This blog post is part of the Seminar Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience, April 10, 2025, funded by the WARFUN project.
Commenting on my research for the WarFun project, someone once remarked that I must be using a very broad definition of fun — one that, apparently, included everything. In a way, they were right. But my usage of the term fun did not come from nowhere. It gradually emerged through engaging with the sources I had at my disposal. Studying fun in the setting of the communist-led People’s Liberation Struggle (Narodnooslobodilačka borba, NOB) that developed during the Second World War on the Yugoslav territories inevitably raised a number of conceptual questions. First and foremost, probably like anyone who has not experienced war, I wondered what could possibly be fun for the inhabitants of Yugoslavia who found themselves caught in the vortex of that particular conflict. Primary sources created during the NOB or dedicated to the memory of the NOB offered some clues. That is, they revealed aspects from which the topic of fun in war might be considered, researched, talked about.
It was not at all encouraging – but, I must admit, it was expected – that the NOB participants very rarely, almost never, used the term fun. However, archival sources, especially various military instructions and directives, abound with synonymous terms. Of course, the term motivation appears, as well as (good) mood and cheerfulness. And singing, dancing, teasing and joking are often mentioned as a means of achieving this desired joyful mood. Memoir literature is a bit more generous on this matter as it is possible to find whole paragraphs – although, unfortunately, rarely more than that – dedicated to actual descriptions of this or that event that comforted, brightened, and cheered up those who were present in this type of sources. In other words, I had to dig through a wide range of sources, but diaries, memoirs, and anecdotal evidence stood out as materials that enabled me to piece together a more comprehensive understanding of fun among women and men who participated in the NOB. Of course, if these women and men were available in present, the method of oral history, I am sure, would prove to be an invaluable asset in researching fun during war. From the fragments I more or less stumbled on reading through hundreds and hundreds of pages of literature, the list of questions I wish I could have asked grew incredibly quickly and I was oh so very envious of my fellow anthropologists who were actually able to talk to war veterans about their own research on fun in war.
In addition, I have found that the finest way to explore fun in written sources about the People’s Liberation Struggle is actually to explore entertainment. Notably, in all languages of ex-Yugoslavia words entertainment and fun translate with one and the same term – zabava – and it means pleasant pastime, party (in all its synonyms), social event or performance with music and dancing. It is a very fitting coincidence for me that cultural life organized as a part of the Yugoslav Partisan resistance during the Second World War – including entertainment activities explicitly designed to be fun – provides a remarkable example of leadership-encouraged and widely accepted activism (and artivism). In accordance, moments of relaxation with music and dance, as well as, occasionally, telling stories and playing social games are types of events that the sources consistently describe in terms that suggest having fun. While such activities often began as an incidental or spontaneous occurrence, Partisan cultural life developed into a strategically cultivated and officially sanctioned means of support and cohesion within a very short time. And while wartime cultural workers tried hard to educate and ideologically direct their Partisan and civilian audiences, they put in equal effort to also distract, amuse, entertain and, if at all possible, motivate them. With the help of singing, dancing, literature, and, above all, theatre, artistic creation and propaganda were intertwined with entertainment.
As a historian of women’s and gender history, I approached the sources not only in search of officially sanctioned propaganda-cum-entertainment among the Yugoslav Partisans, but also of traces of fun as gendered practice. More visible forms of entertainment within the movement — especially those tied to Partisan cultural production — also reveal how gender shaped access, participation, and meaning of fun. Women actively participated as organizers, performers, and audience members. In some cases, their involvement in entertainment spaces provided a form of empowerment within the military context as they, many for the first time in their lives, were able to express some of the issues they encountered in their everyday lives and draw attention to the feminist aspect of the communist ideology some among them advocated. Such activism was often intertwined with humor, singing, and sometimes even alcohol. Women, it seems to me, approached the new that the war had to offer as women of the period tended to approach everything, by getting down to business. But also by creating opportunities, however small, for joy and fun.
In addition, moments of pastime in pleasure and intimacy were shaped by, and in turn shaped, wartime gender relations. Women’s more than men’s writings about the war hinted at a wealth of such practices, many of which remained private or were only partially recorded. These fragments, sometimes embedded between the lines, suggested that women’s experiences of fun were often more ambiguous, more situated, and at times more resistant to dominant narratives than public commemorations or existing secondary literature might suggest.
In the end, fun and entertainment also existed within broader wartime gender dynamics, where different forms of social interaction – ranging from the mentioned celebratory performances all the way to forms of coercive practices – influenced both men’s and women’s experiences. The tension between fun and entertainment as uplifting forces and the harsh realities of war, including the exploitation of women, can further complicate the study of cultural life during the conflict. Primary sources indicate – although fairly rarely and often more obliquely than a researcher might hope – that moments of enjoyment could sometimes be intertwined with violence, coercion, and power plays when control was asserted in ways that could seem almost playful, but were never harmless. For example, if they do approach this terrain, authors of wartime testimonies tend to suggest that occupying forces and collaborators used social gatherings not merely to blow off steam, but as opportunities to assert dominance over civilians and exploiting those suspected of Partisan ties.
The legacy of Partisan entertainment remains full of questions – and, for me, in many ways unfinished work. Complexities I have touched on here point to avenues for further research and reflection. I, for one, feel like I have only scratched the surface. The sources that document Partisan cultural work and related entertainment activities, the ways in which Partisan women and men liked to have fun when the disciplining eye of the Communist Party was not watching as well as how enemy soldiers sometimes weaponized those same activities, offer a deeper understanding of how pleasure, performance, and power can coexist in wartime settings. They also remind us that people navigate conflict not only through suffering and resistance, but also through laughter, song, and creative expression. And that all of those so easily get enmeshed together. Looking at these moments does not distract from the seriousness of war — it helps us see its full emotional and social landscape.