TITO RETURNS TO SKOPJE : THE FORGOTTEN MEMORIES OF JOSIP BROZ

Abstract

After the breakup of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, J.B. Tito’s self and legacy were by turns remembered and forgotten to a greater or lesser extent, depending on certain actions taken by the political elites. In this text I am trying to examine this issue by using examples of the actions taken by state authorities and the political centers of power, like in this case the relationship towards the artistic portrait of J.B. Tito by D. Kondovski, Tito’s message after the 1963 earthquake in Skopje, which was written on the wall of the then-railway station which is now the Skopje Museum, as well as other cultural monuments and institutions that are associated with the memory of J.B. Tito. In the periods after the independence of the Republic of Macedonia, when VMRO-DPMNE was in power, we can see a tendency for removing or concealing the artwork representing J.B. Tito in the museum depots in order to ‘expunge’ or cleanse the Macedonian collective memory of Tito’s legacy. On the other hand, the initiatives that appear on the internet and in the public media in the periods when VMRO-DPMNE is not in power, especially after 2017, strive to restore J.B. Tito's message on the Museum's wall. The architects of the initiatives believe that J.B. Tito's memory will help reestablish the idea of Skopje as a city of solidarity, because in their eyes, “simply put, any healthy society nourishes such concepts.”