Yugoslav Army's Memory Burns Bright Among Ex-Conscripts

More than 25 years since it was dissolved, the subject of the Yugoslav People's Army, JNA, still fascinates many of the people who served it, judging by the number of JNA-themed Facebook pages, websites, forums and blogs.

Despite the legacy of the bloody wars of the 1990s, in which the JNA played a leading part, many of the people who served the army remain interested in the "everyday life" of the army during their own times of service, Tomislav Pletenac, a cultural anthropologist from Zagreb University, told BIRN.

"On the one hand, people in the JNA were under a strong ideological pressure, on the other hand, this was a military institution, where the hierarchy between superiors and subordinates was very strong. This created a form of an internal solidarity among the conscripts," he said.

"This type of solidarity resembles the one in prisons ... people would count the days before they came out, while those soldiers who were considered 'snitches' were collectively punished by their peers," he noted.

All of this created a form of cohesion among the conscripts, Pletenac explained, especially because, in the later period, the army took in people as young as 18, "which meant that these persons weren't truly grown up".   

He said friendships made in the JNA had in many cases persisted over decades, not in homage to the old Yugoslav-era slogan of "Brotherhood and unity" - since "by the 1980s, hardly any of the conscripts believed in the ideology promoted by their superiors" - but more because of a solidarity forged by being "pulled out from everyday civilian life".

A number of different pages and groups on Facebook are dedicated to the JNA. While some are more nostalgic about the Yugoslav era than others, others focus on shots of...