Death and Burial in Socialist Yugoslavia: The Politicization of Cemeteries and Ethnic Conflict in the...

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Carol S. Lilly (University of Nebraska Kearney, USA)

Death and Burial in Socialist Yugoslavia

The Politicization of Cemeteries and Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans

Carol S. Lilly (University of Nebraska Kearney, USA)

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English

Bloomsbury Academic
21 August 2025

Memorials, monuments; History; European history; 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000

Across the globe, memorial and grave sites are being increasingly weaponized in conflicts and politicized by parties to advance agendas. Here, Carol S. Lilly examines ideas of death, politics, memory, ideology and nationalism in the former Yugoslav republics of Bosnia & Hercegovina, Croatia, and Serbia to shine fresh light on cemetery culture in 20th-century Europe.

More specifically, Death and Burial in Socialist Yugoslavia argues that while the CPY created its own communities of the dead in postwar Partisan Cemeteries, it failed to do the same for civilian cemeteries in ways that might reinforce its ideals of secularism, pluralism, and brotherhood and unity.

Moreover, the communist regime left the previous system of ethno-religious segregation in place, further isolating Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims and Jews who continued to be buried in separate locations. Finally, it explicitly politicized burial rites and grave markers, making cemeteries into legitimate spaces of political discourse.

As a result, by the time Yugoslavia disintegrated in the early 1990s, dead bodies and cemeteries had become a concerted weapon of war in the ongoing ethnic conflict. Ultimately, then, this timely study reveals for the first time the extent to which the communist regime not only failed to created their own communities of the dead but also further divided and alienated living communities in Yugoslavia.

By: Carol S. Lilly (University of Nebraska Kearney USA)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 232mm, Width: 154mm, Spine: 24mm
Weight: 524g
ISBN: 9781350285866
ISBN 10: 1350285862
Pages: 334
Publication Date: 21 August 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

List of Illustrations Part I. Foundations Introduction 1. Burial Cultures of the Former Yugoslavia 2. Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia-Hercegovina in Socialist Yugoslavia Part II. Public and Private Forms of Commemoration in Socialist Yugoslavia 3. The Secularization of Cemeteries 4. Burial Rites 5. Grave Markers Part III. Socialist Necropolitics 6. The Politicization of Cemeteries: Mass Graves and Grave Desecrations 7. Conclusion and Epilogue Bibliography Index

Carol S. Lilly is Professor of History at the University of Nebraska Kearney, USA. She is the author of Power and Persuasion: Ideology and Rhetoric in Communist Yugoslavia, 1944-1953 (2000) and co-editor of Natalija: Life in the Balkan Powderkeg (2011, with Jill Irvine).

Reviews for Death and Burial in Socialist Yugoslavia: The Politicization of Cemeteries and Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans

This monograph, the result of years of in-depth research, is an intricate extended essay about the long reach of the socialist era and the impact that this had on individuals and families. * Slavic Review *