A Spirit in the Service of the Nation

Abstract

The thesis of the article is that slivovitz or plum brandy (slivovka in Slovene) played an important role in the reproduction of Yugoslav banal nationalism. It reminded Yugoslavs on a daily basis that they were members of a particular national community. The article is based on an analysis of texts containing the word slivovka that appeared in Delo, Slovenia’s newspaper of record, in the period 1959–91 and Delo’s predecessors Slovenski poročevalec and Ljudska pravica in the period 1945–59.

Slivovitz and Everyday Nationalism: The Analysis of Slovene Newspapers in Interwar Yugoslavia

“…As I have already shown elsewhere (Mlekuž 2020), slivovitz unquestionably occupied a visible place in the process of formation of the Yugoslav nation during the socialist period – it was the most convenient “potatory,” “liquid” signifier (and indeed a very handy signifier in general) of the Yugoslav state, the Yugoslav nation, and other Yugoslav-related elements. This plum spirit, commercially and privately produced in Eastern and Central Europe ( šljivovica or šljiva in Serbian and Croatian; slivovka in Slovene; slivova in Macedonian), had, in the words of Benedict Anderson (2006, 145), “an aura of fatality” about it, as far as the Yugoslav nation was concerned.…”

“…As Billig (1995, 78) rightly points out, the keywords of banal nationalism are usually the smallest ones: “our,” “this,” “here” – words that cannot be clearly understood without an additional semantic background. As I have shown for the period of socialist Yugoslavia (Mlekuž 2020), the possessive “our” is probably the adjective most frequently attached to slivovitz. This central adjective of banal nationalism appears more rarely in connection with slivovitz during the period of the first Yugoslavia, but can nevertheless still be found, for example in a “discussion” about hangovers: “He offered me a swig of it, assuring me that I would be completely recovered within an hour at most.…”

“…From the top down – i.e., prompted above all by the nation’s institutions – or from the bottom up – i.e., passing from everyday life into the official, institutional sphere? How did it become, as it was frequently described in the socialist period, the “national drink” (Mlekuž 2020)?…”