
What Are Spomeniks? - dr_dshiv
https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/what-are-spomeniks
======
nathancahill
Oh wow. Currently in Bosnia & Hercegovina, did not expect to see this on the
front page of HN. There are so many here. They are impressive to see in
person. The one in Sarajevo is a monument to WWII soldiers:
[https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/sarajevo](https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/sarajevo)

Also, Stećak, the medieval version: [https://bazerdzan.ba/blogs/blog/stecak-
the-true-bosnian-trea...](https://bazerdzan.ba/blogs/blog/stecak-the-true-
bosnian-treasure)

~~~
amatecha
I was there as well a couple years ago and purposely sought a few out just to
see them in person! Very imposing and interesting monuments indeed. Memorable,
too.

~~~
res0nat0r
There is a great book out with lots of pictures of these I'd recommend:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0995745536/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0995745536/)

Also for trivia, there is a Spomenik in the new Warzone mode in Call of Duty.

[https://www.callofduty.com/warzone/strategyguide/tac-map-
atl...](https://www.callofduty.com/warzone/strategyguide/tac-map-
atlas/verdansk-north/Zone-1B-Bloc-23-Jarvdinsk-Spomenik-Riverside)

------
tomca32
Funny to see those are referred to in English as "Spomeniks". After living in
the US for a decade, looking at this definitely brings an incredible feeling
of nostalgia.

Damn it. I want to go back in time, and back to Sarajevo.

~~~
CodeMage
Although it's a very unpopular sentiment these days, I also want to go back in
time to Old Yugoslavia. I still remember reading "Moj Mikro" and "Svet
Kompjutera", attending JUDEF in Šibenik and making friends with kids from all
over Yugoslavia. My generation, at least, believed in brotherhood and unity.

~~~
toomanybeersies
I'm not so sure how unpopular it is.

I have a friend who steadfastly still calls himself Yugoslavian, rather than
Macedonian.

Haven't really talked to him about why, and that's a sample size of 1, but
there's others out there who at least look back fondly on Yugoslavia.

~~~
fraktl
Croatian here, although I was a child when Yugoslavia fell apart (born in
1982.), I remember many details about life back then - and in certain aspects,
it was better.

I had no notion of Croatians, Serbians, Slovenians, Macedonians.. we were all
Yugoslavian, with slightly different accents. To this day, I've friends in all
ex-yugoslavian countries and the feeling I get about them is that of
brotherhood, not friendship.

We could go to seaside at any point for free or enjoy national parks.

Nowadays, it's cheaper if I fly to Thailand for 2 weeks. It costs me less than
a week at my own country's seaside. National parks are overcrowded and
deteriorating, and rightist-nationalism ruins the interaction for people like
us - who don't hate and just want to get along and enjoy life together.

There was plenty of food and I particularly remember comics, especially
characters called Raja, Gaja and Vlaja :)

The only thing I feel sorry for is the animosity that was stirred up because
of selfish reasons, the feeling of brotherhood and ability to enjoy the land's
natural beauties was something special. I hope that one day we can have all
the good back without the negatives.

Stay safe brothers and take care!

------
franga2000
HN is the last place I expected to find this, but thanks! The anglicised use
of the word "spomenik" really caught me off guard (I'm from Slovenia), but it
makes enough sense after reading the article. I'll definitely try to check
this map whenever I travel around the region - the design and sheer scale of
some of these was always fascinating to me and I'd love to see more if I
happen to be around.

~~~
hari_seldon_
Is it Anglicized, or is it just using that Latin alphabet that some parts of
former Yugoslavia employ (including Serbia and Croatia)?

~~~
franga2000
It's anglicised as it's using the English pluralization. In Slovene, the
plural of "spomenik" is "spomeniki", here it's "spomeniks". It's even
explained at the bottom of the post.

------
dr_dshiv
Straight to the photos. They are beautiful!
[https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/photo-
directory](https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/photo-directory)

~~~
afc
Thank you for taking the time to post the link. I would have moved on and
missed them otherwise. They are truly beautiful indeed!

------
aorth
They are so strange and lovely. A symbol of another era. There are many of
these spomeniks / pametniks in Bulgaria too, though it seems Yugoslavia really
took it to the next level!

------
jurgenwerk
I fell in love with one particular spomenik so hard I decided to make a small
replica from concrete: [https://www.etsy.com/listing/728310082/concrete-
brutalist-ww...](https://www.etsy.com/listing/728310082/concrete-brutalist-
ww2-yugoslavia)

------
igrekel
See, without caring about its looks, I like this website. It gives some
context, some explanations and helps me to know why I should care about this.
It also provides some nice content to explore, some pointers to find out more.
I just love it and I wish there were more websites with content like this.

------
uka
Bosnian here. I would never call spomeniks spomeniks in English. I would call
them monuments and spomenik in Bosnian. Besides nostalgia that they cause in
yugo nostalgic people - I don't see how they are special in any way

------
ivanhoe
To really understand many of these sculptures/monuments it's important to
familiarize with the background stories of events that they were built to mark
- mostly WWII battles and places of horrible pogroms.

A few links to add more context to some of the best known monuments:

Jasenovac
[https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%2063...](https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206358.pdf)
,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasenovac_concentration_camp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasenovac_concentration_camp)

Bubanj Memorial park
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubanj_Memorial_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubanj_Memorial_Park)

Battle of Sutjeska (aka Tjentište)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Black](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Black)

------
Traxus
Is there not a perfectly fine English translation, "Memorial"?

~~~
floatingatoll
No.

The locally-used name here, "Spomeniks", more precisely groups and identifies
these structures than the foreign word "Memorial" would. Calling them by
another name would make it difficult to communicate usefully about them, while
simultaneously stripping away a piece of their cultural heritage: their
native-language name.

Additionally, as the article notes, Spomenik translates to Monument in
english, not Memorial. They may be both "Spomeniks" and "Monuments", but the
more precise name "Spomeniks" uniquely refers to them, while the less precise
name "Monuments" refers to millions of other objects not associated with this
Yugoslavian cultural effort as well. Prior argument applies.

For example, we call "Stonehenge" and "Moai" by their locally-used names. They
may also be "Monuments", but they have more precise names available, which are
widely used.

~~~
twic
"Spomenik" is literally the word for "monument", right? Here's an article from
1849 mentioning building a Napoleonic monument, calling it a spomenik:

[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rz8_AQAAMAAJ&dq=%22spome...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rz8_AQAAMAAJ&dq=%22spomenik%22&pg=RA3-PA96#v=onepage&q=%22spomenik%22&f=false)

If you mentioned to another former Yugoslavian that you had drawn a picture of
a spomenik, would it be implicitly clear that you meant one of these postwar
memorials, or could they reasonably assume you meant, say, the statue of Bruce
Lee in Mostar?

~~~
Sandman
Croatian here. You're correct, if you only said the word "spomenik" to anybody
from former Yugoslavia, they wouldn't be able to distinguish whether you're
talking about precisely those monuments built after WW2, or any other monument
built before or after the communist era. Or even, say, Washington monument (In
Croatian it's literally called "Washingtonov spomenik"). The word "spomenik"
means "a monument" and just that. I was actually surprised to learn that in
English the word refers to monuments from a particular location and particular
era.

~~~
TomMarius
Well, there are other examples - to me, Bohemians are my nation, to English
people, "bohemian" describes behavior that used to be seen here (and way
overblown in catholic-driven news sources at the time - Prague people were
protestant) during the Middle Ages

------
petercooper
There are lots of monuments of this nature across eastern Europe and the old
Soviet republics. I watch a popular YouTube channel where a British guy
seemingly spends most of his time traveling around old Soviet places and
visits lots of these monoliths (also bus stations, railway stations, anything
that acted as a sort of 'monument' in Soviet times):
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqWdYjn21PdH_SfBbtj7Y...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqWdYjn21PdH_SfBbtj7YBrpbTP-0BMa6)

I prefer the big monuments like spomeniks myself, but mosaics seem to be a
particularly popular form of monument too, especially in Ukraine:
[https://www.kathmanduandbeyond.com/photos-soviet-mosaics-
for...](https://www.kathmanduandbeyond.com/photos-soviet-mosaics-former-ussr/)

------
b4d
Funny trivia guitarists Vlatko Stefanovski and Miroslav Tadic recorded the
album Krushevo in one of the monuments. Check it out, album and the monument,
both are great!

I am trying to visit them all through time...

------
dotemacs
Just like you have "chai" tea, or "naan" bread, so you now have "spomeniks"
monuments.

What you have to remember is that these structures were erected to commemorate
sacrifices that communists wished to be seen, but from a skewed, one sided
perspective.

For example, during the WWII, in the whole of Germany occupied Europe, all the
concentration camps were opened at the behest of of Germany. But not so in the
Independent State of Croatia, which covered most of the territory of Croatia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, parts of Serbia and Slovenia. The monuments
commemorating the camps are done in such a generic manner that you wouldn't
know the victims from the perpetrators.

And while in Germany you have sites like Yolocaust[1] which ridicule those who
don't know what the Holocaust was. You have companies like Valley Eyewear
making their marketing campaigns using the Holocaust monuments.

1\. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-
europe-38675835](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38675835) 2\.
[https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/australian-
sunglas...](https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/australian-sunglasses-
firm-deletes-ads-shot-at-croatian-holocaust-site-20180704-p4zpih.html)

------
aphextron
It's almost impossible to comprehend now that the communist revolution was, at
one time, a highly progressive Utopian fantasy materialized. That for a short
time it inspired works of art like this and was a source of optimism for
millions of people before descending into the darkness of the cold war. It
gives serious pause to the alluring ideal of socialism in this country.
Everyone always thinks that their time will be different and that they have it
all figured out. But the insidious side of human nature that always thwarts
such ideals and reduces to authoritarianism is a constantly insurmountable
baseline of what we are.

~~~
tomca32
Keep in mind that Yugoslavia was a completely different thing during the cold
war. It was a communist country that was not part of the Comintern, or the
Warsaw pact. It, in fact, had open borders with the west.

This caused it to be in a much better place economically than the rest of the
communist world.

There's an old nostalgic american tourist piece about it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRnCnO1Y2c&has_verified=1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRnCnO1Y2c&has_verified=1)

~~~
arethuza
I travelled from Italy into Yugoslavia in 1988 by train and I wouldn't exactly
describe it as a pleasant experience - train stopped in the middle of nowhere
and was surrounded by soldiers and everyone had to endure a _very_ thorough
check of our travel documents. Travelling from Yugoslavia into Hungary on the
same trip I don't think the train even stopped.

~~~
tomca32
Interesting. I have no way of knowing, but my guess would be that your
experience is a consequence of Yugoslavia starting to break apart. All out war
started just 2 years after your trip.

A big part of Yugoslavia's budget came from tourism, so I don't think your
experience was common in the years before the breakup.

Thanks for sharing though. I love hearing stories from Yugo history.

