History

The Youngest Yugoslavs: An Oral History of Post-Socialist Memory

patenaude — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 11:38:25 +0000

The Youngest Yugoslavs: An Oral History of Post-Socialist Memory

Monday, October 13, 2025

patenaude Mon, 10/13/2025 - 07:38

Associate Professor Jovana Babović (Image provided)

Summary

The Youngest Yugoslavs is an oral history collection that gives its readers in-depth, varied perspectives on why Yugoslavia continues to resonate among its former citizens more than 30 years since the state collapsed amid war, genocide, and dislocation.

Abstract

The Youngest Yugoslavs: An Oral History of Post-Socialist Memory is a collection of interviews with the last generation of Yugoslavs who lived in the unified state only as children. The volume showcases how these individuals remember their childhoods during the final decades of socialism and how they conceptualize the lasting impact of Yugoslav multinationalism on their lives. The collection gives readers the opportunity to explore why Yugoslavia continues to resonate so prominently among some members of the state’s youngest cohort. It serves as a major contribution to our understanding of the afterlife of unified Yugoslavia’s brief, though exceedingly dynamic, twentieth century.

Primary research question

How does the youngest generation of Yugoslavs, those born between 1971 and 1991, remember their childhoods during the final decades of socialism and conceptualize the lasting impact of Yugoslav multinationalism on their lives?

What the research builds on

Scholars have primarily studied older Yugoslav generations, those born after the First World War in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and those born after the Second World War in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In her recent study of generational memory, Palmberger found that the cohort born during the interwar years was least impacted by the Yugoslav wars and thus often expressed nostalgia for the general feeling of physical, social, and economic security that characterized the bulk of their adult lives in Yugoslavia. Comparatively, those born after the Second World War, approximately the age of the parents of the interviewees included here, lived through the dissolution of the state in midlife. Scholars have devoted attention to this generation’s struggles to adapt to the market economy and new national identities of the post-Yugoslav world. Historian Ljubica Spaskovska explains that they were ultimately ambivalent about the past because they faced great obstacles in rebuilding their lives and felt insecure about the future. Only a few studies consider the experiences of the youngest Yugoslav generation. They primarily focus on individuals who continued to live in the region and thus articulated their relationship to the past through the prism of the successor states. Palmberger conduced her fieldwork in Bosnia and found that members of this age cohort pitted their positive childhood memories in Yugoslavia against their dissatisfaction with lacking social, educational, and economic opportunities in present-day Bosnia. In her study of youth in Serbia, anthropologist Jessica Greenberg similarly writes that “people too young to have experienced ‘the good life’ in socialist Yugoslavia nonetheless compared their fortunes to those of their parents and older siblings.” While much of this youngest generation’s memory might be based on the imagined ideals of the Yugoslav past, scholars argue that the notion of what could have been nevertheless informed their visions for what could yet be in the successor states. Studies also demonstrate that, for some young adults in the region, remembering Yugoslavia became a way to signal a desire to overcome strained ethnic relationships, while, for others, it reflected an investment in socialist ideas like equality and solidarity. The Youngest Yugoslavs builds on existing scholarship to further highlight this generational group’s distinct engagement with the past, particularly by giving voice to its globally mobile members. The Yugoslav wars caused massive displacement of people, and conditions in the aftermath of state collapse drove many young adults to seek opportunities abroad. Everyone interviewed in this collection lived outside of the region at some point. Some emigrated during or after the Yugoslav wars, while others left for varying intervals in pursuit of education or employment. Some returned to the region, while others remained abroad. As a result, they remembered their childhoods and related to the Yugoslav past differently than individuals who had only experienced living in the successor states. The interviews in The Youngest Yugoslavs thus offer novel insights into the meaning individuals invested in Yugoslav socialism and multinationalism from without. Their collective voices broaden our understanding of this generational experience, and they give us a richer lens for exploring the impact Yugoslavia had on its youngest cohort of former citizens.

What the research adds to the discussion

In its focus on the global network of former Yugoslav citizens, this volume serves as an important resource for studying the role of diasporas on post-socialist memory. Migration out of the region precipitated the formation of place-based and virtual diasporic communities. Most existing scholarship studies the nationalization and, at times, radicalization of the new diasporas that mobilized individuals abroad in the interests of successor states or nations. Scholars argue that traumas such as civil war and displacement triggered the development of strong nationalist orientations in both place-based and virtual diasporas of the former Yugoslavia. However, the multinational Yugoslav diasporic communities that many of those interviewed in this volume mention have not yet been researched. The Youngest Yugoslavs offers readers a chance to consider how some globally mobile members of Yugoslavia’s youngest cohort engaged with one another abroad despite newly drawn or redrawn national lines at home. For some of the individuals interviewed here, these communities were integral to their sense of self as Yugoslavs or post-Yugoslavs, while for others they were peripheral touchstones of belonging. At the very least, most interviewees expressed an awareness of Yugoslav diasporic communities, rather than only those built around the national identities of successor states, which means that these communities invariably shaped how they conceived of the Yugoslav past. This volume ultimately shows that many globally mobile members of the youngest Yugoslav generation found immense value in the legacies of socialism and multinationalism. There are several common experiences that individuals identified as distinct inheritances of their former homeland. They spoke about having had a sense of belonging at the level of the neighborhood, the state, and the cultural community. They associated Yugoslavia with safety, well-being, and the promise of future opportunities. And they identified specific ideological pillars of former Yugoslavia’s society that continue to be relevant to their lives today. Their memories are markedly different from the nostalgia, often termed Yugonostalgia, of older generations. While the members of the youngest Yugoslav generation sometimes reminisced about certain aspects of their childhoods, they more often thought critically about the factors that led to the end of Yugoslavia and their lives in it. No individual included here expected Yugoslavia to reunite. Instead, they closely considered the potential futures that could have been but never were. Many held their connection to the past closely, and those with children were often eager to share it with them. The youngest cohort’s persistent engagement with Yugoslavia suggests that the state’s ideals continue to be compelling for those who lived in the region as much as those who resettled abroad. In doing so, they embraced the promises of their former homeland and asked if some of them could still be realized. The interviewees showed that Yugoslavia left a lasting impact on their lives and that it continues to be a compelling idea for their visions of the future.

Jovana Babović, The Youngest Yugoslavs: An Oral History of Post-Socialist Memory (Indiana University Press, 2025)

University of Indiana Press (2025)

Book Talk w/ Dr. Jovana Babovic, Assoc. Prof. of History - The Youngest Yugoslavs

leverson — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 13:11:19 +0000

Book Talk w/ Dr. Jovana Babovic, Assoc. Prof. of History - The Youngest Yugoslavs

Friday, October 24, 2025

leverson Mon, 10/06/2025 - 09:11

History News

Friday, October 24, 2025 at 4pm - 6:30 pm
Welles Hall - Room 123

Come hear Dr. Babović talk about the process of
researching and writing her latest book!

The Youngest Yugoslavs is an oral history collection that
gives readers perspectives on why Yugoslavia continues
to resonate among its former citizens more than 30 years
since the state collapsed amid war, genocide, and
dislocation. The interviews showcase how individuals
remember their childhoods during the final decades of
socialism and how they conceptualize the lasting impact
Yugoslavia has had on their lives.

Geneseo Launches a New Academic Year

rime — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 13:15:17 +0000

Geneseo Launches a New Academic Year rime Fri, 08/22/2025 - 09:15

Congratulations, Class of 2025!

rime — Thu, 22 May 2025 14:51:14 +0000

Congratulations, Class of 2025! rime Thu, 05/22/2025 - 10:51

Five Students Earn Gilman International Scholarships

rime — Fri, 09 May 2025 17:46:02 +0000

Five Students Earn Gilman International Scholarships rime Fri, 05/09/2025 - 13:46

Student-athlete "Joe" Vogt ‘25 Earns Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence

patenaude — Thu, 01 May 2025 16:00:38 +0000

Student-athlete "Joe" Vogt ‘25 Earns Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence patenaude Thu, 05/01/2025 - 12:00

The Science of Music: Knowledge Production In Medieval Baghdad and Beyond

patenaude — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 18:02:29 +0000

The Science of Music: Knowledge Production In Medieval Baghdad and Beyond

Friday, January 24, 2025

patenaude Fri, 01/24/2025 - 13:02

The Science of Music cover art (Image provided)

Mohammad Sadegh Ansari

Summary

This book is a remarkable exploration of how music, mathematics, philosophy and cosmology interacted, were learned, studied, patronized and transmitted in medieval Baghdad, from the earliest translations of Greek texts through the classic works by al-Kindi, al-Farabi, and al-Urmawi, to the lesser-known works of later commentators.

Abstract

How did the medieval Islamic intellectual tradition conceptualize and produce scientific knowledge? What can we learn about medieval Islamic civilizations from theway they examined and studied the universe? In answering these fundamental questions, Mohammad Sadegh Ansari provides a unique perspective for the study of both musicology and intellectual history. Widely considered to be an art today, music in the medieval Islamic world was categorized as one of the four branches of the mathematical sciences, alongside arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy; indeed, some philosophers and scholars of music went as far as linking music with medicine and astrology as part of an interconnected web of cosmological knowledge. This innovative book raises fascinating questions about how designating music a 'science' rather than an 'art' impacts our understanding of truth, and reconstructs a richly holistic medieval system of knowledge in the process.

Main research question

What was already known

The book draws inspiration from recent scholarship by scholars who have attempted to repurpose modern analytical lenses such as religion and secularism to study similar and yet distinct phenomena in the medieval period, Islamic and otherwise.

What or how does your research add to the field/discussion?

This book raises fascinating questions about how designating music a 'science' rather than an 'art' impacts our understanding of truth, and reconstructs a richly holistic medieval system of knowledge in the process.

Ansari, Mohammad Sadegh. The Science of Music: Knowledge Production in Medieval Baghdad and Beyond. Cambridge University Press, 2024.

Cambridge University Press (2024)

Cope Awarded $500K Mellon Grant for Humanities Project

rime — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 18:48:25 +0000

Cope Awarded $500K Mellon Grant for Humanities Project rime Tue, 01/21/2025 - 13:48

Cultural Studies 4+1

barkan — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 18:54:40 +0000

Cultural Studies 4+1 barkan Tue, 11/26/2024 - 13:54

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Student-Faculty Research Team Selected for CUR Advocacy Program

patenaude — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 13:20:17 +0000

Student-Faculty Research Team Selected for CUR Advocacy Program patenaude Fri, 10/25/2024 - 09:20