Readers of old science fiction may be interested to know about the film version of Olaf Stapledon's novel Last and First Men. The film, mostly a voice over reading of some parts of the novel, was made with many Spomeniks as a background.
This is such a beautiful old school internet resource.
I don't have their book, but I do have a print of Socialist Modernism in the Former Yugoslavia [0]. It overlaps a lot in terms of photography and aesthetic but lacks the story.
These are fantastic art works, and driving around to check them out would a perfect euro tour for a future summer. Still I can't help but be intrigued by the wistful tone of the website. Judging by the "about" page, the guy running it is relatively young, so he can't quite have the Yugo-nostalgia. And yet passages like
> there were many in Yugoslavia who refused to fully integrate into this communist-led multi-cultural society [...] During the hey-day of Yugoslavia, this resentment and anger was very much kept in check by the Yugoslavian government's intense efforts in stamping out inter-ethnic retaliations, nationalism or religious hatred in any form, accompanied by the intense promotion of the ideals of 'Brotherhood and Unity'.
— to me read like they celebrate the Yugoslav communists. Would be curious to know if it's just me, or others also share the impression.
I didn't read much of the site yet, but one way I might read your quote is as being against those who ripped the country apart after communism. I would guess that many young people see that as the last tragedy and not communism.
FWIW Yugoslavia was open to tourism during the Cold War. My father drove from the UK to Dubrovnik with a friend in the 60s. I retraced part of that trip about 5 years ago. I'd have seen more had this site and book been available, but I stumbled on a few of the places on their map.
Not on their map is Zeljava [1] which was an airbase with extensive underground tunnels under a mountain on the Bosnia/Croatia border. At the time, a few parts of it were cleared out with bits of spares amongst the debris. There is a UXO hazard away from worn pathways. This is highlighted by the mine signs. I think there have been a few accident since the war in the 90s, but inside there was a bigger risk from falling concrete (look up for blast door). Recent photos [2] show it has been cleaned up a lot.
A neighbor got out of Yugoslavia when things fell apart. Formerly cordial neighbors burned down his family's house (near Sarajevo). He does remember favorably the Tito regime's success in keeping the peace.
Yugoslavia, in the end, was not much different from the USSR although it was not aligned with it. It was a forced combination of different states or regions (within Yugoslavia they were called republics) that were culturally or ethnically distinct, like much of Europe, but that identity per se wasn't the issue, rather that it was a forced combination and that people were treated differently, with Serbia having a dominant role to the detriment of others. It wasn't due to a lack of "brotherly love" but more like the presence of "brotherly oppression".
Some might argue with this but it's notable that a majority wanted out of Yugoslavia and Serbia was willing to use force to stop that.
In my travels, those who think of the communist era as "the good old days" are usually those who had a relatively privileged position in those times and were affiliated with the communist party and often Serbian. For most people communism was an oppressive system that delivered little in the way of quality of life compared to democratic states and repressed personal freedoms.
Yugoslav communist party was trying to build 'Yugoslav' (South Slavic) identity and trying to suppress nationalist differences. It was more multi-cultural than today's countries in the region which were formed on these ethnic lines.
> Operated by the governing Ustaše regime, Europe's only Nazi collaborationist regime that operated its own extermination camps
> It quickly grew into the third largest concentration camp in Europe
> Unlike German Nazi-run camps, Jasenovac lacked the infrastructure for mass murder on an industrial scale, such as gas chambers. Instead, it "specialized in one-on-one violence of a particularly brutal kind", and prisoners were
primarily murdered with the use of knives, hammers, and axes, or shot
> Ustaše regime having murdered somewhere near 100,000 people in Jasenovac between 1941 and 1945
[+] [-] JoeDaDude|2 years ago|reply
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8015444/
[+] [-] martin1975|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boomskats|2 years ago|reply
I don't have their book, but I do have a print of Socialist Modernism in the Former Yugoslavia [0]. It overlaps a lot in terms of photography and aesthetic but lacks the story.
[0]: https://urbanicagroup.ro/ushop/publications/album/socialist-...
[+] [-] fiforpg|2 years ago|reply
https://archive.org/details/sovietbusstops0000herw
Edit: I see that the book about Spomeniks and the one linked above were actually both released by the same publisher — Fuel.
[+] [-] fiforpg|2 years ago|reply
> there were many in Yugoslavia who refused to fully integrate into this communist-led multi-cultural society [...] During the hey-day of Yugoslavia, this resentment and anger was very much kept in check by the Yugoslavian government's intense efforts in stamping out inter-ethnic retaliations, nationalism or religious hatred in any form, accompanied by the intense promotion of the ideals of 'Brotherhood and Unity'.
— to me read like they celebrate the Yugoslav communists. Would be curious to know if it's just me, or others also share the impression.
[+] [-] zerkten|2 years ago|reply
FWIW Yugoslavia was open to tourism during the Cold War. My father drove from the UK to Dubrovnik with a friend in the 60s. I retraced part of that trip about 5 years ago. I'd have seen more had this site and book been available, but I stumbled on a few of the places on their map.
Not on their map is Zeljava [1] which was an airbase with extensive underground tunnels under a mountain on the Bosnia/Croatia border. At the time, a few parts of it were cleared out with bits of spares amongst the debris. There is a UXO hazard away from worn pathways. This is highlighted by the mine signs. I think there have been a few accident since the war in the 90s, but inside there was a bigger risk from falling concrete (look up for blast door). Recent photos [2] show it has been cleaned up a lot.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BDeljava_Air_Base [2] https://www.scmp.com/photos/today-photos/3238875/once-secret...
[+] [-] cafard|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkjaudyeqooe|2 years ago|reply
Some might argue with this but it's notable that a majority wanted out of Yugoslavia and Serbia was willing to use force to stop that.
In my travels, those who think of the communist era as "the good old days" are usually those who had a relatively privileged position in those times and were affiliated with the communist party and often Serbian. For most people communism was an oppressive system that delivered little in the way of quality of life compared to democratic states and repressed personal freedoms.
Full disclosure: I'm an ethnic Croatian.
[+] [-] asta123|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] senderista|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bekantan|2 years ago|reply
> Operated by the governing Ustaše regime, Europe's only Nazi collaborationist regime that operated its own extermination camps
> It quickly grew into the third largest concentration camp in Europe
> Unlike German Nazi-run camps, Jasenovac lacked the infrastructure for mass murder on an industrial scale, such as gas chambers. Instead, it "specialized in one-on-one violence of a particularly brutal kind", and prisoners were primarily murdered with the use of knives, hammers, and axes, or shot
> Ustaše regime having murdered somewhere near 100,000 people in Jasenovac between 1941 and 1945
--
Flower Monument on Spomenik Database: https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/jasenovec
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Feathercrown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] skrebbel|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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