Zagreb in Transition : Some Semiotic Reflections

Abstract

In this presentation I will try to recapitulate the experience of Zagreb, Croatia’s capital. In the context of great changes that befell Yugoslavia in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Zagreb was under objective threat, not so much in terms of its physical existence, but instead in terms of its identity, formed in the 19th and 20th centuries when it became the capital of “Croatian culture and intellectual and political life”, and a symbol of “national unity and the centripetal tendencies in the Croatian society” – according to the renowned Polish Croatian studies expert Joanna Rapacka in the introduction to her Leksikon hrvatskih tradicija [Lexicon of Croatian Traditions]. The process of legal disintegration of the Yugoslav federation lasted for about ten years, and after a series of new Balkan wars ended in the creation of several smaller countries. In a symbolical sense Zagreb, the capital of the new, independent Republic of Croatia, affirmed its traditional position during the war, not only as a center from which the new government presided over the political, economic and military processes, but also as a shelter to over 300 thousand refugees from the occupied areas of the country, which cemented Zagreb’s central position as the heart of Croatia.