Collective Memory of International Women’s Day in Part of the Feminist Community in Croatia

The article examines the collective memory of International Women’s Day in part of the feminist community in Croatia. Having in mind the importance of social context and mnemonic communities for the (re)construction of memory, the development of women’s movements in Yugoslavia and Croatia is presented. Relying on Zerubavel’s concept of collective memory and qualitative analysis of interviews, this paper discusses the origins of International Women’s Day, its historical horizon, the memory of commemorations in socialist and post-socialist periods, and the mnemonic battles arising around them. Data necessary to describe these elements of collective memory of International Women’s Day was collected through semi-structured interviews conducted with several members of the feminist community in Croatia. Even though today’s feminist community in Croatia, to a certain point, consolidates the legacies of both bourgeois feminism and proletarian feminism, collective memory of International Women’s Day, at least on the part of the feminist mnemonic community, serves as a reminder of its socialist or communist origins. An important form of commemoration in both the socialist and the post-socialist period is public commemoration, whether as protest walks or petition signings. On the other hand, commemorative pluralism and overall decline in the importance or symbolic value of IWD in Croatian society in the post-socialist period, is the most significant difference from the period of socialism. Elements of IWD which appear in both the socialist and post-socialist period and are the focal points of mnemonic battles that are fought over the meaning of IWD and its forms of commemoration are: Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day symbolism, the conflict between politicized Politics of Memory No. 2 Year 3 06/2013 LC.4 ISSN 1847-7755 2 commemoration and depoliticized celebration, and cooptation or patronization by the politics. The most important factor for the appearance of mnemonic battles is found in the emergence of independent feminism, during the liberalization of Yugoslavian society in the seventies.