Sculptors–soldiers’ monuments gracing Yugoslav People’s Army barracks in Slovenia

Abstract

The contribution presents monumental sculptures produced by artistically talented conscripts of the Yugoslav People’s Army while performing military service in barracks across Slovenia. In the past, armies would often engage sculptors in monument building, and the Yugoslav People’s Army, too, enabled its recruits to engage in artistic productivity during military service. On their own initiative or the initiative of their commanding officers, sculptors–soldiers, many coming from other Yugoslav republics, built statues honouring national heroes that gave names to respective barracks, e.g., Josip Broz Tito and prominent figures from earlier military history. In the fifteen years’ period between the end of the 1960s and the early 1980s, at least fifteen such monuments were erected in barracks across Slovenia. Based on newspaper articles, the contribution presents the backgrounds of erecting and unveiling individual monuments as well as their fate after 1991.