Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to understand how and why the local truth regime concerning the NATO intervention outlived the political regime that created it. Here we probe not only the system of power that created the truth regime around the NATO intervention in Serbia, but also the system that maintained, developed, and diffused it after Milošević’s fall in October 2000. We further look beyond the narrative’s coercive, institutional, and structural power dimension to capture its productive aspects, especially its power to create and reproduce collective identities. In particular, we trace how alternative scripts about the NATO intervention were silenced, disciplined, or marginalized over the past two decades, and to what political effect.
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Notes
- 1.
A collection of songs performed at these rallies was later released by an unofficial “Target Records” label and sold on street stands throughout the NATO campaign (Atanasovski 2015).
- 2.
Saddam Hussein has inspired much symbolism in Serbia. One of the standard opposition rallies against Milošević since the early days of anti-Milošević protests in 1991 has been “Slobo Saddam.”
- 3.
The Armed Forces’ calendar of events is available on the its official website, www.vs.rs.
- 4.
It seems that 7 May was chosen as the date for national remembrance because it symbolizes the high loss of life in Niš on 7 May 1999 in a NATO strike (Janačković 2015).
- 5.
A collection of interviews with Serbian intellectuals who mostly held this “anti-NATO” and “anti-Milošević” position was published in Ristić and Leposavić (1999).
- 6.
It is noteworthy that only a few years before, in 1998, Ćirjaković had complained in Newsweek how “embarrassing” it was “to be a Serb” because “Milošević has convinced most of us that if you don’t share his nationalist politics, you must be a traitor” (Ćirjaković 1998).
- 7.
- 8.
Similar moral panic erupted when a group of students from Belgrade University’s Faculty of Security Studies publicly complained that they had to study from a course pack titled “Ethics of War,” which contained material allegedly glorifying the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the most controversial element being an essay by Mary Kaldor depicting the KLA as “cosmopolitan.” The ensuing public pressure forced Professor Dragana Dulić, who taught the course, to retire (Pavićević 2015).
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We would like to thank Jasna Dragović-Soso, Orli Fridman, Denisa Kostovicova, Jelena Obradović-Wochnik, and the editors of the volume for helpful comments and suggestions.
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Subotić, J., Ejdus, F. (2021). Constructing a Truth Regime: The 1999 NATO Intervention in Serbian Political Memory. 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_9
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