My family is Serbian (Bosnian Serb, more accurately). What my family went through during the Tito era and prior is an interesting story. My grandfathers cousins were part of the Black Hand who assassinated Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo leading to WW1. My father was an active participant in anti-government movements during the 70s and was kicked out of the country as a result (and later arrested when he return, resulting in an international diplomatic indecent as he was an Australian citizen at the time).
Anyway, we weren't allowed to visit again until '01. When we did, we attempted to visit Jasenovac, but the police had road blocks on every road approaching the site in a wide radius. We were blocked from approaching the site from two different directions, and on the second attempt were essentially told to go away and that there was 'nothing to see here'.
The Croatian government has since become a lot more progressive, but there is still a large element of denial for what is essentially the Auschwitz of the Balkans.
The old Yugoslav government of Tito also didn't acknowledge what took place at Jasenovac - which is a large part of the reason why the rest of the world doesn't know about it. Tito pushed it all aside in the name of moving forward with 'brotherhood and unity'.
And btw, a lot of the monuments that you see in this post, at least those that were dedicated to the partizans and 'the workers', have since been heavily graffitied and vandalized. The local populations took their anger for the former state out on these huge monuments that were built at large expense.
Your family has some serious history. I consider the guns that killed Arch Duke Ferdinand to be some of the most important objects in the physical world (outside the much more important realm of ideas). I visited the war museum in Vienna where they are kept, alongside the car the duke was riding in and his uniform, a year ago. All the events of 20th century as we know it are shaped by a few objects in that room. Sure some will say they are "merely" the sparks that lit the potential energy in the powderkegs of history but, nevertheless, they are the sparks that did it.
> Anyway, we weren't allowed to visit again until '01. When we did, we attempted to visit Jasenovac, but the police had road blocks on every road approaching the site in a wide radius. We were blocked from approaching the site from two different directions, and on the second attempt were essentially told to go away and that there was 'nothing to see here'.
This isn't likely. Croatia got a progressive government in 2000., that openly endorsed visiting Jasenovac and fought right-wing elements that wanted to forget that shameful period.
Tudman was an autocrat, but Jasenovac only suffered in funding and public events there, you could visit any time you wanted and I learned about Jasenovac in school during the 90's, about the same what says in the article.
Also, Tudman had the crazy idea to mix both Partisan and Ustase (Nazi collaborators) victims and soldiers. Luckily that didn't happen.
Fascinating: the monuments "had to be neutral enough to be acceptable to both victims and perpetrators. After all, once the slaughter was over, the former opponents had to collectively form the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia."
This is one of the sources of the appeal of Balkans for "foreigners" and one of the sources of frustration and despair for the Balkan people themselves.
We never dealt with these issues in any way whatsoever. As is the cultural norm of all of the Balkan people, shit that we don't want to deal with is pushed away, compartmentalized and annotated (for future ammunition against those who have caused the atrocities). This left the entire region susceptible to manipulation by those who wished to tear the region apart. A lot of anger has built up during the 50 years between Jasenovac and the wars of the 90s.
Socialism realism is a bit of doublespeak, though. Here's Wikipedia:
> Socialist realism held that successful art depicts and glorifies the proletariat's struggle toward socialist progress. The Statute of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934 stated that socialist realism "is the basic method of Soviet literature and literary criticism. It demands of the artist the truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development. Moreover, the truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic representation of reality must be linked with the task of ideological transformation and education of workers in the spirit of socialism."
Read that twice if you missed it - it must be truthful, and also must take the task of ideological transformation. That is, propaganda.
"Socialist idealist" might be a friendly way of describing that style of art, or "socialist propaganda" would be a less friendly way. But either way would be far more accurate than socialist realist. As someone whose spent lots of time around the world, the socialist countries have had absolutely terrible taste outside of a rare few well-done landmarks. Soviet housing in Eastern Europe is still brutal and cold and spiritually oppressive, and the older people there simply don't smile and look proud like you see on the banknotes.
Actual realism in art positions itself against romanticism. The socialist propaganda art is highly romanticized. The name's very much an Orwellian-style misnomer that hasn't been appropriately discarded yet.
Guy won the international miners contest where he shoveled 'with ease' 25kgs in one go and similar mythic stories behind it.
And every single note had a similar story behind it that furthered the myth of "workers in the spirit of socialism".
> And every single note had a similar story behind it that furthered the myth of "workers in the spirit of socialism"
In Yugoslavia AFAIK the only note in that period with the real story is the one you've mentioned (but the other person was depicted in that older note). For others, citation needed, as the Wikipedia article is very specific. Old 1000 note "Arif Heralić" then some monuments or the most famous people, or generic faces, without real stories.
Anyway, we weren't allowed to visit again until '01. When we did, we attempted to visit Jasenovac, but the police had road blocks on every road approaching the site in a wide radius. We were blocked from approaching the site from two different directions, and on the second attempt were essentially told to go away and that there was 'nothing to see here'.
The Croatian government has since become a lot more progressive, but there is still a large element of denial for what is essentially the Auschwitz of the Balkans.
The old Yugoslav government of Tito also didn't acknowledge what took place at Jasenovac - which is a large part of the reason why the rest of the world doesn't know about it. Tito pushed it all aside in the name of moving forward with 'brotherhood and unity'.
And btw, a lot of the monuments that you see in this post, at least those that were dedicated to the partizans and 'the workers', have since been heavily graffitied and vandalized. The local populations took their anger for the former state out on these huge monuments that were built at large expense.