The crossed swords of memory: the image of communist Yugoslavia in the textbooks of its successor states

Abstract

A comparative analysis of textbooks in Yugoslavia’s successor states reveals conflicting narratives of Yugoslav communism. Two basic interpretative frameworks are: communism’s state-forming function, renewing or granting statehood; and, ‘Yugoslavism’ seen as an ideology ‘hostile’ to national aspirations. This created a ‘memory mutation,’ a shift of focus from the socio-political system to the national question, reducing the memory of communism to a memory of Yugoslavia, so the central function of the discourse on communism became to create the interpretative framework for the wars of 1990s.