![]() ![]() Instead, Korchnak, like many Central Europeans of his time who were suffocating under particularly repressive and colourless Communist regimes, looked on Yugoslavia and its people as models for a brighter, more prosperous future, and revelled in its culture as an immediate way to make that feel real. In fact, I never even went to Yugoslavia when it existed,” he admits. “I have no connection, no family ties to Yugoslavia, which tends to surprise people. ![]() Born in 1976 in what is present-day Slovakia but growing up in what was then Czechoslovakia, Korchnak never visited socialist Yugoslavia. Korchnak himself exemplifies the complex, often incongruous nature of Yugo-nostalgia. Melania ( Podcast Episode #54) and the enduring appeal of the country’s first car, the Zastava 750 or Fića/Fićo ( Podcast Episode #57), the episodes cover a multitude of subjects in a reportage style, often positively though sometimes with an ironic detachment. Over 60 episodes (and counting), Korchnak explores the memory of a country that no longer exists, examining complex issues related to socialist Yugoslavia through multiple viewpoints from people who address different facets of whatever topic is being examined.įrom looking at Yugoslavia as an alternative political project (Podcast Episode #12) and examining Serbian historical revisionism (Podcast Episode #23), to comparing two of Yugoslavia’s most famous women in Jovanka vs. “I’ve always been drawn to the region as both an interested observer and a friend of the people,” Korchnak tells BIRN in a phone interview from his current home in Astoria, Oregon. “A passion project”, is how he describes it. With this project he filled his time doing something he loved – writing, design, production – about somewhere he idealised. Peter Korchnak, creator and host of “Remembering Yugoslavia”, launched the podcast in 2020 as COVID-19 began shutting everything down. Today, Yugo-nostalgia means different things to different people: according to Dr Milica Popovic, a political scientist specialising in Memory Studies, Political Sociology and Higher Education Studies at the Central European University in Vienna, it could be “counter-identity” to the prevailing narrative an alignment with the values of anti-fascism, solidarity and internationalism that were central to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia even a sort of “safe space for ambivalent emotions” or a simple longing for a return to better, happier times. When the phrase was coined in the early-1990s, it was as a term with largely negative connotations, used by nationalists to disparage those with a hankering for the federalist past. Yet, Yugo-nostalgia is a complex and ever-evolving phenomenon. Like many things from the Balkans, “Yugo-nostalgia” defies simple explanation.Ī combination of the words “Yugoslavia” and “nostalgia”, the term might at first appear to refer to little more than a harmless, wistful longing for socialist Yugoslavia by some people living in its former constituent states. ![]()
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