slovenian victims of the Great War in Serbia in mid-August, 1914, under the Cer, was a Slovenian Anton Jenko, who fought as a volunteer in the Serbian army.
In reality, there were also other colours, not just black and white. But the mobilization for the Great War on the basis of black-and-white divisions between the Southern Slavs left a lasting mark and remained one of the causes of an extended period of conflicts between the citizens of the first common Yugoslav state. One of the important task of a nation state in the commemorations of the fallen soldiers, as Ashplant put it, is to maintain or secure the unity of an „imagined community“, and its associated narratives and rituals, in the face of sometimes acute social divisions. However, in the common Yugoslav state – and due to the divisions originating from the period of war, on one side, and the politicians aiming to capitalise there positions – they were unable to construct a common memory of the past to unite them as a one nation.
According to Gabriella Elgenius, the societal significance of holidays lies in the preservation of collective memory. Annually repeated shared rituals reinforce the memory of those events and ...personalities that are expected to be familiar to all the members of the community, in effect pushing all other ones into the shadow of collective forgetting. What is more, the emotionally charged commemorations remind members of the community about their social ties and shared history, reinforcing their national identity. The same process occurred in the newly-formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, where the key players exploited national ceremony to implement their (re)interpretations of the past (as the dark age of national dispersion and slavery to foreign masters) and their new agenda for the future. The Unification Day, celebrated on 1 December, as well as the other state holidays, were supposed to contribute to the formation and reinforcement of the narrative image of a community that defined itself as Us and feels like One. The purpose of the Unification Day was to stage national unity and collectively express the will to belong to a firm and lasting community, in order to make sense of the death of past martyrs who gave their lives for Vidovdan ideals. A nation-state cannot exist without national unity. Regretfully, the ruling elites in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes failed, for various reasons, to nationalise the collective memory of the past and construct an efficient, internalised nationalist ideology. Thus, the Kingdom entered history as the single nation-state without its own nationalism, which meant it was missing the greatest mobilisation force, one that in the modern period has proved itself stronger than geography or religion and more stable than political and economic interests. Even though at the end of the war the citizens of the newly established kingdom were all rooting for Yugoslavia, the new nationstate failed to create the Yugoslavians as a people. It would seem that up until King Alexander’s declaration of dictatorship it had channelled its powers, and even its violence, mostly into the creation of the Serbs.
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