"Иако телесно ви нисте живи, ви зрачите на нас као жива бића": изградња спомен-костурнице и обликовање Централног трга у Чачку 1945–1955.

English title: “Although You Are Not Physically Alive, You Radiate Upon Us Like Living Beings”: The Construction of the Memorial Ossuary and the Shaping of the Central Square in Čačak, 1945–1955

The article analyzes the construction of the memorial ossuary and the shaping of the Central Square in Čačak between 1945 and 1955 as a process of urban, memorial, and ideological reconstruction. After the Second World War, the new authorities did not merely take over institutions; they also sought to reshape the space in which the local community gathered, remembered, and recognized itself.

The old urban core, associated with the marketplace, the commercial street, and civic heritage, was given a negative meaning as a remnant of the defeated order. By contrast, the new Central Square was intended to become a space of socialist modernization, public discipline, commemoration, and political representation.

The memorial ossuary functioned as a secular sanctuary of revolutionary power. The bones of the fallen were not treated merely as human remains, but as the symbolic foundation of the new order. Through public ceremonies, speeches, commemorations, and the use of the square, the dead were represented as a permanently present moral force of the community.

The article shows that the shaping of the Central Square in Čačak was part of broader processes of socialist modernization, but also a local example of the political sacralization of public space. For this reason, the article is important for the history of Čačak, urban history, the history of socialism, memory studies, and the study of symbolic power.