Josip Broz Tito, Imagination and Post-Yugoslav Quest for a Miracle
Josip Broz Tito, Imagination and Post-Yugoslav Quest for a Miracle

Summary/Abstract: After the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), in Serbia and other post-Yugoslav societies emerged а strong and obsessive need for the research of the biography of Yugoslav lifelong president Josip Broz Tito. Numerous articles, books, biographies and essays about Tito, lost their previous ideological and political significance, while discourse on his personality broke beyond the boundaries of political history. Contemporary discursive, practical and ritual use of Josip Broz Tito’s ‘real’ biography is shifting between a mere historical memory and a critique of daily and political life during the transition. Enriched with ‘mystery’, narratives about Yugoslav past become a compensation for a sense of dissatisfaction, distrust in institutions and a general sense of failure in numerous political, economic and cultural plans of post-Yugoslav societies. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the quest for a miracle in contemporary Serbian yellow press by identifying three key figures (archetypes) that initiate a discourse of Yugoslav hero, father and trickster.After the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), in Serbia and other post-Yugoslav societies emerged а strong and obsessive need for the research of the biography of Yugoslav lifelong president Josip Broz Tito. Numerous articles, books, biographies and essays about Tito, lost their previous ideological and political significance, while discourse on his personality broke beyond the boundaries of political history. Contemporary discursive, practical and ritual use of Josip Broz Tito’s ‘real’ biography is shifting between a mere historical memory and a critique of daily and political life during the transition. Enriched with ‘mystery’, narratives about Yugoslav past become a compensation for a sense of dissatisfaction, distrust in institutions and a general sense of failure in numerous political, economic and cultural plans of post-Yugoslav societies. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the quest for a miracle in contemporary Serbian yellow press by identifying three key figures (archetypes) that initiate a discourse of Yugoslav hero, father and trickster.

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