Heroism in Characters of People's Heroes: Spent Symbolic Capital of Yugoslav Nations?

Abstract

The socially constructed, institutionally elected People’s heroes of Yugoslavia first linked narratives on World War Two in Yugoslavia into the coherent entirety, and then through later usages they marked the spatial and symbolic world in which the inhabitants of Yugoslavia lived, moved and worked. Dead and living People’s heroes, as bearers of the highest values, represented the symbolic capital that influenced the formation of the collective identities of twenty million Yugoslavs. Through canonized heroic biographies, the paradigmatic patterns and values upon which heroic characters were created are revealed. The paper considers the heroism of those People’s heroes as a symbolic capital inherited by the Yugoslav nations. The aim was to determine the structure of this heroic model and to discover the similarities and differences between the universal heroic values, the heroic paradigm of Homo Dinaricus and the heroism of socialist national heroes. As exponents of the heroic relevancy of the historical moment, national heroes discover the empirical and ontological side of their heroism.