Yugoslavia lives. It lives, among other things, in the architecture and infrastructure built during its existence. Buildings, roads, and monuments from the Yugoslav era keep that country and the memory of it not just alive but an integral, if sometimes invisible, part of everyday experience in Yugoslavia’s successor countries. The same goes for Czechoslovakia and its progeny. 

But the two countries also live on in a more poetic way, an ocean away, on an island at the edge of the North American continent. After they served their representative duties as Yugoslavia’s and Czechoslovakia’s pavilions at the Expo 67 world fair, both buildings were repurposed as cultural institutions in small communities on the island of Newfoundland.

This is their story.

With Jasmina Cibic, Robert Lodge, Kevin McAleese, Donald Niebyl, and Terezie Nekvindová.


The Remembering Yugoslavia podcast explores the memory of a country that no longer exists. Created, produced, and hosted by Peter Korchnak. New episodes two to three times per month.

• Shownotes/transcript: RememberingYugoslavia.com/Podcast-Expo67-Pavilions-Yugoslavia-Czechoslovakia/
• Instagram: @RememberingYugoslavia
• SUPPORT THE SHOW: Patreon :: PayPal :: Subscription

Support the show

Eighty years since its publication, Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia remains the most authoritative (and longest) book of travel writing on that former country. The book, which documents West’s travels through Yugoslavia in the second half of the 1930s, has been described as “astonishing,” “brilliant,” “remarkable,” “a supreme literary monument,” and “one of the most important books written about Europe in the last century.” It’s also been derided as biased, fictional, and factually flawed.

What’s the big deal about this big book? Who was Rebecca West? And what makes the book relevant a lifetime later?

With Helen Atkinson (Rebecca West's great-niece), Angela Carlton, and James Thomas Snyder. Featuring music by Gogofski, Paniks, and Undescore Orkestra.


The Remembering Yugoslavia podcast explores the memory of a country that no longer exists. Created, produced, and hosted by Peter Korchnak. New episodes two to three times per month.

• Shownotes/transcript: RememberingYugoslavia.com/Podcast-Black-Lamb-and-Grey-Falcon/
• Instagram: @RememberingYugoslavia
• SUPPORT THE SHOW: Patreon :: PayPal :: Subscription

Support the show

Few travel books have had as big a real-world impact as Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History by Robert Kaplan. Published in 1993, this account of Kaplan’s travels through Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia in the late 1980s and 1990 purportedly influenced President Clinton’s policy in the region during the wars of Yugoslav dissolution. Kaplan’s portrayal of the relations among the peoples of former Yugoslavia created “the sense that nothing could be done by outsiders in a region so steeped in ancient hatreds” (Richard Holbrooke). 

The ancient hatreds thesis, which holds that Yugoslavia disintegrated in war because its constituent peoples have always hated and killed each other, has become a trope of explaining the place. It has also been dismantled over and over by generations of scholars and policy wonks. Balkan Ghosts is one of those books you read so much about you might get a feeling you no longer need to read it because you already know it through and through from all the reviews and critiques. 

What does Robert Kaplan think about the criticisms leveled at his famous book over the past nearly 30 years? About how his book has been utilized? Has he ever defended his work and what does he have to say? Does he care about the book’s impact? How have his views evolved?

With Robert D. Kaplan. 


The Remembering Yugoslavia podcast explores the memory of a country that no longer exists. Created, produced, and hosted by Peter Korchnak. New episodes two to three times per month.

• Shownotes/transcript: RememberingYugoslavia.com/Podcast-Balkan-Ghosts/
• Instagram: @RememberingYugoslavia
• SUPPORT THE SHOW: Patreon :: PayPal :: Subscription

Support the show

Yugoslavia was the most aggressive among socialist countries in using assassinations as a means of protecting the state and the communist party. Over its 45-year existence, the UDBA, the Yugoslav State Security Service, dropped at least 80 bodies of its political enemies, mostly Croats, abroad. Some with the contracted assistance of Yugoslav mobsters. And after the death of Yugoslavia, members of state security services and their organized crime friends have played important roles in the newly independent states.

A story of state-sponsored murder, organized crime, and justice.

With Christian Axboe Nielsen, Paul Vidich, and Maria Vivod.


The Remembering Yugoslavia podcast explores the memory of a country that no longer exists. Created, produced, and hosted by Peter Korchnak. New episodes two to three times per month.

• Shownotes: RememberingYugoslavia.com/Podcast-UDBA/
• Instagram: @RememberingYugoslavia
• SUPPORT THE SHOW: Patreon :: PayPal :: Subscription

Support the show

Bosnians are leaving their country in droves. Why? And what can be done about it?

With Samir Beharić, Elma Hodžić, Danijela Majstorović, and Nela Porobić Isaković. Featuring music by Dubioza Kolektiv.


The Remembering Yugoslavia podcast explores the memory of a country that no longer exists. Created, produced, and hosted by Peter Korchnak. New episodes two to three times per month.

• Shownotes: RememberingYugoslavia.com/Podcast-Bosnian-Emigration/
• Instagram: @RememberingYugoslavia
• SUPPORT THE SHOW: Patreon :: PayPal :: Subscription

Support the show

Yugoslavia was a one-party system, and not everyone there liked it. One might get an impression Milovan Djilas was the only Yugoslav dissident. But there were thousands of Yugoslavs who criticized the regime, including Svetlana Slapšak who got involved in human rights advocacy in 1968 and has worked as an activist under Tito, Milošević, and Janša. 


The Remembering Yugoslavia podcast explores the memory of a country that no longer exists. Created, produced, and hosted by Peter Korchnak. New episodes two to three times per month.

• Shownotes: RememberingYugoslavia.com/Podcast-Svetlana-Slapsak/
• Instagram: @RememberingYugoslavia
• SUPPORT THE SHOW: Patreon :: PayPal :: Subscription

Support the show

From July 2018 to January 2019, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City hosted the exhibition Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980. The exhibition introduced socialist Yugoslavia’s architecture and architects to international audiences. It generated a ton of positive press and its impact continues to reverberate. What was Toward a Concrete Utopia and why was it such a big deal? How and why did the exhibition come about? What did it accomplish? 

With Vladimir Kulić, Justin McGuirk, Bojana Videkanić, and Sanja Horvatinčić. Featuring music by Detective Spook and Sunset Cruise.


The Remembering Yugoslavia podcast explores the memory of a country that no longer exists. Created, produced, and hosted by Peter Korchnak. New episodes two to three times per month.

• Shownotes: RememberingYugoslavia.com/Podcast-Toward-Concrete-Utopia/
• Instagram: @RememberingYugoslavia
• SUPPORT THE SHOW: Patreon :: PayPal :: Subscription ›

Support the show

In July 2020, a series of eighteen essays appeared on the Disorder of Things blog under the umbrella title, Yugosplaining the World. The project brought together 30 former Yugoslavs in the West to reflect "on what their lived experience can teach the US and other countries that are facing outbursts of nationalism, violence, and racism and help provide some avenues for addressing it or understanding it better." The Yugosplaining symposium also aimed to reclaim the authors’ own narratives from those presented by outsiders in order "to show Yugoslavia as a historical political project in a useful and relevant light." 

One year later, what did Yugosplaining get right (or wrong? What impact has the project had (if any)? What are its possible futures?

With Aida Hozić, Jelena Subotić, and Srdjan Vučetić.


The Remembering Yugoslavia podcast explores the memory of a country that no longer exists. Created, produced, and hosted by Peter Korchnak. New episodes two to three times per month.

• Shownotes: RememberingYugoslavia.com/Podcast-Yugosplaining/
• Instagram: @RememberingYugoslavia
• SUPPORT THE SHOW: Patreon :: PayPal :: Subscription

Support the show

For some two decades now the 1980s have been a rich referential resource for culture-makers across ex-Yugoslavia (and globally, of course). Re-releases and reunion tours. Music echoing the ’80s sound. Documentaries. TV shows. Movies. Theater productions. Art retrospectives. Exhibitions…

Now that we’ve entered the temporal territory of 40th anniversaries of this and that from the era, it’s clear the “cultural virus of the 1980s” continues to afflict the region of former Yugoslavia.

Why is that? What is it about the Yugoslav ’80s culture that is so worth reviving and that is so inspiring decades later? And where do we go from here?

With Maša Kolanović, Martin Pogačar, Ljubica Spaskovska, and Mitja Velikonja. Featuring songs by Bastion, Detective Spook, PMG Kolektiv, Svemirko, and Yugo Project.


The Remembering Yugoslavia podcast explores the memory of a country that no longer exists. Created, produced, and hosted by Peter Korchnak. New episodes two to three times per month.

• Shownotes: RememberingYugoslavia.com/Podcast-Yugoslav-80s/
• Instagram: @RememberingYugoslavia
• SUPPORT THE SHOW: Patreon :: PayPal :: Subscription

Support the show

Do you remember that time in the early days and weeks of the pandemic when you picked up a new hobby? You baked bread. You gardened. You crocheted. You refurbished furniture. You wrote a novel. You created a podcast... Vlado Vince built a Yugoslav computer. 

The little Galaksija, an 8-bit computer created by Voja Antonić that enthusiasts built themselves using instructions published in 1983 in Yugoslavia’s first computer magazine, had an enormous impact on Yugoslavia’s IT industry. And, like other 80s tech around the world, the Galaksija has enjoyed a revival in recent years. 

This is the story of the DIY Yugoslav computer and its enduring legacy.

With Voja Antonić, Jenny List, Dejan Ristanović, and Vlado Vince. Featuring the tracks "Galaksija iz 80a" and "Testarossa" by Detective Spook.


The Remembering Yugoslavia podcast explores the memory of a country that no longer exists. Created, produced, and hosted by Peter Korchnak. New episodes two to three times per month.

• Shownotes: RememberingYugoslavia.com/Podcast-Galaksija-Computer/
• Instagram: @RememberingYugoslavia
• SUPPORT THE SHOW: Patreon :: PayPal :: Subscription

Support the show