The traditional History Fest was held this year in digital format and in a somewhat shortened version due to the coronavirus pandemic, but it still offered a number of interesting contents. The organizer of this event, Husnija Kamberovic, told FENA news agency that two panel discussions and a doctoral workshop were the central events at the festival.
While historians from Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia spoke in a panel on Yugoslavia about different interpretations of the reasons and process of the country’s disintegration, political activists who led the process of political pluralization in Bosnia and Herzegovina testified about the political situation at the time and presented a series of hitherto unknown details about the then political scene.
In the doctoral workshop, Ph.D. students presented the results of their research, from which new interpretations of changes in the societies of Southeast Europe in late socialism could be learned: from the fate of the Turks in Bulgaria during the 1970s and 1980s, to completely new interpretations of the position of intellectuals of Yugoslavia in the era of socialism, on the foreign policy activity of the Alliance of War Veterans after the Second World War, privatization models in Yugoslavia, the role of the Catholic Church in conducting the referendum in Bosnia and Herzegovina and more, Fena news agency reports.
The History Fest program also discussed the role of historians in the public, the relationship between historiography and nationalism, as well as the state of historiography in post-Yugoslav countries, which, according to Prof. Kamberovic, makes this festival one of the largest gatherings of historians in this part of Europe.
