Unwanted Cultural Heritage of the Republics of the Former Yugoslavia

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the systematic destruction and the current state of monuments to the national liberation struggle in the former Yugoslavia. The aim of the paper is to point out the fact that after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in 1990, in all republics, to a greater or lesser extent, deliberate neglect or targeted destruction of cultural heritage created in the period between 1945–1990. Monuments erected to commemorate the anti-fascist struggle in the Second World War are desecrated, neglected or demolished. For the purposes of this article, the secondary data sources have been used, including information available on the Internet, daily newspapers, as well as in the relevant literature on. The method of qualitative data analysis was applied. In addition to the above, the paper will use relevant examples on the topic of destruction of monuments. The politicization, revision and mythologizing of history in our time is particularly expressed in the way we treat cultural heritage. There are positive examples of restoration of demolished monuments from that period, but for now it is still not enough.