Utopia of the Uniform: Affective Afterlives of the Yugoslav People's Army by Tanja Petrović

22 December was Yugoslav People's Army Day.

As someone whose father had served in the Yugoslav People's Army (Jugoslovenska narodna armija [JNA] in Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian), and having grown up hearing so many transformative and life-changing stories associated with the (up to) 2 years' service in the JNA not just from my father but also from whole generations of men (and second-hand from women and children) whose formative years were spent in socialist Yugoslavia, when I found out that there was going to be a book launch at the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (SSEES) at University College London (UCL) covering the afterlives of those who served in the JNA, I simply had no choice but to go. As I was to find out, I wasn't the only person who was so swayed by these stories built from an experience shared by millions of Yugoslav men.

Here are some personal points related to the book and the JNA in general.

• Pilgrimages to Karlovac. My father served in the JNA for two years in the late 1960s in the Croatian city of Karlovac. My father's main story is that the JNA taught him to eat. He'd been a picky eater, so when when he was served food on his first two days at the base, he ate nothing. But on the third day he ate everything as he was too hungry. Pilgrimage was a subject in the book, as with the example of the former JNA recruit who took his French wife to Žabljak in Montenegro, the place where he served. When I mentioned the Karlovac pilgrimages (I've been three times!) at the book launch, panelist Professor Elena Stavreska had noted how the places where our fathers, brothers, cousins served have formed our personal family geography, gaining mythical status. Everyone present then before asking a question or comment would first mention the place(s) that their male ancestors (or themselves) had served in the JNA.
• By the way, the base in Karlovac no longer exists. The last time I was there was in November 2017, the barracks were unguarded and wide open to the elements in preparation for their complete demolition. Here's a picture then of what was left standing at the base.

• My father served at the same base as the author's father as well as famous Slovenian philosopher and commentator Slavoj Žižek, though not at the same time.
• "A gde si služio?" The question still asked among Yugoslav men of a certain age when meeting. This would be one of the few times I'd hear my father speak in (good) Serbo-Croatian. And they all seemed to know the nicknames of every guy who was serving at the time in a 50 km radius from their base. There was also the time I witnessed a Serb and a Croat bond on a bus in Bosnia in 2012 after crossing the border (the moan everyone gave when the conductor asked to get their passports ready) – they served in the JNA at same area at the same time.
• My father's cousin served in Kosovo in the early 1980s at a time of great unrest. He did not enjoy his time in the JNA because of this, resulting in much delayed PTSD that now has manifested as chronic depression. This contravenes the generally held conception of the time spent in the JNA being one of the most cherished eras in participants' lives.
• Some JNA stories are the stuff of legend. Then there's the celebrity element, such as when Yugoslav pop megastar Zdravko Čolić finally did his JNA service (think Elvis Presley and his military service days) or how in 1996 Šaban Šaulić recorded two modern versions of Macedonian folk songs in homage for the time he served in the JNA in Bitola, Macedonia.

• Great points in the book about how the very centralised, regimented and monolingual, and therefore monocultural, structure and nature of the JNA were the antithesis of those of the WW2 partisan brigades from which the JNA originated and based its pre-1990 legitimacy as a protector of the Yugoslav people, as well as the multilingual, self-managed, non-aligned, multicultural nature and structure of socialist Yugoslavia as a whole. However, the primarily effective role of the JNA was as it was commonly referred to, being "the school of Brotherhood and Unity" (Yugoslavia's motto).
• The parallels abound with military service in other countries. I've heard similar experiences with men from the former USSR, such as a taxi driver I met in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in far eastern Russia, who even though was originally from cosmopolitan Kyiv, Ukraine, he enjoyed his first taste of freedom away from his family in this isolated place and chose to remain there. The biggest parallels are with Israel, where despite the small size of the country and due to grounding policies that saw enforced segregation, its various social groups (secular Ashkenazis, Mizrachis, Russian-speakers, Haredim, Druze, etc.) don't interact as much as it would seem. So the IDF forces the recruits together, much like how the JNA deliberately mixed its recruits from all parts of the federation and of different socio-economic and ethnic groups. It's no surprise that the IDF is also called "the melting pot of Israel".
• Coming from that parallel is the aftermath of the 1990s war and the changed perception of the JNA from an element of the people to one against the people and its involvement in the atrocities of the 1990s. By the time the JNA was practically sending boys to be killed in the meat grinder that was the front line in Srem in 1991 (much like they did in the needless Battle of Srem in early 1945), rather than send their boys in celebrations, everyone was involved in hiding them, as was the case with one of my first cousins. Now we have former recruits coming to terms that the Army they once served in and believed to be a side of good is a side of war crimes – something some Israelis are now facing with their legacy of serving in the IDF.

Lastly, here's the red star badge that was on my father's Titovka (Partisan hat) as part of his JNA dress uniform. It stares at me next to my workspace.

Utopia of the Uniform: Affective Afterlives of the Yugoslav People's Army is available for purchase from Duke University Press.