The First World War as public memory in Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia: From Yugoslav to national narratives and beyond

This paper investigates the developments of public memory of the First World War as it is written in to the national narratives of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia on the way to the centennial of the War’s outbreak. The First World War constitutes both a shared and a divided memory in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia. Though the war was a catastrophe everywhere, to Serbia it also became a triumph on allied side, whereas in Bosnia and Croatia it was mainly a state collapse. Yet, the First World War also provided the immediate conditions for the creation of the first Yugoslav state, and consequently the history of the war was narrated very much within a Yugoslav context, echoing the triumphant Serbian narrative.

With the fall of socialist Yugoslavia, the memory of the First World War developed quite differently in the three states. While in Serbia, the First World War narrative remains national and heroic, in Croatia and Bosnia First World War history is being created anew, and, at least in the Bosnian case, with an obvious aspiration to present Bosnia’s war experience firmly within European history and a discourse of European reconciliation. Based on analyses of popular history books, history debates in newspapers and media, and political commentary, the paper shows how the First World War as public memory has moved from Yugoslav to national narratives and is being used for situating the formerly Yugoslav nations within a European context