Academic literature on the topic 'Yugoslavia – Civilization – Italian influences'

After the signing of the so-called Ciano-Stojadinovic Pact (March 1937), Italian-Yugoslav relations suddenly improved. The turnaround in bilateral relations between the two countries (destined, however, to remain ephemeral) was clearly visible in the field of cultural relations. This essay aims to show how, after 1937, the Italian authorities tried to promote Italian culture and language in a big style in the capital of the Kingdom, Belgrade, in an attempt to counteract the supremacy enjoyed up to then by the cultural action of other countries such as France, Germany, etc., in order to promote the Italian language and culture. The fascination with the Italian civilization was also meant to contribute to bringing Yugoslavia politically and ideologically closer to the Fascist regime. Despite the invested resources and the success of some major events (for example, the great exhibition of Italian portraits through the centuries) the results were disappointing, showing once again the structural limits of Fascist political and cultural action abroad.

The article examines how the "native city" is constructed and remembered in the works of the Italian refugee and later emigrant, Gianni Angelo Grohovaz. Born in Fiume (Italy) in 1926, Grohovaz was forced to abandon his city when it was ceded, as spoils of war, to Yugoslavia. After eventually emigrating to Canada, Grohovaz became not only an eloquent voice on behalf of Italian-Canadians, but also a passionate poet for a world and a civilization destroyed, in his view, first by the aftermath of the war and then by Italy's own perfidy towards Fiume and Istria. Though never able to overcome the pain, Grohovaz does eventually reconcile himself with this irreparable loss of a home, a hometown, and a way of life by suggesting that Canada is, in some ways, very much like Fiume and Fiume is, in some ways, very much like Christ.

Music plays an important role in social integration, often providing the vehicle for how one culture reinterprets itself in another. However, as in the case of the Ionian Islands, a peoples’ ability to incorporate outside influences and produce local culture may find itself at odds with the more nationalistic purposes of the state. The Ionian Islands came to be part of the Greek state without enduring the yoke of occupation by the Ottoman Empire or suffering in the wars that preceded the Greek free state. Therefore, the Ionian culture, in particular its popular music, has been made obscure by political elites who defined Greece as the benevolent opposite of its enemies, as the center of civilization and therefore without cultural influences – a definition that Ionian music, influenced by Italian settlers, did not meet.

The aim of the article is to highlight the attempts of Balkan regional integration in the twentieth century and early XXI century. The Balkan region occupies a special place in European history. Various civilization influences intersect in the Balkans, and trade routes from Europe to the Middle East have traditionally passed. The uneven historical development of the Balkan peoples has led to the severity of the formation of nation-states and the dominance of conflicting internal regional and external interests in the Balkans. The conflict potential of Balkan history was due to the clash of ideas of "great" state formations in the form of "Greater Serbia", "Greater Albania", "Greater Serbia", "Greater Macedonia". An attempt to resolve these contradictions on an international basis was an attempt to implement the Yugoslav project. This project had two different implementation attempts. After the First World War, Yugoslavism was embodied in the format of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. After the Second World War, a more successful attempt at international integration was made in the form of Yugoslav federalism. However, exogenous processes have overturned the achievements of endogenous regional integration. The implementation of the European integration project of the Balkan countries depends on the readiness of the European Union to accept them and on the readiness of the Balkan countries to become part of the European Union. The European integration of the Balkan countries raises the question of the borders of the European Union. Turkey remains on the verge of civilization influences. Turkey's accession to the European Union is of strategic global importance. The qualitative characteristics of the European Union depend on the solution of this issue. The EU does not synchronize the accession process of the Balkan countries with the negotiation process with Turkey. It is impossible to do that, because Turkey is more than all the six Balkan countries that emerged after the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Since its crisis-marked beginnings, punk’s relationship with anarchism could be described as ‘complicated’. In spite of the wide use of the word and the circled ‘A’ symbol, not every artist considered anarchy in its political meaning of radical egalitarianism and libertarian socialism. This article explores the ‘impulse of anarchy’ in punk, as considered by Edoardo Sanguineti, as a more-than-political aesthetic phenomenon present in all avant-garde poetry (and arts in general) in modern history, consciously or not, whose ultimate goal is to change life and modify the world. Through this perspective, the article presents a comparative analysis of three expressions of crisis by three different punk groups from three different European countries, in three different languages: ‘Možgani na asfaltu’ (‘Brains on the Asphalt’) in Slovene by Berlinski zid from (then) Yugoslavia, ‘Lasciateci sentire ora’ (‘Let Us Hear Now’) in Italian by Franti from Italy and ‘Crisis’ in English by Poison Girls from the United Kingdom. The article will thus try to contribute to the understanding of anarchist and anarchic influences in coping with crisis under international capitalism and bourgeois hegemony.

The creative work of Nikola Borota - Radovan (musician, composer, lyricist, arranger and record producer, based in New Zealand - formerly from Yugoslavia) held a specific place in development of world music (poly)genre in his native homeland in the early 1970s. This study focuses on his creative principles, applied to works published between the years 1970 and 1975 (while the role of these works in social, cultural and political context of the time and place will be elaborated in another study, see Jovanovic 2014). The platform established to present this unique musical approach authenticaly was called kamen na kamen (a studio and stage outfit that has included number of collaborations over many years). Based on the musical models and aethetics of the folk revival and created under influence of The Beatles?, in adition to many other popular music production directions of the era, Borota?s works reveal significant musical, performance and production qualities, innovative expression and musical solutions, that need to be percieved from the contemporary (ethno)musicological point of view. Despite the fact that many prominent creative Yugoslav musicians of the time also worked within a similar framework I would argue that Mr. Borota?s creative outcome was signifficantly different from other Yugoslav popular music creative efforts. This is particularly noticeable in the author?s unique treatment of South-European and other folklore motives, which is the main topic of this study. Folk (ethnic) idioms exploited by Mr. Borota in his compositions originate from the rural traditions of western Dinaric regions. This is especially true for the rhythmic formations of deaf or silent dance; for the semi-urban and urban tradition of the Balkans and the Mediterranean; Middle European traditions; traditions from non-European peoples; elements of Italian Renaissance; and international (mostly Anglo-American) musical models. Compositions are analysed partly in accordance with the principles presented by Philip Tagg (1982), and following the principles of the ?Finnish method? in ethnomusicology. According to my best knowledge, there was no previous comparable (ethno) musicological ellaboration of folk revival, Beatlesque influences and early forrays into world music within Yugoslav popular music culture. I therefore consider this study to be the first contribution to the research in this subject.

A few days ago, in August 2013, a Cochrane Database Systemic Review reported that the existing limited evidence to date on the effect of Mediterranean diet (MD) on primary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD), suggests some favorable effects on risk factors; however, the reduction of CVD event rates was not mentioned [1]. The review included 11 trials (15 papers, 52,044 participants); 7 trials described the intervention as a MD. Clinical events were reported in only one trial [Women's Health Initiative (WHI) 48,835 postmenopausal women with an intervention not described as a MD but increased fruit and vegetable and cereal intake], where no statistically significant effects of the intervention were seen on fatal and non-fatal endpoints during the 8 years of its duration [1]. Since the WHI study was huge and had a great weight in the analysis, it eliminated any other beneficial effect on CVD incidence from other studies. Moreover, in this study the diet used as an intervention was not MD. On April 2013 the results of the Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea (PREDIMED), a multicenter trial from Spain, were published in New England Journal of Medicine [2]. The study included a total of 7,447 persons (aged 55-80 years) with no CVD at baseline. These were randomized to 1 of 3 diets: a MD supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil, a MD supplemented with mixed nuts or a control diet (advice to reduce dietary fat) [2]. An interim analysis terminated the trial prematurely at 4.8 years. The primary endpoint was the rate of major CVD (myocardial infarction, stroke, or CVD death). The multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios were 0.70 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.54 to 0.92) and 0.72 (95% CI, 0.54 to 0.96) for the group assigned to a MD with extravirgin olive oil and the group assigned to a MD with nuts, respectively, vs. the control group [2]. No diet-related adverse effects were reported [2]. Moreover, a post hoc analysis of PREDIMED that will be published in September 2013, in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggests that one of the mechanisms by which MD, particularly if supplemented with virgin olive oil, can exert health benefits is through changes in the transcriptomic response of genes related to CVD risk [3]. These results of the PREDIMED trial confirm that changes in diet can have beneficial effects on CVD risk. However, the study was criticized for mainly 3 reasons. One is that in MD the dietary pattern as an entity is rather more important than the inclusion or avoidance of specific nutrients [4]. Second there were low (in absolute terms) primary composite CVD outcome rates (3.8% and 3.4% in the intervention groups vs. 4.4% in the control group) and a minor absolute risk difference (range 0.6 to 1%), thus limiting the importance of the study findings [5]. Furthermore there were statistically significant differences in baseline characteristics between the groups: men (+5.7%), obese persons (+4.7%), diuretic use (+3.5%), and oral hypoglycaemic use (+3.2%) in the control group than in the intervention group [5]. And third there was a complete lack of policy implications [6]. The PREDIMED trial was neither a pure test of a Mediterranean-style diet nor a pure test of extra- virgin olive oil or nuts. All the above make the interpretation of the PREDIMED trial similarly difficult to that of the Lyon Diet Heart Study [7], which tested provision of a margarine rich in alpha-linolenic acid on top of brief advice to consume a MD in high CVD risk patients with astonishing results [7]. Policymakers [8] and Great Scientific Organizations, like Mayo Clinic [9], already recommend consumption of a Mediterranean-style diet on the basis of a body of evidence from observational and interventional studies, in antithesis to the findings of the Cochrane Database Systemic Review [1]. On the other hand, the policy implications of the PREDIMED trial related primarily to the supplemental foods [2] and not MD itself, thus, we probably have to go both back and elsewhere to find evidence base for the benefits of MD and if these are related in any degree to blood pressure (BP) reduction. The Seven Countries Study showed that the risk and rates of heart attack and stroke both at the population and at the individual level were directly and independently related to the level of serum total cholesterol (TC). It demonstrated that the association between TC level and coronary heart disease (CHD) risk from 5 to 40 years follow-up is found consistently across different cultures [10,11]. The Seven Countries Study started in 1958 in former Yugoslavia. In total, 12,763 men, 40–59 years of age, were enrolled as 16 cohorts, in 7 countries, in 4 regions of the world (United States, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Japan); 1 cohort is in the United States, 2 cohorts in Finland, 1 in the Netherlands, 3 in Italy, 5 in the former Yugoslavia (two in Croatia, and three in Serbia), 2 in Greece (1 in Crete and 1 in Corfu), and 2 in Japan [10]. The Seven Countries Study has continued, with high levels of participation, for more than 50 years.􀀁The initial and objective data on CVD health in relation to the MD originated from the Seven Countries Study [10]. CHD deaths in the United States and Northern Europe greatly exceeded those in Southern Europe, even when controlled for age, TC and BP levels, smoking, physical activity, and weight [12]. After further investigation, the importance of the eating pattern characterized as the MD became clear [12,13]. What exactly is meant by "Mediterranean diet" today, and its benefits, is detailed by other researches during the last 20 years [14,15]. During the 90's, for the first time, the concept of a food pyramid and the need for an adherence to MD score were born [14-16]. As a result of the Seven Countries Study, the MD has been popularized as a "healthy" diet. Nevertheless, it has not replaced the "prudent" diet commonly prescribed to coronary patients [17]. The Crete cohort of the Seven Countries Study had the lowest rates of deaths from CVD [10]; even the 25 year mortality was lower than others (for example vs. the Italian cohort) [18]. This was attributed to the entire lifestyle of Cretans including a variation of MD, the Cretan-type MD. Many investigators during the last 20 years would rather refer to the Cretan-type MD rather than plain MD, which is a rather abstract definition [19-22]. The 40 years’ CVD mortality in the Corfu cohort showed that participants also benefited from the long-term adoption of a nutritional pattern (close to the Cretan-type) of MD, the presence of physical activity, optimism, and a positive psychological profile [23]. During the last 15 years, and before the economic crisis, Greeks adopted a more western way of life. Nevertheless, several aspects of the traditional Greek way of life and diet, suggest that a relatively high consumption of vegetables and fruits or olive oil and bread, remained well-established among large segments of the Greek population, and may explain why a population with a few healthy habits still enjoys one of the longer life expectancies among the 16 cohorts of the Seven Country Study 40 years after its initiation [23]. The Working Group on Epidemiology and Prevention of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) coordinated in 2003 information from 12 European cohort studies, including 205,000 persons, and assessed the 10-year CVD mortality rates. This gave birth to the SCORE (Systematic Coronary Risk Estimation) project [24]. The European Society of Cardiology encouraged the creation of local SCORES for each country, based on the original SCORE and local data. Indeed the HellenicSCORE (equations and charts) present the calibration of the risk by age group and sex, based on mortality data, as reported by the National Statistical Services of Greece and prevalence data regarding smoking, TC and BP levels, as reported by the ATTICA study [25]. This was very successfully tested in the ATTEMPT Study [26]. The predicated rates of CVD were verified in a survival study with a nearly 4-year follow-up in patients with metabolic syndrome and randomization to intensive versus moderate risk factor treatment [27]. In the meantime the MD score (MedDietScore) was developed, according to the adherence to MD [28].􀀁The weekly consumption of the following 9 food groups: non-refined cereals(whole grain bread and pasta, brown rice, etc.), fruits, vegetables, legumes, potatoes, fish, meat and meat products, poultry, full fat dairy products (like cheese, yoghurt, milk), as well asolibe oil and alcohol intake, were included [28]. The inclusion of dietary evaluation (MedDietScore), as well as other sociodemographic and anthropometric characteristics, increases the accuracy and reduces estimating bias of CVD risk prediction models [29]. Thus, we have a country adjusted integrated system that can predict CVD risk. It was clear, during the use of HellenicSCORE and MedDietScore, that a better adherence to MD was related to a lower CVD risk. On the contrary, aging, central fat, hypertension (HTN), diabetes, inflammation, low social status and abstinence from a MD seem to predict CVD events within a 5-year period; actual data from the ATTICA study [30]. All these put the adoption of MD at a high position among CVD risk factors, for good and for bad, according to the degree of adoption (MedDietScore). However, does MD affect the level of BP? Is HTN one of the factors to increase CVD risk if the adherence to MD (MedDietScore) is low? There is some evidence on this issue. It has been suggested by a review on the dietary influences on BP that there is more than enough evidence from observational and clinical studies that diets low in saturated fats and sodium and rich in fruits, vegetables, and fiber, with adequate amounts of potassium, calcium, and magnesium, are effective in the prevention and treatment of HTN alone or as an adjunct to pharmacologic therapy [31]. Such dietary combinations are provided by the MD [31]. The association of adherence to the MD with the incidence of HTN was evaluated among 9,408 men and women enrolled in a dynamic Spanish prospective cohort (SUN) study during 1999- 2005 [32]. The adherence to MD was associated with reduced mean values of systolic BP [moderate adherence, -2.4 mm Hg (95% CI: -4.0, -0.8); high adherence, -3.1 mm Hg (95% CI: -5.4, -0.8)] and diastolic BP [moderate adherence, - 1.3 mm Hg (95% CI: -2.5, -0.1); high adherence, -1.9 mm Hg (95% CI: -3.6, -0.1)] after 6 years of follow-up [32]. These results suggest that adhering to a Mediterranean-type diet could contribute to the prevention of age-related increase in BP [32]. In the ATTICA Study the mean value of the MedDiet Score was 25.5 (±3) for men and 27 (±3) for women (p<0.001). The prevalence of HTN was 36.6% in men and 23.7% in women (p<0.001) [33]. Diet score was 23.5±6.4 in hypertensive and 26.8±6.6 in normotensive individuals (p<0.001). The sensitivity of defining people with HTN was higher than for any other CVD risk factor, suggesting that the adoption of MD reduces the risk for HTN [33]. In an elderly population of Cyprus, another Mediterranean Country, 60% of men and 58% of women have HTN, along with other classical CVD risk factors [34]. A 10-unit increase in the MedDietScore was associated with 21% lower odds of having one additional risk factor, including HTN, in women (p< 0.001) and with 14% lower odds in men (p=0.05) [34]. The results of the CARDIO2000 study [35] point out that the adoption of MD by physically active subjects seems to significantly reduce the coronary heart disease (CHD) events and prevent, just about, the one-third of acute CHD syndromes, in controlled subjects with HTN [35]. This supports the idea that MD combined with physical activity provides substantial protection from acute coronary events in patients with HTN [35]. Other data from the SUN Study also [36] suggest that there is an inverse relationship between fruit and vegetable consumption and the prevalence of nonpreviously diagnosed HTN in a Mediterranean population with a very high intake of both fat (paradoxically) and plantderived foods [36]. There was a 77 % reduction in the prevalence of HTN for those with the higher consumption of both fruit and vegetables compared with those at the lower quintiles of both food groups [36]. This inverse relationship was also evident when considering BP as a continuous variable, with a mean systolic BP and diastolic BP of 2.2 mmHg lower for those with the highest consumption of fruit and vegetables compared with those with the lowest intake [36]. The study concludes that in a Mediterranean population, with an elevated fat consumption, a high fruit and vegetable intake is inversely associated with BP levels [36]. From the same (SUN) study it was reported that there is an inverse association between fiber or fruit/vegetable consumption and weight gain, thus emphasizing the importance of replacing some dietary compounds by such foods and fiber-rich products, which may help to avoid weight gain [37]. This brinks about the issue of MD and obesity, mainly central, which is the key clinical manifestation of metabolic syndrome (MetS); this includes HTN. Data suggest that the prevalence of MetS has dramatically increased during the recent years, especially in Western Countries and South East Asia [38]. More than one third (35 %) of adults in the U.S. could be characterized as having the MetS, which translates to nearly 84 million U.S. adults affected by MetS [38]. Unfortunately the prevalence of MetS in Mediterranean Countries is high (one forth of the adult population), although definitely lower than that in U.S. [39,40]. It has been shown by prospective cohort studies, cross-sectional studies and clinical trials that adherence to the MD was associated with reduced risk of the MetS and its individual components also, in particular waist circumference, triglycerides levels, low density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), BP levels and glucose metabolism [38,41]. These effects of MD increase life expectancy in patients with MetS [42]. On the other hand, Mediterranean countries, such as Greece, have experienced a rapid social-economic change in the last 15 years and recently an economic crisis; both having negative impacts on healthy eating. These community changes affect nutritional habits and there is a tendency to abandon the traditional healthy MD [43]. However, if we continue to try at the elementary school level, things might be better than they look. A study aiming to examine the long-term effects of the "Cretan Health and Nutrition Education Program" on BP, examined several parameters: BP, dietary, anthropometrical and physical activity data nearly 10 years after the original study (at baseline year 1992-1993, and follow-up examination at year 2001-2002) [44]. The findings of the study revealed that the increase over the 10- year period in systolic BP and diastolic BP was higher in the control group than in the MD intervention group (P=0.003 and P<0.001 respectively). These facts are encouraging, indicating favorable changes in BP, micronutrients intake, body mass index (BMI) and physical activity over a 10-year period and 4 years after program's cessation [44]. We just have to keep trying to establish MD at an early age. In brief, MD reduces CVD risk and this action could be at least in part attributed to the reduction of BP and MetS. Given that the complete adoption of MD is practically impossible, a high degree of adherence is desirable. This could substantially reduce adverse CVD events as well as the incidence of acute coronary syndromes, by one third, If combined with a high level of physical activity. A high adherence to MD also reduces the prevalence of MetS, a part of which is HTN, and diminishes its clinical consequences, improving life expectancy. It is more effective if MD is adopted early in life.

Introduction: Socialism – from Eternal Reality to Passing DreamThe Year of Revolutions in 1989 presaged the end of the Cold War. For many people, it must have felt like the end of the Twentieth Century, and the 1990s a period of waiting for the Millennium. However, the 1990s was, in fact, a period of profound transformation in the post-Socialist world.In early representations of Socialism’s end, a dominant narrative was that of collapse. Dramatic events, such as the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in Germany enabled representation of the end as an unexpected moment. Senses of unexpectedness rested on erstwhile perceptions of Socialism as eternal.In contrast, the 1990s came to be a decade of revision in which thinking switched from considering Socialism’s persistence to asking, “why it went wrong?” I explore this question in relation to former-Yugoslavia. In brief, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was replaced through the early 1990s by six independent nation states: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Kosovo came much later. In the states that were significantly ethnically mixed, the break-up was accompanied by violence. Bosnia in the 1990s will be remembered for an important contribution to the lexicon of ideas – ethnic cleansing.Revisionist historicising of the former-Yugoslavia in the 1990s was led by the scholarly community. By and large, it discredited the Ancient Ethnic Hatreds (AEH) thesis commonly held by nationalists, simplistic media commentators and many Western politicians. The AEH thesis held that Socialism’s end was a consequence of the up-swelling of primordial (natural) ethnic tensions. Conversely, the scholarly community tended to view Socialism’s failure as an outcome of systemic economic and political deficiencies in the SFRY, and that these deficiencies were also, in fact the root cause of those ethnic tensions. And, it was argued that had such deficiencies been addressed earlier Socialism may have survived and fulfilled its promise of eternity (Verdery).A third significant perspective which emerged through the 1990s was that the collapse of Socialism was an outcome of the up-swelling of, if not primordial ethnic tensions then, at least repressed historical memories of ethnic tensions, especially of the internecine violence engendered locally by Nazi and Italian Fascist forces in WWII. This perspective was particularly en vogue within the unusually rich arts scene in former-Yugoslavia. Its leading exponent was Slovenian avant-garde rock band Laibach.In this article, I consider Laibach’s career and methods. For background the article draws substantially on Alexei Monroe’s excellent biography of Laibach, Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK (2005). However, as I indicate below, my interpretation diverges very significantly from Monroe’s. Laibach’s most significant body of work is the cover versions of Western pop songs it recorded in the middle part of its career. Using a technique that has been labelled retroquotation (Monroe), it subtly transforms the lyrical content, and radically transforms the musical arrangement of pop songs, thereby rendering them what might be described as martial anthems. The clearest illustration of the process is Laibach’s version of Opus’s one hit wonder “Live is Life”, which is retitled as “Life is Life” (Laibach 1987).Conventional scholarly interpretations of Laibach’s method (including Monroe’s) present it as entailing the uncovering of repressed forms of individual and collective totalitarian consciousness. I outline these ideas, but supplement them with an alternative interpretation. I argue that in the cover version stage of its career, Laibach switched its attention from seeking to uncover repressed totalitarianism towards uncovering repressed memories of ethnic tension, especially from WWII. Furthermore, I argue that its creative medium of Western pop music is especially important in this regard. On the bases of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Bosnia (University of Melbourne Human Ethics project 1544213.1), and of a reading of SFRY’s geopolitical history, I demonstrate that for many people, Western popular cultural forms came to represent the quintessence of what it was to be Yugoslav. In this context, Laibach’s retroquotation of Western pop music is akin to a broader cultural practice in the post-SFRY era in which symbols of the West were iconoclastically transformed. Such transformation served to reveal a public secret (Taussig) of repressed historic ethnic enmity within the very heart of things that were regarded as quintessentially and pan-ethnically Yugoslav. And, in so doing, this delegitimised memory of SFRY ever having been a properly functioning entity. In this way, Laibach contributed significantly to a broader process in which perceptions of Socialist Yugoslavia came to be rendered less as a reality with the potential for eternity than a passing dream.What Is Laibach and What Does It Do?Originally of the industrial rock genre, Laibach has evolved through numerous other genres including orchestral rock, choral rock and techno. It is not, however, a rock group in any conventional sense. Laibach is the musical section of a tripartite unit named Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) which also encompasses the fine arts collective Irwin and a variety of theatre groups.Laibach was the name by which the Slovenian capital Ljubljana was known under the Austrian Habsburg Empire and then Nazi occupation in WWII. The choice of name hints at a central purpose of Laibach and NSK in general, to explore the relationship between art and ideology, especially under conditions of totalitarianism. In what follows, I describe how Laibach go about doing this.Laibach’s central method is eclecticism, by which symbols of the various ideological regimes that are its and the NSK’s subject matter are intentionally juxtaposed. Eclecticism of this kind was characteristic of the postmodern aesthetics typical of the 1990s. Furthermore, and counterintuitively perhaps, postmodernism was as much a condition of the Socialist East as it was the Capitalist West. As Mikhail N. Epstein argues, “Totalitarianism itself may be viewed as a specific postmodern model that came to replace the modernist ideological stance elaborated in earlier Marxism” (102). However, Western and Eastern postmodernisms were fundamentally different. In particular, while the former was largely playful, ironicising and depoliticised, the latter, which Laibach and NSK may be regarded as being illustrative of, involved placing in opposition to one another competing and antithetical aesthetic, political and social regimes, “without the contradictions being fully resolved” (Monroe 54).The performance of unresolved contradictions in Laibach’s work fulfils three principal functions. It works to (1) reveal hidden underlying connections between competing ideological systems, and between art and power more generally. This is evident in Life is Life. The video combines symbols of Slovenian romantic nationalism (stags and majestic rural landscapes) with Nazism and militarism (uniforms, bodily postures and a martial musical arrangement). Furthermore, it presents images of the graves of victims of internecine violence in WWII. The video is a reminder to Slovenian viewers of a discomforting public secret within their nation’s history. While Germany is commonly viewed as a principal oppressor of Slovenian nationalism, the rural peasantry, who are represented as embodying Slovenian nationalism most, were also the most willing collaborators in imperialist processes of Germanicisation. The second purpose of the performance of unresolved contradictions in Laibach’s work is to (2) engender senses of the alienation, especially as experienced by the subjects of totalitarian regimes. Laibach’s approach in this regard is quite different to that of punk, whose concern with alienation - symbolised by safety pins and chains - was largely celebratory of the alienated condition. Rather, Laibach took a lead from seminal industrial rock bands such as Einstürzende Neubauten and Throbbing Gristle (see, for example, Walls of Sound (Throbbing Gristle 2004)), whose sound one fan accurately describes as akin to, “the creation of the universe by an angry titan/God and a machine apocalypse all rolled into one” (rateyourmusic.com). Certainly, Laibach’s shows can be uncomfortable experiences too, involving not only clashing symbols and images, but also the dissonant sounds of, for example, martial music, feedback, recordings of the political speeches of totalitarian leaders and barking dogs, all played at eardrum-breaking high volumes. The purpose of this is to provide, as Laibach state: “a ritualized demonstration of political force” (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst 44). In short, more than simply celebrating the experience of totalitarian alienation, Laibach’s intention is to reproduce that very alienation.More than performatively representing tyranny, and thereby senses of totalitarian alienation, Laibach and NSK set out to embody it themselves. In particular, and contra the forms of liberal humanism that were hegemonic at the peak of their career in the 1990s, their organisation was developed as a model of totalitarian collectivism in which the individual is always subjugated. This is illustrated in the Onanigram (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst), which, mimicking the complexities of the SFRY in its most totalitarian dispensation, maps out in labyrinthine detail the institutional structure of NSK. Behaviour is governed by a Constitution that states explicitly that NSK is a group in which, “each individual is subordinated to the whole” (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst 273). Lest this collectivism be misconceived as little more than a show, the case of Tomaž Hostnik is instructive. The original lead singer of Laibach, Hostnik committed ritual suicide by hanging himself from a hayrack, a key symbol of Slovenian nationalism. Initially, rather than mourning his loss, the other members of Laibach posthumously disenfranchised him (“threw him out of the band”), presumably for his act of individual will that was collectively unsanctioned.Laibach and the NSK’s collectivism also have spiritual overtones. The Onanigram presents an Immanent Consistent Spirit, a kind of geist that holds the collective together. NSK claim: “Only God can subdue LAIBACH. People and things never can” (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst 289). Furthermore, such rhetorical bombast was matched in aspiration. Most famously, in one of the first instances of a micro-nation, NSK went on to establish itself as a global and virtual non-territorial state, replete with a recruitment drive, passports and anthem, written and performed by Laibach of course. Laibach’s CareerLaibach’s career can be divided into three overlapping parts. The first is its career as a political provocateur, beginning from the inception of the band in 1980 and continuing through to the present. The band’s performances have touched the raw nerves of several political actors. As suggested above, Laibach offended Slovenian nationalists. The band offended the SFRY, especially when in its stage backdrop it juxtaposed images of a penis with Marshal Josip Broz “Tito”, founding President of the SFRY. Above all, it offended libertarians who viewed the band’s exploitation of totalitarian aesthetics as a route to evoking repressed totalitarian energies in its audiences.In a sense the libertarians were correct, for Laibach were quite explicit in representing a third function of their performance of unresolved contradictions as being to (3) evoke repressed totalitarian energies. However, as Žižek demonstrates in his essay “Why Are Laibach and NSK Not Fascists”, Laibach’s intent in this regard is counter-totalitarian. Laibach engage in what amounts to a “psychoanalytic cure” for totalitarianism, which consists of four envisaged stages. The consumers of Laibach’s works and performances go through a process of over-identification with totalitarianism, leading through the experience of alienation to, in turn, disidentification and an eventual overcoming of that totalitarian alienation. The Žižekian interpretation of the four stages has, however been subjected to critique, particularly by Deleuzian scholars, and especially for its psychoanalytic emphasis on the transformation of individual (un)consciousness (i.e. the cerebral rather than bodily). Instead, such scholars prefer a schizoanalytic interpretation which presents the cure as, respectively collective (Monroe 45-50) and somatic (Goddard). Laibach’s works and pronouncements display, often awareness of such abstract theoretical ideas. However, they also display attentiveness to the concrete realities of socio-political context. This was reflected especially in the 1990s, when its focus seemed to shift from the matter of totalitarianism to the overriding issue of the day in Laibach’s homeland – ethnic conflict. For example, echoing the discourse of Truth and Reconciliation emanating from post-Apartheid South Africa in the early 1990s, Laibach argued that its work is “based on the premise that traumas affecting the present and the future can be healed only by returning to the initial conflicts” (NSK Padiglione).In the early 1990s era of post-socialist violent ethnic nationalism, statements such as this rendered Laibach a darling of anti-nationalism, both within civil society and in what came to be known pejoratively as the Yugonostagic, i.e. pro-SFRY left. Its darling status was cemented further by actions such as performing a concert to celebrate the end of the Bosnian war in 1996, and because its ideological mask began to slip. Most famously, when asked by a music journalist the standard question of what the band’s main influences were, rather than citing other musicians Laibach stated: “Tito, Tito and Tito.” Herein lies the third phase of Laibach’s career, dating from the mid-1990s to the present, which has been marked by critical recognition and mainstream acceptance, and in contrasting domains. Notably, in 2012 Laibach was invited to perform at the Tate Modern in London. Then, entering the belly of what is arguably the most totalitarian of totalitarian beasts in 2015, it became the first rock band to perform live in North Korea.The middle part in Laibach’s career was between 1987 and 1996. This was when its work consisted mostly of covers of mainstream Western pop songs by, amongst others Opus, Queen, The Rolling Stones, and, in The Final Countdown (1986), Swedish ‘big hair’ rockers. It also covered entire albums, including a version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. No doubt mindful of John Lennon’s claim that his band was more popular than the Messiah himself, Laibach covered the Beatles’ final album Let It Be (1970). Highlighting the perilous hidden connections between apparently benign and fascistic forms of sedentarism, lead singer Milan Fras’ snarling delivery of the refrain “Get Back to where you once belong” renders the hit single from that album less a story of homecoming than a sinister warning to immigrants and ethnic others who are out of place.This career middle stage invoked critique. However, commonplace suggestions that Laibach could be characterised as embodying Retromania, a derivative musical trend typical of the 1990s that has been lambasted for its de-politicisation and a musical conservatism enabled by new sampling technologies that afforded a forensic documentary precision that prohibits creative distortion (Reynolds), are misplaced. Several scholars highlight Laibach’s ceaseless attention to musical creativity in the pursuit of political subversiveness. For example, for Monroe, the cover version was a means for Laibach to continue its exploration of the connections between art and ideology, of illuminating the connections between competing ideological systems and of evoking repressed totalitarian energies, only now within Western forms of entertainment in which ideological power structures are less visible than in overt totalitarian propaganda. However, what often seems to escape intellectualist interpretations presented by scholars such as Žižek, Goddard and (albeit to a lesser extent) Monroe is the importance of the concrete specificities of the context that Laibach worked in in the 1990s – i.e. homeland ethno-nationalist politics – and, especially, their medium – i.e. Western pop music.The Meaning and Meaningfulness of Western Popular Culture in Former YugoslaviaThe Laibach covers were merely one of many celebrations of Western popular culture that emerged in pre- and post-socialist Yugoslavia. The most curious of these was the building of statues of icons of screen and stage. These include statues of Tarzan, Bob Marley, Rocky Balboa and, most famously, martial arts cinema legend Bruce Lee in the Bosnian city of Mostar.The pop monuments were often erected as symbols of peace in contexts of ethnic-national violence. Each was an ethnic hybrid. With the exception of original Tarzan Johnny Weismuller — an ethnic-German American immigrant from Serbia — none was remotely connected to the competing ethnic-national groups. Thus, it was surprising when these pop monuments became targets for iconoclasm. This was especially surprising because, in contrast, both the new ethnic-national monuments that were built and the old Socialist pan-Yugoslav monuments that remained in all their concrete and steel obduracy in and through the 1990s were left largely untouched.The work of Simon Harrison may give us some insight into this curious situation. Harrison questions the commonplace assumption that the strength of enmity between ethnic groups is related to their cultural dissimilarity — in short, the bigger the difference the bigger the biffo. By that logic, the new ethnic-national monuments erected in the post-SFRY era ought to have been vandalised. Conversely, however, Harrison argues that enmity may be more an outcome of similarity, at least when that similarity is torn asunder by other kinds of division. This is so because ownership of previously shared and precious symbols of identity appears to be seen as subjected to appropriation by ones’ erstwhile comrades who are newly othered in such moments.This is, indeed, exactly what happened in post-socialist former-Yugoslavia. Yugoslavs were rendered now as ethnic-nationals: Bosniaks (Muslims), Croats and Serbs in the case of Bosnia. In the process, the erection of obviously non-ethnic-national monuments by, now inevitably ethnic-national subjects was perceived widely as appropriation – “the Croats [the monument in Mostar was sculpted by Croatian artist Ivan Fijolić] are stealing our Bruce Lee,” as one of my Bosnian-Serb informants exclaimed angrily.However, this begs the question: Why would symbols of Western popular culture evoke the kinds of emotions that result in iconoclasm more so than other ethnically non-reducible ones such as those of the Partisans that are celebrated in the old Socialist pan-Yugoslav monuments? The answer lies in the geopolitical history of the SFRY. The Yugoslav-Soviet Union split in 1956 forced the SFRY to develop ever-stronger ties with the West. The effects of this became quotidian, especially as people travelled more or less freely across international borders and consumed the products of Western Capitalism. Many of the things they consumed became deeply meaningful. Notably, barely anybody above a certain age does not reminisce fondly about the moment when participation in martial arts became a nationwide craze following the success of Bruce Lee’s films in the golden (1970s-80s) years of Western-bankrolled Yugoslav prosperity.Likewise, almost everyone above a certain age recalls the balmy summer of 1985, whose happy zeitgeist seemed to be summed up perfectly by Austrian band Opus’s song “Live is Life” (1985). This tune became popular in Yugoslavia due to its apparently feelgood message about the joys of attending live rock performances. In a sense, these moments and the consumption of things “Western” in general came to symbolise everything that was good about Yugoslavia and, indeed to define what it was to be Yugoslavs, especially in comparison to their isolated and materially deprived socialist comrades in the Warsaw Pact countries.However, iconoclastic acts are more than mere emotional responses to offensive instances of cultural appropriation. As Michael Taussig describes, iconoclasm reveals the public secrets that the monuments it targets conceal. SFRY’s great public secret, known especially to those people old enough to have experienced the inter-ethnic violence of WWII, was ethnic division and the state’s deceit of the historic normalcy of pan-Yugoslav identification. The secret was maintained by a formal state policy of forgetting. For example, the wording on monuments in sites of inter-ethnic violence in WWII is commonly of the variety: “here lie the victims in Yugoslavia’s struggle against imperialist forces and their internal quislings.” Said quislings were, of course, actually Serbs, Croats, and Muslims (i.e. fellow Yugoslavs), but those ethnic nomenclatures were almost never used.In contrast, in a context where Western popular cultural forms came to define the very essence of what it was to be Yugoslav, the iconoclasm of Western pop monuments, and the retroquotation of Western pop songs revealed the repressed deceit and the public secret of the reality of inter-ethnic tension at the heart of that which was regarded as quintessentially Yugoslav. In this way, the memory of Yugoslavia ever having been a properly functioning entity was delegitimised. Consequently, Laibach and their kind served to render the apparent reality of the Yugoslav ideal as little more than a dream. ReferencesEpstein, Mikhail N. After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture. Amherst: U of Massachusettes P, 1995.Goddard, Michael. “We Are Time: Laibach/NSK, Retro-Avant-Gardism and Machinic Repetition,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 11 (2006): 45-53.Harrison, Simon. “Identity as a Scarce Resource.” Social Anthropology 7 (1999): 239–251.Monroe, Alexei. Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005.NSK. Neue Slowenische Kunst. Ljubljana: NSK, 1986.NSK. Padiglione NSK. Ljubljana: Moderna Galerija, 1993.rateyourmusic.com. 2018. 3 Sep. 2018 <https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/throbbing-gristle>.Reynolds, Simon. Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. London: Faber and Faber, 2011.Taussig, Michael. Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.Verdery, Katherine. What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Žižek, Slavoj. “Why Are Laibach and NSK Not Fascists?” 3 Sep. 2018 <www.nskstate.com/appendix/articles/why_are_laibach.php.>

Defence Date: 26 February 2019
Examining Board: Prof. Pavel Kolář, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof. Lucy Riall, European University Institute; Prof. Hannes Grandits, Humboldt University of Berlin Assoc.; Prof. Igor Duda, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula
Yugoslav discovery of its own Mediterraneaness was the result of several factors – global politics manifest in Yugoslav engagement in the Non-Aligned Movement, economic benefit from foreign tourism and the development of the Adriatic as the centre of Yugoslav entertainment. The new socialist government had to find a balance between the Yugoslavization of three main cultural spheres – Central European, Balkan, and Mediterranean – and multi(national) culturality symbolized in the ideological postulate of “brotherhood and unity”. In the building of a specific Yugoslav culture, the spread of mass media and consumerism played an important role and enabled shaping Yugoslav popular culture. Two things were crucial: the introduction of self-management and opening to the Western countries. The first caused the liberalization of the cultural sphere and the “democratization” of culture, while openness to the West contributed to the further internationalization and commercialization of culture. In a country that had just started developing its entertainment industry, the Italian example not only filled a gap in the everyday needs of Yugoslav citizens, but it also shaped their taste, and expectations from domestic production. Three case studies – popular music, television entertainment, and fashion and lifestyles – demonstrate the Yugoslav Mediterranean was built upon direct Italian influence, ideological work on the creation of a specific Yugoslav culture, a collective imaginary of the Adriatic as a shared space among all Yugoslav people, and the promotion of Yugoslavia as a tourist destination. Finally, the development of domestic and foreign tourism at the Adriatic had not only an economic purpose, but also played an important soft-power role in disseminating information on everyday life under the Yugoslav socialist experiment. The international dimension of Yugoslav tourism thus created a platform for the promotion of the country and the Yugoslav good life abroad, with happy and satisfied tourists returning home with images of the sunny and light-hearted Mediterranean
Chapter 2 'Popular Music and the Sounds of the Sea' of the PhD thesis draws upon two earlier versions published as articles “Opatijski festival i razvoj zabavne glazbe u Jugoslaviji (1958–1962.)” (2016) in the journal 'Časopis za suvremenu povijest' and “A romanthic southern myth (2005) in the journal 'TheMa – Open Access Research Journal for Theatre, Music, Arts'.

Questa dissertazione e imperniata sulla parola masca, che denota un personaggio popolare e antichissimo di genere femminile, riscontrabile esclusivamente nel folclore e nella letterature della regione italiana del Piemonte. Si attribuisce a questo personaggio la facolta rarissima di esercitare tanto il bene che il mate, a seconda de¡ casi.
La tesi si basa su ricerche storiche e linguistiche che traggono i loro dati dai recessi piu remoti della civilta celtica in territorio piemontese, dove essa e prosperata dall'inizio del 4° secolo a.C. fino al 1° secolo della nostra era, epoca alta quale questa regione fu inglobata dall'impero romano.
Basandosi su dati storici e archeologici, la ricerca prende atto di un substrato celtico persistente e profondo nella cultura e nella tradizione piu antiche del Piemonte. In modo particolare si concentra l'attenzione sulla derivazione dei personaggio della masca da una figura religiosa dei Druidi, venerata fervidamente dai Celti, i quali attribuivano a questa divinita il dualismo tipico (bene-male) che si riscontra nel personaggio oggetto di questo studio.
In seguito si traccia il discrimine tra la masca e le streghe demoniache con cui la prima e spesso e del tutto erroneamente confusa ed associata. Una volta tracciata questa distinzione si possono riallacciare i legami tra la masca e il suo sacrale pristino ove ('equilibrio sotteso tra bene e mate e permanente e inestricabile dagli attributi fondamentali della dea celtica centrale, la Grande Madre.
Le ricerche etimologiche per appurare l'origine della parola masca non fanno che confermare la dualita e l'equilibrio tra il bene e il mate inevitabilmente compresente in questa parola e nel personaggio ch'essa denota.
Si passa in rassegna la tradizione orale e la letteratura del Piemonte (tanto in lingua piemontese che in lingua italiana) per, inventariare i diversi significati che possono assumere questa parola e questo personaggio. Si perviene a dimostrare che la dicotomia di valori e di poteri contrastanti insiti nella religione dei druidi rimane ad un dipresso la stessa nel personaggio delta masca. Ci si puo imbattere in questo dualismo di valori opposti e antitetici anche in altri personaggi del folclore piemontese, strettamente connessi alta masca, quali il mascon, i1 setmin o anche in personaggi mitologici, come la faja, il faunet e il servan.
La somma di queste prove letterarie, folcloriche, archeologiche e filologiche avalla l'attribuzione di un carattere unico, non demoniaco, al personaggio della masca, che riannoda strettamente la letteratura e la tradizione orale del Piemonte alta religione dei druidi e al passato celtico, fornendo altresi scorci preziosi su uno dei capitoli piu oscuri del passato delle etnie europee.