It was in the summer of 2020 when the plan of Belgrade city authorities to rename a number of streets was announced by Deputy Mayor of Belgrade Goran Vesić, who said that a majority of streets currently recalling places where ‘Serbia is not respected’ – especially locations in former Yugoslav republics – were set to be changed (Stojanovic 2020). Vesić declared that Belgrade should no longer name streets for ‘areas where everything reminiscent of Serbianness has been erased’ (Stojanovic 2020; Danas 2020). Efforts such as this to obliterate traces and legacies of the socialist Yugoslav past, undertaken over the last three decades across the region, are clearly still ongoing; and changes to street names and urban spaces represent just one manifestation of this process. Against this trend, however, research has shown that many who trace their roots in Yugoslavia engage with that socialist past not just in the context of how they or their families used to live, but rather, how they want to live now (Balunovic 2020). For some, looking backwards, Yugoslavia remains the symbol of a ‘normal’ life (Spasić 2012); but for some, looking forwards, it is a symbol of the potential for a better future (Palmberger 2008).

While the focus of this book is on the analysis of memories from the decade after Yugoslavia dissolved, this analysis inevitably addresses processes of continuation and change related to engagement with and the existence of the socialist Yugoslav past as a political phenomenon.