Conclusion: Sarajevo and One Illusion in August

Abstract

In Chapter 2, ‘Once upon a time in Sarajevo’, I began my narrative of Sarajevo and Yugoslavia by echoing a statement by cultural anthropologist Fran Markowitz (2011), who described pre-1990s Sarajevo as the most Yugoslav city in Yugoslavia. For Markowitz, pre-war Sarajevo was the ideal mirror image of a state known for its cultural, religious and ethnic diversity. The city of Sarajevo—in which Yugoslav multiplicity was compacted in a dense urban environment—was the classic example of a settlement in which almost all human beings, regardless of their ethnic and religious backgrounds, could live in harmony. This was true multiculturalism. Sarajevans called it cohabitation, or ‘common life’, as Markowitz (2010, p. 29) credibly translates the South Slavic phrase ‘zajednicki zivot’.