War Song in a Service of Ideology. Comparative Essay on the Example of Yugoslav and Ukrainian-Russian Conflicts

Abstract

Both the official army music and combatants’ informal folk songs have always played a noteworthy role in their respective societies regardless whether this music was created as means of actual propaganda or subsequently as part of reinvented commemorative culture. This article focuses on comparison of the two most recent European armed conflicts, namely 1) the ethnically motivated conflicts in former Yugoslavia between 1992 and 1995/1999, and 2) the interethnic violence followed by Russian military intervention in Ukraine in 2014; the Russo-Ukrainian conflict has not yet been settled and still threatens to escalate. Building on wide range of primary and secondary sources (mainly of Western, Central and South-Eastern European provenience) that has been ignored by a regional scholarship, the paper seeks to provide a contextual background behind the war songs and to compare their prevalent patterns and typology of their inner dynamics and transformations. This paper will not inquire into international, economical or military implications of the aforementioned armed conflicts; it will focus specifically on textual and contextual analysis of those songs. Study brings completely new insights on phenomenon of war songs in East European and former Yugoslav environment and brings much-needed light on the intertwined social, cultural and identity relations that can be established between the former Yugoslav and post-Soviet countries. This topic is very important since state doctrine, national narratives, historical memory affect current and also future development of both regions what is clearly visible on elaborated material.