Capturing Facades in ‘Conflict-Time’: Structural Violence and the (Re)construction Vukovar's Churches

Abstract

The siege of Vukovar in 1991 set the precedent for the urban warfare which characterised the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. The destruction of urban religious heritage during the siege played a key role in ethnicising the conflict. Although the war is over, peace remains elusive—the city remains in ‘Conflict-time’ marked in part by competitive (re)construction; strategic neglect; and ‘neutralisation’ of religious architecture and sacral heritage. This article questions why Vukovar's churches became and remain flashpoints of contestation and seeks to understand their spatial and visual impact on this contested city.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my colleagues at Queen's who hosted the ‘Religion, Violence and Cities conference’ at which a version of this paper was first presented and to Dr. Chris Chippindale for his guidance. Finally, I would like to thank the people of Vukovar for their time, and Željko Troha, Goran Vodička, Zoran Mandić, Nikolina Beljo and others for their assistance with translation.

Funding

This study was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council for providing funding for the Conflict in Cities project (RES-060- 25-0015). In addition, I am grateful to the Cambridge European Trust, the Wingate Foundation, and Peterhouse for supporting my fieldwork.

Notes

1. This phrase was coined during the Second World War by the Partisan Movement. After the war it became designated as the official policy on inter-ethnic relations in the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. The slogan appeared in many schools, factories and public venues. It was also the name for the Ljubljana-Zagreb, Belgrade-Skopje highway.

2. Literally translated as: ‘Rise Up’. A Croatian fascist anti-Yugoslav separatist movement founded in 1929. The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Croatian ultra-nationalism and Catholic fundamentalism. The Ustaše aimed to create a Greater Croatian state including parts of modern Bosnia. From 1941–1945, its leader Ante Pavelić was the head of the Nazi puppet regime of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH).

3. Majski (1985, p. 12) claims that the total death toll in the city during the Second World War was 3750.

4. Interviews with religious figures, political figures and local residents in Vukovar were undertaken from 2006–2010 as part of my PhD research. Subsequent interviews have been conducted under the auspices of the Conflict in Cities and the Contested State project funded by the ESRC.

5. The numbers of Serbs and Jews who perished at this site is unknown. The figures displayed that the Donja Gradina Memorial Site on what is today the Republika Srpska (Bosnian and Herzegovina) side of the former Jasenovac Camp claim that 700,000 victims perished here (500,000 of whom were Serbs) (2013). However, the Croatian side displays a total number of 81,998 known named victims (46,685 of whom were Serb).

6. To complicate matters even further, churches in Slavonia and Vojvodina are unique in that both historic Orthodox and Catholic churches tend to be built in a Maria Theresa provincial baroque style.