Enumerating monuments to the NOB in Bosnia & Herzegovina: A brief comment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62215/2744-2365.2024.5.5.141Keywords:
14,402 monuments, Institute for the Protection of Monuments of Culture, Smail Tihić, SBNORAbstract
This paper discusses the continued reference to a figure of “14,402” monuments and memorials to the People’s Liberation War (NOB) having been created across the territory of Yugoslavia by 1961 in relation three sources of figures on the numbers of monuments and memorials commemorating the People’s Liberation Struggle (NOB) on the territory of Bosnia & Herzegovina. The first is a survey undertaken between 1956 and 1958, the results of which were later reappraised and published along with those of other Yugoslav republics in 1961, where a total of 3,574 monuments and memorials were enumerated upon the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, contributing to the overall figure of 14,402. The second is a survey conducted between 1966 and 1973, with a summary of these results being published in 1981, showing a total of 2,049 monuments and memorials were documented. The third is data currently being compiled in the spomenicinob.info database. While at present this database holds details of slightly over 4,000 monuments and memorials to the NOB created during the period 1945–1992,[1] the data used here pertains exclusively to the two aforementioned surveys. Using this data, it is shown that the 3,574 figure from 1961 is a vast overstatement when discussing monuments created, and better describes places of memory than tangible monuments. Additionally, it is shown that, while the figure of 2,049 published in 1981 is generally supported by field research in the present day, it is still not possible to consider this figure as ‘precise’ due to a number of factors, including accidental omissions, the overlooking of new memorials created during the seven-year period in which the survey was undertaken, and the destruction and replacement of memorials as a result of external factors.
The paper concludes that the figure of 14,402 monuments having been made across Yugoslavia by 1961, with “almost three monuments or cemeteries [being created] every day for sixteen years” oft repeated in the literature is a gross over-estimate when discussing ‘monument making’.
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