History and memory beyond classroom in Croatia.

This article investigates the attitudes of Croatian final-year high school students toward the legacies of the Second World War (1941–1945) and the Croatian Homeland War (1991–1995) through the lens of memory studies and the concept of postmemory, which describes how traumatic experiences of older generations are transmitted affectively to younger ones. Using structural equation modeling on survey data from a nationally representative sample of 1,122 students collected in 2020/2021, the study identifies three main dimensions of political postmemory among youth: Critical antifascist postmemory, Revisionist postmemory of Croatian victimhood (including non-critical victimhood, revisionist views of the Independent State of Croatia, and prohibition of communist symbols), and an Anti-Yugoslav patriotic reconciliatory stance. The research further reveals that these postmemory orientations are significantly predicted by political attitudes (ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, gender conservatism, homophobia), trust in institutions (political, media, repressive and religious), and political knowledge, with revisionist and reconciliatory postmemories associated with more conservative, authoritarian, and anti-democratic attitudes, while the antifascist postmemory aligns with liberal, pro-democratic values. The findings highlight the complexity and nuance beyond a simple binary of antifascist versus revisionist narratives in Croatian collective memory and underscore challenges for civic education and the transmission of historical knowledge amid contested memory politics.