Socialist heritage revised. Culture-Artistic Societies in post-Yugoslav space(s)

The heritage politics was an important aspect of the official culture and identity politics in socialist Yugoslavia. The state-founded Culture-Artistic Societies (KUDs), which were established or reconstituted across Yugoslavia after World War II, were among the main protagonists in policy making and bearers of cultural activities. They negotiated between national and supranational identities, simultaneously performing “national heritage” and advocating the ideology of “brotherhood and unity” through staging the folk songs and dances of all the nations and nationalities of Yugoslavia. After the dissolution of Yugoslavia, KUDs have concentrated their activities exclusively around the “national heritage” in the context of political and ethnic revival in post-Yugoslav societies. Regardless of all system changes and although they were often positioned at the centre of the contested discourses, their role as authority in the field of music and dance heritage has not shaded. In other words, they created and still create the mainstream discourse about the heritage.

Having that in mind, the cases of KUDs that preserve the Yugoslav socialist cultural legacy in a current moment, by cherishing Yugoslav dance and musical heritage are particularly interesting. The paper engages with the potential of these “new employments” of the official Yugoslav cultural heritage within new national borders. It probes the active usages of socialist legacy and their ambivalent micro-political meaning. Under the investigation will be KUD “Novi Svet” from Kranj (Slovenia), KUD “Crvena Stjena”, Podgorica (Montenegro), KUD “Branko Cvetković”, Belgrade (Serbia) – all of them active in performing “folklore of all Yugoslav nations” in post-Yugoslav context. The main goal of the paper is to highlight the complex and contradictory employments of Yugoslav heritage in post-Yugoslav space particularly in relation to the crises of the contemporaneity.