Introduction
In October 2016, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) held local elections in a charged atmosphere. Only days before, Republika Srpska (RS) had held a referendum which overwhelmingly endorsed January 9, the day RS seceded in 1992, as a holiday. The vote was held in defiance of a BiH constitutional court ruling which had struck the holiday down as discriminatory and over the objections of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) and Western governments. The controversy diverted attention away from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s myriad political and economic difficulties and pushed it into the familiar grooves of identity politics, allowing the major ethnonationalist parties—the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BiH), and the Serb Democratic Party (SDS)—to once again claim victory (Kapidžić Reference Kapidžić2016).
This election was the latest evidence that over two decades out from the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA), ethnonationalist politicians remain entrenched in Bosnia. Their ability to keep themselves in power is heavily dependent on the propagation of a politics of difference which they assiduously cultivate and defend. They have successfully exploited notions of identity which stress the separateness of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s three main communities while simultaneously feigning amnesia about memories of coexistence in shared, heterogeneous spaces.
It has been well established that the physical landscape and built cultural heritage are intimately connected to notions of identity and belonging, and as a result they are often deliberately targeted for destruction as part of an overall assault on a community’s culture and history (Bevan Reference Bevan2006; Coward Reference Coward2009; Brosché et al. Reference Brosché, Legnér, Kreutz and Ijla2016). During the 1992–1995 war, ethnic cleansing aimed to physically destroy the human and physical landscape that embodied coexistence or cultural hybridity. Since then, ethnonationalists have continued to attempt to delegitimize, marginalize, erase, or ignore symbols and narratives that run counter to their exclusivist imaginings.
While many complained that Dayton’s political arrangements rewarded the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing, the Accords did include provisions which aimed to reverse at least some of those gains, including Annex 7, which covers the right of return to homes and the restoration/compensation of lost property, and Annex 8, which stipulated the establishment of a commission to preserve national monuments. The unusual inclusion of a cultural heritage institution in a peace agreement recognized that places, as loci of cultural memory, could be utilized as political tools to rebuild society, “including ephemeral aspects such as belonging and meaning” (Sørensen and Viejo-Rose Reference Sørensen and Viejo-Rose2015, 7). Annexes 7 and 8 were linked in that it was believed that restoring the physical landscape might make it easier for returnees to come back. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which directed the Annex 8 commission for its first five years, saw the commission’s work “as the keystone of [UNESCO’s] role in reconciliation” in postwar BiH (Goodey and Desimpelaere Reference Goodey and Desimpelaere2003, 7). In such a context, it is not surprising that ethnonationalists view cultural heritage sites and institutions as something to be controlled and contained so that they reinforce rather than challenge the dominant political narratives about identity.
Scholars have investigated many aspects of the political struggles over memory and identity in post-Dayton BiH. This includes a growing body of work on how cultural heritage reflects and shapes these struggles (see on the role of monuments Franović and Vukosavljević Reference Francović and Vukosavljević2016; Sahovic and Zulumovic Reference Sahovic and Zulumovic2015; Begić and Mraović Reference Begić and Mraović2014; Čusto Reference Čusto2013; Karačić Reference Karačić2012; Makaš Reference Makaš2011, Reference Makaš2007). This paper hopes to contribute to this literature in two ways. First, despite its inclusion in the DPA, the role and significance of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments (CPNM) has attracted much less attention (see Perry Reference Perry2015; Musi Reference Musi2014) than other aspects of cultural heritage. This paper will help fill that gap by examining the politics surrounding the CPNM’s work over time. Second, it will complement a macro-level institutional analysis of the CPNM with a micro-level description of two monuments, demonstrating how the overarching narrative promoted by the CPNM of a shared cultural heritage played out in specific circumstances on the ground.
Sørensen and Viejo-Rose (Reference Sørensen and Viejo-Rose2015, 2) argue persuasively that “the aftermath of conflicts can be analyzed through the changes wrought to particular places as they absorb the impacts of conflict and emerge with altered roles, connotations, and meanings.” I will adopt their method of a “biography of place” to trace the fates of Vraca Memorial Park in Sarajevo and the Partisans’ Memorial Cemetery in Mostar. Both monuments belong to the socialist era of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and commemorate World War II. These monuments are especially intriguing because by location and era they exemplify the sort of multicultural coexistence that the ethnic cleansing during the 1992–1995 war aimed to reverse. How they have fared since the war can provide insights into the interplay of identity, politics, and place in post-Dayton BiH. The descriptions and characterizations of the monuments draw on site visits to Sarajevo and Mostar in May and October 2016 as well as interviews with cultural heritage professionals and members of civil society groups.
The paper is organized as follows. First, it discusses the political and heritage institutions created by Dayton, and in particular their conceptions of identity. It then describes the history, significance, and current condition of the two monuments and considers the political implications of their abandonment as well as of the struggles over control of the CPNM. Ultimately, Vraca, the Partisans’ Cemetery, and the CPNM itself all contribute to a narrative of pluralism and shared experience that threatens the exclusivist definitions of belonging that dominate post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina. For that reason, the CPNM found its authority and vision contested and finally circumscribed, while Vraca and the Partisans’ Cemetery have been neglected, allowing nature to overwhelm them and obscure the past they represent.
The 1992–1995 War and the Destruction of Cultural Heritage
The 1992–1995 war was characterized by policies of so-called ethnic cleansing, in which grave violations of human rights and humanitarian law were undertaken in a deliberate effort to homogenize territory. Over 100,000 people were killed. Out of a pre-war population of 4.4 million, over two million people were displaced. By 1995, “Ethnic cleansing [had] succeeded in radically altering the pre-war demographic geography of Bosnia-Herzegovina” (Toal and Dahlman Reference Toal and Dahlman2006, 6). The 2013 census illustrated the country’s stark spatial division with 92.1% of Serbs living in Republika Srpska, while 91.39% of Croats and 88.23% of Bosniaks lived in the Bosnian-Croat Federation (Toe Reference Toe2016).
Physical property was also destroyed in a widespread and systematic way. A 2002 survey reported that 92% of the mosques and 75% of the Roman Catholic churches in Bosnian Serb-held areas were heavily damaged or destroyed, with buildings of particular historic or cultural importance being disproportionately targeted; “virtually no minarets survived the 1992–1996 war intact” in Bosnian Serb-held areas (Riedlmayer Reference Riedlmayer2002a, 11). Often, the destruction was carried out in close chronological proximity to the flight of the local population. In many cases, not even the ruins survived; sites were bulldozed and the rubble was trucked away. The spaces were converted into parking lots, trash dumps, public parks, and other uses. In Banja Luka, the Bosnian Serb authorities “not only removed the rubble of the Ferhadija and the other demolished mosques, they also deleted the mosques from the city’s master plan” (Riedlmayer Reference Riedlmayer2002b, 125).
Perpetrators sought to create “a flawless map” (Benvenisti Reference Benvenisti2000), one whose human and physical landscape reflected their domination and ownership over not only the land but more crucially over the past itself. No trace of the “other” could be tolerated. Even place names were erased; one Bosnian Serb leader said that all names “that are associated with evil and where the Serbian culture has been erased” would be changed (UPI 1992). Just as the homeland can serve as the place which “anchors the nation with permanence on the face of the earth” (Emerson Reference Emerson1960, 105), buildings can serve as a “point zero” for a population.Footnote 1 Destroying them was intended to remove any sense of familiarity or connection displaced people may have had to the landscape. The perpetrators believed that without visible signposts of memory to guide them, the absent population would not be tempted to come back.
As Musi (Reference Musi2014, 55) explains, “this systematic destruction of built cultural heritage facilitated strategies of so-called ethnic cleansing: the destruction of buildings denoting the historical presence of particular groups on territories claimed by others served simultaneously the two aims of annihilating the traces of past (co)existence and preventing possible future claims over the (cleansed) territory.” Prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) reflected the gravity of this destruction. In multiple cases, political and military leaders were convicted of war crimes and/or persecution as a crime against humanity for attacks directed at cultural property (Brammertz et al. Reference Brammertz, Kevin, Kipp and Tomljanovich2016).
Institutional Framework
The Dayton Peace Agreement brought the fighting to an end in late 1995, but at the price of reifying the successes of ethnic cleansing. The political system bequeathed to postwar BiH by the DPA is “a rigid consociational democracy, including equal representation, veto rights and far-reaching autonomy” (Bieber and Keil Reference Bieber and Keil2009, 345). Political power is distributed along ethnoreligious lines; the constitution identifies the constituent peoples of BiH as “Bosniacs, Croats, and Serbs… (along with Others)” (DPA, 1995). Each of the three named groups has equal representation in government institutions. There is a three-person presidency: “one Bosniac and one Croat, each directly elected from the territory of the Federation, and one Serb directly elected from the territory of the Republika Srpska” (DPA, 1995).
Ethnoreligious identity was also territorialized, producing “a particular ‘spatial governmentality’—an ideological, political and social mechanism of territorial segregation and disciplining of ethnically conceived peoples in BiH” (Hromadžić Reference Hromadžić2013, 263). Dayton established two entities, the Bosnian-Croat Federation (the Federation), which controlled 51% of the territory of BiH, and Republika Srpska, which controlled 49%. Such institutional and territorial arrangements ignore the disparity in the respective sizes of the three groups. The 1991 census showed Bosnia’s population was 43.7% Muslims, 31.4% Serbs, 17.3% Croats, 5.5 % Yugoslavs, and 2% others (Kalyvas and Sambanis Reference Kalyvas and Sambanis2005, 197). In the 2013 census, Bosniaks formed a bare majority of the population (50.1%), with Serbs and Croats accounting for 31% and 15.4%, respectively (Toe Reference Toe2016).
The logic of a territorialized ethnoreligious state dictated the creation of one of the world’s most complicated political systems—a multi-layered, highly decentralized federal system with a bewildering array of institutions. There are four levels of government: the state (BiH), two co-equal entities (the Federation and RS), cantons, and municipalities; Brčko District has a separate status as a self-governing unit. BiH has a tripartite presidency, a bicameral parliament, and ten cabinet ministries. The entities each have a prime minister, a parliament, and 16 cabinet ministries. The Federation is divided into ten cantons and then into 74 municipalities and six cities, while RS is divided into 57 municipalities and seven cities. RS has a centralized government while the Federation has autonomous cantons. This unwieldy system has all but paralyzed BiH politics and fostered high levels of corruption and dysfunction.
The constitution’s understanding of identity is deeply problematic. It treats identity as simple, singular, and total—you belong to one of three mutually exclusive groups (or you are an unnamed “Other,” in which case you are not a fully equal citizen).Footnote 2 There is no place here for a person who comes from a mixed background or who chooses to define themselves in a pluralist way (i.e., as a citizen of BiH). The constitution naturalizes and calcifies ethnoreligious identity by officially endorsing separation as the organizing political principle. This in turn fuels fundamentally incompatible political visions about the nature of the state: the Bosniaks want a strong central government; the Bosnian Serbs resist the whole notion of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s legitimacy while continuing to harbor dreams of secession; and the Bosnian Croats push for their own entity (Ni Aolain Reference Ni Aolain1998).
The sphere of cultural heritage mirrors this complex and fragmented system.Footnote 3 Annex 8 provides the legal basis for the existence of the CPNM, which is a state-level institution. The CPNM is to consider for designation as a national monument “movable or immovable property of great importance to a group of people with common cultural, historic, religious or ethnic heritage such as monuments of architecture, art or history; archeological sites; groups of buildings, as well as cemeteries” (DPA, 1995). Individuals and groups may submit petitions to the Commission, which then determines if the site meets the aforementioned criteria. Once designated, the entity in which the property is located “shall make every effort to take appropriate legal, scientific, technical, administrative and financial measures necessary for the protection, conservation, presentation and rehabilitation of the property” and refrain from deliberate measures which might damage it (DPA, 1995). The CPNM’s decisions are final.
While the CPNM has the authority to designate properties as national monuments, it does not have the authority to implement or enforce its decisions. The Bosnian constitution vests responsibility for the making and implementing of cultural policy in the entities and Brčko, which each have their own cultural heritage bodies. The state-level Ministry of Civil Affairs has the more modest remit of “coordinating activities and harmonizing plans of the Entity authorities and defining a strategy at the international level in the fields of culture” (Bosnia and Herzegovina).Footnote 4
In the Federation, the Federal Ministry of Culture and Sport houses the Institute for the Protection of Monuments, both of which are legally based on the 1985 Law on the Protection of the Cultural, Historical and Natural Heritage. However, “cantons bear the core responsibility for culture” in the Federation, so each has its own ministry that covers culture (Bosnia and Herzegovina). Several cantons and municipalities, including Mostar and Sarajevo, also have cultural heritage institutes. In RS, the Ministry of Education and Culture oversees the Institute for the Protection of the Cultural, Historical and Natural Heritage, both of which are legally based on the 1995 Law on Cultural Properties. In both entities, the respective ministry of regional planning is legally tasked with implementing the CPNM’s decisions. Brčko has its own Department for Town Planning and Property Law Affairs and Economic Development, which is legally tasked with implementing the decisions of the CPNM.
Annex 8 is animated by contradictory impulses. It calls for the preservation of national monuments chosen by a technocratic commission (its members are to be “professionally competent”). But in practice, “national” is not an inclusive term that incorporates everyone who lives within the boundaries of BiH. Rather “national” has a circumscribed, particularistic meaning, equating to “a group of people,” which in the larger context of the DPA basically equates to Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs (Perry Reference Perry2015, 189). This attenuated understanding of “national” is underscored by the stipulation that the commissioners are to be “generally representative of the ethnic groups comprising BiH” and reinforced by the vesting of cultural policy at the entity level rather than the state level. Thus the institutional structure sells short the powerful idea that there may be a shared cultural heritage recognized by more than one group.
Aside from its political symbolism, such a fragmented system is simply inefficient. “There is no adequate system in place for the coordination and exchange of information” between the entity-level ministries of culture, nor is there a regular transfer of data between the entity-level institutions and the CPNM (Ševo, Lalic, and Korac Reference Ševo, Lalic and Korac2008, 35–36). The entity-level institutes “suffer from a lack of funding, vision and appropriate expertise” (Perry Reference Perry2015, 202). The History Museum’s Elma Hodžić noted with frustration that “it is really difficult to operate in BiH because you have so many levels, and so many layers, and so many people that are responsible for something that they would usually pass the ball to someone else and then you never know who to call.”Footnote 5
UNESCO directed the first iteration of the CPNM, which was appointed in March 1996 for a five-year term; control over the commission transferred to the BiH government in December 2000. There were five commissioners, three from BiH and two representing the international community. The Federation appointed Fahrudin Rizvanbegović, a professor of literature, and Miroslav Palameta, a medieval historian. RS appointed one member, although its representative changed numerous times and occasionally missed meetings. UNESCO appointed Léon Pressouyre from France who served as chair, and Azedine Beschaouch from Tunisia.
Although Annex 8 directed the CPNM to review petitions, this first iteration of the commission did not do so. Instead it drew up a Provisional List of 777 properties which were to be considered “national monuments” until the CPNM issued a final decision. One commission member reportedly reflected that “at times it seemed like everyone simply wanted to put as many of ‘their’ monuments on the Provisional List as possible” (Perry Reference Perry2015, 198); another observer characterized the process as “I will designate your church if you designate my mosque.”Footnote 6
The CPNM achieved only meager results in its first five years (Riedlmayer Reference Riedlmayer2002b, 125). It was criticized “for its lack of transparency, lack of consultation and politicization of the designation process” as well as its failure to develop relevant legislation (Walasek Reference Walasek2015, 238). The CPNM found itself “mired in disputes about procedural issues” (Riedlmayer Reference Riedlmayer2002b, 125), and its ability to schedule meetings or make decisions was compromised by the frequent changes in the RS representative, which some suspected may have been “a subtle way to obstruct consistency and progress” (Perry Reference Perry2015, 190). A UNESCO evaluation noted that the commission “lost momentum” after Pressouyre was appointed to lead a commission on the reconstruction of the Mostar bridge in 1998; the final five meetings were characterized as being of “comparatively poor quality” (Goodey and Desimpelaere Reference Goodey and Desimpelaere2003, 37). Although its term lasted through March 2001, its final meeting came in mid-June 2000.
After the commissioners’ initial term had elapsed, the Bosnian government did not appoint new ones (Walasek Reference Walasek2015, 239). The OHR, which believed that the CPNM could contribute to the reconciliation process, pushed the Bosnians to revive it. The presidency finally named new commissioners in December 2001. Three Bosnians—Amra Hadžimuhamedović, Dubravko Lovrenović, and Ljiljana Ševo—were joined by two international members—Tina Wik and András J. Riedlmayer, who was replaced by Zeynep Ahunbay in February 2002. Hadžimuhamedović, the Bosniak representative, is an architect; she was the only commissioner who worked full-time for the CPNM. Lovrenović (d. 2017), the Croat representative, was a medieval historian; Ševo, the Serbian representative, is an art historian; Ahunbay from Turkey specializes in Ottoman architecture; and Wik from Sweden is an architect specializing in restoration and conservation. She was replaced in 2008 by Martin Cherry from the United Kingdom, who is a historian specializing in historic buildings conservation policy.
The sitting members were reappointed after their first five-year term expired. In the third term (2011–2015), the presidency made no move to appoint new commissioners or to legally extend the service of the sitting commissioners. The commission worked in “technical mandate” during this period.
From late 2001 onward, the Commission’s programs were underpinned by the philosophy that there was a shared cultural heritage in BiH belonging to everyone.Footnote 7 As Hadžimuhamedović explained, “heritage testifies about the unity in diversities. About something that is not even a sort of complexity of identity, but something that is interwoven strings of all these layers, periods, contributions, knowledge, beliefs - everything. And if you pull just one string from this fabric, everything falls apart, and nothing survives.”Footnote 8 The Commission promoted a message that cultural heritage efforts could help to restore communities, rebuild mutual trust, and contribute to reconciliation.Footnote 9 In 2006, the CPNM designed a campaign called “My Bosnia and Herzegovina - My Heritage” that aimed “to raise awareness of children in primary schools about the importance of cultural heritage and to encourage responsibility for its preservation by highlighting the richness and uniqueness of Bosnian tradition and culture, and the fact that unique cultural heritage is an indispensable and integral part of our identity.”Footnote 10
The CPNM became a professionalized and effective institution. Its commissioners all possessed both the appropriate academic credentials and extensive professional experience. It assembled a technocratic staff that received training abroad, attended regional and international conferences, engaged in grassroots work, and worked with volunteers in local communities. Unlike the previous commission, which had held its meetings in secret, this iteration of the commission was committed to transparency. It held news conferences after its sessions to discuss its decisions and other policy matters related to cultural heritage. It posted its decisions on its website in multiple languages and made several visits a year to municipalities, where it met with local officials and others to discuss its work. To promote public awareness and raise funds for endangered monuments, it created a traveling exhibition and multimedia display, Cultural Memory—A Vanishing Treasure, which was shown throughout BiH as well as internationally (Ševo, Lalic, and Korac Reference Ševo, Lalic and Korac2008, 47). Its approach to cultural heritage won it international accolades, including the European Heritage Award in 2010, and its grassroots and educational activities won it support at the local level.
The Monuments
Of the over 800 monuments approved by the CPNM by May 2017, fewer than 20 were from the socialist era, and the majority of those were constructed in remembrance of World War II. These included Vraca; the Partisans’ Cemetery; the Susnjar memorial complex; the monument at Mt. Makljen; Garavica Memorial Park; the monument at Šehitluci in Banja Luka; the Novi Travnik necropolis; and the Park of the National Heroes.
Vraca and the Partisans’ Cemetery share a number of similarities. They are indeed monumental in terms of their scale.Footnote 11 Both are integral parts of the urban landscape, with sweeping, panoramic views of the cities of which they are a part. During the socialist era, they were regularly used as ritual locations by public officials and for educational purposes such as school outings. Important ceremonies involved thousands of people and attracted radio and television coverage (Putnik Reference Putnik2016). Both locations were popular as parks before the 1992–1995 war.
Vraca Memorial Park
Vraca opened on November 25, 1981, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s “Statehood Day.”Footnote 12 Designed by Vladimir Dobrović and landscaped by Aleksander Maltarić, it also incorporated work by sculptor Alija Kučukalić. The Council of Associations of Fighters of the National Liberation War (SUBNOR) filed a petition in June 2004 with the CPNM, which designated Vraca as a national monument in May 2005.
Vraca sits high above Sarajevo, offering a commanding view of the city. It is physically located on the border between RS and the Federation, although the entire property falls on the Federation side. A stone Austro-Hungarian fort dating from 1898 sits on the site, and during World War II, German and Ustaša forces carried out executions there (Donia 2006, 193). The bodies of those executed at Vraca as well as those of prisoners who died at the hands of the fascists elsewhere in Sarajevo were buried at Vraca.
There are several component pieces to the memorial. The entrance to the park is a broad central plateau which includes a pyramid-shaped fountain topped by an eternal flame. On the eastern end of the site is a memorial to the women combatants of World War II, the Zena-borac (Woman Fighter) sculpture, depicting a woman with her arms raised. To the west of the plateau, there are broad steps, flanked by black granite walls bearing the names and birth and death dates of over 2,000 partisan fighters who died during the war. At the monument’s dedication ceremony, the mayor of Sarajevo made a point of mentioning that the names encompassed Jews, Serbs, Muslims, Croats, and others (Donia 2006, 214).
At the top of the steps there is a long level area which includes the monument to the Heroes of the Revolution, a black granite cube surrounded by low granite blocks on which are engraved the names of 26 Sarajevans who are also buried there. Past the cube, there is another broad plateau and steps leading up to the fort. In the fort’s two atria, the names of World War II victims from Sarajevo were inscribed on the walls in white relief letters (Donia 2006, 240). Of the 9,091 victims named, 7,262 are Jews who perished in the Holocaust (Gruber Reference Gruber2011, 19). The fort itself housed an exhibit on Sarajevo during World War II, featuring a collection of artifacts, documents, and photographs on loan from the History Museum. Behind the fort, a path lined with stones bearing the names of the partisan units which fought in Sarajevo leads to a stone monument to Yugoslav President Josep Broz Tito, which sits at the farthest west end of the property.
Because of its strategic location above the city, Bosnian Serb snipers and heavy artillery battlements used it during the 1992–1995 war.Footnote 13 As a result, “the entire complex was laid waste” and has remained in a state of neglect and dereliction (CPNM 2005). Locals rarely go to the park, although a tour company regularly takes foreign visitors there as part of its “Death of Yugoslavia” tour. Empty liquor bottles, used condoms and needles, and other detritus are strewn throughout the site, and graffiti defaces most surfaces. The pyramid holding the eternal flame is jammed full of trash and the fountain no longer works. The whole complex is overgrown with weeds, tall grass, small trees, and untrimmed greenery. Only the fort’s walls remain standing; the museum’s content has been lost and the names on the atrium walls have disappeared (Donia 2006, 241). The Zena-borac sculpture lost one of its arms to vandals in 2013.Footnote 14 The stones identifying partisan units are lost in a tangle of weeds and brush.
There have only been sporadic efforts to address Vraca’s condition. In 2005, the CPNM stated that there had been no conservation or restoration works carried out. An initiative to restore Vraca was started in 2001, but stalled due to lack of funding. Occasionally, there are official cleaning and maintenance efforts of a limited nature, such as in late July 2015.Footnote 15 More often, this work is organized and carried out by local and international civil society groups and only impacts a small area of the park. The Social Democratic Union organized a cleaning activity in May 2008 (Musi Reference Musi2014, 130); there was a February 2010 petition “to save and renew Vraca Memorial Park” that resulted in some official restoration work (Musi Reference Musi2010, 7); international volunteers participated in a cleaning action in August 2014;Footnote 16 and local groups sponsored cleanings in May 2015Footnote 17 and August 2016.
In 2015, the History Museum decided to celebrate International Women’s Day by highlighting the Zena-borac sculpture.Footnote 18 An artist created a wooden arm to replace the missing one and affixed it to the sculpture; the arm was then taken down and is being stored at the museum.Footnote 19 The museum followed that with a public program to discuss World War II memorials in BiH. Worried that Vrava “was vanishing from the panorama of the city,” Hodžić organized a cleaning project.Footnote 20 She could draw on a group of volunteers from the youth NGO AISEC who worked at the History Museum, but she also recognized that given the size of the space, citizen volunteers would be required as well.
The “Vraca Revolution” was carried out over three days in August 2016.Footnote 21 It was self-consciously trying to convey a message of unity and activism: in Bosnian, the slogan was rendered as “VRACA REVOLUC-I-JA” so that it could be read as either “Vraca Revolucija” or, by separating the letters “i-ja” (and me) it could be read as “Vraca Revolution and me.” Hodžić asked private companies for donations to support the cleaning, invited other organizations to participate, and publicized it via the media and Facebook. The action started by reaffixing the wooden arm to the Zena-borac. The volunteers weeded the pathways, picked up trash, and scrubbed off graffiti; some people came and made food and coffee for the volunteers. When the eternal flame was emptied of trash, the plaque designating the site as a national monument was found at the bottom. The group’s efforts were limited by the type of tools they had available, the size of the park, and inclement weather. All told, as many as 125 people participated in the cleaning efforts.Footnote 22
In the absence of a formal restoration project or regular maintenance, Vraca slid back into its wild state soon after each of the various civic initiatives.
Partisans’ Memorial Cemetery
The Partisans’ Cemetery was designed by Bogdan Bogdanović (1922–2010), a celebrated Serbian architect who designed some of the former Yugoslavia’s most famous monuments.Footnote 23 Bogdanović (Reference Bogdanović1997, 80) called the necropolis “a miniature Mostar…its ideal diagram.” Its design elements echoed typical features of the city—water flowed through it from a fountain at the top to a pool below, as the Neretva River flowed through Mostar, and its twisting, upward-sloping stone pathways recalled the cobblestoned streets of the Old Town (and in fact incorporated building materials from the Old Town). The remains of 560 partisan combatants are buried there (CPNM 2006a). The names on the gravestones “are distributed proportionally according to the percentage of the population representing each ethnicity at the time the monument was built” (Mackić Reference Mackić2016, 75). According to Bogdanović (79), its position, climbing up the side of a hill, was intentional because he wanted “the city of dead Antifascist heroes...and the city of the living, for which they gave their lives” to look one another in the eye.
President Tito officially opened the Partisans’ Cemetery on September 25, 1965. The monument was the site of numerous rituals and commemorations, such as the liberation of Mostar by the partisans on February 14, 1945. It was a place where visiting dignitaries would lay wreaths, school children would take their Pioneer oaths, and members of the Yugoslav National Army from Mostar would take their oaths.Footnote 24 Following SUBNOR’s submission of a petition in June 2003, the CPNM designated the necropolis as a national monument in January 2006. SUBNOR, now known as SABNOR-BiH (Union of Antifascists and Veterans of the People’s Liberation War in BiH), has remained active in trying to preserve and restore the site.Footnote 25
According to the CPNM’s (2006a) decision, the Partisans’ Cemetery,
is a unique monument in the urban scale of Mostar...Thanks to the skill of the designer…the effect is a harmonious composition of plant species, running water and stone…Although this is a memorial complex, visitors are able to enjoy the unique blend of light, architectural forms and greenery, and enjoy the views of the city and the river as they stroll. The interplay of architectural forms borrowed from the quintessence of the ambiental architecture of the region (Herzegovina’s necropolises, the roof cladding of Mostar’s houses, the use of river pebbles to cobble the paths, the intermingling of greenery with architectural and urban elements, the interplay of light and shadow) create an almost imaginary vision of the necropolis as a place for the living.
Several bombs went off at the cemetery on the eve of the February 14 commemoration in 1992. As this predates the start of the war, Mostar historian Dragan Markovina contends that “symbolically, the cemetery was the first thing fired upon in Mostar.”Footnote 26 War action combined with intentional efforts to disfigure the monument, such as dynamiting sections of the façade, inflicted significant damage on it (CPNM 2006a). Since the end of the war, it has suffered from serious neglect and vandalism. The waterworks no longer function; the flat tombstones are overgrown; the stone pathway up the hill is choked by a riot of tall weeds; there is no functioning lighting at the site; and the entrance plaza is barely visible. Croatian nationalist and fascist statements and symbols abound. To give just two examples, “Tito is a vampire” and “I am Ustaša, my father is a Communist, I will kill my father in the name of Christ” are spray painted on a wall.Footnote 27 Anti-fascist groups sometimes cause further damage by trying to cover over such graffiti.
Despite its derelict condition, SABNOR-BiH gathers annually at the cemetery to commemorate Mostar’s liberation and Bosnia’s Statehood Day. A few hundred people, most of them elderly, attend these events, although the youth cultural center Abrašević has hosted gatherings afterwards for the attendees (Palmberger Reference Palmberger2016). Foreign tourists sometimes visit the cemetery.
The city of Mostar formed a committee in 2003 to develop a plan for renovating the cemetery. In 2005, with funding from the city of Mostar and the Federation, the green areas were cleaned and replanted, parts of the water system were repaired, and there was electrical work done, including the installation of new floodlights (CPNM 2006a). The Netherlands and Norway funded the replacement of all the tombstones. Within a few months, vandals had damaged the new lighting and defaced and broken some of the tombstones, and the greenery was not maintained.Footnote 28 There were additional restoration efforts in 2008–2010, with funding provided by the Federation Ministry of Culture, Norway, and SABNOR-BiH.Footnote 29 A fence was installed and a small building, intended as a souvenir shop and security center, was constructed, although it has not been used (Lawler Reference Lawler2013). There have been several initiatives led by civil society groups as well as online efforts to rally support behind properly caring for the site.Footnote 30 The Youth Council of Mostar carried out single day cleaning actions at the cemetery in 2012, 2013, and 2014, which largely consisted of volunteers with black garbage bags picking up trash (Lawler Reference Lawler2013). In 2013, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights and SABNOR-BiH held an event at the cemetery to highlight its poor condition.
Absent security for or maintenance of the Partisans’ Cemetery, restoration efforts have repeatedly fallen victim to vandalism and the forces of nature. Bogdanović (84) mourned the fate of the necropolis, writing in 1997 that “all that is left of that original promise is that the former city of the dead and the former city of the living still face each other - only now they gape with empty, black and scalding eyes.”
Discussion
These two monuments, isolated and ignored, are visually striking. The Partisans’ Cemetery is especially arresting because its entrance is so overgrown that one has almost no idea that it is even there, only to discover this “amazing, almost space-age monument” rising up out of the landscape (Robertson, 2010). Yet despite their size, history, architectural and artistic value, touristic potential, and status as burial sites, these monuments have been abandoned.
As a practical matter, the monuments’ very condition contributes to their continuing neglect. Locals do not wish to visit them because they are in disrepair and have reputations as places frequented by anti-social elements. There are no signs or plaques explaining why the monuments exist or what they mean. Some visitors to the Partisan’s Cemetery report being harassed by nationalist youth, who have also attempted to disrupt the annual gatherings held by SABNOR-BiH.Footnote 31 A fire was set at the entrance to the cemetery in February 2014.
Both monuments literally inhabit liminal spaces. Dr. Bakir Nakaš, the head of SABNOR-BiH, characterized Vraca as being in “no man’s land.”Footnote 32 To reach it, one has to leave the Federation and drive into RS. The Inter-Entity Boundary Line is quite obvious thanks to the large sign welcoming you to Republika Srpska. As of June 2014, one also has to drive past a plaque dedicated to Ratko Mladic that is set into a wall bordering the park, a reminder (if one was needed) that the Bosnian Serb forces shelled Sarajevo from positions close to Vraca. Several people said that they believed residents avoided Vraca because of its role in the siege of Sarajevo.
The Partisans’ Cemetery is located on the Croatian side of a sharply divided Mostar. Bosniaks live on the eastern side of the city, while Croats live on the western side. Each side has its own electricity, cable, and cellular providers, public transport systems, postal services, and school curriculum (Hopkins Reference Hopkins2015). Local elections have not been held in Mostar since 2008, as “Bosniak and Croat parties have not been able to reach an agreement on the electoral regulation, nor for local administration” (Pasic Reference Pasic2016). The city has been described as existing in a state of “soft partition” since the end of the war (Bose Reference Bose2017, 193).
The line of demarcation between the two sides is well-known, if not officially marked, and public spaces play an integral role in assertions of identity and control (Palmberger Reference Palmberger2017, Reference Palmberger2016; Makaš Reference Makaš2007). Nationalist Croats have actively “Croatianized” West Mostar; Yugoslav-era street names have been replaced with the names of prominent Croats, and instead of blue, signs are now the red of the Croatian flag. Two of the most imposing signs of Croatian identity are the 100-foot cross erected in 2000 at the summit of Mt. Hum, the location from which Bosnian Croat forces shelled East Mostar during the 1992–1995 war, and the 305-foot bell tower belonging to the reconstructed Franciscan Church. Visible from nearly every point in the city, they have been perceived as “aggressive and confrontational” by the non-Croatian population (Makaš Reference Makaš2011, 161). Meanwhile, symbols associated with Tito’s regime have been ignored or erased, reflecting the “strong anti-Communist and anti-Yugoslav dimension of Croat nationalism” (Moll Reference Moll2013, 920).
The physical locations of the two monuments make it easy for responsibility for them to fall through the cracks (sometimes deliberately) in BiH’s fragmented governmental structure. According to Mirzah Fočo of the CPNM, the standard justification behind inaction on Vraca is the lack of jurisdictional certainty; “people don’t know where the border is between the two entities… and the administrative responsibility is sort of in the midst.”Footnote 33 The CPNM is not in a position to intervene when entity, cantonal, and municipal governments fail to care for these monuments.
Coward (Reference Coward2009) argues in his influential book Urbicide that “buildings constitute the urban environment as an always already shared space;” destroying them thus destroys the possibility of the heterogeneity of existence. Young (Reference Young1993, 6) makes a similar argument about public art such as monuments, stating that one of their “basic functions…[is] to create shared spaces that lend a common spatial frame to otherwise disparate experiences and understandings…[and] propagate the illusion of common memory.” In so doing, spaces such as Vraca and the Partisans’ Cemetery can help to forge a collective identity and foster a sense of belonging to a heterogeneous community (Bevan 2006, 24). While this faithfully reflects the philosophical underpinning of the CPNM’s work, it runs precisely counter to the ethnonationalist drive to homogenize identity.
Vraca and the Partisans’ Cemetery are monumental reflections of the collective memory narrative around World War II constructed by Tito’s regime.Footnote 34 The victims remembered in these spaces - whether civilians or partisan fighters - are self-consciously identified with the struggle against fascism and the emergence of the Yugoslav state. The nature of the partisans’ victory over the fascists was reflected in the new regime’s slogan of “Brotherhood and Unity.” Tito’s regime actively “sought to ‘de-ethnicize’ the remembrance of all the inter-ethnic violence of World War II in Yugoslavia for a host of reasons: to cement the legitimacy of the new state, to promote the “Brotherhood and Unity” of all nationalities, to manage potentially explosive national relations, and to spread the blame for war crimes in an evenhanded way” (Bergholz Reference Bergholz2010, 409).
Begić and Mroavić (Reference Begić and Mraović2014, 14) note that socialist monuments as a category “exemplify a strange quality of in-betweenness, symbolizing not only the socialist past and antifascist struggle but also a past that has been appropriated differently by different people.” These fragmented (re)visions of the past map unevenly and poorly across the memory landscape embodied by Vraca and the Partisans’ Cemetery. It is not that memories of World War II have been supplanted by the much more recent trauma of the 1992–1995 war; it is that they have been reimagined along ethnonational lines. Musabegović (Reference Musabegović2013, 27) argues that “ethno-nationalism has established a new myth of collectiveness, which is no longer based on universal proletarian solidarity, brotherhood, and unity, but on particular solidarity with one’s own collective, which is largely based on fratricide. The collectivist myth has thus remained preserved, but has changed its appearance.” It is not uncommon for a monument that remembers the 1992–1995 war to also refer to victims from WWII, or for a World War II–era monument to be updated to include the recent war, but such monuments generally only remember “my victims.” These narrow remembrances allow ethnonationalists to propagate “a narrative of historical continuity of suffering of one’s own ethnic group” (Francović and Vukosavljević Reference Francović and Vukosavljević2016, 221). This tends to go beyond simply embracing their own group’s victimhood, often shading into claims of having endured more suffering and more killing than other groups (Karačić Reference Karačić2012). Simultaneously, these narratives deny the suffering their group has inflicted on others or downplay it as an isolated incident, as opposed to the planned policy carried out against your group by a hostile other (Markovina 2013, 45). Such “ethnonationalized” reinterpretations of WWII produce a fear-driven narrative of historical antagonism between sharply defined and homogenous groups that fuels distrust in the present and presents a cautionary warning for the future - “they” are always killing “us,” so we must be wary (Francović and Vukosavljević Reference Francović and Vukosavljević2016, 221, 225).
Vraca and the Partisans’ Cemetery subversively require recognition of a more complex and intertwined past. The “de-ethnicized” history they represent doesn’t belong to any one group, rather it encompasses them all, and in a very particular way. Victims and fighters of various ethnoreligious affiliations are not just remembered, but honored in a single space, the names jumbled together and rubbing shoulders, sharing in a common past in which they suffered together. Ernest Renan (Reference Renan1882) argued that “common suffering is greater than happiness” in forging a national identity; “one loves in proportion to the sacrifices which one has approved and for which one has suffered.” Young (Reference Young1993, 6–7) also stresses the identity-building role of monuments: “memorials provide the sites where groups of people gather to create a common past for themselves, places where they tell the constitutive narratives, their ‘shared’ stories of the past. They become communities precisely by having shared (even if only vicariously) the experiences of their neighbors.” But there is no room in the ethnonationalists’ cramped narratives for shared suffering, and thus the past represented by Vraca and the Partisans’ Cemetery is exiled to the wilderness, both literally and figuratively.
The condition of the monuments illustrates Fontana’s (Reference Fontana2013, 461) striking observation that “in peacetime BiH, heritage not belonging exclusively to the Bosniak, Croat, or Serb constituent peoples is actually becoming nobody’s heritage. As such it is being marginalized, delegitimized, underfunded, and ultimately dismissed.” This dynamic played out in the treatment of cultural heritage institutions as well. Seven cultural institutions, including the National Museum and the History Museum, found themselves without legal status after Dayton as politicians argued over whether they should be considered state-level institutions, which left them starved of funds.Footnote 35 The National Museum was forced to close from 2012 until September 2015; there is considerable irony in the fact that it “largely survived the shelling during the siege only to be shuttered in peacetime by an indifferent administration” (Larsen Reference Larsen2015). As Hodžić poignantly stated, “It is obvious that this crisis in culture is really, really close to the crisis in politics, so if we say that we have a history museum of BiH it means that we have history, and I think that [for] the politicians it is easier to rule with entities and nationalism than to have one country with the story about [the] Ottoman era, [a] story from the Austro-Hungarian period, [a] story about [the] Middle Age period.”Footnote 36
The CPNM, whose activities similarly promoted a multicultural view of belonging, drew the ire of ethnonationalist politicians, especially those from Republika Srpska. As Hadžimuhamedović flatly stated, “in fact we [the CPNM] are obstacles for these exclusivist projects as they saw it.” An early sign of the opposition of the RS to the CPNM’s work came in 2002. The OHR and the CPNM wanted the entities and Brčko to pass harmonized legislation on the enforcement of the CPNM’s decisions. A draft law was produced, but the RS parliament failed to act on it, forcing the High Representative to impose the law on the RS.Footnote 37 The CPNM’s efforts to have a state-level law on cultural heritage passed in 2004 foundered when the RS withdrew its support from the draft.Footnote 38
The SNSD, the leading party in RS, worked “tirelessly to devolve powers to the entities from the central state and its institutions,” including the CPNM (Walasek Reference Walasek2015, 124). In February 2007, SNSD member Sredoje Nović was named BiH Minister of Civil Affairs, a position he held until April 2015, and he also assumed the presidency of the BiH national commission for UNESCO. The CPNM found its “position and authority...fiercely contested by the entity heritage preservation institutes” (Walasek Reference Walasek2015, 124) and by Nović, who through a variety of means attempted “to suffocate the CPNM so that it could be subordinated to the entities.”Footnote 39 For example, in early 2008 Nović’s ministry reportedly drafted a cultural heritage law that would assign the CPNM’s responsibilities to the entity-level institutes.Footnote 40 In 2013, Salmir Kaplan, the Federation Minister for Culture and Sports and a member of the SDA, also began attacking the CPNM in the media (Walasek Reference Walasek2015, 125). The CPNM felt especially vulnerable given its uncertain legal status since 2011. Reportedly, the SNSD’s Nebojša Radmanović, the Serbian member of the presidency council (2006–2014), had been refusing to consider appointing new members.
In late January 2016, the presidency designated three new members: Amir Pašić, Goran Milojević, and Radoje Vidović. While Pašić is an award-winning architect and recognized expert in the field of historical preservation and restoration, the appointments of Milojević and Vidović are problematic. Milojević, an architect by training, served as a representative in the House of Peoples of the BiH parliament (2004–2007) representing RS before he became the director of the RS cultural heritage institute (2008–2013), which has long championed the idea that the CPNM’s responsibilities should be transferred to the entity level. Vidović, a member of HDZ BiH, served as a representative and speaker in the House of Peoples (2007–2013) and as a municipal mayor (2013–2016). There was no mention of the two international members. The Commission has since changed its rules; four votes are no longer needed to reach a decision (CPNM 2006b).
Conclusion
The struggles of the CPNM are emblematic of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political difficulties. The architecture put in place by the Dayton Peace Agreement incentivizes ethnonationalist politics both from an identity and an institutional perspective. The memories of a common heritage evoked by the CPNM and exemplified in shared, heterogeneous public spaces had to be stifled lest they undermined the new ethnonationalist ascendancy. The abandonment of Vraca and the Partisans’ Cemetery is a physical manifestation of the politically unusable narrative about the past which they represent; as Hodžić put it, “they were deleted from collective narratives, they were no longer existing in their earlier life.”Footnote 41
There have been efforts by the CPNM and other cultural heritage institutions and by concerned individuals and civil society groups to acknowledge these collective narratives, pulling up the metaphorical weeds to reveal a vision of the past which they hope can influence the present. Restoring lost physical landscapes can help repair a landscape of the mind by bringing communities together. Janine Clark (Reference Clark, Janine2016, 1200) argues that “integrating nature and the environment into the process of dealing with the past provides a basis for developing more grassroots forms of transitional justice that primarily reflect local needs rather than macro political agendas.” The multiple civic cleaning actions undertaken at both monuments represent the sort of “green” transitional justice practices that Clark (Reference Clark, Janine2016, 1211) writes about; she notes that greening activities can build resilience and “facilitate improved relations in post-conflict communities and societies.”
Young (Reference Young1993, xiii) observes that “memorials by themselves remain inert and amnesiac, dependent on visitors for whatever memory they finally produce.” But when nature has swallowed the past, entrance into these wild, overgrown spaces is marked as dangerous, undesirable, transgressive. Visitors turn away, and the spaces remain silent, unable to testify to the possibility of a more pluralist vision for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Alen Kerić for his assistance in conducting the research for this paper. I would also like to thank the reviewers for their valuable comments.
