When I think about my childhood in Bosnia during the 1990s and early 2000s, one word sometimes comes to my mind: Proleter.
It was the name “everyone” in my birthplace town Teslić used for our local football club. In the late 1990s, I was about ten years old, and like most kids in Bosnia, I liked playing and watching football. At the same time, I felt something strange about the club’s name. Why did “everyone” say “Proleter” when the official name was “FK Teslić”?
Already in my childhood, I learned from my father that the name had been changed during the war, as part of a broader wave of nationalist identity politics. What had once been a symbol of town, its industrial workers and socialist-era pride, was now too politically wrong and inconvenient for the post-war order. “Proleter” meaning the Proletarian was pushed aside, at least formally.
The contradictions didn’t stop there. My primary school was once called Mladost (Youth) as a hopeful and existential name. My grandparents, who worked there, including my grandfather, who was the principal of the school, experienced the school as part of their lifetime contributions and efforts to uphold the family tradition of teaching and their commitment to the socialist system. After the war, it was renamed Petar Petrović Njegoš, after a 19th-century Montenegrin Orthodox bishop and romantic nationalist poet who, among other things, promoted exclusion and massacres of the Muslim population.
Another example was the street where we lived after the war. The street had been named after the Proletarian Brigades, the elite units of the Yugoslav partisans. That was also changed and renamed after Karađorđe, in honor of a 19th-century Serbian rebel nobleman, who he played an important role in his uprising and actions against the Ottoman Turks, but had little to do with Bosnia.
As a child, I understood things regarding politics and society more than people might have assumed. I saw these name changes not just as bureaucratic decisions but as acts of power, brutality, and injustice. They weren’t just about reflecting history, but about rewriting it through mythological and uncivilized means, about who gets to belong, and who doesn’t. To be honest, I am not saying that things were good 100% during the socialist Yugoslavia period. There were a lot of problems with identity politics at that time, but the new ethno-nationalist political actors and elites did many even worse things than the official communists.
Despite enjoying the sport, I always had an ambivalent and love-hate relationship with the football club and my town in general. I wasn’t a great player since I was clumsy, often afraid to head the ball, and usually picked last when teams were chosen. I carried the nickname “Didi,” inherited from my father, who in his youth, got it from a player from Brazil. But it wasn’t skill that kept me involved. What fascinated me more was the culture and politics around the club.
Before the Bosnian War, clubs like FK Proleter Teslić, especially in industrial towns, generally had players from all three major ethnic communities, Serbs, Croats, and Muslims (later Bosniaks), as well as individuals who identified as Yugoslavs and others. In socialist Yugoslavia, ethnicity was seen as less important and often downplayed in public institutions, and sports were viewed as a shared civic activity. Players were chosen for their talent and commitment to the team, not for their names or religion. Teslić, as an industrial town with a working-class population, reflected this development. FK Proleter had a reputation as a community club and civic pride at the local level.
With the outbreak of war in 1992 and the rise of ethno-nationalist politics in Bosnia and especially in Republika Srpska (Serb Republic), almost everything changed. Institutions, including football clubs, were restructured along ethnic lines. Most of Teslic’s population with Bosniak and Croatian identification, including the football players, were excluded or forced to leave. Teslić itself witnessed war crimes such as ethnic cleansing and killing campaigns, and sports were no exception to the climate of fear and division.
The name of the club changed from Proleter to FK Teslić, erasing its socialist and contested, yet still more inclusive, heritage. Only years later was the old name restored. This story is not just about football, but rather about how identity, memory, and politics shape our everyday lives, personalities, and communities.
One of my worst memories dates back to the early 2000s, when our club participated in what was called the Danish Football School. It was a project aimed at bringing together children to play the game we all supposedly loved. I remember traveling to the nearby town Jelah, where children from Bosniak, Croat, Serb and other communities would meet. But instead of friendship and reconciliation, I also witnessed anger, hate, and fear. I remember how children barely older than ten cursed at each other with such strong fury and hostility, as though making angry comments about religion and what happened during the war.
When we were back in Teslić, there were incidents involving children throwing small stones at each other. My worst memory was about after playing one game, one boy provoked the guest players by running around them while wearing a T-shirt with the face of Radovan Karadžić, who was the wartime period president of the Serb Republic and later convicted of war crimes and genocide. For him, it felt like a lot of fun, but for me, it was traumatic. I remember the moment as if struck by an electric current, a feeling of fear and powerlessness going through my body.
That experience left a deep mark on me. It taught me that politics is not something abstract or only about ideas, but also about how it is done regarding our streets, our schools, and our games. It lives in how we name things and how we treat those who are “other.” It taught me how hate is learned early, and affects our social world, and how we choose to create our nearest environment and places. And also that politics can be about life and death.
In the later 2000s, the football club changed its name back to Proleter. The name that had once been too “socialist” returned. And that’s where the paradox became more clear to me. The same fans who shouted nationalist slogans, who idolized war criminals, who sang about the Serbian nation being chosen by God, these same people now chanted with love for Proleter. They embraced a name rooted in Marxist, working-class, Yugoslav identity, without a hint of irony.
It was then that I realized something deeper about us as human beings: we are full of contradictions. We carry beliefs and traditions that don’t always align or mix, but still do despite contradictions and absurdities. We want pride, a sense of and belonging, even if it is absurd, bizarre, and ironic. We cling to identity, even if it conflicts with history, institutions, and reason. That contradiction doesn’t make us evil, but it can make us dangerous if left unexamined.
Today, I think among other things about how there is no street in Teslić is named after a Proleter footballer, even though some players were very talented and popular, and even ended up playing in stronger Yugoslav clubs. Their names, like so much else, were more or less forgotten or erased. But remembering matters. Telling these stories matters because they show how identity, history, politics, and emotion are very twisted, even when it comes to football.
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