A Walk Through Yugoslavia (exploring the museum)

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Museum of Yugoslavia, a museum dedicated to a country that has not existed for quite some time now.

For International Women's Day, since it is considered a communist holiday, haha, we decided to visit, logically, a communist museum, or a socialist one, whatever you want to call it. To me it is pretty much the same thing. Maybe the ideas were once different, but today they still exist all over the world, hiding behind the cloak of some so called Republic. Sure, as if that changes anything.

But anyway, let us not go too deep into that. I donot know much about the whole topic. Mostly have my own personal feeling and impression about it. Instead, I will tell you about the things I saw there that I really liked.

I love museums. I can get so absorbed in looking at every single object that I could easily spend the whole day there, only remembering in the evening that I am hungry, thirsty and in need of all the other unavoidable human necessities. xD

And that is usually exactly what happens. I always say something like, let us first walk through everything and then we will sit somewhere and eat. But then we end up getting hungry while we are still exploring. Sometimes so hungry that I joke to myself that if I faint, I will wake up in Yugoslavia.

I belong to a slightly younger generation. Well, younger in the sense that I do not actually remember that country at all. I was born in it when it already consisted of only Serbia and Montenegro. And even that fell apart quite soon after.

The Museum of Yugoslavia was founded in 1996 by merging the Memorial Center of Josip Broz Tito and the former Museum of the Revolution. Today, the museum complex includes the House of Flowers, the Old Museum, and the 25 May Museum. All together, the indoor exhibition space covers about 5,252 square meters, along with a park area of 3.2 hectares.

Inside the museum you can see many personal belongings, an archaeological collection, weapons, numerous domestic and international decorations, paintings, sculptures, and a wide variety of gifts that Tito received from all corners of the world.

This was quite strange to me when I saw it. The Republic of Guinea introduced a new currency in 1971 and called it sili. In their language, that word means elephant.

In 1980, the Central Bank of the Republic of Guinea placed the portrait of Tito, the marshal and lifelong president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, on their largest banknote, the 500 sili note.

This is, I assume, only one of his working desks. You walk up to it and lightly tap on the wood just to hear if it is full and real, haha. We are true Balkan people, it cannot be any other way. I even had the idea to sit down in the chair, but I did not. I followed the rules and behaved like a proper citizen. xD

A set of one thousand origami cranes, made by about fifteen students from Tokyo in just two weeks.

In Japan, a wreath made of cranes like this is given to someone you wish recovery and good health, and that is exactly what the Japanese students did. What I found interesting is that through this museum I was able to see and learn quite a lot about the cultures of other countries as well, not only about the former Yugoslavia.

Now that I wrote that, I realize how silly it sounds, because that is exactly what museums are. No matter what they are dedicated to, there is almost no way they can be narrowly focused on just one thing without also offering a wider picture of the whole world.

A scarf, of course in red, with an inscription embroidered by women from the correctional facility in Požarevac. It says:
"Long live the Third International".

The Third International, also known as the Comintern, was created based on Lenin's idea and was dissolved in May 1943.

This is the microphone from which Siniša Stanković read the declaration proclaiming the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia on November 29, 1945.

As a small interesting side note, for many years in Serbia that same day was traditionally the time when people held a "svinjokolj", the slaughter of a large pig and the preparation and storage of meat for the winter. It is quite ironic, because the Orthodox Christmas fast begins the day before. But at that time, people were often afraid of the communist authorities and did not dare to openly express their faith, observe traditions, celebrate their family patron saint day or go to church. Thankfully, in recent years everyone can notice that this has been changing for the better.

Vučko, the mascot of the 14th Winter Olympic Games held in Sarajevo. Readers of Yugoslav newspapers were asked to choose the mascot for the 1984 Winter Olympics from six finalists. The winner was Vučko, a little wolf, designed by the Slovenian designer and illustrator Jože Trobec.

And some interesting light bulbs that I just had to photograph. Aren't they lovely and so artistic? Today, you don't really see packaging this beautiful anymore.

In this next photo, you can see three items: a glass milk bottle from the Belgrade Agricultural Combine, or PKB for short, dated 1960; in the middle, a carrier for portions with a small pot; and on the right, a frying pan for eggs, produced by the enamelware factory in Celje, Slovenia.

Here I photographed just a few of the many batons on display; there are really a lot of them.

The Youth Baton was a symbolic relay baton carried every year from 1945 to 1987 throughout the entire Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and presented to Josip Broz Tito on his birthday, May 25, which was celebrated as Youth Day. Organized by the youth, it traveled for months across the country, representing unity and loyalty. From 1957 onwards, it became a single federal baton.

Among the many gifts Tito received, there is also this Eiffel Tower, made out of wood, if I am not mistaken, by some elementary school students during their technical education classes. It is truly incredible; back when I was in elementary school, the most ambitious thing we made in our technical classes was a tiny table and chair for a dollhouse. And look at this, their very first Eiffel Tower!

There is also this robot, a robot calculator, which, if I remember correctly, was made by high school students from one of the technical schools. It's really cute, almost like it follows you with its eyes when you approach it from different angles in the room.
Actually, no, I just enlarged that inscription, and it says that it was made by elementary school students from Slovenia. That makes it even more impressive! 😀

Here is a model representing the metaphor of social standard, a gift from the Zenica district to Josip Broz Tito for his 70th birthday in 1962. At the bottom, as the foundation, are the Zenica mines and steelworks; the second level shows the wood industry, and at the top is the social standard.

Then there are various radios, radio sets, lamps for radios, old televisions, mini and portable, record players, cameras, all that wonderful technology that used to look so beautiful, full of colors, with amazing designs. Why is all technology today so dull and monotonous… boring. What do you think about that?

A Corinthian helmet from the 7th-6th century BCE, a gift from Greek King Paul to Josip Broz Tito during his visit to Greece in 1954.

This also caught my special interest. It is some kind of game, a solitaire, made out of ores and minerals. It was a gift from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Madagascar. How it is played, I have no idea, will have to Google it to find out. I just know that these spheres really remind me of planets, and it is beautifully made, a true piece of art.

And what do you think this is? I didn't know either until I read the description - it is parts of the Moon's surface, WOW! A gift from Richard Nixon, the President of the USA, to Tito during his visit to America in 1970.

Some daggers of interesting shapes, and then - hop! - straight to the ceiling. 😁 No, this isn't some important lamp, a gift from a queen in the 13th century, haha. It's just an ordinary ceiling lamp above the entrance to the 25 May Museum, along with a fascinating ceramic mosaic.

Inside, the space is huge, but I'm not sure if we came on the wrong day or if it was just the way the exhibition was arranged at the time. Either way, we didn't stay too long there, probably overwhelmed by all the impressions up to that point and all the carefully examined items from the various collections we saw in other building of this complex.

I only have a photo of me in front of the huge world map, pointing at the SFR Yugoslavia, while you can see the USSR (SSSR) peeking in from the side as well. 😁

Oh yes, I almost forgot this one, where I, as a half-Montenegrin, am standing next to a Montenegrin (Serbian) costume and singing to myself:

"Mi stojimo postojano kano klisurine, proklet bio izdajica svoje domovine!"

"We stand steadfast like the cliffs, cursed be the traitor of their homeland!"

Of course, I kept the tickets for my box where I save all kinds of them, from concerts, museums, plane tickets, everything. And there is, of course, the sugar from the café inside the museum, where we took a break and had coffee.

And that's it! Of course, this isn't even a thousandth of what you can see there, and I have shared what caught my attention the most.

If you ever visit Serbia and enjoy history and also nostalgic objects, I warmly recommend that you visit this museum.

Thank you for reading and greetings to everyone! 🤗

[//]:# ([//]:# (!worldmappin 44.78795 lat 20.45197 long Museum of Yugoslavia, Belgrade, Serbia d3scr))