History, Stories, and Selves

Abstract

After providing a concise history of the idea of and the sociopolitical context in which the Yugoslav People’s Army, based on mandatory military service, existed in socialist Yugoslavia, the chapter outlines the main narrative threads about military service present in everyday conversations and popular culture. These are about the friendships men made in the army; about what they learned or gained from military service; and about the skills and strategies they employed in engaging with the military institution. Highlighting the modalities in which these narratives emerge and circulate in the aftermath of Yugoslavia, the chapter focuses particularly on the tension between the ubiquity of army stories in the post-Yugoslav space and the difficulty of incorporating them into the biographies of actual men. This tension results in silence, hesitation, and suspension, forms through which the feelings related to military service work as a force recalling a lost future in the aftermath of political catastrophe.