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In using the concept historical culture rather than history writing,, or simply historiography, I wish to emphasize two aspects that are not necessarily included in these terms: firstly, that history is represented and drawn upon in a multitude of forms and fields in society. Historical culture is a broad concept, which includes historiography as well as the many other ways of communicating history. Secondly, that historical culture also denotes the culture of the academic and educational fields of history and the professional collective of historians. In this sense a historical culture is characterised by certain ways of researching and communicating history, and influenced by particular relationships to society.⁸

Historical culture includes texts, artefacts, and social practices in which history is communicated. Important elements of historical culture are popular representations of history such as schoolbooks and trivial history, as well as political speeches, commemoration ceremonies, monuments, and various art products.⁹ History may be more or less subject to ideological dictates or political control. Often historical culture is connected to nation or state, but the term can also be used in plural to emphasise that smaller cultures, subcultures and countercultures exist within a wider historical culture. Inevitably, I shall have to speak of several historical subcultures in order to distinguish between, for example, academic historical culture and more popular historical cultures, or between Yugoslav and national or republican historical cultures.

In the case of post-Second World War Yugoslavia, the writing and teaching of history were subjects of concern for nearly all the shifting regimes, and often the communication of history was subordinated to and penetrated by politics. Since history was a highly institutionalised and hierarchical field, academic and educational history writing played a central role in Yugoslav historical culture. But history was also very present in media, for example in feuilletons in news magazines, and fictional representations of history in literature and film were common.

Historical culture shapes and reflects historical consciousness.¹⁰ The latter can be understood as a mental, subjective aspect of historical culture, in which history is employed by the individual as a source for orientation in time and for perception of the surrounding world and our expectations of it. At a more practical level, it is a widespread idea that history is the basis for general knowledge and predictions of future developments, as when A.L. Rowse suggested in 1946 that history is the best source for evaluating developments in the world of international politics.¹¹

At the core of historical culture lie the communicational processes through which history is presented and represented. Accordingly, these processes are the objects of analysis in this book. In this it differs from most studies of collective, collected or public memory, the focus of which are, obviously, on representations of memory rather than history.¹² Nevertheless, approaches and methods of memory studies are often very like those used in studies of historical culture, and insights from memory studies can contribute to the understanding of historical culture. This is not least relevant in the present case, since the events included in the historical themes that are under question here occured within the living memory of many Yugoslavs in the period under investigation.

Indeed, most of the history about the Second World War was, for several decades, written as a more or less official memory by persons who had participated on the winning side of that war. But outside official historiography other memories existed, the articulation of which would later challenge hitherto accepted representations of the war and the events that took place in its shadow. In this way, different memories entered historical culture, supplying bases for historical counter-cultures, or maybe even for a historical cultural transformation.¹³ Memories were regarded as more authentic and legitimate representations of the past than official historiography.¹⁴ In general, however, I will deal with the issue of memory mainly as a communication of history and hence as an element of historical culture.

Historical culture is often intimately connected to ideology – among the most obvious examples are the relations between historiography and national states, or between historiography and communism. In these cases history has been used to make certain political constructions appear natural and legitimate. However, use of history can take many other forms.

Defined broadly by Klas-Göran Karlsson, use of history is “… when aspects of a historical culture are activated in a communicative process in order for certain groups to satisfy certain needs or look after certain interests.”¹⁵ In Karlsson’s terminology use of history need definitely not be abuse or misuse. Rather, his approach emphasises the functions that articulations of history have in society. Scholarly historiography, according to Karlsson, is just one way of using history, aimed at explaining the past on its own premises according to causal models, sources and established knowledge. He proposes a handful of other ways of using history, which include: general ‘existential’ uses, reflecting the common human need to remember and feel rooted in time and space; ‘moral’ uses, related to the idea that something should be remembered, and often based on indignation because of missing or insufficient attention to these particular elements of history; ‘political’ uses, characterised by metaphoric, comparative and symbolic representations of history, and often directed at or directly addressing later or contemporary issues; and ‘ideological’ uses that situate the past within particular contexts of meaning and select historical elements in order to convince, rationalise and legitimise certain concepts. A special way of using history, dubbed ‘non-use’, is the deliberate and ideological endeavours to ignore or downplay certain elements of history.¹⁶

The different ways of using history are most often overlapping. Works of academic history may well include existential and ideological uses of history. Nevertheless, the differentiation of uses of history according to function, points to some of the ways in which historical culture interacts with and influences society. The intentions behind these uses may be countless, as may the consequences, many of which are surely unintended.

The concepts of historical culture and use of history are closely related, yet functionally distinct. Historical culture denotes the communication of history in general. Use of history refers to the aims and the more or less intentional functions of the communication of history.