Bila jednom jedna zemlja [Once Upon a Time there was a Country]

Abstract

attempt to understand from a personal perspective the breakup of Yugoslavia and the ensuing 1990s interethnic wars, as seen from the neighbouring Romanian communities. The author spent his childhood and adolescence in a small village in Banat, a Romanian region at the border with Yugoslavia, during the Communist regime of Ceaușescu. The neighbouring country and its culture, namely Titoʼs Yugoslavia, were to him, as well as to most of his compatriots, an enlightened alternative to Romaniaʼs totalitarianism – an open society, a bridge towards Western Europe. While the 1980s meant for the Romanian people extreme poverty, darkness and terror, this particular region harboured networks of small trade with food, clothes, sweets and all the bare necessities of life, all brought from Yugoslavia and ensuring a means of survival which to the rest of Romanians looked like prosperity. Also, the Yugoslavian television and radio stations became the major source of information and entertainment – all these creating a paradisiac image of a Communist and yet open country: Titoʼs Yugoslavia. As a result, a peculiar form of attachment to Yugoslavia grew within people here, parallel to the disenchantment with and estrangement from Ceaușescuʼs regime.

The breakup of Yugoslavia represented a shock, while the wars that followed horrified the entire European continent. The shock and horror were even stronger in Banat, as the interethnic violences developing next to them destroyed the former image of the adjacent paradise. Bila jednom jedna zemlja is a reflection, a recollection and an evaluation of those times and reactions, and also an attempt to explain – both rationally and emotionally – the persistence of ”Yugo-nostalgia“, and the avenues to, eventually, overcome this.