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treatment‘ of Yugoslav past is in many cases a far more basic and notoriously neglected quest for
normalcy.
Figure 24 | Live footage of Tito on a visit, mejerchold‘s video.
In light of the great pre-1991 expectations, the post-socialist societies seem to be failing to reinstate,
for instance, social solidarity (inter-generational, inter-class) as a counterbalance to the
pressures of market economy. Moreover, the persistent subordination of the post-Yugoslav (and
indeed the former eastern bloc entirely) countries to the victorious ‗Democracy of the West‘
discourses further adds to re-evaluating of the Yugoslav past in the light of the so-called
purification from socialism or the annihilation of the problematic socialist past (which in many
cases entails the entire socialist past). The newly established elites readily adopted the role of selfsubordination:
by promoting the ‗redemption via democratisation‘ they took on themselves the
role of the intrinsically problematic and flawed and, because of its experience with socialism,
essentially handicapped actor in the Europeanising Europe. Moreover, as Tanja Petrović
maintains, ―The East Europeans themselves often treat socialism as something essentially non-
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