Don’t forget to remember: Collective memory of the Yugoslav wars in present-day Serbia.

Abstract

Between the years 1991-1995, three wars were fought on the territory of former Yugoslavia, which led to the fall of the supra-national state and a newfound emphasis on ethnic and national identities. Since then, collective memories in the 'newly' created nations have undergone tremendous change in attempts to clarify 'who we were before and who we are now'. The current study looks at the present-day understandings of the past in Belgrade, Serbia. Through an analysis of history textbooks coupled with an intergenerational comparison of focus group data, the study attempts to account for both reified and lay representations of the past as well as any divergence that exists between them. The findings suggest that there is a close link between remembering and belonging, a connection that functions to frame identity in exclusive rather than inclusive terms.Through this process, where one version of the past is considered the only right one, critical attachment becomes equated with in-group detachment and attempts to acknowledge the transgressions of the in-group become silenced.

The power of politics: How political leaders in Serbia discursively manage identity continuity and political change to shape the future of the nation

“…The survey (N = 467) was administered through social media channels, probably limiting the generalizability of the results, although no demographic details were asked of participants so this is unclear. Nevertheless, the events that scored the highest in terms of significance seem to concur with the general literature on Serbia's political history (Damjanov, ; Ramet & Pavlaković, ; Živković, ) as well as political events brought up in a previous study exploring collective memory in Serbia (Obradović, ). From the survey, the five highest ranked events of each time frame were chosen to inform the corpus for speech collection.…”

“…The wars also saw the increased involvement of the international community in the region, particularly through the establishment of an International Crime Tribunal in Hague (ICTY) in 1993, intended to prosecute and convict war criminals from Former Yugoslavia, and the decision of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to bomb Serbia in 1999. In Serbia, the context of this research, the involvement of the international community was frequently perceived as negative, unjust and unfair towards the nation and its people (Klarin, ; Obradović, ). This perception of Serbia as being ‘vilified’ on a global level leads to both institutional and political narratives emphasizing a stigmatized and victimized national identity during the 1990s (MacDonald, ; Subotić, ).…”

Conspiracy mentality in post-conflict societies: Relations with the ethos of conflict and readiness for reconciliation

“…However, almost 20 years since the end of the armed conflicts in former Yugoslavia, we are witnessing the fact that the main causes of the conflicts, especially the socio-psychological ones, have not been overcome. Dominant narratives and social representations of the conflicts, created at the time of their escalation, are still present in the public discourse in all former Yugoslav societies (Koska & Matan, 2017; Obradović, 2016; Pavasović Trošt, 2018). In the case of the Serbian-Croatian war, the dominant Croatian narrative about this conflict is that this conflict represented a legitimate international war waged to defend Croatian independence from Serbian aggression (Banjeglav, 2012), and to bring democracy and freedom to the Croatian people (Jansen, 2002); consequently, Croatian citizens with Serbian nationality are seen as collaborators with the aggressor (Koska & Matan, 2017).…”

“…In the case of the Kosovo Albanian-Serbian conflict, the dominant narratives are very different: while the Albanians justify the independence of Kosovo by their majority status, the Serbs claim their right to Kosovo as their historical heritage (Bieber, 2002; Obradović & Howarth, 2018), and the Albanians are seen as trying to ''biologically exterminate'' them from this area (Pavasović Trošt, 2018). But the dominant narrative among the Serbian people, common for all the Yugoslav wars, is the narrative about the Serbs (and Serbia) as historical victims, with the ever-present tendency to defend themselves from external threats (Obradović, 2016), including those coming from the international community, which is seen as negative, unjust and unfair towards Serbia and the Serbian people (Obradović & Howarth, 2018). These social representations of the conflicts have an important role in the creation of distrust between the ethnic groups and the prevention of reconciliation (Psaltis, Franc, Smeekes, Ioannou, & Žeželj, 2017).…”

Whose memory and why: A commentary on power and the construction of memory

“…These fields have explored the ways in which hegemonic representations of the past become part of reproducing and keeping alive hostile intergroup relations (Paez & Liu, 2011), how stigmatized pasts become re-imagined in order to serve protective identity functions (Obradović, 2016), and how institutions become part of shaping these memory processes by legitimizing specific versions of the past (Podeh, 2002;van Ommering, 2015). This literature shows clearly what is at stake in processes of remembering, and the power one holds by being able to shape the ways in which the past is understood.…”