Abstract
As the systematic and planned extermination of an unwanted group, any genocide starts long before actual killings take place. It has its preparation, execution, and post-genocide phases. Focusing only on its most dramatic and horrific phase, the physical extermination of victims, can reduce or undermine the preventative purpose of studying genocide. In this paper, we discuss how engineering and politicizing a “collective memory” in Serbia during the 1980s helped shape the consciousness of the future perpetrators of genocide at Srebrenica, and we consider the need to address the social construction of the reality in which that collective memory was enmeshed, a reality which enabled Srebrenica to occur in the first place.
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Notes
- 1.
Wilkes (2003) explores Illyrian culture in the region and identified Klotjevac as an ancient Illyrian settlement with rich archaeological sites (chamber tombs).
- 2.
The Bosnian Church practices a version of early Christianity outside both Orthodox and Catholic dogma which was declared as heretical and subject to persecution. Between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries the Catholic pope sent several crusades and inquisitions to Bosnia. Members of the Bosnian Church, many of whom converted to Islam after the fifteenth century, were dubbed by some authors as “the first European Protestants.” See Brockett (1879).
- 3.
Željko Ražnatović Arkan (1952–2000) was a Serbian warlord and leader of the paramilitary unit Serb Voluntary Guard, also known as the “Tigers.” Arkan ordered, oversaw, and committed numerous atrocities against Bosnian, Croatian, and Albanian civilians in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. In 1997, he was indicted by the ICTY “for wilfully causing great suffering, cruel treatment, murder, wilful killing, rape, other inhumane acts.” See the Case Information Sheet IT-97-27 at www.icty.org/x/cases/zeljko_raznjatovic/cis/en/cis_arkan_en.pdf. He was killed by a rival gang member in Belgrade on 15 January 2000.
- 4.
General Ratko Mladić was military commander of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). On 22 November 2017, he was sentenced to life in prison by the ICTY after being found guilty of 10 charges, one of genocide, five of crimes against humanity, and four of violations of the laws or customs of war. See the Case Information Sheet IT/09/92 at www.icty.org/cases/party/704/4.
- 5.
Radovan Karadžić was wartime political leader of the Bosnian Serbs and president of the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska (Serb Republic) during 1992–1995. On 20 March 2019, he was found guilty of the genocide in Srebrenica, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and sentenced to life imprisonment by the ICTY. See the case IT-95 at www.icty.org/case/karadzic/4.
- 6.
Dobrica Ćosić is one of the most widely read Serb writers. He is often called the father of the Serb nationalist revival. His works include the fiction cycle Time of Death and book of essays The Real and the Possible.
- 7.
Next to Dobrica Ćosić, Antonije Isaković is a leading Serb nationalist writer and one of the creators of the notorious SANU Memorandum, in 1986.
- 8.
Serb writer Vuk Drašković, author of the notorious “historical novel” Nož (Knife), was a hard-line nationalist during the 1990s and has more recently become a “moderate” politician.
- 9.
In Andrić’s novel Radisav’s executioner is Merdžan, a Gypsy serving with the Ottoman troops—so not actually a Turk or a Bosnian Muslim. Radisav is punished for sabotaging bridge-building works at the Drina in Višegrad. Andrić’s description of his death by impalement has been characterized as the most graphically described act of violence in modern Yugoslav literature. See Andrić 2003, 43–50.
- 10.
Petar Petrović Njegoš (1813–1851) authored epic verse The Mountain Wreath, which glorified the extermination of the Muslim converts (Istraga Poturica).
- 11.
For example, “neće Fata sina Bajazita, ‘oće Fata Obilić Junaka” translates as “Fata doesn’t want son Bajazit [the son of fourteenth-century Ottoman Sultan Murad Hüdavendigâr’s son], she only wants Oblić hero [Miloš Oblić, a mythical Serb figure from the 1389 Battle of Kosovo who is said to have assassinated Sultan Murad].” Similar lyrics were used by Chetniks during World War II and again in the 1990s: “Turkinja se pred džamijom klela da je je samo Srbina volela” (“See the Turk at her mosque bowing / Her love to Serbs only swearing”), for example, which suggested that Muslim women were available for sexual humiliation.
- 12.
“Alija” is a reference to the late Alija Izetbegović, first democratically elected president of Bosnia and Herzegovina and leader of the Bosniaks’ largest political party, the SDA (Party for Democratic Action).
- 13.
Albina Sorguc, “Bosnia Prosecutors Launch Probe of Chetnik Rally ‘Hate Speech’” in BIRN (March 2019), available at: https://balkaninsight.com/2019/03/12/bosnia-prosecutors-launch-probe-of-chetnik-rally-hate-speech/. Accessed 10 April 2019.
- 14.
4C or the Serb cross is a national symbol of Serbia and of the Serb Orthodox Church. The tetragrammic cross includes a letter “C” (i.e., the Cyrillic “S”) in each of the four quadrants, as an acronym for “Samo sloga Srbe spašava” (Only unity saves the Serbs). During the 1990s, the 4C symbol and its message were used to mobilize Serbs against other ethnic groups in the region and to mark the territory occupied by the various Serb forces in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo.
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Adams, R., Halilovich, H. (2021). Mass Myths to Mass Graves: Politicizing Memory in Serbia as a Prelude to Genocide in Bosnia. In: Ognjenovic, G., Jozelic, J. (eds) Nationalism and the Politicization of History in the Former Yugoslavia. Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65832-8_14
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