The Center for Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies (CSEEES) is pleased to welcome Ivan Smiljanić of the Institute of Contemporary History in Slovenia as a Slovene Research Initiative Faculty Exchange Fellow in September 2024. Smiljanić, an avid fan of tea over coffee, discussed the topics of Slovenia and public memory with CSEEES autumn 2024 intern Jo Baldwin. 

The general population of the U.S. doesn’t know much about Slovenia, so Smiljanić allowed us to step into his home country. “Pretty much whatever outdoor activity you're into, Slovenia has something to offer. Its geography is diverse, ranging from the Alps to the sea and from the Karst to flat regions in the east. You can go skiing, canoeing, surfing, skydiving, mountaineering, you name it.” He also advises to be careful if you go to the mountains, “there's a lot of foreigners who want to conquer [the] highest peaks in flip flops!”

When looking at the Slovenian language, Smiljanić shared his favorite expression, “Did you comb yourself with a firecracker?” (si se počesal s petardo?) if a person shows up with messy hair. This playful expression is just one example of how language encapsulates the unique cultural humor and idiosyncrasies of a region, and it highlights the ways in which everyday phrases can become ingrained in public memory, shaping how communities perceive and remember their shared experiences.

Smiljanić, an expert in public memory and monuments, shared that public memory is “the shared experience of the past on a wider societal level. Society decides what it'll remember and what will be forgotten.” Monuments can often share only a fraction of the story, and there is often difficulty sharing several experiences and perspectives. 

Smiljanić says that this is an important thing to keep in mind when researching monuments and that “we can't give a completely unbiased version of anything in history, and monuments are guilty of that too.” At the end of the day, all historians can do is try to “present a picture that [a historian] feels is the most honest and objective he can offer. That's the most we can do, really.”

An important lesson to learn when studying monuments is that “monuments stay the same while time moves on and things change. Suddenly they promote ideals that have become obsolete, unwanted, uncomfortable or even deemed dangerous. It must be decided what we do with them – do we let them be, add additional explanation to them, put them in a museum, destroy them?”

An example from his research is on spomeniks which is “a name that has become popular online in the last decade and a half as the common name for all the unusually shaped modernist Yugoslav partisan monuments.” 

Smiljanić noted that, “While this means that more of Western academia is researching this topic and offers new insight, it also means that these monuments get more visitors who often don't see them as anything other than exotic, alien shapes void of any meaning, so they can be their playground for whatever reason they want. One of the most egregious cases was an Australian company using the monument at the Jasenovac extermination camp as an aesthetic background for a sunglasses ad. In order to problematize such appropriations, knowledge about the history and meaning of these monuments is needed, so that's why part of my research is dedicated to that topic.”

Smiljanić’s work doesn’t end at researching monuments, but extends to a different medium exploring historical memory. He co-authored a graphic novel about the fascist burning of the Slovenian National Hall in Trieste in 1920. Smiljanić combined his skills with his father, who works as a graphic novel author. Their skills married to create a project delving into “complex relations between Slovenians and Italians. After the First World War, the western third of what is today Slovenia became a part of Italy, so the Slovenians living there experienced the rise of fascism, its persecution, violence and suppression of the national identity.” 

He added that, “One of the first such events, even before Mussolini came to power, was the fascist burning of National Hall in Trieste, a city on the Adriatic coast in which an Italian majority and Slavic minority cohabited, showing that Slavs weren't welcome there anymore. In the graphic novel, we tried to show how everyone has their own truth about what happened, because newspaper reports from the Yugoslav and Italian press in the days after the burning were vastly different and blamed each other for the burning. The shadow of Italian fascism is still present in Italian-Slovenian relations, but we've moved on from the past traumas too and the renovated National Hall was given back to Trieste Slovenians in 2020. With the graphic novel we wanted to show the historical context surrounding the burning and to think critically of who writes – or in this case, draws – history and how.”

Smiljanić will be bringing his wealth of knowledge and experience to The Ohio State University on September 4, 2024 from 2:00-3:00 in Hagerty Hall Room 406. We invite you to join us for this enlightening discussion and a cup of coffee or tea.