Veterans, Memory and Transnational Networks of Solidarity: Connected Histories of Yugoslavia and Algeria

Centering on the exchanges between Yugoslav Partisans and Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) during and after the Algerian war of independence, the lecture explores the role of memory and war legacies in Yugoslav socialist internationalism and anti-colonial solidarity. The lecture focuses on the narratives of the shared struggle for liberation, the sharing of the Yugoslav experiences of the People’s Liberation War (1941-1945) and the postwar building of state socialism in Algeria, and transfers of knowledge in war commemoration. The memory of the People’s Liberation War – the antifascist struggle and socialist revolution during the Second World War in Yugoslavia – played a connecting role with liberation movements such as the FLN. The war memory surfaced in the Partisans’ deep identification with the Algerian liberation struggle, and different spheres of Yugoslav assistance to Algeria were based on the wartime and postwar experiences in Yugoslavia. Medical assistance represents an illuminating example, focusing on the care for the wounded and disabled Algerian soldiers, based on the Yugoslav know-how in the establishment of military medicine and disability care for the Partisans. Finally, veterans’ internationalism developed between the two countries in the 1970s, involving exchanges in the field of war remembrance.

Jelena Đureinović is a historian of Yugoslavia interested in memory and legacies of war in the 20th and 21st centuries. She is a researcher at the Research Centre for the History of Transformations (RECET) at the University of Vienna. Her current project, funded through the APART-GSK program of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, investigates Yugoslav socialist internationalism and the connected history of antifascism and anticolonialism. It examines the role of war legacies in the relations between the Yugoslav Partisan veterans and liberation movements from Africa, with Algeria in focus. Her main research interests include memory studies, global Cold War history and the history of Yugoslavia. Her book The Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contemporary Serbia: Collaboration, Resistance and Retribution was published by Routledge in 2020.

This episode was recorded on the 02nd of December 2025 at the Centre d’Études Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA)

Prof. Sidi Mohamed Lakhdar Barka, Professor of Comparative Literature from the Department of English at University of Oran 2 moderated the lecture.

To see related slides please visit our web site www.themaghribpodcast.com

We thank our friend Ignacio Villalón, a doctoral candidate at the University of Crete / Institute for Mediterranean Studies, for his guitar performance for the introduction and conclusion of this podcast.

Recorded and edited by  Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).