The summer’s end has revealed an unprecedented mass of tattoos on the beaches, as well as unimaginable boldness of expression among them, but it has also pushed into a corner men with “JNA motifs”, once a dominant group of tattooed individuals in the former state.
Thousands of men who marked their bodies with visible reminders of military service have gone through a somersault of historical events. In them, that army first became an enemy, and then disappeared, so the signs on their forearms or shoulders sometimes confuse them more than they clarify their memories, experts explain.
In addition to the media and numerous forums, the topic has long attracted the interest of anthropologists, who have published several scientific discussions on it in recent years. Notable are the texts of Sandi Abram from Ljubljana in the Croatian journal “Etnološka tribina” and his younger colleague from Split, Duje Dorotka, in the latest issue of the journal “Ethnologica Dalmatica”.
Traditional tattooing was not as pleasant as it is today. Older women would prick girls “until their arms were drenched in blood”. In Central Bosnia, women can still be found today with tattoos of crosses or stylized suns on their fingers, hands, forearms, chests, and other parts of their bodies, even on their foreheads.
A multitude of special signs
The popularity of JNA tattooing varied from barrack to barrack and depended on the time of its emergence. While the oldest witness from 1950 was the only one in his platoon who got tattooed at that time, in the sixties and seventies, between 30 to even 90 percent of conscripts, according to unofficial estimates, underwent this technique of permanent self-identification.
Soldiers most often tattooed themselves manually, using a needle that each of them had. It would be wrapped in thread dipped in some liquid pigment. The color would come from a ballpoint pen, ink, or most commonly black ink, which could be found everywhere in the army at that time.
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Artistic motifs mostly included the inscription JNA, the year of service commencement, and the place of service, then possibly the unit designation, branch of the army, etc. They would then add the names of girlfriends, favorite clubs, images of mermaids – especially sailors – eagles, weapons, comic book heroes, political motifs, band names, etc.
It was a multitude of special signs – the then dominant ideology was not literally transcribed onto the body, but in this eclectic whole, political figures, symbols of luck, various fauna, love-empathetic signs, and mythological beings often found themselves together, emphasizes Abram.
Similar context, different experiences
The context in which soldiers got tattooed was similar in many cases. It was done in their free time away from the eyes of superiors. Namely, in the JNA, tattooing was formally prohibited, but the ban was not strictly enforced, especially if the motifs were not too subversive. Anyway, most “superiors” had similar markings under their uniforms, explains Abram, noting that many of his interlocutors were socialized with military tattoos through their fathers’ bodies.
‘Neither would he remove it, nor cover it, nor anything. Let it stay like this, whoever likes can look, and whoever doesn’t like shouldn’t look. I served that and it has remained with me, I can’t escape from it, right? But some are ashamed of it. Why did you write JNA? So what, where were you? You were in the JNA and that’s it.’
However, tattoos had a personal experience for everyone and were part of an intimate life story. Behind the oldest one, from 1950, lies the story of a fountain pen that a poor boy salvaged from a sunken Italian boat during the war and took with him to the army, writes Dorotka.
Another, otherwise exemplary soldier, got tattooed after his military service was extended due to the outbreak of conflict in Kosovo.
A third example is a Slovenian who served “dead guard”, where psychological tensions are a common occurrence, and relationships among people are specific. At one point, he realized he was one of the soldiers without a tattoo, so he concluded it was better to tattoo something on himself than for one of them to come up with it.
JNA as a large tattoo convention
This tense situation points to the similarity of military tattoos with prison ones. According to literature, prisoners, people who have had everything taken from them in prison, get tattooed as a form of defiance against the ruling regime. Tattooing in prisons is a subversive bodily act through which the prisoner takes control over their body and challenges the system that tries to control them, the authors emphasize.
During the first half of the 20th century, tattoos were mostly done by sailors, prisoners, and some other marginal groups. Then tattooing was faithfully followed by members of three civil movements from the second half of the twentieth century: feminist, gay, and New Age movements.
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Going to the army in a rural society was a kind of confirmation that you are healthy, and that was a desirable mark for brides.
They expressed rebellion against some established social conventions with tattoos, especially to express resistance against social control imposed by the generally accepted notion of beauty, emphasizes Dorotka, adding: by taking their bodies “into their own hands”, they deliberately defied some patriarchal and conservative social norms.
This was followed by an era of questioning established norms, during which tattooing spread to members of the middle and upper classes. The spread of tattooing in the West in the seventies was greatly influenced by celebrities like Janis Joplin, recalls Abram in an interview. This “renaissance of tattoos” also affected its mass adoption in the JNA, believes Dorotka.
In our case, the JNA inadvertently took on the role of the main promoter of modern tattoos, explained Abram, reminding that it was the “golden age” of Yugoslavia, until the death of Josip Broz, so that pride was also transferred to the skin. Thus, the JNA was not only a “forge of brotherhood and unity”, but actually a large tattoo convention, adds Abram.
The tradition of Catholic women in Central Bosnia
Tattooing is usually also beautification of the body, but scarification cannot be considered as such – it is a reflection of shame and concealment of that shame, or regret for the past.
However, in Croatia and neighboring countries, there is a significantly older history of this ritual. In addition to modern tattooing, which borrows its name from the Polynesian word “ta-tu”, meaning “to mark”, there is still a small number of those who have received “pricking”, “stabbing” or “sicanje” as a remnant of the ancient custom of their community.
In the Dalmatian hinterland, ethnology has recorded the occurrence of “sicanje” of crosses among older women, which was done with wooden needles, charcoal powder, and a tightening band, notes Šibenik ethnologist Jadran Kale. This branch of tattooing from previous centuries was brought by migrations from Bosnia.
The epicenter of traditional tattooing is Central Bosnia, where Catholic Croatian women have preserved this ancient custom. Historian Ćiro Truhelka (1865-1942) wrote about this phenomenon in the last decade of the 19th century in the journal “Glasnik zemaljskog muzeja”, which is still published today. The phenomenon dates back to the pre-Christian period, and after the Ottoman conquests, it gained a sign of collective identification.
“They say that this custom used to serve to prevent deviation from faith, but it still happened that tattooing did not achieve that purpose, as some tattooed women still live today, who converted to Islam over 20 years ago to marry a Muslim who was dear to them,” writes Truhelka.
Tattooing brought by the Thracians
He believes that tattooing was brought to these regions by the Thracians, which is the name for about 200 Indo-European tribes that came here about four millennia ago. From them, he believes, the custom passed to the Illyrians, and then to the Slavs.
Traditional tattooing was not as pleasant as it is today. Older women would prick girls “until their arms were drenched in blood”. In Central Bosnia, women can still be found today with tattoos of crosses or stylized suns on their fingers, hands, forearms, chests, and other parts of their bodies, even on their foreheads.
In recent decades, tattooing has developed as a kind of art, but also as a business that has flooded the entire world. A multitude of styles, from tribal traditions from all over the world, through Celtic-Viking decorations, to natural realism, idealized scenes and characters from history, are offered by every better “tattoo art studio”, as well as tattoos from Japanese tradition, sailor, military, and circus tattoos, new styles that gather a mix of characters from comics, cartoons, graffiti, aliens, etc.
The removal of tattoos is associated with a feeling of shame and should be taken as a constitutive part of individual forgetting. The removal on the body is a prerequisite for removal in memory.
How they cope with stigma
The JNA tattoo today primarily proves military service in Yugoslavia, says Abram. Going to the army in a rural society was a kind of confirmation that you are healthy, and that was a desirable mark for brides.
However, in many cases, the JNA tattoo today means stigmatization, which is why the bearers of the mark often question the meanings of their tattoos. The most common answer is: “Those were the times”.
Some bearers of JNA tattoos do not feel stigmatized. Dorotka recorded the following words of a certain Milivoj: “Neither would he remove it, nor cover it, nor anything. Let it stay like this, whoever likes can look, and whoever doesn’t like shouldn’t look. I served that and it has remained with me, I can’t escape from it, right? But some are ashamed of it. Why did you write JNA? So what, where were you? You were in the JNA and that’s it.”
However, Abram has met interlocutors who refused to talk about their tattoos, and some even cursed him. This indicates a call, perhaps even regret, or an internal rejection of the external visibility of that mark, explains Abram.
Covering and removing tattoos
Perhaps more than words, the attempts of former soldiers to remove their tattoos speak, emphasizes Abram, noting two most common methods of removal. These are scarification, or covering with another tattoo, for example, turning the word “JNA” into “ONA”; and cauterization or burning, or complete surgical removal of the tattoo.
Tattooing is usually also beautification of the body, but scarification cannot be considered as such, notes Abram – it is a reflection of shame and concealment of that shame, or regret for the past.
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Tattooing and removing tattoos are two opposing acts. With the JNA tattoo, the then dominant ideology of Yugoslav socialism was transcribed onto the body. The removal is about reshaping the body in the post-socialist period, about removing that stamp from the public eye.
The removal of tattoos is associated with a feeling of shame and should be taken as a constitutive part of individual forgetting. The removal on the body is a prerequisite for removal in memory, concludes Abram.
Dorotka, however, believes that tattoos do not necessarily qualify their bearers as nostalgic individuals nor do they feel stigmatized because of it. He believes that the tattoo is a figure of memory that helps in reconstructing a past that has survived various historical breaks.
Written by: Ivo Lučić
