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3 REMEMBER VUKOVAR Memory, Sense of Place, and the National Tradition in Croatia Kruno Kardov I n 1991, under the intensive shelling of Vukovar, radio journalist Siniša Glavašević wrote the short story Priča o gradu (The story of a town), witnessing the vast destruction and the loss of orientation in the world. He ended the story with the following remarks: “There are no shop-windows in which you were admiring your joys, there is no cinema where you were watching the saddest movie, your past is simply destroyed and now you have nothing. You have to build again. First your past, to look for your roots, then your present, and then, if you have enough strength, invest it in a future. And don’t be alone in the future. And the town, don’t worry about it; it was in you all the time. Only hidden. So the executioner couldn’t find it. The town—that is you.”1 This story not only describes the transformation of once familiar places into unrecognizable and destroyed environments, or the shift from place to space, but also indicates the transformation of social identity and the making of a new beginning. This chapter aims to illustrate the identity construction of Vukovar’s citizens and the making of a new Croatian national tradition in which the battle of Vukovar, as I argue, occupies a central position. CONTEXTUALIZING THE FIELD Vukovar is situated in the northeastern part of Croatia on the right bank of the Danube River. Before the war and the breakup of Yugoslavia, Vukovar 64 KRUNO KARDOV was one of the largest and most important industrial and cultural centers in the region of Eastern Slavonia. At the outbreak of the war in 1991, Vukovar had 44,639 inhabitants, of whom 47.2 percent were Croats, 32.3 percent Serbs, and 9.8 percent Yugoslavs; there was also a small percentage of other nationalities.2 Although the city had a long and rich history, Vukovar emerged as a highly symbolic place only at the beginning of nineties, due to war events. The beginning of the armed conflict is marked by the death of twelve Croatian policemen on 2 May 1991 in the nearby village of Borovo. Shortly afterward, federal armed forces—the Yugoslav Peoples’ Army (JNA), supported by volunteers and local territorial defense—positioned military units around the city, and in August intense shelling began. From August to November, during the period of the fiercest fighting, Vukovar was under constant siege and was pounded with as many as seven thousand shells and rockets a day.3 At that time Vukovar attracted significant media coverage, and the Croatian public perceived the battle as having vital importance for the future of the country as a whole. The slogans “Vukovar shall not fall” and “Vukovar must not fall,” coined by defenders and local media reporters , became well known and were frequently used across the country. The eventual fall of Vukovar on 18 and 19 November 1991 was thus followed by intense feelings of disappointment and sorrow among the Croats. After the fall of the city, citizens of Croatian nationality were expelled.4 Most of the men were taken to concentration camps, and the wounded from the hospital were taken away and executed. In all, 2,600 persons disappeared, of whom around 550 persons are still missing, and the mass grave at Ovčara near Vukovar remains the largest one in Croatia, with 200 bodies exhumed.5 Since help never came to the rescue of the defenders, and the city surrendered only after the defenders were left without ammunition, the surviving defenders and right-wing political parties accused the central government of betraying and sacrificing Vukovar in exchange for the international recognition of the Croatian state.Although the accusations have never been proven true, they have become a part of popular knowledge existing even today, for they offered the only acceptable answer on how the “heroic” city could fall. These feelings of a triple betrayal are still present among Croats in Vukovar and have a significant influence on the level of distrust toward Serbs, the international community, and the central Croatian government. The fall of the city also ultimately meant the division of its citizens along ethnic lines. From that day on they lived under different educational, political , and economic systems, and their experiences of war had also little in [3.137.178.133] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 03:07...

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