No-One's Memories and a Monument to No-One:

The Process of Collective Memory Construction in after

the Wars of the 1990s

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of “DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY”

by

David Lea

Submitted to the Senate of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

תאריך לועזי 30.10.2013.

Beer-Sheva

No-One's Memories and a Monument to No-One:

The Process of Collective Memory Construction in Serbia after the

Wars of the 1990s

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of “DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY”

by

Lea David

Submitted to the Senate of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Approved by the advisor ______

Approved by the advisor ______

Approved by the Ph.D Committee Chairman ______

Approved by the Dean of the Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies ______תאריך לועזי 30.03.2014.

Beer-Sheva

This work was carried out under the supervision of:

Dr. Jackie Feldman Prof. Lev Luis Grinberg

In the Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Research-Student's Affidavit when Submitting the Doctoral Thesis for Judgment

I Lea David, whose signature appears below, hereby declare that (Please mark the appropriate statements):

X I have written this Thesis by myself, except for the help and guidance offered by my Thesis Advisors.

X The scientific materials included in this Thesis are products of my own research, culled from the period during which I was a research student.

Date: 30.10.2013. Student's name: Lea David

Signature:

Thesis Acknowledgment

This Ph.D thesis would have been impossible without tremendous help of many friends, colleagues and experts who shared interest in the project from its infancy. I had the great fortune to work with outstanding scholars and mentors. They welcomed my project, provided precious advice and guidance throughout different stages of my research and offered so much needed support and encouragement. Yulia Lerner, Uri Ram, Nir Avieli, Uri Shwed were there for me – I thank them with tremendous respect. I would also like to thank the rest of my Sociology and Anthropology Department at Ben Gurion University, in particular Ph.D students Noa Leuchter, Hila Zaban, Yael Ben David and many others for their encouragement, insightful comments, and hard questions.

But above all, I owe sincere gratitude to my dear mentors, Jackie Feldman and Lev Grinberg that provided the finest models of scholarship to which I can only aspire. I cannot thank them enough for the continuous support of my Ph.D study and research, for their patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge. I could not have imagined having a better advisors and mentors for my Ph.D study.

Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family for supporting me unselfishly throughout the whole process. Though my Ph.D research was followed by many exciting academic findings, the most important discovery of all is the unlimited support and love I received from my entire family. This is to my dearest husband Nery and my beloved twin daughters Aya and Zoe.

Dedicated to the victims of the wars and defenders of the fatherland from 1990-1999, Savski Square, , 2012

Spomenik Žrtvama rata i braniocima otadžbine od 1990 do 1999, Savski Trg, Beograd, 2012

Content page:

Abstract in English 2

Introduction: “In Honor of the Shameful Past” 14

Part I Ch. 1: Contested Memory - Theoretical Approach 42 Ch. 2: The Serbian Case 79

Pat II Ch. 3: Ethnographic Work – Methodology 100 Ch. 4: The State Control over Political Arena: Multiple Lives of the Imagined Monument 120

Part III Ch. 5: Fragmentation and Decontextualization of the 1990s` War Memories: War Veterans as Victims 145 Ch. 6: Social Narratives of Suffering: Impression Management of Serbia’s Evolving National Calendar 175 Ch. 7: Holocaust Discourse as a Screen Memory: the Wars of the 1990s as an Elephant in the Room 194

Final remarks: From the Compromising Past to the Compromised Memories: The Monument Revisited 225

Reference 255

Abstract in Hebrew

1

Abstract

This research deals with the ways in which a contested past may be negotiated and channeled into collective memory. However, where disagreement regarding a difficult past exists, the manner in which collective memory is constructed is no longer solely an internal matter; external factors exert significant influence on local memory. Post-conflict states, or more correctly, their ruling elites, face enormous pressures from both domestic and international audiences to please their often contradictory demands. These political elites often struggle to find ways to deal with the transitional justice mechanisms and with the human rights demands forced upon them by the international community while simultaneously responding to local demands to be acknowledged as the righteous party in the conflict. As suggested in this study, the aim of ruling elites is, to construct a certain sellable image for international display while simultaneously shaping a certain national identity to accord with local demands. Consequently, many tensions between global and local demands exist, and these tensions influence the process of reinforcing particular collective memories. In this dissertation I suggest that the process of the construction of collective memory in Serbia after the wars of the 1990s has proved to be an exemplary case of how a post-conflict nation-state may mediate its contested past in order to bridge the gap between domestic demands and those of the international community. Within this process Serbia has utilized its transition towards Europeanization to appropriate, internalize, subvert, evade or transform categories of memory. Serbia’s situation, being cast in the role of the major villain in the wars of the 1990s, initially limited the options available to it. Subsequently the power imbalance between Serbia and the EU resulted in the Serbian political elite’s agenda of promoting a collective memory independent of international pressure. Within this particular set of circumstances the enormous gap between the local demands to be recognized as the righteous party in the conflict and the international demands to confront Serbia’s problematic past, serves as a magnifying glass and helps us analyze the ways political elites try to bridge this gap.

2

Following the decade long attempts to erect a Monument in respect of those killed/fallen/defenders/victims1 of the wars in the 1990s, I demonstrated that demands for dealing with the past, together with other political, social and economic requests and conditions, placed enormous pressure on the ruling elite and played a central role in the process of memory construction. Though the open competitions to erect a monument dedicated to the fallen of the wars of the 1990s were an opportunity to negotiate different mnemonic agendas, the ruling political elite, as the dominant actor, chose to selectively promote Serbian victimhood as a strategy intended to bridge the conflicting domestic and international demands. The extent of the difference between these conflicting demands must be understood in the light of the democratization process that started after the overthrow of Milošević regime in 2000, at that point, the international community conditioned Serbia`s financial well-being and its candidacy for the EU on the implementation of transitional justice mechanisms. Thus, Serbia’s relation to its past was ultimately determined not only through its triple contested pasts: post-war, post-Yugoslav and post-communist, but also through its uneven power-relation with the EU. The process of Europeanization, together with the human rights regime, inevitably brought about alterations in the selection of “usable” memory contents. However, the process of the construction of collective memory in Serbia cannot be explained solely through processes such as the consolidation of human rights discourse and the cosmopolitization of collective memory within the context of Europeanization. Neither can it be explained solely through the given national context. Political calculation, economic depression, social instability and the somewhat imposed process of Europeanization were at the root of the political elite’s strategic decision to invest their resources in maintaining control over political spaces (symbolic spheres in which political actors represent and further their interests (Grinberg 2010)), as the best solution for dealing with demands made both on the international as well as the national level. As has been demonstrated here through meticulous analysis of the Monument affair (2002-2012), the ruling political elite strategically decided to prevent any open and frank

1 The part of contestation and disputed over monument lies in impossibility to reach any kind of consensus to whom the monument should be erected. 3 discussion of the painful and contested national past by maintaining absolute control at all times over these political spaces. All of Serbia’s ruling political elites (right up to now day) have perceived the opening of the Pandora`s box of Serbia`s contested past a dangerous matter. Some were afraid because of their own personal involvement during the wars of the 1990s. Some saw in it a possible source of political and economical instability, while others feared their own political position. These reasons, together with the conflicting demands at the international and local levels explain why the debate regarding Serbia’s role and its responsibility in the wars of the 1990s has never been initiated or supported by the state. Although the Serbian political elites were forced to implement some forms of international transitional justice models regarding Serbia’s role in the wars of the 1990s, the state never encouraged, initiated or promoted any kind of public discussion of the core issues of the contested wars. The analysis of the Monument affair revealed that in order to deal with the conflicting demands, the ruling political elite created and adopted mechanisms of “silencing”. “Silencing” means the closure of political space to any other political actors and the control of public debate. These mechanisms suited the need for strategic maneuvering between the international and the domestic demands. All three mechanisms: 1) decontextualization of memory contents, 2) creation of social narratives of suffering and 3) promotion of the Holocaust memory as a screen memory, are strategies of closing political spaces which thus prevent public debate, representation, negotiation and compromise. These strategies of silencing were intended to reduce the tension between the contradicting demands at the international and the domestic levels. I showed that in spite of the fact that state officials had no clear or inimitable vision, the Monument was perceived at all times as a political device, which was supposed to placate both domestic and international demands. Thus, the ruling elite “hijacked” or “occupied” (Grinberg 2010) political spaces, in order to maneuver and mediate the international demand to confront Serbia’s criminal national past and the domestic demands to be validated as a righteous party in the conflict. The silencing and neutralizing of the mnemonic battles surrounding the Monument affair was partially enabled through the use of the mechanism of fragmentation and decontextualization of memory contents. This mechanism was

4 demonstrated in the case of the war veteran’s mnemonic battles, in which the political elite was engaged in deliberately and strategically fragmenting the war veteran population. The rationale behind choosing this population of war veterans lies in the fact that the participants of the wars such as veterans, refugees or witnesses of atrocities, as mnemonic groups are an inevitable factor in the post-war reconstruction period and the “healing” of the nation cannot be done without addressing their sufferings in the past war. Consequently, gaining control over the veteran population was a crucial step in achieving control over political spaces where any public reckoning with the past might be possible. The political elite primarily intended to mitigate the veterans’ political power, weaken their struggle for their rights, and to reduce the financial burden which war veterans might impose on the state budgets. However their actions were also directed towards maintaining supremacy over the memory agenda. The first step of seizing control over the veteran population and of mitigating their potential political and social power was done very effectively through persistently fragmenting them. This was carefully achieved by using policies of ascribing different privileges to different veteran groups. All governments, regardless of their political tendencies, supported this policy, which consequently led to endless quarrels, disputes and allegations between different veteran groups. After the veterans had been extensively fragmented, the state found successful ways to filter and de-contextualize the war veterans’ memories, thereby bridging both the domestic and the international aspirations. The ruling political elite, through mediation of political spaces and the state institutions, filtered and de-contextualized the war veterans’ memory contents in two main ways: through the adoption and implementation of the European Standards laid out in the Law on Associations, and through changes in the process of granting financial support to war veteran associations. The ruling elite had concluded that filtering and decontextualizing certain adverse memory contents may better Serbia’s chances of being accepted to the European Union, even though neither the Europeanization nor the Transitional Justice mechanisms directly proscribe what should be remembered or forgotten. The de-contextualized and filtered memories require a shift from concrete memories to abstract remembrance. The idea is to reinforce certain categories while avoiding specific details. In other words, wars are bad but liberation

5 wars are a necessity. Thus the real victims are those who fought those wars. Not some concrete wars, but wars in general. Not some concrete soldiers but soldiers as a category. This particular logic was assigned to the ways in which the war veteran organizations were to be granted financial support. On the one hand, the category of ‘fighter’ was reinforced: various war veteran organizations representing different wars across historical lines, such as the , World War One, World War Two, and the wars of the 1990s, were granted financial aid. On the other hand, it seems rather clear that only organizations that contextualized their war experience as traumatic, and highlighted their victimhood, were selected as grant recipients. Processes of filtering and decontextualization by which memories of concrete (particular) atrocities are transformed into abstract (universal) violations and suffering of humanity prove to be crucial for satisfying the contradicting demands at the international and the national level. It is a process through which, instead of accepting responsibility for the misdeeds, the state tries to find the lowest common denominator between the demands at the international and at the domestic level. As a result, the state continued the previous pattern of Serbian victimization. The category of victim was found to be a suitable one. For the international community it was meant to express full appreciation and understanding that wars are terrible things, which only produce victims on all sides, while for the domestic community, reframing war veterans as victims was a mode of settling the internal differences between those who perceived the war veterans as criminals and those who recognized them as national heroes. Consequently, the filtering and decontextualization of the wars of the 1990s, both promotes the state agenda based on victimhood, while weakening the promotion of other veterans’ organizations’ memory agendas. This has been a successful strategy for closing political spaces where any open and frank discussions of the role of Serbia and its responsibility for the wars of the 1990s could take place, effectively preventing the entry of any other actors into these spaces. It also explains how the erected monument ended up commemorating both “victims and defenders of the homeland” together. The second mechanism I examined deals with the ways through which the social narratives of suffering are endorsed and embraced to further promote the characterization of as victims. The narrative and commemorative networks of victimhood were

6 developed as a way of tacitly claiming the righteousness of the wars in the 1990s wherein the Serbs were betrayed, sacrificed, expatriated and destroyed. In order to promote this memory agenda, it was necessary to construct wide sets of societal infrastructures to successfully enroot the vision of the victimized nationhood. Since national calendars are not an instrument for representing a historic reality, but a device for setting forth certain agendas, to check my hypothesis of the ruling elites’ promotion of the Serbian victimhood I turned to the analysis of the newly tailored Serbian calendar. If the hypothesis was to be true, victimhood would be certainly engraved in the commemorative cycle of remembering and forgetting. By careful assessment of the evolving national calendar during the last decade, I showed that the Serbian political elite have managed Serbia’s contested past through cover-ups and cultural reframing rather than through public acknowledgement. The newly emerging national calendar came to life after a process of debate lasting several years, in which an eight-member committee, together with various professionals, “negotiated” over Serbian history and past events. The rationale of those prolonged negotiations over Serbia`s past was to find a suitable formula, to adapt it to local needs, and to align it with international standards and with similar programs established by governments in many other European countries. The whole calendar illustrates the government’s best efforts at overcoming the gap between the international and the domestic demands. I have shown that in order to deal with this complex problem, extensive use of impression management (IM) techniques was made, in order to create the current Serbian calendar, as a state-sponsored practice. IM is best defined as the attempt to control images that are projected in real or imagined social interactions (Schlenker 1980). IM techniques actually enabled different readings of the calendar at the domestic and international levels, primarily as they facilitate the construction of multiple meanings. On the one hand, the calendar intends to present Serbia as a democratic and progressive state, but on the other hand, it legitimizes a wide range of emotions at the local level. In other words, the new Serbian calendar is made both to meet European expectations and to further Serbian interests of joining the EU, but also to allow wider audiences in Serbia to express feelings of animosity, injustice and frustration as a means of settling historical accounts. At the international level, the

7

Serbian case strikes one as an exemplary case study of how contemporary states deal with the requirements of a global human rights regime. In many ways, Serbia is behaving like a job applicant who is trying to “look good and lies to do it” (Weiss and Feldman 2006). This attitude is supported by conformity to European standards, as well as by a self- presentation exemplifying Serbia's good and moral deeds. The latter includes the struggle against fascism, a culture of negotiation, and continuously fighting anti-Semitism. By contrast, on the local level, the promoted memory of Serbian victimhood is presented and preserved in seven of the 21 commemorative days. This not only suggests that Serbia perpetuates already well embodied patterns of victimhood, but that such patterning makes room for the expression of grievances, unresolved historical accounts and comprehensive feelings of injustice. The calendar deliberately chooses to revive and symbolically rebuild 19th century Serbia by placing and enforcing the new Serbian commemorative master narrative in the 19th century, and thereby, completely ignoring the wars of the 1990s. Apart from March 24, the date commemorating the beginning of the NATO bombardment on Serbia which further promotes Serbian victimhood, the wars of the 1990s and Serbian participation therein are conspicuously absent from the calendar. Indeed, according to the new Serbian calendar, these wars and atrocities apparently never happened, and if they did happen, then Serbia had nothing to do with them. More importantly, such tailoring blurs Serbia's responsibility for the wars in the 1990s. Thus, it seems that promoting social narratives of suffering helps the governmental efforts to close political spaces to other political actors and consequently, to escape taking any responsibility for the wars of the 1990s. It also makes more understandable the fact that other parties in the Monument affair, apart from the Belgrade Municipality, were persistently denied the access to the political space. During the course of the Monument affair different mnemonic groups, from various ideological points of view, tried to resist the social narratives of suffering enforced by the state, but with very limited success. The third mechanism, developed by the ruling political elite and intended to cover an open debate on the Serbia`s contested past, is the creation of Holocaust discourse. I suggested that the Holocaust memory discourse in Serbia has been currently promoted by the state in its effort to conceal any political space where an encounter between the state

8 and the civil society can occur and redirect public debate regarding the wars of the 1990s. Thus, in Serbia, Holocaust memory is currently being brought to the fore as a platform for articulating national interests and thus is activated as a screen-memory. The concept of screen memory serves to draw attention to the complexities of social memory, as it simultaneously produces and interrogates knowledge about the past as a way to both conceptualize and trouble contemporary notions of social memory. Thus, it is not that the Holocaust has become a single universally shared memory, as Levy and Sznaider envisaged, rather as Assmann (2007) suggested - it has become the paradigm or template through which other genocides and historical traumas are very often perceived, presented or shuttered. The Holocaust has thereby not replaced other traumatic memories around the globe but has provided a language for their articulation or a wider context that enables reframing of the past (Byford 2007). I showed that in Serbia it is a zero sum game where, instead of dealing with their roles and responsibilities, Serbian governments are engaged in reframing and obfuscating the contested elements of their national past. While East European countries that have already joined the European Union try to expand their memory agendas, by marginalizing Holocaust memory, nation-states still waiting to enter the European Union may promote Holocaust discourse as a precious signifier of their moral boundaries. In Serbia, Holocaust memory discourse is promoted not only to better Serbia’s image on the international stage but also to equate the Serbian victims with the Jewish victims. Both those real and symbolic power relationships and the supremacy of the core Europe over memory contents inside the European Union, actually pushes Holocaust discourse to the forefront as it successfully bridges the tension between international and domestic demands. The real power behind the adoption and promotion of Holocaust memory in Serbia lies in the fact that Serbs were perceived both internally and externally as those who helped saving the Jews during World War Two and as their “brothers in suffering” (MacDonald 2005). The ruling political elites in Serbia perceived that the Holocaust, from the international perspective, has proved to be a suitable device for gaining certain privileges and for claiming membership in a unified moral community. Thus, only after realizing that promoting the Holocaust memory might work in their favor, both at the domestic and international level, the Holocaust became an important issue for the ruling elites. Mixing and merging different and at times even

9 contradicting agendas promoted at the local and international level, the Holocaust came in handy for the Serbian political elite as a device for simultaneously satisfying both domestic and international demands. In other words, looking from outside of the European Union, embracing Holocaust memory is understood as a necessary step suitable for international display that adds extra points and improves Serbia’s chances of getting accepted into the EU. Looking from the inside, the promotion of the Holocaust simultaneously beats several “flies” at once: it seemingly promotes both the Serbian victimization throughout history by equating Serbian victims with Holocaust victims, and serves as an exemplary case for the highest standards of appreciation of human rights. It also purposefully constructs a discourse that covers and redirects any open and sincere discussion on the accountability and responsibility on Serbia`s part for the wars in the 1990s. However, Holocaust memory discourse is utilized and tailored in such way that, while in theory it is supposed to preach human and minority rights, in practice, it not only actually promotes nationalism and Serbian victimhood but also disguises the discourse on the role of Serbia in the wars of the 1990s. Such instrumentalization of Holocaust memory helps us understand not only how the Serbian national calendar has three commemorative days dedicated in some manner to the Holocaust,2 but also why the Jewish choir receives money designed for war veteran organizations that help improving their societal position and promote the tradition of the liberation wars in Serbia. It also explains why the Belgrade Municipality, in its press release for the opening of the “Monument to the victims of the wars and defenders of the fatherland from 1990-1999”, linked the monument directly to the future Holocaust memorial, subtle equating Serbian victims with the Holocaust victims.

However, while these strategies determined how the process of collective memory construction looks, Serbia’s triple contested pasts3 determined the question of the content, of what is to be remembered/forgotten. Serbia, similar to other ethno political groups in

2 The Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide in World War One World War Two and (22 April), the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Holocaust Victims (27 January) and the International Day against Fascism and anti-Semitism (9 September). 3 Post-war, post-communist and post-Yugoslav. 10 the former , is deeply immersed in the role of being a victim (Franović 2008). This is the case, I suggested, because the victimization narrative is found to be the most suitable in bridging the gap between demands at the international and domestic levels. This choice is, however, not a result only, as it has been widely argued until now, of the embedded historical and cultural patterns but was also the most suitable option available, in providing a satisfactory solution for both the international and the domestic communities. The role of the victim enables nations to select one particular past that annuls and countermands other pasts. For example, promoting Serbia’s sacrifices for the sake of Europe in World War One and their brotherhood in suffering with the Jewish people in World War Two allows issues of Serbian responsibility for other events in their history to be swept under the carpet. Considering the events of the 1990s wars, it becomes apparent that this is actually a very powerful positioning. It allows Serbia to play the role of an under-privileged and victimized nation that cannot be held responsible for the wars, while helping to forge a desired national identity. This particular memory framing explains why both in the newly tailored national calendar and in the emerging Holocaust discourse, potentiating the prism focusing precisely on Serbian victimhood in the country’s national past, was found to be suitable for both international and domestic display. Embracing Serbian victimhood where Serbs are to be perceived, both internally and externally as victims, served (and still serves) the attempts of the ruling elite to close political spaces to any frank debate on the wars of the 1990s. Thus, it seems that the choices in memory content selection were not random. On the contrary – they followed a particular logic. Caught between the opposing international and domestic demands, the ruling political elite in Serbia provided other actors with limited or no access to political spaces where any open debate on the recent wars could take place. Nevertheless, the role of the state as the main memory promoter in the process of Europeanization did not disappear but was altered. The imbalance in power between Serbia and the EU, expressed throughout the processes of Europeanization, the rise of transitional justice mechanisms and the human rights regime, forces the post- conflict governments to become artful and canny when mediating between external and internal factors. While there is an extensive literature that deals with the ways by which states manage transitions to democracy, including the evasion of laws, claimant attitudes

11 toward the state, opportunism, nepotism, favoritism and clientelism, camouflage and double moral standards (Sztompka 2004), the change in the role of the state in the process of forging a collective memory is rarely ever addressed. This functional change, from being the source of power to becoming a mediator and often a gate keeper explains why memory is extensively perceived as a supplementary source of power. In addition to more traditional sources of power, such as social cohesion, political stability, economical wealth, military capabilities; memory and the representations of the past became increasingly valuable supplies for achieving real and symbolic goals. Consequently, the ruling elites will create, find or adopt mechanisms to promote memory contents that are simultaneously suitable for both international and domestic display, even if it this comes at the at expense of whole social segments, such as, for example, the war veterans in Serbia. In this sense, victimhood seems to be the best suited position to choose as it deconstructs the category of justice and responsibility. In human rights discourse, victims and perpetrators are usually referred to as two completely separate and homogenous sets of people, while in reality not all victims are the same, nor are all perpetrators the same, and some victims are also perpetrators (Borer 2003). On the one hand, the universal human rights stance rejects the hierarchy of victims, while on the other “it is precisely the absence of the hierarchy that de-contextualizes and de-historicizes the actual deeds of past injustice” (Levy and Sznaider 2010: 131). Thus, it seems beneficial for nations with compromising pasts to choose exactly the motif of victimization as it promotes sympathy instead of responsibility. In the end, it looks like the question is not why nations with contested pasts chose to promote their own victimization, rather, how do they produce societal webs and networks of suffering to enforce and embed the victimization into life of a nation.

Trapped in between the opposing international and domestic demands and defined by the power-relations with the EU, all the ruling political elites in the post-Yugoslav spaces, without exception, limited the access that other mnemonic groups have to political spaces where any open debate on the recent wars could take place. However, while the officials in , Bosnia, Macedonia and are invested in pushing to

12 the fore a set of narratives on the wars of the 1990s, in Serbia the official strategy is to obfuscate the past as way of controlling and managing it, rather than to picking a side. It has been the strategic decision of the ruling political elite to find ways to keep political spaces, where the contested and painful national past could be shaped openly and frankly, closed for other actors. James Young (1993) claimed that the success of each monument is measured in its ability to account for multiple meanings. This can however allow for abuse, in cases where the abstract forms and representations of the past events are used to obfuscate, de-personalize, de-contextualize and altogether obscure meaning – which in the end becomes irrelevant to everyone. This policy – blurring the past in order to control public memory – is embedded in the Monument, making it invisible and doomed to be a stumbling block, a place of contestation, rather than reconciliation.

Key Words: Serbia, the Wars of the 1990s, Europeanization, Collective Memory, Political Space, Monument, War Veterans, Holocaust, National Calendar

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Introduction

“Djilas [Belgrade’s Mayor]4 refrained from placing a wreath at the monument to victims of the wars of the 1990s”5; “Dissatisfied families prevented Djilas from placing a wreath – The shame of executioners commemorated together with victims perpetuated in concrete”6; “The monument initiative - competition - In honor of the shameful past”7; these were some of the headlines which appeared in March 2012, reporting the scandalous event which took place in the very heart of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. On Sunday the 24th of March 2012, Belgrade Mayor Djilas unveiled a memorial dedicated to “The victims of the wars and defenders of the fatherland from 1990-1999”. While two months prior to the unveiling ceremony the deputy Mayor had announced that on the 24th of March of the same year (2012), on the thirteenth anniversary of the NATO bombardment on Serbia, a monument “in honor of the innocent victims of former Yugoslavia”8 would be publically inaugurated; the actual event was shrouded in secrecy. The organizers, led by the Belgrade Mayor, tried to avoid large audiences by only inviting some of the veteran organizations who had been involved in initiating the erection of the monument. This attempt at maintaining a low profile followed several boycotts by Human Rights organizations, and the fear of an open confrontation with them, had prompted the Mayor not to publically disclose the exact hour of the opening. His fears turned out to be justified. Prior to the event, a Women’s Feminist-Antimilitarist Peace Organization called “Women in Black” organized a series of public demonstrations protesting against the decision to erect a monument dedicated both to the victims and to the perpetrators. They raised their voices against equating victims with their executioners, claiming that this monument represents “a permanent mark of [Serbia’s] crimes”9, while demanding that the Serbian government take responsibility for its misdeeds in the wars of the 1990s.

4 My parenthesis. 5 Djilas sprečen da položi venac na spomenik žrtvama ratova od 1990. do 1999. Godine, 24 March 2012, www.blic.rs 6 Krvnici i žrtve u betonu sramote, 24 March 2012. www.e-novine.rs 7 U slavu sramne prošlosti, 1 March 2012, www.e-novine.rs 8 Spomenitk na Savskom Trgu do kraja marta, 30 January 2012. www.presonline.rs 9 Žene u crnom povodom spomenika „svim žrtvama i braniocima“- Trajni beleg zločina, 18 March 2012, www.politika.rs 14

Though civil society organizations in Serbia are relatively weak and marginalized, the Mayor had a good understanding of how such confrontations look in the media, realizing that such a turn of events may cost him votes in the upcoming elections in May 2012. The Mayor’s concept for the ceremony included him delivering a short speech and several photo opportunities by the monument; with the whole event being primarily aimed at winning the votes of war veterans and their families. Though he did succeed in keeping the event small, the Mayor had been unpleasantly surprised when some family members of those killed in the wars did not allow him access to place a wreath at the monument. No one was able to make their way through the crowd, not even the Mayor or any other municipality officials. The crowd’s actions were a direct result of their disappointment with the appearance of the monument, which "does not even feature the names of the victims, nor the cross."10 “We waited 20 years and what we got is just humiliating and shameful”11, they explained. The monument, located in the square near the Central Railway Station, in an area well known for prostitution and sex shops, is minimalistic in appearance and can easily go unnoticed by passers-by. It has a compound composition, constructed out of three geometric elements: a rusty steel plate, a pathway with boulders and a transparent glass plate. The steel plate is engraved with a tiny inscription; “The victims of the wars and defenders of the Fatherland from 1990-1999”. One has to come very close to the plate to be able to read the inscription. There is a glass panel beside the steel plate with a dirt path, symbolizing a river running behind them. There are no names, no cross, and no figurative sculptures of any kind – just rusty steel, glass and boulders. It took ten years, three open competitions and sixty million dinars12 to erect this monument. The contestation described above arose mainly from the fact that no significant public discussion on Serbia’s responsibility for its role in wars of the 1990s has ever been initiated by any Serbian government since those wars ended in 1999. Numerous questions have been buried in a deep and actively produced silence, with all governments since 2000 having deemed it to be too risky, politically, to deal with Serbia’s contested past. Even when the monument was erected, many questions remained

10 Djilasu nisu dali da položi venac na spomenik žrtvama rata 1990-1999, 24 March 2012, www.24sata.rs 11 Ibid. 12 Equivalent to 600 000 Euros. 15 publically unanswered. Who are the victims that the monument seeks to commemorate? Are they Serbian victims? All those who died in the Former Yugoslavia? Does the monument commemorate only civilians or military personnel as well? Who are these defenders of the homeland? Does this include people who served in the Yugoslav Army at the time of the wars? People who were recruited by force, volunteers in paramilitary units? Are only Serbs from Serbia included or are Serbs from Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia included too? Another question can be asked regarding the exact location of the “Fatherland”, engraved in the monument? Does this mean Serbia, a Greater Serbia or the Former Yugoslavia? Finally, is it even possible to erect a monument which can significantly commemorate victims and fighters simultaneously? It was the that led to the atrocious and highly contested wars. Serbia was one of six republics in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ). Together with Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), Montenegro and Macedonia, and two autonomous provinces within Serbia – Vojvodina and Kosovo; it had formed part of a multinational socialist state. Nationalism within the republics grew throughout the 1980s, spurred on by the fall of Communism in Eastern and Central Europe. In May/June 1991 Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence from Yugoslavia, and in April 1992 Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) followed suit. The Yugoslav National Army (JNA), led by Serbian president Slobodan Milošević, resisted these moves for independence. The United Nations imposed an arms embargo on all of the Yugoslav republics, which gave the Serbian controlled Yugoslav army far greater military strength. This imbalance, amongst other things, led to large scale ethnic cleansings and mass killings. Once the wars ended, the Serbian nationalist regime, leaded by Milošević, turned their attention to the autonomous province of Kosovo, within Serbia itself. The repression of the ethnic Albanians by the Serbian military police increased, and in 1998 Serbian-controlled Yugoslav Army troops entered Kosovo to quash the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). While both sides blame each other for the atrocious deeds that transpired during the war, it is an accepted fact that troops led by the Yugoslav government forces committed ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians. This atrocity resulted in the fierce NATO bombardment of Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro.

16

The 1990s were an extremely difficult period for Serbia, as well as indeed, for the other countries that fought in these wars. During this decade Serbia underwent the wars for the legacy of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, isolation and UN sanctions, the NATO bombing campaign and Slobodan Milošević’s anti-European authoritarian rule, which isolated the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia13 () from Europe. Political life in Serbia during the 1990s had the characteristics of a closed state, a closed society and a closed system (Orlović 2007). During the year 2000, under the influence of external and internal pressures and with the assistance of the civil society, democratic opposition parties gathered against Milošević, seeking to attain a civic European orientation. After the overthrow of the Milošević regime, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was integrated into international institutions and organizations within a very short time. Following the political changes of 2000, the improvement of relations with the EU and the prospective EU membership became the main priorities for the new Serbian government. From 2000 onwards democratization processes have been linked with Europeanization, with the latter process being understood as integration into the European Union (Orlović 2007). In the year 2000 conservative traditionalism still prevailed over the pro-European perspective in political conflicts in Serbia. Candidacy for the EU was conditional not only on the compatibility of candidate nations to the EU’s political criteria, but also to maintaining peace and developing security in the region (Fink-Hafner 2007). There were exacting pre-conditions for integration into the EU and constant political pressure was exerted on candidate nations to fulfill EU expectations. Under these pressurized conditions, the majority of parties made adjustments to their programs, platforms and public statements. Having to deal with often contradictory national and transnational demands, the Serbian political elites were forced to implement some forms of international transitional justice models regarding Serbia’s role in the wars of the 1990s, including international and domestic trials (Subotić 2009). However, the state never encouraged, initiated or

13 Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) was established in 1992 as a federation. In 2003, it was reconstituted as a political union called the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro (SCG). Following Montenegro's vote for full independence in the referendum of 21 May 2006, Montenegro declared independence on 3 June 2006. This was followed on 5 June 2006 by Serbia's declaration of independence, marking the final dissolution of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, and the re-emergence of Serbia as an independent state, under its own name, for the first time since 1918. 17 promoted any kind of public discussion of the core issues of the contested wars. This should be understood in the light of the fact that, even after the overthrow in 2000, the Serbian government never took full responsibility for its part in the wars of the 1990s. While the rhetoric regarding the wars of the 1990s during the Milošević regime espoused Serbia’s righteous struggle to free the Serbs and all alleged Serbian territories, surprisingly, after 2000 this remained more or less the same. The wars of the 1990s lasted almost a decade (1990 – 1999, in Slovenia, Croatia, BiH, Kosovo as well as the NATO bombing) and resulted in 100,000 – 300,000 refugees and internally displaced people living in Serbia14 (Serbs from Croatia, BiH and Kosovo), an unknown number of Serb casualties, a couple of thousand disabled people, 6,000 missing Serbs and 250,000 Serbs who fled the country. In Croatia alone, 15,970 citizens were killed, in Bosnia and Herzegovina 97,207 (who have been identified) and in Kosovo 13,421. At least 1,200 murdered Kosovo Albanians were transported to Serbia and buried in 18 mass graves15 (those that have been discovered so far). To date, there is still no official body in Serbia in charge of collecting the exact numbers of Serbian citizens, soldiers, policemen, women and children who were killed between 1990 and 1999. Serbia differs significantly from other post-conflict states in the , such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and even Kosovo, with respect to its perception on what actually happened in these wars. The main difference lies in the fact that while other ethnic communities from the former the Yugoslav state actually gained independence at the end of the wars (Slovenia, Croatia, BiH – separated into two different entities, Macedonia, and later on also Montenegro and Kosovo), Serbians perceived this process to have taken place at their expense. The Serbian population either fled the lands they inhabited or stayed in them as an ethnic minority (Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo). Thus, Serbia was the obvious looser of all of the conflicts. It did not gain anything and its territory actually shrunk. The basic questions that still have not been publically addressed include: what was Serbia fighting for; why was it fighting and against exactly who was it fighting. However, in the absence of any frank and public discussion sponsored by the government can the contested elements of Serbia’s past have new meanings assigned?

14 Big gap in numbers are the result of many different source, mostly coming from various NGOs and not from the official sources. 15 Data presented by ‘Women in Black” organization. 18

Who, indeed, generates the meaning of the past and who determines these are framed by power relations? In other words, what is the logic behind the process of socially organized amnesia and memories currently taking place in Serbia?

Personal approach I am Yugoslavian by birth. In 1991, when Yugoslavia began disintegrating and wars commenced between the different ethnic groups, I became a Jew; my name gave me away. When, in 1999, I reconciled myself to my new identity and immigrated to Israel, the Ministry of the Interior and my Slavic accent rendered me a Serbian. As my identity evolved, so did my memories; at least those I cared to remember. The metamorphoses within me took place against the backdrop of Israeli society’s constant pursuit of memory and commemoration. It is due to this personal history of mine that I have chosen to research the disintegration and reconstruction of post-war Serbian national identity, as it is manifested through the process of collective memory construction. It was in the aftermath of Cast Lead – the Israeli attack on Gaza in response to well, I am not sure I remember. I was sitting in my living room while staring at unbearably militant images on the news, wondering how I “succeeded” in upgrading my life: from a decade of wars of secession in Former Yugoslavia, the and the NATO bombardment to the chronic and never ending Israeli-Palestinian wars. The soon- to-be father of my children was sitting next to me, bearing his own national shame and preferring at that very moment to be a Serb rather than Israeli. Once again, we found ourselves talking about the wars in Yugoslavia, trying to make sense of our personal life stories. I said that Israel in many ways looked very much like Yugoslavia: the total obsession with commemorations in Israel – in schools, squares, public spaces, even kindergartens, was similar to those unforgettable pioneers’ parades in honor of the big and almighty Tito; the cult of the fallen soldier in Israel paralleled that of the partisans in Yugoslavia; and in both Israel and Serbia there was an overall feeling of organic belonging to the “national being” and in both countries there was never-ending rhetoric around the ultimate national value – sacrificing your life for the homeland. At some point, while discussing the fact that it is unlikely that many Israelis would ever agree with my comparison, as they are trapped in the perception of the “uniqueness” of their

19 situation, he asked me: And what about today? When the Serbian Memorial Day is commemorated? Silence. “What memorial day?” I ask. “When Serbs commemorate the fallen fighters from the wars in the 1990s?” - he insisted. I had no idea. I immediately sent an e-mail to my mother. “There is no such thing”, she responded. Then I sent an e-mail to my sister. “There is no such thing”, she responded. I received the same answer from all my friends. I found this hard to believe. It just made no sense to me. That’s how I started my research. Since moving to Israel in 1999, my perceptions of those wars relied almost solely on my personal memories and were not shaped in a societal process of construction, reproduction and contestation of Serbian national identity. I was eager to find out how the wars of the 1990s had been presented, articulated and shaped in public discourse over the last decade. It was an intellectual journey in search of emotional closure. Throughout the entire research I was highly influenced by the Israeli context. In many senses this proved to be a valuable comparison, but it was also a trap. Hoping to understand which elements of the 1990s wars were missing from Serbia’s commemorative calendar and why, my very first venue of internet research was to find the ‘Veterans’ Organization’ in Serbia. First in the line of the many difficulties yet to come was to determine the appropriate terminology. Should one talk of soldiers, fighters, defenders, veterans or warriors?16 It was clear that all of these terms are in use and instead of finding one big veterans’ organization I found scores of small, fragmented and at times phantom organizations. At the very beginning of my search for the war veterans’ organizations, I came across several articles reporting on the “Monument Affair”. I understood from the short article that there had been open competitions, cancelled twice, for erecting a monument to victims and fallen fighters. The affair seemed to be just what I was looking for: the entire issue revolved around the particular framing of memory contents from the wars of the 1990s with both the state and segments of civil society being able to negotiate with each other and promote different agendas.

16 vojnik, ratnik, borac, veteran, branilac…. 20

Monument Affair The affair started back in the 1990s but it was not until the year 2001 that two veterans associations17 officially applied to the municipality of Belgrade to erect a monument in commemoration of the Serbian soldiers who had been killed in action during the wars of the 1990’s. In November of 2002 an open competition began for the sculptural design of a memorial in honor of the fallen fighters and victims of the 1990- 1999 wars in the territory of former Yugoslavia and those killed in the NATO bombings. The sculpture was to be built in one of the parks on the periphery of Belgrade. Many additional organizations who considered themselves to be qualified in terms of the competition’s requirements quickly joined the initiative.18 The competition garnered interest from the general public and as a result a group of artists and intellectuals, later self named as the "Monument Group", began to assemble regularly, holding theoretical discussions concerning the competition. These discussions centered on two main issues. The first involved the question of who the soldiers to be commemorated were (soldiers in the Yugoslavian army, soldiers on reserve duty, soldiers from the units established in Croatia and Bosnia, volunteers, police sent to Kosovo, soldiers and civilians killed in the NATO bombings) and who the victims to be commemorated were (whether they were the same soldiers from all of the above categories or only soldiers from specific categories, civilians from all of the former Yugoslavia or only from certain parts, only Serbians or everyone irrespective of their affiliation to a specific ethnic group). The second issue was concerned with the need to first of all reach the truth about the wars, and only subsequently to discuss how the past is best remembered. In a move apparently related to the pressure applied by the monument group, which held regular meetings, wrote letters and demanded that a wide scale public debate be held, the steering committee notified that the competition had been cancelled (June 2003). However, just one month later in July 2003, a new competition for a sculptural solution to the issue of a suitable memorial for the victims of the 1990-1999 wars in the territory of former Yugoslavia, including the NATO bombings, was publicized. The only significant change that came was that the words "Fallen Fighters" were removed from the title of the competition. Paradoxically,

17 The Military Invalids’ Association and The Association of Fighters of Wars between 1990-1999. 18 The Association of Parents of Soldiers Killed in NATO Bombing, War Veterans and Fighter's for Peace, Civilian Invalids of the War, The Parents Association for the Missing from Novi Sad. 21 those that had initiated the erection of the monument now found themselves ousted from it. At the end of the second competition in December of 2003, the professional committee announced that: "the committee respectfully tried, in a professional and honest manner, to find the project that would best describe the drama and tragedy that befell us.19 However, the works that were submitted were disappointing. We have regretfully determined that the noble goal of the monument did not provide true inspiration. The fact is that the subject is extremely complex, and represents the absurdity of our times..."20 The competition was cancelled once again. The veterans and victims associations were disappointed, each for their own reasons. In June of 2004, the municipality of Belgrade organized a public debate restricted to the issue of the monument, with no discussion permitted on the role and responsibility of Serbia in the wars. The Monument Group refused to participate as, according to them, the debate was not properly organized. Instead, they submitted a letter of assessment to the municipality of Belgrade in which they specified the necessary steps to be taken in order to erect the monument. Among these were: data collection and thorough preparation for public debate, a series of public debates and the selection of a work of art that would meet the contextual and political challenges of this issue. Their proposal was not only refused but completely ignored. In December of 2005, the municipality of Belgrade publicized a third competition for a conceptual, artistic, architectural and urban solution for the Savski Square in Belgrade, with a monument dedicated to the "Victims of the Wars and Defenders of the Fatherland from 1990-1999". A few changes took place in the course of the following month. Firstly, the competition was now geared toward an architectural design and not a sculpture. Secondly, the fighters were reinstated, though renamed "defenders" and thirdly, the former Yugoslavia was replaced with the "fatherland", a no less ambiguous term.21 Lastly, the intended geographical location of the monument had moved from the periphery of Belgrade, to its center. In October 2006 the competition closed, however no

19 My italics 20 Document published in the beginning of January 2004 by the Belgrade Municipal Professional Committee: "Progress Report of the Professional Committee for the selection of a sculptural design for a memorial to the fallen fighters and victims of 1990-1999 wars in the territory of former Yugoslavia including those killed in the NATO bombing. 21 Between the name “Yugoslavia”, as it was in 1990, and the name “Serbia”, as it is today, the name and area of the state has been changed 5 times. 22 first prize was awarded. Instead, a second prize was awarded, for "recommended placement" while the committee reserved the right to "improve and make corrections". According to the committee: "the work’s highest value is in its ability to further the location’s potential in that it creates a new visual identity for this place. Thus, by encouraging the living, the victims are honored."22 In March 2012, to my great surprise, the monument finally came to life. Influenced by the Israeli context, my presumption was that the overwhelming ambiguity regarding the role and responsibility of Serbia present in the public discourse unequivocally means that the Serbian state is not in a position to establish and claim a solid narrative on what transpired in the wars of the 1990s. It was only after I had finished my research, which I conducted from 2009 to 2012, that I was finally able to make some sense out of the fragmented data of the “Monument Affair”. I then realized that my basic assumption had been completely wrong. Not only has Serbia’s political elite been slowly yet persistently constructing a narrative relating to the wars of the 1990s but it has also been trying persistently to control the negotiations between all parties involved over memory content. Though many civil groups were involved in the “Monument Affair”, and although at certain points in time it looked as if the negotiations over memory content between the sides were producing results, it was all a pretense. From the very beginning it was the state that, by the use of the political elites’ powers and authority, created and cultivated the illusion of a meaningful encounter between the parties involved, while actually persistently promoting its own agenda. The monument case proved that the state is actively reframing its role in the wars of the 1990s. Rather than opening a public debate, the state has actually gradually constructed social settings developing the narrative of Serbian victimhood. If, as has also been suggested by other studies (Subotić 2009, Kuljić 2006, Bieber 2002), it is indeed the case that negotiations between the state and civil society have been managed and controlled by the state, then I consider that inquiries regarding the current collective memory construction in Serbia also have to be undertaken using the top-down approach. Why and how is the ruling political elite of more than a decade choosing to

22 Quoted from a pamphlet publishing the results of the competition, October 2006, Belgrade. 23 embrace the narrative of victimization of the Serbs? What are the reasons behind these choices and what has the resultant pay off been? Throughout this study, I claim that, apart from being well embedded in Serbia’s past, the state’s choice of victimization as the main memory agenda is actually a straightforward consequence of the opposing demands Serbia has to face simultaneously. On the one hand, there is an international demand forced upon Serbia to “face its state criminal history” (Subotić 2009: 15). On the other hand, Serbia also has to deal with local demands to be recognized as a righteous party in the conflict. I contend that the ruling political elite have elected to adopt the strategy of claiming Serbian victimhood in order to alleviate the tension between these two opposing demands. I disclose three discrete mechanisms through which the ruling political elite altered, appropriated and instrumentalized the adoption of the EU standards and adjusted them to claim Serbian victimization, each being elaborated upon here: 1) decontextualization of memory contents, 2) creation of social narratives of suffering and 3) promotion of Holocaust memory. The first mechanism, discussed in the fifth chapter, deals with the ways in which the ruling political elites set about deliberately and strategically fragmenting the war veteran population. In many ways, gaining control over the veteran population was a crucial step in gaining control over the memory of the contested wars of the 1990s. This was intended primarily to mitigate the veterans’ political power, weaken the struggle for their rights, and to reduce the financial burden which war veterans might impose on the state budgets. However this policy was also aimed directly at maintaining supremacy over the memory agenda. I elaborate on how the ruling political elite has filtered and de- contextualized the war veterans’ memory contents in two main ways: through the adoption and implementation of the European Standards laid out in the Law on Associations, and through changes in the process of granting financial support to war veteran associations. The second mechanism, examined in the sixth chapter, deals with the ways through which the social narratives of suffering have been endorsed and embraced in order to further promote the characterization of Serbs as victims. I examine how the new Serbian calendar created by the ruling elite reinforces and perpetuates the leitmotif of Serbian victimization. This commemorative calendar has been used as a way

24 to tacitly claim the righteousness of Serbia in the wars in the 1990s, wars wherein the Serbs were betrayed, sacrificed, expatriated and destroyed. The third mechanism analyzed in the seventh chapter, addresses the creation of Holocaust discourse as a means to cover up an open debate on Serbia’s contested past. I elaborate on how Holocaust memory discourse in Serbia is being currently promoted by the Serbian Orthodox Church, having also been adopted at a later date by the ruling political elite in its efforts to minimize interactive dialogue between the state and the civil society and to redirect public debate regarding the wars of the 1990s.

Theoretical approach As post factum interpretation of the legitimacy of wars ultimately defines the way in which the memory of that war is constructed there may be retroactive power struggles over legitimization of behavior during the war. This is particularly true for nation-states with a “difficult” past. A contested national past can be a serious obstacle to the political and economic growth of a nation and is predominantly managed in three different ways. Firstly, publicly addressing the past may be beneficial for a society as a means of proving moral righteousness (Olick 2007, Levy and Sznyder 2002). This may even incorporate exploitation of culpability by, for example, war tourism (Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996). Secondly, various memory entrepreneurs may produce multi-vocal and fragmented spaces and commemorations which are constructed in a way that allows for multiple readings (Vinitzky-Seroussi 2002, Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz 1991). Lastly, for numerous reasons, some nation-states may prefer concealing and obfuscating contested elements of their past (Rivera 2008, Giesen 2004, Aguilar 1999). It is important to stress however, that both remembering and forgetting are selective as well as strategic in nature and are never exploited to their fullest. This research shows how Serbia’s political elite, as the main force behind the decisions regarding society’s political policy and the embedded representatives of the state itself, instrumentalized the European integration process and developed strategies and mechanisms to reframe the contested elements of its past. In order to understand the mechanisms through which the state is constructing the current social settings appropriate to claiming Serbian victimization, it is of utmost importance to stress that the nation-state

25 is perceived not as a homogeneous entity but as a plurality of institutions and processes (Lemke 2007). As such the state, as a phenomenological reality, is produced through discourses and practices of power, produced in local every day encounters. This plurality is further constructed through metaphors, images and representational practices (Ferguson and Gupta 2002). Nation-states represent themselves as reified entities with particular spatial properties which “help to secure their legitimacy, to naturalize their authority, and to represent themselves as superior to and encompassing of, other institutions and centers of power” (Ferguson and Gupta 2002: 982). It was Foucault who initially viewed government as a broader process than the relatively unified and functionalist entity suggested by the notion of the state. For that reason, the nation-state is understood and conceptualized here through the prism of governmentality, which is perceived as strategies, tactics, actions, procedures and policies, whose purpose is to control, regulate, design and create lifestyles, by the use of power or authority in a variety of contexts. While many researchers have claimed that the governmentality approach shows that nation-states rarely generate homogeneous policies, I show that in the Serbian case, the fog of confusion and ambiguity regarding the wars of the 1990s, is actually fabricated and preserved in order to mask a unified narrative - the victimhood agenda. Nevertheless, it is of utmost importance to stress that one has to be cautious when analyzing long term processes of memory construction. What might appear as a final outcome might just be a particular phase in the long run. It can take years or even decades before memory surfaces in the public arena or before there is a willingness to even acknowledge the war experience (Edkins 2003, Alexander 2004, Smesler 2004). Examples of these processes wherein large sectors of populations have been, and are still, bluntly ignored can be found all over the world and in every historical epoch.23 The groups which directly experienced wars, such as veterans, refugees or witnesses of atrocities, only have a chance to shape the national memory if they command the means to express their vision, and most importantly, if their vision is compatible with social or political objectives and inclinations of other important social groups, such as political elites or political parties (Kansteiner 2002: 188).

23 For instance, the Korean war, also named “an ignored war”, the French – Algerian war, the genocide of Armenians and so on – for more see Bourke Joanne 2004, Alexander Jaffrey 2004; 2012, Aguilar Paloma1999, Prost Antoine 1999. 26

Memory always reflects present needs (Nora 1989, Connerton 1989, Lowenthal, 1985, Zerubavel 1995, Kuljić 2006), and “while the object of commemoration is usually to be found in the past, the issue which motivates its selection and shaping is always to be found among the concerns of the present” (Schwartz 2001: 395). The term collective memory refers to the dissemination of beliefs, feelings, moral values and knowledge regarding the past. There are a variety of generic terms in the field of memory research such as social and public memory, or “collective remembrance” (Winter and Sivan 1999, White 2006) which deal with theories elucidating the context of memory construction for groups, societies or nations. Halbwachs ([1925] 1992), who coined the term “collective memory”, asserted that individuals are incapable of remembering in a coherent successive manner outside the connections and constraints of their group and it is thus society that determines and fashions their memories. My position here is that remembering, while being constructed from cultural forms and constrained by the specific nature of the social context, is an individual mental act. Despite the fact that memory is socially organized and mediated, individual memory is never totally standardized (Misztal 2003). Memory is social because it exists by means of its relation with what has been shared with others: language, symbols, events, as well as geography and mental and cultural topography. I chose the term collective memory over others since I consider collective memory as “mediated remembering,” or “as a form of mediated action, which entails the involvement of active agents and cultural tools” (Wertsch 2002: 21-22). It is an exploration of a shared identity that unites a social group. The decision to examine the process of collective memory construction in relation to the wars of the 1990s emanates from the recognition that warfare possesses a decisive function in building the nation as a "sacred community of sacrifice". Warfare not only strengthens the connection between the nation and its homeland, but the creation of the “war myths serves multiple functions including the creation of meaning out of suffering” (Hutchinson 2009: 409). The construction of memories regarding what transpired in war constitutes a vital process for a nation, since via practices, symbols, ceremonies and memory sites the desired moral boundaries of memory may be formed in order to reflect the established nation at present. According to Jeffrey White, images of the past mediate between social relations and identity, with these therefore becoming a tool in the

27 formation of that identity, moreover these images also therefore determine “which identities obtain public recognition and validation through acts of memory” (2006: 331). Practices of collective memory crystallize and forge the collective identity of a community and aid in the functioning and continuation of the nation. States strive to form their own central narrative, which is often that of the war experience. It seems that Grant rightly pointed out that: “[The] Myth of the War Experience is a myth designed to mask war and to legitimize the war experience, reshaping it into a sacred experience which provided the nation with a new depth of religious feeling, putting at its disposal ever- present saints and martyrs, places of worship, and a heritage to emulate” (2005: 521). Wars are in essence liminal experiences that are traumatic and permeated by extreme emotions and actions, and what is more, questions regarding the moral boundaries of a nation may be posed through war. In other words, nations make wars and wars make nations (Tilly 1992). After wars the basic need of every group is to define its identity and ensure its continuity. This is manifested in the search for an event that signifies the group’s inception, "birth" or "origins", thereby differentiating it from other groups. Eliade (1963: 34) claimed that "beginnings" are significant as they denote prototypical events and accordingly define and affix templates which facilitate the continuity of group identity. Zerubavel (1995: 6-7) terms the “great beginning” which the group chooses to locate itself in relation to, the ‘master commemorative narrative’. This is the group’s story of its origins, taken from various events that occurred in the group’s past. This story not only provides moral boundaries but also serves as proof of the continuity of the group’s identity and uniqueness. Ceremonies and memory sites that sanctify war are central to nation building (Roberman 2007, Winter 2006, Ben-Amos 2003) and the cult of fallen soldiers often gives rise to the primary ceremonial acts through which citizens identify with their homeland (Ben-Amos 2003). Through ceremonies composed of semiotic sets the nation- state represents its foundations and aspirations as well as its moral and social stances (Handelman 1990). The state’s objective in such ceremonies is partly “to create a sense of shared values and ideals… to create a sense of common memory, as a foundation for unified polis” (Young 1993: 6).

28

Osborne (1998) deemed monuments and memory sites "the geography of identity" and further asserted that nation-states conquer physical spaces in order to establish desired values via semiotic sets. According to Young, “with monuments, we honor ourselves” (1993: 3). Memory sites and monuments represent "territorialized memories" that make a place sacrosanct (Roberman 2007: 1055). Museums, memory sites and monuments are places of pilgrimage, protest and tourism, they are "places of and for national self-fashioning" (White 2006: 52). However, the practices around these monuments are not static and the changes in memory sites reflect the changing relation of society to heroism and victimhood (Feldman 2007: 1148). Olick and Robbins argue that “memory sites and memory practices are central loci for ongoing struggles over identity” (1998: 126). Thus, the dispute over the erection of the monument is not simply an additional arena of political debate but rather an effort to enforce accepted facts on generations to come. Topographic features of the landscape, such as monuments and memory-sites, constitute a series of symbolic resources of essential significance in the formation of personal biographies and the creation and reproduction of structures of power (Tilley 1996). Moreover, this refers to the ways the performative aspect of commemorative practices surrounding the monuments and memory-sites underpin and help organize collective remembrance (Ashplant et. al 2000). This consequently compels people to take a strong stance and also reveals various strata of society. Groups that employ memory to further their interests are termed carrier groups or memory entrepreneur groups. These carrier groups may represent institutions and the elite as well as more peripheral social groups. It is pertinent to note that the ability of forming a mnemonic group which consolidates memories and values may not be universal, and what is more, most individuals or groups will not translate their memories into action. Without homo actans (Winter and Sivan 1999), or an agent capable of transmitting the message of memory to others, collective memory will not be formed. According to Alexander: "Carrier groups have both ideal and material interests, they are situated in particular places in the social structure, and they have particular discursive talents for articulating their claims” (Alexander 2004: 11). The state, as an entrepreneur of memory, has the central task of building national memory and the ceremonies that surround it. States, having the power to implement the

29 meta-narrative as a basis for national memory in society, create as part of the national identity "the state-sponsored memory of a national past" or "national memory" (Young 1993). These are essentially memories which serve the state’s need for control, unity, legitimization, discipline etc. Official memory is “a political process without an end” which needs the art of forgetting, as much as the art of remembering, in order to function successfully (Connerton 1989). Paul Ricoeur (2004) also argues that the past cannot be simply “forgotten” and erased from memory, but is set aside (oubli de reserve) and used again when it is needed, i.e. when new political orders and elites try to re-introduce certain events into social memory that former regimes wanted to forget. However, the civil sector in democratic societies also plays a highly significant role in collective memory construction. The concept of civil society, especially in the light of its popular use in the past two decades, has come to designate descriptive and normative dimensions that need to be distinguished in order to comprehend its dynamics in relationship with society and with the political sphere at large (Bieber 2003). Ernest Gellner (1994: 3–4) accentuates the element of pluralism in his definition: “the idea of institutional and ideological pluralism, which prevents the establishment of monopoly of power and truth, and counter-balances those central institutions which, though necessary, might otherwise acquire such a monopoly”. Most authors seem to distinguish between ‘civil’ and ‘ethnic’, mainly on the basis of the distinction between the ideals of the organizations involved. Uncivil society is then defined by the myriad of national grass- roots organizations with nondemocratic or (right-wing) extremist ideas (Kopecky 2003). In Serbia, during the past two decades ethnic identities have become increasingly important (Bieber 2003). Ethnic nations, such as Serbia, where the emergence of civil society contains both civil and ethnic components, relate citizenship and full participation in society to ethnicity and descent (Bryant 1995: 145). Political organizations and movements, including veterans’ associations and bereaved families are also at the forefront of the struggle for memory. They all operate in civil society to either reinforce or alter the official narrative. This is why my analysis deals with a wide range of civil sector agendas, from various veterans’ organizations to human rights promoters. There are many other political actors and memory entrepreneurs active in today’s Serbia, but it is my view that the veterans’ organizations and the ‘Monument Group’, who both took an

30 active role in the monument affair, represent a micro cosmos of a broader picture in the current process of memory construction in Serbia. These memory entrepreneur groups operate in arenas of articulation in which various actors struggle for their specific memories (Ashplant, Dawson and Roper 2000: 17). It is the diversity of mnemonic practices used by different memory entrepreneurs to promote their own memory agendas that features in this analysis. However, the process of forging a collective memory is in present times often influenced by more global, large-scale processes. The age of globalization poses significant challenges to nation-states in general and to young states in particular. The influence of external factors on local memory has been considerably increased due to transnational agents. The term ‘transnational agent’ refers to supranational actors such as international organizations, international law institutions and international funds. The European Union is an example of one such transnational agent. The involvement of supranational agents through specific actors in the politics of memory after wars changes the picture completely (Ashplant, Dawson and Roper 2000). Supranational actors configure new power relations in the political space and through human rights discourse, regulations and norms they weaken the nation-state’s power. Since collective memory is a product of power relations in a society, the enforcement of the process of Europeanization in Serbia together with the implementation of European Standards, inevitably affects the dynamics between the nation-state and civil society in their struggle over memory. Europeanization includes complex and strongly disputed processes where the amalgamation of knowledge, attitudes and values is emphasized (Karlsson 2010: 38). Drawing on Anastasakis (2005: 78), “Europeanization is both a means and an end, it is method as well as substance, it is a project and a vision”. The meaning of this concept within the social sciences is both fashionable and contested. The most parsimonious definition of Europeanization is that of a process by which “states adopt EU rules” (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005: 7). States applying for EU membership are supervised and monitored by the EU (Orlović 2007: 92). In the case of Serbia, Europeanization has been closely connected to democratization, with democracy in Serbia being understood in terms of harmonization

31 with EU standards. My understanding of Europeanization, however, is broader. I conceptualize Europeanization as the construction, diffusion, and institutionalization of formal and informal rules, creation of shared beliefs, and ways of political practice in Europe (Radaelli 2003, Katzenstein 2006, Subotić 2011, Fink-Hafner 2007). In a broader sense, the process of Europeanization also implies that the East European post socialist countries must undergo multi-directional transitions and transformations. It is important to understand that the post-socialist transition is not a single track road to achieving a Western-European mode of capitalism but an uncertain process that leads to innovation when new rights and rules enmesh with old values and interests (Burawoy and Verdery 1999). Such transitions are characterized by a constant movement of different concurrent processes, with each one impacting on all the others, with the previously dominant notion of unilinearity of those processes being re- challenged. It has been shown through many case studies that the post socialist moral value systems create unpredictable outcomes when merged with Western ideas (Buyandelgeriyn 2008). It is not simply a matter of copying certain policies, norms and values, but rather about “translating” and adjusting them to local customs/norms and meanings. This process of translation is crucial to understanding how the implementation of European policies, norms and values produces new social practices and categories of meanings. In a period of transition and consolidation, “the bond between 'real power’ and the power to dominate over symbols, memories and amnesia remains strong” (Jović 2004: 98). This underlines the difference between the individual need to remember and the need of the dominant ideology to institutionalize memory by exploiting “the usable past” (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). It is a reality in post-conflict countries that the democratization process comes with imperatives for implementing certain forms of transitional justice such as compensation for victims, lustration, museums and other commemorative activities. Politics of regret, formal and informal community initiatives are other examples of this phenomenon (Subotić 2009: 18). Thus, changing the image of the past is an important part of the transition of values and ideologies. The basic assumption I tried to test here is that the democratization and Europeanization processes collided with the local demand to recognize Serbia as a

32 righteous party in the conflict, and brought about significant alterations in the way that collective memory is being forged. The collision between the international and local demands ascribed the state, or, more precisely the ruling political elite, the role of mediator between those two.

The argument This research seeks to make contributions on two different levels, empirical and theoretical. I hope to present an innovative analysis of how collective memory relating to the wars of the 1990s is currently being constructed in Serbia, and to demonstrate how this analysis challenges existing theoretical dogma in social memory studies research. I suggest in this thesis that in nation-states with problematic histories, which lack an agreed upon unified narrative of their past, the construction of collective memory is no longer solely an internal matter. Rather, collective memory construction is now affected by international affairs, with transnational agents actively influencing and shaping both the dynamics and the contents of collective memory. Thus, it is crucial to understand that contemporary states are obliged to deal with the requirements of a global Human Rights Regime where the influence of external factors on local memory has become substantial due to the activities of transnational agents, such as international organizations and councils, international law institutions and international funds. The involvement of transnational agents through specific actors in the memory politics changes the picture completely. The trigger for international actors to become involved in efforts to memorialize the victims of human rights violations is derived either from the unwillingness or from the inability of nation-states to fulfill their moral responsibilities with respect to memorializing them, even when they have made significant efforts to address past wrongs (Blustein 2012). This focus on human rights displaces the concept of historical memory from its home within the setting of nation- states, where memory is delimited by clearly defined borders, moving it into the international arena, resulting in an enlarged practice of public historical memory promoted and sustained in new ways by international actors (Blustein 2012: 20). However, I suggest here that it is not only national memory politics which is dictated or at least influenced by the international community’s demands. It is more than that. The

33 state, not only mediates between the opposing demands coming from the international and domestic levels, but it also actually frames its memory to promote national interests in the international arena. This approach, which simultaneously addresses both the power-relations between Serbia and the international community (the EU) and the nature of Serbia’s triple transitions: post-Yugoslav, post-socialist and post-war explains in the fullest the process of collective memory construction in Serbian. In understanding this “in-between” condition of a nation-state, one has to give an account of both local and global influences which affect social settings. So what happens in transitional societies, where the condition of “in-betweeness” shapes new categories of meanings and where the negotiations over a contested past are “hijacked”24 by the state? What are the mechanisms created by the state to address different needs at both the domestic and international level? What are the strategic choices embraced by different social groups to deal with these mechanisms imposed by the state? Empirically, this research demonstrates and explains the mechanisms employed by the state in reframing and concealing contested elements of Serbia’s past. It also outlines the state’s impact on civil society engagement in promoting other memory agendas. My claim here is that the process of Europeanization itself, i.e., adopting Europeans norms, standards and values, has actually enabled Serbian governments to strengthen the nationalist agenda. Public cultural discourse, commemorative representations, organization of political spaces, encounters with bureaucracies and legislation have all served to further promote this agenda (Aretxaga 2003). Thus, the Europeanization process is being manipulated by the state to promote its own nationalist agenda rather than to promote the Human Rights regime. The research into the ten-year long “Monument Affair” has revealed two key facts: first, that the state seems to be in full control over negotiating the past and second, over the years the political elites have developed a rather clear narrative as to Serbia’s position regarding the war of the 1990s – that of being the victims. The ruling political elite used three mechanisms to elaborate on their victimization agenda, which served as a compromise solution between the

24 This is a paraphrase of a claim in Jelana Subotić’s book “Hijacked Justice – dealing with the past in the Balkans”, according to which the transitional justice has been instumentalized for the purposes of the political elites. 34 international demand to acknowledge its wrongdoings and the local demand to be acknowledged as a righteous party in the recent wars. These three mechanisms, which are clearly exemplified and depicted in my data on the “Monument Affair” are: 1) decontextualization of memory contents, 2) creation of social narratives of suffering and 3) promotion of Holocaust memory as a screen memory. From the above analysis I claim that the needs and interests of the political elites have been crucial in the construction of memory of the contested past, as they serve as both mediators and gate keepers between European integration and local civil society. Domestic political instrumentality, together with other forms of political calculation, plays an immense part in the process of forging a collective memory in Serbia. The proof of the ruling elite’s continued determination to disable attempts of other memory entrepreneurs to impact the narrative of the wars of the 1990s is evident in wide range of governmental practices, both at the state and the municipality levels. It is precisely these strategies used by the ruling political elite to exclude other memory agendas that I trace here. Archival documentation, newspapers articles, interviews, official documentation are all used to reveal the hidden mechanisms employed by the officials to claim a particular narrative. Having said that, numerous newly constructed counter-narratives and practices emerging from the grass-roots level, raise important questions on what happens when memory is put in service of revenge, resulting in the risk of a future evolving into continued conflict and violence (Gutman, Sadaro and Brown 2010: 4)?

Methodological approach I used two methodologies in this research: collecting data and analyzing it. Before describing the methodology on collecting data I want to introduce my core methodological concept for analyzing the process on memory construction in Serbia. Memory construction is viewed in terms of both temporal and spatial dynamics. Mechanisms are analyzed which were developed by the state during a 10 year period (2002-2012) during which both the state and some segments of civil society left their imprints on the synthesis of the national memory in numerous ways: physically, culturally and socially. This process is by no means understood as linear, coherent or univocal but as a constant encounter between memory entrepreneur groups.

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The term I find most relevant for my research is “political space” (Grinberg 2010), which refers to the encounter between the nation-state and civil society. The political space is a symbolic sphere in which political actors, in this instance memory entrepreneurs, represent and further the interests of specific groups in society through the use and construction of language, narrative, discourse and myth. Political space bridges the tension between the state and civil society since it mediates conflicts between dominant and dominated groups (Grinberg 2010: 14). The political space is a dynamic entity, subject to perpetual change. Civil movements and organizations may recruit support from different social groups and to mold and change policies leading to an opening and closing of the political space. I find this term to be a valuable analytical tool since it takes into account both the dynamic nature of encounters and the idea of a constantly changing structure of opportunities. Its dynamic nature is presented in the idea that the political space is an arena of contestation and representation. In this arena there is an ever present danger that actual political actors may try to close the political space to new identities, agendas, and actors. Under certain conditions they succeed. Furthermore, the analysis of political space focuses on political actors and their relations with civil society and state policies in changing national and international contexts (Grinberg 2012: 19). Due to the ability of “Political space” to depict complex and multilayered encounters between the state and civil society it has become an irreplaceable conceptualization tool. It is also suited to the analysis of processes such as transitions to democracy, particularly because it demonstrates that the dynamic opening and closing of political space is influenced not only by local power relations but also by global power relations that shape the power of different social groups within the nation-state (Grinberg 2012: 26). Moreover, such an understanding of political space helps us in defining the shared identity when some social groups are excluded from the national community. To a certain degree the political space is intended to create social homogeneity, consensus or compromise or "to define a common denominator" (Gagnon 2006: 14). Hobsbawm (1993) argues that the by-product of establishing a nation-state is the homogenizing project, intended to construct homogenous political spaces in a heterogeneous social reality. In other words, the creation of a political space is designed

36 to settle conflict in order to manufacture a unified national identity through a number of parallel processes. Such processes include: the construction and propagation of a specific national image, largely generated by the dominant group, the formation of a system of symbols and ceremonies, the creation of a process of differentiation between those who do or do not belong to the nation and finally the definition of common enemies, whether real or imagined (Guibernau 2004). At the empirical level, I used a method of data collection used primarily in anthropology – multi-sited ethnography. This is the most reliable method of data collection since in multi-sited ethnographic research the object of study is inherently fragmented and multiply situated. Therefore comparison is an integral dimension of this research design. In his seminal work on multi-sited ethnography, Marcus (1995) showed that this method in particular allows for researchers to understand how power structures from seemingly disconnected spaces ultimately produce real impact across spatial and temporal dimensions. The research employed a combination of methodological techniques: a) semi-open interviews, b) archival research and c) and the collection of documentation from newspapers. In the period from 2009-2012 I conducted around 40 interviews with representatives of the memory group entrepreneurs that participated in and influenced the political space surrounding the competition to erect the monument. They were divided in to three groups: The first group was comprised of state representatives, politicians and professionals engaged by the state. The second group consisted of representatives from the associations of veterans, families of missing persons and casualties. The third group consisted of Monument Group members. Archival research was mostly conducted at the Belgrade Municipality – Sector for Culture and via the governmental site of the Ministry for Social Policy. Newspapers’ Documentation which contained articles along four themes: on the Monument affair, about the veteran’s organizations, on the national calendar and about Holocaust memory discourse. All of the analyses make use of empirical material in the , including newspaper articles, interviews and other media contributions, sermons, addresses, and speeches by members of the political elite.

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These materials helped me understand the strategic interests, motives and modus operandi of each of the actors present in the political space at a specific point in time. They also helped me recognize both the mechanisms through which the state is reframing Serbia’s contested past and the practices such mechanisms activate at the bottom-up level.

The layout of the research What happens when, after a war or a catastrophe, self-reckoning does not take place and the dead and missing are not listed, families do not grieve and comfort each other and no memorials are erected?25 My main goal in this research is to explain the mechanisms through which Serbia’s political elites are concealing and reframing contested elements of its past as part of the country’s desire to join the European Union and its strategic promotion as a EU candidate state. A consequence of this agenda has been the state’s refusal to allow the opening of political spaces, which are crucial for negotiations between memory entrepreneurs, to take place. This further triggers unpredictable narratives and practices at the grass-root level. The research is divided in three parts. The first part provides both theoretical conceptualization and the contextualization of the Serbian case. The second part elaborates on methodological choices and presents in detail the ‘Monument Affair’. The third part deals with the mechanisms employed by the state to reframe contested elements of Serbia’s past, and the ways in which these mechanisms produce narratives and practices in the civil sector of society. The first chapter introduces a theoretical framework of social memory studies applied to the nation-state dealing with threefold transitions: from post-socialism to liberal democracy, from a post-Yugoslav federation to an ethnic Serbian state and from a post-war state to a peace-building state. It is due to this specific context that the process of memory construction cannot be understood properly without accounting for both local and global factors. At the domestic level, both the nation-state and civil society are

25 Paraphrases to the opening sentence of the Jenny Edkins book “Trauma and Memory Politics” where she starts her introductory chapter stating: “In the aftermath of a war or catastrophe comes reckoning. The dead and missing are listed, families grieve and comfort each other, and memorials are erected.” (2003: 1) 38 analyzed for their part played in forging collective memory. At the international level, I elaborate on the ways in which Europeanization, democratization and transition are interconnected, and why I find the governmentality approach to be relevant when analyzing the influences of transnational agents to nation-state memory construction. This chapter concludes with a discussion on why I find it crucial to understand and de- construct the mechanisms created by the state under pressures to keep pace with Europeanization demands. The second chapter provides the necessary contextualization for the specific Serbian case. I briefly discuss what transpired in the wars of the 1990s and I explain their contested nature. Then I elaborate on how those wars were perceived by the international community and also on the demands and pressures Serbia has had to face since the overthrow of President Milošević in 2000. I furthermore show how specific domestic political conditions shaped both civil and ethnic segments of civil society in general, focusing in particular on how the veteran population has been affected. I finish this chapter by raising some questions on how such political framing impinges on the creation of the new master commemorative narrative. My third chapter is dedicated to methodology. This chapter reveals my own involvement and role, to the extent that I present my field work strategies and the ways in which I collected data. I also discuss my societal positioning, especially being female and Jewish in the predominantly male environment of war veterans, while noting certain advantages and disadvantages that shaped my fieldwork. Moreover, I also share my own motivations and challenges affected by my personal ideology. The fourth chapter starts with an explanation of why I was mistaken to think that the Monument Affair represented an arena of negotiation and how my mistake led me to discover the mechanisms in which Serbia as a nation-state utilizes the process of Europeanization to further conceal the political space. I tell the story of the open competition for designing the monument from the point of view of the Belgrade municipality and show how the municipality manipulated other mnemonic groups such as Veteran Organizations and the Monument Group. I conclude this chapter by discussing the revelation of the hidden agenda wherein the national memory project is disclosed: the victim is the new hero.

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The third part consists of three chapters, each of which elaborates on different mechanisms that the state employs in attempting to simultaneously meet both international and local demands. The fifth chapter deals with questions on how Serbia, while implementing European Standards, adopted the European Union’s Law on Associations which further fragmentized the veteran organizations. This law also resulted in significant alterations to the ways in which memory entrepreneur groups are to be granted financial support. This allows the state to make use of new tools, allowing it on the one hand to claim to be promoting European standards while on the other hand granting it almost total control over the promoted contents of memory. In the sixth chapter I try to show how the state forged a new memory agenda wherein new social narratives are created in which feelings of guilt, shame and frustration are transmitted, deepened and maintained. I present the official, top-down narrative of the Serbian past as it appears in the newly adopted Serbian national calendar. I elaborate on how, on the one hand the calendar intends to present Serbia as a democratic and progressive state, while on the other hand, it legitimizes a wide range of emotions at the local level. I show that the new Serbian calendar is made both to meet European expectations and to further Serbian interests of joining the EU, but also to allow wider audiences in Serbia to express feelings of animosity, injustice and frustration as a means of settling historical accounts. The last chapter deals with the promotion of Holocaust memory discourse which is perceived by the state as representing the most appreciated European democratic values: it is understood as an expression of minority rights and the struggle against fascism. I suggested that Holocaust memory discourse in Serbia is being currently promoted by the state in its efforts to shrink any political space where an encounter between the state and the civil society could occur and to redirect public debate regarding the wars of the 1990s. In Serbia Holocaust memory is brought up to the fore as a platform for articulating national interests and thus is activated as a screen-memory. Drawing on theories of the globalization of memory, I show how the Holocaust discourse serves the domestic political elite in multiple ways: concealing any political space; redirecting public debate regarding the wars of the 1990s and to equating Serbian victims with

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Holocaust victims. I further show that “the Holocaust has become a unit of measurement” (Levy and Sznaider 2002: 98) used to better Serbia’s image on the international stage. I conclude my research with some final remarks, where I discuss overall mechanisms used by political elites to disable an open and frank national debate of their contested past. I show that the mechanisms analyzed in the research: decontextualization of the veterans’ memories, creation of social narratives of suffering and promotion of Holocaust discourse as screen memory are all chosen by the ruling elite as they serve to bridge the opposing demands coming from international and domestic arenas. The “hijacking” of political spaces is shown to be a consequence of the instrumentalization of the Europeanization process by the ruling political elite and its adjustment it to its own nationalist ethnic agenda.

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Part I

Chapter 1

Contested Memory - Theoretical approach

Contested past My research deals with contested pasts and the ways such pasts are later negotiated and translated/channeled into collective memories. The construction of memories relating to that which transpired in the past constitutes a vital process for a nation, since via practices, symbols, narratives and memorial sites the sought after moral boundaries of memory are shaped to reflect the established nation of the present. This involves a struggle for definitions, meanings and legitimization of behaviors and it directly influences the way in which the memory of the particular event is constructed. Because memory is a field of articulation of public and private needs, values and aspirations, it is also the site where contradictions of identities are contested (Misztal 2003: 120). Contests over the past may arise either when the official state authorities’ visions of the past do not match the ordinary people’s desire to commemorate pain, grief and suffering, or when different ethnic, religious, socio-economic groups oppose the hegemony over a narrative of the past. These contests over memories of the past are always a reflection of present needs (Nora 1989, Connerton 1989, Lowenthal 1985, Zerubavel 1995, Kuljić 2006) and they address the core questions of what actually transpired in the past, who is to blame and who should take responsibility. Whether we are referring to a single event that has changed the route of a nation, a global or a local war, a legacy of a previous regime or significant geo-political changes, a contested past is always a serious obstacle to the political and economic growth of a nation and as such, plays an enormous role in the present.

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This obsession with the past26 (Huyssen 2003) in general might be explained by the fact that memory is perceived to be “the foundation of self and society” (Casey 1987) and as such it is a major theme in contemporary life, a key to personal, social, and cultural identities (Kenny 1999). Memory, both individual and collective, is constructed and reconstructed by the dialectics of remembering and forgetting, shaped by semantic and interpretative frames and subject to a panoply of distortions (Cattell and Climo 2002). Unlike individual memory, collective memory comprises recollections of the past that are determined and produced by groups. Individuals are restricted in their ability to remember in a coherent successive manner beyond the connections and constraints of their group and thus society plays a large role in determining and shaping their memories. The term 'collective memory’ refers to the dissemination of beliefs, feelings, moral values and knowledge concerned with the past. However, there are a variety of generic terms in the field of memory research such as social, public and cultural memory or “collective remembrance” (Winter and Sivan 1999, White 2006) which deal with theories elucidating the context of memory construction for groups, societies or nations.27 If it is impossible to fix the concept with a single name, it is also practically impossible to define it with a single conceptual notion agreed across a wide range of disciplines (Olick and Robbins 1998). Used with various degrees of sophistication, the notion of memory, more practiced than theorized, has been used to denote very different things, which nonetheless share a topical common denominator: the ways in which people construct a sense of their past (Confino 1997). Collective memory thereby presumes activities of sharing, discussion, negotiation and often contestation (Zelizer 1995).

26 Though it doesn`t seem always clear whether this obsession is slightly exaggerated by the memory researchers who themselves create this perception of obsession. 27 The fact that the unit of analysis, methodology and theoretical assumption vary greatly in the memory research, and that social memory studies is non-paradigmatic, trans-disciplinary and centerless enterprise (Olick and Robbins 1998) did not reduce zest and enthusiasm, on the contrary, the memory study field is constantly in the expansion. On issues of the methodological problems in memory studies see examples in Confino Alon (1997)"Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method", American Historical Review 102(5): 1386-1403, also Kansteiner Wulf (2002) "Finding meaning in memory: A methodological critique of collective memory studies", History and Theory 41: 179-197, Radstone Sussane (2008) "Memory Studies: For and Against", Memory Studies 1 (1): 31-39. 43

An almost infatuated fixation with the subject might be understood in the light of the fact that collective memory plays a key role in constructing both collective and personal identities. Nowadays, all parties involved in the process of memory construction clearly understand that memory is not a guaranteed right but a privilege. One has to fight to become the master of memory and with it the master of meaning.28 This involves the struggle for definitions, meanings and legitimization of behaviors and it directly influences the way in which the memory of a particular event is constructed. Nevertheless, as I suggest in this research, it is not memory per se that matters. All sides who participate in memory construction, from nation-state to communities of memory and individual practitioners, understand that memory is a tool which may be employed in achieving very specific goals. Thus when entering the arena of articulation, such as social and political spaces, the various actors involved struggle for the predominance of specific memories (Ashplant, Dawson and Roper 2000: 17). A person or entity who has control over memory is actually entitled to financial, political and social resources within society. At the risk of overemphasizing the manipulative character of the past in the hands of political entrepreneurs, I do take here a somewhat instrumentalized approach, at least regarding the role of the state. Having said that, I do not imply that a collective memory is solely an artificial construction but rather that it is a competing and negotiating arena wherein individuals and collective selves operate within a discursive terrain (Verdery 1991). In addition, the way collective memory is forged is fundamentally shaped by the availability or absence of resources, with this being a straightforward outcome of the existing power relations in the society. Therefore, today more than ever, the central question remains that of politics of agency. In other words, who controls narratives, commemorative practices and memory discourses and in what way are these interpreted to others?

Memory agents: The Governmentality approach The term memory agency denotes a structural definition, that is to say, memory agents exist in all social structures. This refers to institutions such as the nation-state,

28 Paraphrase to Lewis Carroll`s “The Completed Illustrated Works of Lewis Carroll” Guiliano E. (ed.) New York: Avenel Books (1982: 136) 44 civil society or supranational institutions through which carrier groups attempt to further their memories and ensure their recognition (Ashplant, Dawson and Roper 2000). Carrier groups, memory entrepreneurs or mnemonic groups,29 have both ideal and material interests, they are situated in particular places in the social structure. However, only those carrier groups in possession of particular discursive talents for articulating their claims may impact the process of a collective memory construction. Mnemonic groups are groups that employ memory to further their interests with a primary task of acting as mediators between the various memory agents. These mnemonic groups may represent institutions and elites as well as peripheral social groups, but it is only when they are capable of transmitting the message of memory to others, that collective memories will be formed. These groups have both ideal and material interests and by using their particular discursive talents for articulating their claims, mnemonic groups actually claim their social rights and status (Alexander 2004). The state, as an agent of memory that expresses its vision of the past through the activities of various official bodies acting as memory entrepreneurs, has the central task of building the national memory and the ceremonies that surround it. The nation-state is best understood as an "imagined community" which describes a large group of people united by a unifying idea that causes them to act as a community, whilst in practice the connection and similarity between the individuals comprising this community as well as individual groups within it, are negligible or even nonexistent (Anderson 1983). According to Brubaker, nations are widely, though unevenly, available and resonant as a category of social vision and division in the modern world (Brubaker 1996). Anthony Smith seeks the origin of the nation and national identity in ethnic identity as a pre- modern form of shared cultural identity. According to Smith, an ethnic community is defined as a human population with common names, myths and memories as well as a certain degree of unity. The emphases are on subjective elements such as memory, myth and symbols through which ethnicity and nationalism may be understood while the essential element of collective identity is shared culture (Smith 2001: 57).

29 The literature in memory studies uses these three terms interchangeably when discussing groups that gather memories for the sake of promoting a particular vision of the past. 45

Nation-states always attempt to implement the meta-narrative as a basis for national memory in society, create as part of their national identity "the state-sponsored memory of a national past" or "national memory" (Young 1993). This refers to dominant or hegemonic narratives which underpin and help organize remembrance and commemorations at the level of the nation-state (Ashplant et. al 2000). These are essentially memories which serve the state’s need for control, unity, legitimization, homogenization, discipline etc. The modern state is one of the most important agents of memory, since it has the power to formalize, codify and objectify systems through which it monopolizes or seeks to monopolize not only legitimate physical force but also legitimate symbolic force. This includes the power to name, identify, categorize and to state who is who and what is what (Brubaker and Cooper 2000). Koonz (1994) suggested that states that impose a single narrative through which they vindicate their leaders and vilify their enemies, leave the average citizen alienated. By focusing for the most part on construction rather than on reception, and on key protagonists in memory struggles rather than on popular responses; one might overestimate the resonance and importance of historical memory to those not actively involved in producing and reproducing it (Brubaker 2002: 701). I, however, believe that through various forms of commemorative practices and memory discourses, official memory clearly demonstrates governmental efforts to simulate spontaneous, natural and authentic processes of collective memory formation that takes root over time in society. For example, through national calendars the state has the power to dictate not only working and none working days and secular and religious holidays, but more importantly, it dictates when, how and why the nation is entitled to celebrate or commemorate. Moreover, this is done through the repetitiveness of the calendar and it is rarely experienced as a forceful action, while in reality, it represents the silent power that is forced upon society. This is how the state claims its “seemingly natural right to exist” (Young 1993). This seems to be in particular important among the nations where, in the absence of the consensus over the past events, the official attempts to enforce a certain memory agenda rely upon the strategy of repetitiveness in hope that the principe of “fake it until you make it” will bring about the desired results. Of course, the key element is in

46 the symbolic repertoire available to the nation-state for binding its citizens into collective national elements (Ashplant et.al. 2000). In this study I investigate the politics of memory, both from above and from below. From above, I focus on the ways in which categories of memory are proposed, propagated, imposed, institutionalized, discursively articulated, organizationally entrenched and generally embedded in multifarious forms of “governmentality”. It was Foucault who initially viewed government as a broader process than the relatively unified and functionalist entity suggested by the notion of the state. For that particular reason, the nation-state is understood and conceptualized here through the prism of governmentality, which is perceived as strategies, tactics, actions, procedures and policies, whose purpose is to control, regulate, design and create lifestyles, by the use of power or authority in a variety of contexts. This refers to the analysis of the exercise of power by focusing on the development of governmental forms of reasoning and related governmental modes of power. For this domain of analysis Foucault introduced the neologism 'governmentality’, combining 'government’ and 'mentality’. Governmentality refers to more or less systematized, regulated and reflected modes of power that go beyond the spontaneous exercise of power over others, following a specific form of reasoning which defines the body of action or the adequate means to achieve it (Lemke 2001). I find the governmentality approach to be very fruitful when discussing the ways in which contested pasts are dealt with. Since the nation-state is perceived not as a homogeneous entity but as a plurality of institutions and processes (Lemke 2007), the strategies of governing people either directly or indirectly, affect collective memory construction. The state as a phenomenological reality is produced through discourse and through the practice of power, produced in local encounters at the everyday level. This plurality is further constructed through metaphors, images and representational practices (Ferguson and Gupta 2002). Nation-states represent themselves as reified entities with particular spatial properties which “help to secure their legitimacy, to naturalize their authority, and to represent themselves as superior to and encompassing of, other institutions and centers of power” (Ferguson and Gupta 2002: 982). To answer the question of how states produce and reproduce mechanisms in forging memory which become a social subject in everyday life, one has to examine the

47 ways such an experience of state power affects and shapes the mnemonic groups’ engagement in civil society. Thus, from below, I have studied the micro-politics of memory categories and the ways in which these categories of memory are being appropriated, internalized, subverted, evaded or transformed by non-state actors. In the governmentality perspective, the role of non-state actors in shaping and carrying out governance is an expression of a changing logic or rationality of government by which civil society is redefined from being a passive object of government to be acted upon and into an entity that is both an object and a subject of government (Sending and Neumenn: 2006). The concept of civil society, especially in the light of its popular use in the past two decades, has come to designate descriptive and normative dimensions that need to be distinguished in order to comprehend its dynamics in relationship to society and the political sphere at large (Bieber 2003). Perhaps the simplest way to see civil society is as a "third sector," distinct from government and business. In this view, civil society refers essentially to the so-called "intermediary institutions" such as professional associations, religious groups, labor unions and citizen advocacy organizations that give voice to various sectors of society and enrich public participation in democracies. Civil society organizations are critical actors in the advancement of universal values around human rights, the environment, labor standards and anti-corruption. Thus, civil society is commonly perceived as many groups trying to work using their own strategies (in my case-of remembrance) alongside the state and sometimes against it. (Winter and Sivan 2006) However, most authors seem to distinguish between ‘civil’ and ‘ethnic’, mainly on the basis of the distinction between the ideals of the organizations involved. Ethnic society is then defined by the myriad of national grass-roots organizations with nondemocratic or (right-wing) extremist ideas (Kopecky 2003) and though such organizations are mostly based on ethnic premises, they also take an active part in practicing democracy. My stand is that civil society refers to and contains both ethnic and civil actors such as social organizations and movements, including both veterans’ associations and bereaved families and human rights carrier groups. They all operate in civil society to either reinforce or alter the official commemorative narrative.

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However, the manner in which collective memory is constructed in a nation-state with disagreement regarding a problematic past, is no longer solely an internal matter. It is subject to international affairs where transnational agents actively influence and shape both the dynamics and the content of the collective memory. Thus, it is crucial to understand that contemporary states are obliged to deal with the requirements of a global Human Rights Regime where the influence of external factors on local memory is increased by the activities of transnational agents. The term transnational agents refer to supranational actors such as international organizations and councils, international law institutions and international funds. The consolidation of a human rights discourse is actually contributing to a gradual reconfiguration of nation-state sovereignty itself (Levy and Sznaider 2006). Nation-states are capable of mutating and adjusting to different political, cultural and economic circumstances, thus the question remains ‘what is changing and how?’ The involvement of transnational agents through specific actors in the politics of "naming wars" changes the picture completely. The trigger for the involvement of international actors in efforts to memorialize the victims of human rights violations is to be found either in the unwillingness or inability of nation-states to fulfill their moral responsibilities with respect to memorializing them, even if they have made significant efforts to address past wrongs (Blustein 2012). This focus on human rights displaces the concept of historical memory from its home within the setting of nation-states, where memory is delimited by clearly defined borders, moving it into the international arena, resulting in an enlarged practice of public historical memory promoted and sustained in new ways by international actors (Blustein 2012: 20). This particular form of globalization forces nation-states and civil societies to produce new practices and mechanisms as ways of promoting their memory agenda claims. Transnational actors configure new power relations in the arenas of articulation, and may freeze the nation-state’s power by means of human rights discourse, regulations and norms. Consequently, many tensions between global and local interests exist, and these tensions influence the process of reinforcing particular identities. Some researchers (Hirst and Thompson 1996, Smith 2001,, Hobsbawm 1993) argue that nation-states still have a central function in the propagation of power. Others

49 claim that post transitional nation-states no longer function as independent actors and that their power is substantially limited due to the establishment of international institutions and the rise of transnational organizations (Guibernau 2001: 256). Kaldor asserts that this has shattered the hegemony of the nation-state (Kaldor 2004). It seems to me that the current configuration of power relations inevitably alters the “traditional” role of the nation-state but it does not necessarily mean that it also weakens it. I argue here, that both the rise of transnational organizations and the Human Rights Regime force nation-states to become artful and canny when mediating between external and internal factors. This functional alteration, from being the source of power to becoming a mediator and often a gate keeper explains why memory as a social category is being manipulated today more than ever.

Narratives The politics of articulating contested elements of the past is apparent in the attempts to frame the significance of a dispute in relation to competing constructions of meanings (Ashplant et. al. 2000:17). The meaning-making processes involved in producing a desirable narrative, present powerful means of marking the discontinuity between the past and the present, as well as that between the new and former regime (Misztal 2003). Ashplant, Dawson and Roper (2000) rightfully point out that “the conflict over language …is always an element in a broader struggle over representations of the use of force: a struggle to make particular meanings effectively dominant, so as to secure legitimacy for ‘our’ violence whilst rendering that of the enemy illegitimate” (Asplant et.al. 2000: 54). Narratives are a governmental practice, given that they both connect politics with individual conduct and that they allow determination of the social context which constitutes adequate behaviors (Peter 2012). All narratives serve as shared formulations through which memory agents forge their memories. Narratives provided by a socio-cultural context have the capacity to serve as cultural tools for members of a collective as they recount the past (Wertsch 2008). Narratives are comprised of familiar social templates, such as myth, which help to explain the past. Narrative framing is achieved through the manner in which themes are selected and organized on commemorative occasions (Brubaker and Feischmidt 2002:

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708). Wertsch (2008) showed that narratives always contain two levels of organization: specific stories situated in space and time, and “schematic narrative templates” that “produce replicas that vary in their details but reflect a single general story line.” The most common schematic narrative templates created after wars are based on motifs of heroism, bravery, patriotism, suffering and victimhood. Which narrative wins out is a matter of the performative power and the performative impact of the textual enactment and in that sense, the commemoration of a traumatic event is critical to achieving symbolic extension and emotional identification with a wider audience (Alexander 2004). All narratives are embedded in and reinforced through various forms and genres of commemorative practices. Commemoration lifts extraordinary events, which embody our deepest and most fundamental values, from out of an ordinary historical sequence (Schwartz 1982). Ben-Amos (2003) accounts for the four different globally omnipresent commemorative dimensions apparent in the politics of memory: commemorations in time, spatial commemorations, printed commemorations and utilitarian commemorations. Commemorations in time address the temporal dimension of remembrance through national calendars and various anniversaries, spatial commemorations refer to monuments, memorial sites, museums and other physical edifices that occupy public spaces, printed commemorations deal with history books and other discursive practices, while utilitarian commemorations include fellowships, public spaces or web pages and blogs dedicated to constructing a certain narrative of the past. When dealing with competing narratives of the past, memory and memorial practices often become contested sites. Thus the politics of memory are increasingly prominent where both nation-states and civil societies take an active role in forging collective memories of the contested past. Their success is always defined by the existing power relationships between themselves and the transnational agents. Since the mnemonic representations are always constructed, circulated, and stored in particular forms (Wagner- Pacifici 1996: 302), it is the material resources and demographics that determine which narratives can be heard and who will listen to them.

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Political space The political process of contestation needs to be understood in the light of the dynamics of memory, both at the temporal and the spatial level, where memory entrepreneur groups operate within certain arenas of articulation. The term arena refers to social and political spheres in which various actors struggle for their specific memories (Ashplant et. al. 2000: 17). However, this term proves to be vague and is defined only in broad terms. Therefore, I find the term “political space” as defined by Lev Grinberg most relevant and conceptually strongest. Grinberg made the concept of political space a useful analytical tool due to its ability to depict complex and multilayered encounters between the state and civil society. This is contrary to other uses of this term where, for the most part, the term “political space” remains an extremely abstract and elusive concept where its substance mostly stays unidentified. What we mean by “political space” is usually unclear. Bourdieu (1992, chapter 9) used the term “political field” and defined it as a symbolic field of representations of social groups, arguing for its autonomous character. One definition current in the Anglo European literature on social movements defines political space in terms of political opportunity structure, which Charles Brocket has neatly summarized as "the presence of allies and support groups; the availability of meaningful access points in the political system; the capacity of the state for repression; elite fragmentation and conflict and the temporal location in the cycle of protest” (Brockett 1991: 254). The most common use of the term is both figurative and taken for granted (Grinberg 2009, 4) in connection with the politics of the territorial state (Dalby 2005). Ferguson and Jones suggested that thinking about political space, forces us to reconsider the degree to which politics and territory continue to be related, possible shifts in that relationship and the sources of change, as well as the extent to which important aspects of global politics and governance have transcended territory or are effectively de- territorialized (Ferguson and Jones 2002). They suggested thinking about political space in terms of the actual patterns of provision of governance in areas of widespread interest and salience: the institutions and arrangements that have been established or are being adopted currently in the face of changing conditions.

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This, however, covers one aspect of new political spaces as political spaces can also be analyzed in terms of established, emergent, patterns of requirement for governance: the “demand side” of the analytical question (Jones 2002: 228). Grinberg (2010) gives another interpretation by showing that the political space is a symbolic sphere in which political actors, in this instance memory entrepreneurs, represent and further the interests of specific groups in society through the use and construction of language, narrative, discourse and myth. It bridges tension between the state and civil society since it mediates conflicts between dominant and dominated groups (Grinberg 2010: 14). For that reason, political space of any substantive significance involves far more than mere political arenas within which individual and groups can chat about issues of common concern or interest (Jones 2002). According to Jones (2002) significant political spaces concern the management of issues that are of concern to various collectives of human beings. Grinberg, however, takes into account both the dynamic nature of encounters and the idea of a constantly changing structure of opportunities. The political actors delineated by Grinberg are entrepreneurs whose primary task is to mediate between the particular groups to which they belong. These actors demand social and economic rights as well as legitimization for the agendas of the groups they are identified with. The integration and success of various actors in the political arena is dependent upon their ability to learn the rules that operate in the space as well as the content they choose to promote. As a result of the possibilities for civil movements and organizations to recruit support from different social groups and to mould and change policies, there is a dynamic opening and closing of the political space of representation, which therefore is subject to perpetual change. This dynamic feature of political space, due to its symbolic and non- autonomous character, distinguishes it from the concept of a political arena, that is merely the sphere located in between civil society and the state (Grinberg 2009: 24). The dynamic opening and closure of political spaces of symbolic recognition and representation take place within the political arena. Moreover, such an understanding of political space helps us in defining the shared identity when some social groups are excluded from the national community.

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To a certain degree the political space is intended to create social homogeneity, consensus or compromise or "to define a common denominator" (Gagnon 2006: 14). In a way, the by-product of establishing a nation-state is the homogenizing project, intended to construct homogenous political spaces in a heterogeneous social reality (Hobsbawm 1993). In other words, the creation of a political space is designed to settle conflict in order to manufacture a unified national identity through a number of parallel processes. Such processes include: the construction and propagation of a specific national image, largely generated by the dominant group, the formation of a system of symbols and ceremonies, the creation of a process of differentiation between those that belong or do not belong to the nation and finally the definition of common enemies, whether real or imagined (Guibernau 2004). Political spaces are of particularly worth when analyzing processes such as transitions to democracy, mainly because this demonstrates that the dynamic opening and closing of political space is influenced not only by local power relations but also by global power relations that shape the power of different social groups within the nation- state (Grinberg 2012: 26). It is impossible to deny that contemporary political space is becoming increasingly globalized and complex, with this fact inevitably affecting the dynamics of changing possibilities. As the analysis of political space focuses on political actors and their relations with both civil society and state policies in changing national and international contexts (Grinberg 2012: 19), the concept of political space seems to present a perfect analytical tool for the Serbian case. As there is always a danger that political actors may try to close the political space, barring entry to new identities, agendas, and actors, one has to ask under what conditions they succeed in doing so. I will show here that the analysis of political space in Serbia help us understand the nature of the encounter between both the state and civil society and the global and local forces when dealing with Serbia’s contested past.

The threefold nature of Serbia’s contested past and the process of Europeanization: The Serbian case An inevitable side effect of a country undergoing transition is that elements of its past will be contested, resulting in a dynamic process of memory construction. In Serbia

54 the contested elements of its past, and consequently the areas within which memory reconstruction is taking place, are threefold, relating to the three major transitions the country has undergone: from a post-war state to a peace-building state, from a post socialist state to a liberal democracy and from a post-Yugoslav federation to an ethnic Serbian state. However, the process of memory construction also has to be analyzed in relation to the existing balance of power systems, where the process of Europeanization plays a key role.

The nature of transitions Transitional societies have to reinvent their national identities and often simultaneously to (re)position themselves in international arenas (Volčić 2003). Transitions, whether we are talking about post-war, post-socialist, post-dictatorship or other transitory stages, are described as times of instability, ambiguity and crisis when animosities become particularly strained and marked by increasing degrees of intolerance (Prosić–Dvornić 2000). Transition is characterized by a constant development of simultaneous processes taking place at different speeds, in different intensities and along different pathways. The different concurrent processes have been shown to interact and impact on one another, proving that the earlier dominant notion of uni-linearity to be incorrect (Verdery and Burawoy 1999). Although it could be argued that all societies are in a constant state of flux with technological or cultural stasis being almost impossible to achieve, it is clear that some transitory eras are much more influential than others, irrespective of whether society is in a phase of expansion or contraction. For this reason transitions are important theoretical frames as they encapsulate the dynamics, power relations and ambiguities of social processes. In order to understand the processes of meaning-making in transitional societies, one must analyze how local values, practices and materialism on one hand, and individuals, groups and organizations on the other produce new social categories. It is due to the very nature of transitions, where the past is always contested, that the category of memory receives such enormous attention and becomes a crucial indicator of the success of the transition. Whether we speak of post socialist, post- dictatorship or post-war societies, they are all faced to varying degrees with demands to

55 reframe their national identities. Those demands are defined by power relations and often serve to embrace the need to improve and upgrade national images for the sake of economic survival (Dzenovska 2005). Since national identities are tightly connected to the category of memory, it is the memory itself that becomes useful for display. But in order to understand how and why the collective memory becomes a useful resource in transitional societies, one has to go beyond power relationships, that is, beyond the description of the processes, groups and histories that produce mutually exclusive denotations of the past. I suggest it is necessary to look at the mechanisms which enable meaning-making processes to occur which ascribe the collective memory a power for setting in motion particular social narratives.

Post-war transition Wars are in essence extraordinary experiences that are traumatic and permeated with extreme emotions and actions. They possess a decisive function in building the nation as a "sacred community of sacrifice". Warfare strengthens the connection between the nation and its homeland, and the creation of “war myths serves multiple functions including the creation of meaning out of suffering” (Hutchinson 2009: 409). What is more, questions regarding the moral boundaries of a nation may be posed through war. Thus wars often serve the basic need of every group to define its identity and ensure its continuity signifying the group’s inception, "birth" or "origins" (Nora 1996), and differentiating it from other groups. Eliade (1963: 34) claimed that "beginnings" are significant as they denote prototypical events and accordingly define and affix templates which facilitate the continuity of the group identity. Gillis (1994) also links the establishment of national identity to the “cult of new beginnings.” The group’s choice to locate itself in relation to a "great beginning" is denoted by Zerubavel (1995: 6-7) as a master commemorative narrative. This is the group’s story of its origins, taken from various events that occurred in the group’s past. This story not only provides moral boundaries but also serves as proof of the continuity of the group’s identity and uniqueness. The master commemorative narrative, based on turning points and liminal events, constitutes a framework for the content and values that may be included in the group’s identity, while also providing guidelines and norms that filter desirable

56 characteristics for the group or society (Lomsky-Feder 2004). However, the choice of an "original event" is always dependent on the group’s current needs, or the needs of select parts of the group who are capable of dictating the meta-narrative in the present (Schwartz 1982). Therefore, during the course of history and in accordance with varying needs and ideologies, the group may change its meta-narrative, redefining it in relation to their renewed choice of "the new beginning". War-related practices are intended to further valorize and promote the nationally suitable narrative in such a way as to justify it historically (Young 1993). The legacy of war is shaped by the nation-state which exercises its power to recognize, commemorate and incorporate within its national narrative only certain war memories whilst others are officially marginalized or forgotten. This is particularly true for nation-states with that are facing serious obstacles in the process of “making meaning out of suffering” (Hutchinson 2009) as a result of the problematic and contested elements of their past which may include: accusations of atrocities committed, violation of international war laws, human rights violations etc. A contested national past can be a serious obstacle to the political and economic growth of a nation and is predominantly managed in three different ways by nation-states. Firstly, a society may prove its moral righteousness by publicly addressing the past (Olick 2007, Levy and Sznaider 2002) and may even exploit their culpability through war tourism (Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996). Secondly, nation-states may initiate and endorse various memory projects, that simultaneously produce multi- vocal and fragmented spaces and commemorations which are constructed in a way that allows for multiple readings (Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz 1991). This fragmented approach deals with the contested past through commemorations in different spaces and times, where various narratives of the past are represented to diverse audiences, as demonstrated by the commemoration of Yitzchak Rabin (Vinitzky-Seroussi 2002). The multi vocal approach refers to commemorations in shared times and texts, that are open to assorted meanings such as the commemoration ceremonies for the Vietnam War in America, described by Barry Schwartz and Robin Wagner-Pacifici (1991). Lastly, for numerous reasons, some nation-states may prefer concealing and obfuscating contested elements of their past (Rivera 2008, Giesen 2004, Aguilar 1999). It is almost never the case that a past, no matter how difficult or problematic it might be, is wholly forgotten.

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Though significant segments might be completely absent from the official narrative, competing narratives are encapsulated and preserved by mnemonic groups acting at the grass roots level. Both remembering and forgetting are selective as well as strategic in nature and are never exploited to their fullest. However, the state choice to embrace the strategy of forgetting explains why, for example, many Turks continue to deny the Armenian genocide; many Vietnam veterans remain wedded to the defense of “it was him or me” when justifying the slaughter of unarmed women and children; many prisoners accused of the genocide in Rwanda claimed their innocence; many Serbs deny the very existence of the genocide in Srebrenica and many Croats deny expelling thousands of Serbs from their homes (Brouke 2004). Nevertheless, it is of utmost importance to stress that one has to be cautious when analyzing long term processes. What might appear as a final outcome is always just one phase in the long run. It can take years or even decades before a memory surfaces in the public arena or before there is a willingness to even acknowledge the war experience (Edkins 2003, Alexander 2004, Smesler 2004). is a perfect example of the longevity of such processes with the alterations in the perceptions of the contested elements of their past. The debates around the Holocaust and the Germans’ culpability went through several distinctive stages: the shock of discovery in 1945, a retreat into oblivion followed by the flood of memory beginning in the 1960s and the quest for a new German past in the post-Cold war (Koonz 1994: 216). Alterations in the way in which the past is treated are often caused by geo-political changes. These may strengthen existing war memorial practices, as in the case of Finland, where the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union boosted the demand for new marked sites for commemorations (Raivo 1994). However, they can also change the official narrative of the contested past, as in the example of America where only in the late 1980s did the U.S. government begin to acknowledge part of its debt for more than sixty thousand Japanese- Americans interned in camps during the World War Two (Koonz 1994: 261). Such examples can be found all over the world in all historical epochs, wherein large segments of populations have been bluntly ignored, as in the Korean war, also named “the ignored war” (Brouke 2004: 743).

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The struggle over agency over the contested past always reflects upon the existing societal power relations. Examples of this are seen in the attempt of Spanish Civil War veterans to change the principal narrative (Aguilar 1999); or the attempts of veterans’ groups after the Algerian War to gain social acknowledgment (Prost 1999) and to “face the public neglect and exclusion” (Evans 1997: 73). The dynamics of forging a common narrative together with multiple contestations are a common feature as, for example, in the case of , where the memory of Vichy was repressed between 1954 and 1971 (Confino 1997: 1394) or in the case of the Germans who fought in the International Brigades in between 1936 and 1939 and were employed within East Germany to forge a myth of a national identity that could be distinguished from that of the West (Brouke 2004). States strategically choose how to deal with the contested elements of their national past, and they enforce their choices via war memorial ceremonies and memorial sites whose purpose is to sanctify war as part of the nation-binding process (Roberman 2007, Winter 2006). The cult of fallen soldiers often becomes the primary ceremony through which citizens may identify with their homeland (Ben-Amos 2003, Mosse 1990). It is the memory of the courageous deeds and heroic sacrifices of these soldiers that is given public articulation as a means of bringing back to society stability and loyalty. The cult of the dead was particularly embraced after the World War One (Gillis 1994) and in a similar fashion in Israel after the war in 1948 (Ben-Amos 2003). The Second World War, however, brought significant changes in war memorials (Mosse 1990). Remembrance slumped and suffered a “crisis of representation after the Holocaust and Hiroshima (Olick and Robbins 1998: 119). The changing perceptions of past wars are apparent both in war memorial ceremonies and in monuments. While earlier monuments aimed to exacerbate resentment for further campaigns, many later monuments worked to erase a burden (Olick and Robbins 1998: 119) or even to free a viewer from the obligation to remember (Young 1992). Thus, changes in the memorial landscape reflect changing relations to heroism and victimhood, as well as changing attitudes to a homeland and nation (Feldman 2007: 1149). The state remains relevant both as the carrier of the brunt of warfare and as a major producer and choreographer of commemorations (Winter and Sivan 1999). For

59 example, Lomsky-Feder (2004) demonstrates the mechanism implemented by the state in the direct filtering of the stories of Israeli war veterans through clear norms that operate on the arenas of articulation dictating what may be included or excluded from "national memory". However, there tension always remains between the collective mourning and the political projects of nation-states (Ashplant et. al. 2000). Translating individual grief into public mourning for the dead is a political action and should not be seen separately from the politics of war memory and commemorations. Social groups suffering injustice, injury or trauma that originated in war have become increasingly prepared to demand public recognition of their experience, testimony and current status as “victims” or “survivors” (Ashplant et. al 2000). For these purposes suffering carrier groups provide discursive tools that a growing number of individuals can use to identify with trauma and its consequences (Degloma 2009). However, the groups which directly experienced wars, such as veterans, refugees or witnesses of atrocities, only have a chance to shape the national memory if they command the means to express their vision, and most importantly, if their vision is compatible with social or political objectives and inclinations among other important social groups, like political elites or parties (Kansteiner 2002: 188).

Post socialist transition The collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe after 1989 opened up new vistas of research on aspects of democratization throughout the region. The terms “post- socialism or post-communism” began simply as temporal designations: societies once referred to as constituting “actually existing socialism” had ceased to exist as such, having been replaced by one or another form of putatively democratizing states. These terms designated whatever followed once the means of production were privatized and the Party’s political monopoly disestablished (Chari and Verdery 2009). Post-socialist and post-communist democratization has become a core theme in comparative political research in the 1990s and has since then developed into one of the most prominent and wide-ranging topics in scholarly debate. Before the recent overthrow of communist regimes, the rather voluminous body of literature on regime transitions was based almost exclusively on political transitions from right-wing authoritarian to

60 democratic political rule, mostly addressing South American states. Thus transitology, as a branch of comparative politics, tended to compare transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule. However, the transitions from communist political systems to plural ones differ from previous transitions in a number of important aspects. Researchers, following Bunce30, have started to grasp that post-socialist transformations differ from other cases in two significant aspects. First, they are more complex as they contain efforts to completely overhaul the old economic system and second, they posses specific socio- cultural and normative dimensions which include both communist and traditional legacies, testifying to the effects of the deep disruption of the old social, ideological and normative system (Melich 2005). Dobry (2000) also pointed out two sets of tightly linked factors that are significant for East European transitions. The first set addresses various aspects of elements inherited from the previous system. These include organizational forms and resources, informal networks and solidarity ties, as well as social capitals, habits and routines of the actors themselves. The second set of factors deals with “the particular way by which each country concerned extricates itself from the previous system” (Dobry 2000: 56). Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, 28 countries have emerged out of the eight former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The newly emerged statehoods have engaged in a substantial and complex exercise during the past 20 years: to position themselves on the geographical and mental map of Europe (and indeed the entire world) as democratic, politically stable countries with emerging and promising market economies. The transition from central planning to a market economy and from a one-party system to a pluralistic and democratic society also involved systematic transformations of identity and image (Szondi 2007). On the one hand, the current period is not one of transition or a “bridge” between socialism and capitalism. It is rather the activities, memories, social networks and culturally specific values of individuals that engender uncertainty as a state of dynamic

30 For a bitter polemic on this issue see Bunce Valerie (1995) “Should Transitologists be Grounded?" Slavic Review 54(1): 111-127: Karl Terry Lynn and Schmitter Phillippe (1995) “From an Iron Curtain to a Paper Curtain: Grounding Transitologisasts or Students of Postcommunism?” Slavic Review 54(4): 965-987; Melich Jiri (2005) “Breaking the postcommunist Liminality: the transformation process in Eastern Europe”, The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization (Demokratizatsiya) 13(1): 117-140. 61 being. The concept of uncertainty31 became central in the growing body of knowledge concerning the outcomes of the collapse of socialism and the subsequent implementation of neoliberal policies in the 1990s. The deconstruction involved in transition highlighted how different aspects of cultures influence market capitalism thus creating unexpected outcomes (Buyandelgeriyn 2008). On the other hand, this period also revealed a curious paradox. While the largely peaceful overthrow of the communist hegemony enjoyed the support of sizable majorities in most cases, elements of the old ideology not only remained but also became surprisingly popular in many parts of post-communist Europe. Straughn (2009: 485) argued, quite rightly, that this is because socialist ideologies remained culturally available strategies of action “that provided material privileges in the past and promise to ameliorate new problems engendered by alternative strategies”. Although some communist practices and values have continued to exist alongside the newly implemented democratic regimes, the complexity of the present-day situation, its successes, failures, promises, disappointments, and hopes, has prompted many people and nations to attempt to reframe the recent past This extensive involvement with the past has not only been a reflection of the national or individual needs for reconstruction of their image and identity, but is an inherent demand of the democratization process itself, where post-communist transitional justice is a precondition for achieving democracy (Lavinia 2006). In Eastern Europe, the need for a re-examination of the monochromatic communist interpretation of the past gained new urgency with the geopolitical reorientation returning to the European home (Davidova 2006). In more ways than one, the core question in post-socialist and communist transitions became how the past shapes both the present and the future. One can see, for example, that in the current self-reflections of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland the intensity of the presence of the past six decades reverberates with archetypical outbursts of suppressed memories, a delayed affirmation of the ‘right to memory’. Consequently these societies have striven to release their conceptions of the past from the burden of the officially mandated Soviet interpretations of World War II (Malksoo 2009: 658). Such processes of reformulation of the past are linked to problems of restitution, political rehabilitation,

31See more on this issue in Bunce Valerie (2003) “Rethinking recent democratization – Lessons from the Postcommunist Europe” World Politics 55: 167-192. 62 legal problems relating to communist party assets, the roles of the former nomenklatura as privatization proceeds, and treatment of former communist functionaries and state security services (Welsh 1996). They also involve addressing human rights violations and individual and collective misconducts. All of the factors listed above are extensively elaborated in the vast body of literature that explores the changing nature of modes and representations of collective memory during the post socialist transition to democracy. Many different aspects of collective memory are undoubtedly being examined: commemorative practices and public spaces, museums, monuments, history books, calendars, cultural amnesia, memory activism and nation branding among others. Yet all researchers agree that the past has become both a source of dispute and contestation, thus it is more relevant than in none- transitory stages. However, reformulating the memory of past regimes and ideologies differs significantly from altering the memory of traumatic events and wars. Wars necessarily entail ruptures in the fabric of identity on multiple levels, as they engender death and the personal experience of unimaginable horrors on the part of combatants and others. They also entail the distortion of everyday life and the disruption of social and economic relations, as well as profound political change. Furthermore wars leave obvious physical evidence of destruction in public spaces, destruction that is hard to mask. Yet the collapse of regimes, if not followed by wars, leaves far fewer physical traces, and over time their legacies are always contested. Velikonja (2009) mentions four predominant ways in which past regimes are remembered: antinostalgia, amnesia, cultural revisionism and nostalgia (Velikonja 2009). The first strategy in dealing with the past is renunciation – anti-nostalgia. Where this strategy has been employed the socialist times are almost completely blacked out and condemned. The second strategy is an amnesia that imposes silence about everything preceding 1989–91, almost as though the past never happened. The third strategy is historical revisionism, amounting to a complete reinterpretation of the socialist past. The fourth and final strategy is nostalgia, an uncritical glorification of past times, regardless of what they were really like (Velikonja 2009). These four strategies are found in varying combinations across South East European post – socialist countries. Furthermore, there is often a huge gap in the strategic choices employed by the

63 state as opposed to approaches embraced at the grass roots level. Thus, for example, while almost 61 percent of Romanians think that life was better under Ceauşescu (Vassilev 2011), as a state was engaged in revisionist politics in order to revive its nationalism (Kuljić 2002). A similar situation is also found in Serbia, large sections of the society there embrace a specific form of nostalgia – Titostalgy as an omnipresent mental representations of Tito (Velikonja 2008), while at the same time, other segments of society are hugely invested in revisionism (Kuljić 2002), in which Chetnik traditions are glorified and celebrated.

Post- Yugoslav transition The post–Yugoslav transition is not simply a sum of the post–socialist and post- war transitions, with the political consequences of ethnicity in Yugoslavia being deeply embedded in the process. The violent ethnic nationalisms which replaced Yugoslavia’s communalist ethos of bratstvo i jedinstvo () in 1991, when the Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia fragmented into its constitutive republics, took observers by surprise. The bloody ethnic warfare which continued to rage in the territories of Former Yugoslavia from that time has substituted trepidation for the enthusiasm with which most Europeans greeted the collapse of communist hegemony in Eastern Europe. As it was the character of the ethnic nationalism prevalent in the Former Yugoslavia that defined the nature of the conflict it is necessary to understand the various ethnic categories, the perceptions of them and the political processes through which they have been expressed. The post-communist resurgence of ethnic nationalism in the region was seen as springing from robust and deeply rooted national identities. These identities were sufficiently resilient to have survived decades of repression by ruthlessly anti-national communist regimes. In Slavic languages the word “narod” means both “people” and “nation”. Thus the concept of a “nation-state” belonging to a specific “nation” or “people” is conceived as ethno-nationalism (Denich 2000: 24). Ethno-nationalism proved crucial to the political elites, enabling them to take advantage of the symbolic power that ethnicity has to offer. It was used as a tool for pursuing territorial, political and economic objectives. Thus, it is important to understand Yugoslavian ethnicity through the regions’

64 specific political history, with this ethnicity being subject to political manipulation in the context of the collapse of the civil order (Hammel 2000: 30). There was an inherent ambiguity in the manner in which the communist leadership in Yugoslavia treated nationality. It is similarly relevant to note that: "While communist states preached proletarian internationalism on the normative level, ethno- nationalism was the cornerstone of their operative ideology and an important source of internal legitimacy" (Malešević 2006: 399). In Yugoslavia under communist rule, sentiments were manipulated in the inauguration of a pan-Yugoslav national identity. The Titoist slogan “brotherhood and unity” was intended to mend the rifts and fratricidal relations between Yugoslavia’s ethnically defined “nations” during World War Two. Ethno-nationalism, which generated the recent Yugoslav conflicts, was a dominant concept throughout the period of communist rule in between 1941 and 1991 (Petrović 2000: 165).. Brubaker (2000) ascribed this to the fact that the strongly institutionalized ethno-national classificatory system made certain categories readily and legitimately available for the representation of social reality, the framing of political claims, and the organization of political action. He claimed that institutional definitions of nationhood “did not so much constrain action as constitute basic categories of political understanding, central parameters of political rhetoric, specific types of political interest and fundamental forms of political identity” (Brubaker 1994: 48). The government did not recognize the existence of Yugoslav nationality. Petrović (2000: 166) showed the depth of this paradox explaining that: “Even though the word “Nation” was formally out of ideological favor as an inclusive category, the political leadership was too concerned with the so-called process of ethno-genesis so that in the second Yugoslavia (1945-1991) three new nations were created (Macedonian, Montenegrin and Muslim). This was possibly an attempt to balance the powers of the three “old” nations (Serbs, Croats and Slovenes).” And though the creation of Yugoslav identity was politically motivated, many people did attach themselves to the Yugoslav identity during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s (Petrović 2000: 166). “Yugoslav” was an admissible category for self-declared censuses.

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It was used by three categories of people: those who were committed Yugoslavists, those who were members of the Communist party and wished to eschew ethnicity and those who were Muslims or who belonged to other ethnic minorities and wished to avoid ethnic identification (Hammel 2000: 26). However, Markowitz (2007) showed that state census categories do not necessarily reflect longstanding cultural practices, forge commonsensical social categories, or present an objective picture of the ethnic distribution of the population. Urban residents, Communist party members, the younger generation and people from minority nationalities or from nationally mixed parentage were most likely to identify themselves as (Sekulić, Hadson and Messey 1994). This paradox of institutionalized ethno-nationalism was manifested in the striking duality through which ordinary people perceived it. At the community level, even in places which were ethnically mixed, inter-ethnic relations were judged to have been very good. However, at the inter-republic level, people saw relations between nationalities as being very bad (Gagnon 2010: 35).32 This was due to the fact that by the early 1980s the legitimacy of the Yugoslav Communist Party had been eroded and parties in the various republics began to portray themselves as defenders of the national interest. Each party blamed other republics for the economic problems their country was facing. Once communism as an ideological and political system was spent, the quest for political changes pressured the existing political elite into finding a new way to mobilize mass support (Petrović 2000: 165). Nationalist ideologies were used as a means of transposing conflicting interests into emotionally charged ethnic grievances which had been strategically created and instrumentalized by the intellectual and political elite. While dismantling the federal state the new governments encouraged a revival of national political identities by promoting interest in national history and culture. State controlled media also adopted ethnic/cultural stereotyping (Prosić-Dvornić 2000: 321). Memories of past conflicts were reactivated in order to construct seemingly insurmountable ethnic barriers. The idea that the collapse of communism enabled the ‘liberation’ of private, national memories long suppressed under Tito must be regarded as highly dubious, not

32 More on the public opinion and sociological polling in 1989 and 1990 that showed the highest levels of ethnic coexistence being in exactly the most heterogeneous regions of the country in Gagnon Chip (2010) “Yugoslavia in 1989 and after.” Nationalities Papers 38(1): 23–39. 66 least because this was the way in which the new nationalist regimes themselves represented the situation (Jansen 2002). Thus the reasons for the bloodshed should not be ascribed to “ancient hatreds” between various ethnic groups as suggested by a number of researchers (Kaplan 1993, Cohen 1995, Anzulović 1999), with causation of the war being more directly related to internal struggles for political power and economic gain, with the ethno-nationalist agenda having been artificially manipulated. According to Hayden (1996), the extreme nationalism in the former Yugoslavia has not been only a matter of imagining "primordial" communities, but rather of making existing heterogeneous ones unimaginable. In formal terms, he argues, the point has been to implement an essentialist definition of the nation and its state in regions where the intermingled population formed living disproof of its validity: the brutal negation of social reality in order to reconstruct it. Thus, it is this reconstruction that turns the imagination of community into a process that produces real victims (Hayden 1996). However, several other factors did play a role in the breakup of Yugoslavia and the violent wars that followed, such as unemployment (Woodward 1995), the failure of the rule of law and legitimating system (Lukić 1993, Ramet 2004) as well as the role played by the intellectual elite (Dragović-Soso 2002, Dimitrijević 2001). Thus, ethnic nationalism is as much a consequence of unsuccessful state-building as it is its cause. The disintegration of the state and the loss of its legitimacy diminished civic affiliation and opened the door to ethnic mobilization. The role of democratization and its consolidation in the post-communist states has been described by Valerie Bunce. She contends that in the societies where nationalism erupted prior to the disintegration of the state and before the fragmentation of the communist regime there was a delayed transition to democracy (Bunce 2003: 177). In the aftermath of the bloody wars all successor Yugoslav states suffered a delay in their transition to democracy and continued embracing the ethno-nationalist category as the most important pattern for their national consolidation. Virtually all Yugoslav successor states chose the same pattern of memory politics: to embrace revisionist and anti-Yugoslav agendas. It was a triple-track process whereby all newly consolidated nation-states 1) revived elements from their ancient histories in order to legitimize their distinctiveness and uniqueness from neighboring nation-states, 2) revitalized their right-

67 wing movements and 3) reframed the communist legacy and partisan struggle as oppressive. The rising nations began almost instantly to declare their nationhood by occupying central public spaces and erecting monuments, promoting new national holidays and performing new commemorative practices. The deconstruction of the Yugoslav identity, ideology and legacy was omnipresent in all Former Yugoslav states but was most extensive in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Kosovo. During and after the wars of the 1990s hundreds of World War Two monuments and memorial sites were destroyed and defaced. For example, the Alliance of Anti- Fascist Fighters of Croatia detected 2,964 monuments and memorial sites which were either “demolished or desecrated and removed” between 1990 and 2000 (Banjeglav 2012: 100). Similar examples are to be found all across Bosnia, where the partisan monuments suffered the most damage.33 Perhaps the symbol of the attempts to erase the partisan anti- fascist struggle is Makljen monument. In the year 2000, five years after the war in Bosnia was finished, the monument was mined and blown up. In Serbia the attitude toward partisan legacy was slightly different as during the wars of the 1990s Milošević tried to promote Serbia as the successor of the Yugoslav legacy. Thus his attitude toward the communist legacy was somewhat ambiguous and although commemorative practices ceased to exist during the 1990s, memorial sites suffered from neglect rather than being damaged and defaced as in Bosnia and Croatia. Notwithstanding this ambiguity the change in the country’s stance with regard to the World War Two legacy is blatantly apparent in the changing names of the streets, squares and public institutions34, as well as in the altered stances taken by history books (Stojanović 2009) and historical studies (Kuljić 2002). The replacement of the deconstructed Yugoslav identity by newly nationalist identities was promoted by restoration of the legacies of right-wing nationalist movements, first and foremost the Chetnik and Ustasha movements. The legacies of these previously denigrated and vilified movements now impacted not only memory agendas

33 For a more detailed description see Karačić Darko (2012) “Od promoviranja zajedništva do kreiranja podjela.” in Re:vizija prošlosti: politike sjećanja u Bosni i Hercegovini, Hrvatskoj i Srbiji od 1990 godine, ACIPS, Sarajevo, 17-78, p.29. 34 For more on this issue see “Ime promenilo 1500 ulica.” 11 November 2008, www.novosti.rs 68 but also nationhood policies in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia. These trends started at the beginning of the 1990s when memories of past atrocities started to emerge as part of Serbian and Croatian nationalist ideologies. The transition of this particular memory discourse from the intellectual domain into the arena of public politics together with the symbolic revival of genocide led to a “manipulation of symbols with polarizing emotional content” (Denich 1994: 369). While during the 1990s wars memories of Ustasha or Chetnik movements had been used to mobilize and recruit of fighters, after the wars those legacies were as least partially revitalized by Serbian and Croatian governments. The most striking examples of such revisionism, where the ultra-nationalist movements were revived and officially supported are to be found in both Bleiburg, where partisans liquidated the political leadership of the Ustasha regime along with thousands of soldiers and civilians during World War Two, and in Ravna Gora, where Draža Mihailović formed the Chetnik resistance movement. While commemorations took place from the beginning of the 1990s in Bleiburg, where executed a large number of Croatian Ustasha in 1945, from 2004 Croatian official representatives not only participated in these commemorations but the state also funded both the commemorations and the memorial-site (Banjeglav 2012). In Serbia, the initiative to rehabilitate Draža Mihailović and to promote his status to that of a national hero was (and still is) accompanied by furious debate that further fragmentizes Serbia. Following suit of the Croation government, the Serbian government is now also funding commemorative practices at Ravna Gora. The reflection of such official policies is evident in both Republika Srpska, a Serbian part of Bosnia and in the Federation, a Bosniak-Croat part of Bosnia. In addition to the anti-nostalgia represented in anti-, and the revisionism apparent in the reframing and rewriting of history, state sponsored amnesia of political crimes of the communist era is also evident. While investigations into whether individuals were associated with state repression and in particular with the activities of state security services are prevalent in Central and Eastern Europe (Welsh 1996), these issues are never addressed in the former Yugoslav states, as the wars of the 1990s have completely overshadowed them.

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Despite the active restoration and reinvention of certain historic periods none of the former Yugoslav governments have been engaged in publically addressing the nature of the wars of the 1990s, neither have they debated issues of responsibility for actions during those wars. In both Serbia and Bosnia foreign and domestic Human Rights actors attempted to establish a ‘Truth and Reconciliation Committee’ in the year 2000, but those efforts failed miserably (Subotić 2009). It has only been through institutions of transitional justice such as International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and domestic trials that the sides have been forced, at least to some extent, to bear the consequences for the misdeeds in the wars of 1990s. All current politics of memory in the Former Yugoslav states are placed in service of national interests. Dominant narratives are constructed through the key component of collective memory through which the perceived victim status of every group is organized (Levy and Sznaider 2010). All of the ethno political groups are currently deeply committed to embracing their victimhood. The role of victim turns out to be a comfortable one: if I am a victim I cannot be responsible for anything, and no one can argue with me because it would be showing a lack of respect for a victim. It is actually a powerful positioning where one can play the role of an under privileged and victimized nation that cannot be held responsible for the wars waged in the 1990s (Schauble 2011).

Europeanization In order to fully understand how current local Serbian memory is being constructed within the context of the triple-contested transitions, it is also necessary to recognize the existing power relations between Serbia and the European Union. Following the collapse of communism, the breakdown of the Yugoslav federation and the bloody wars of the 1990s, Serbia finally began the democratization process in 2000 in the hope of becoming a member state in the European Union. However, this has been a complex undertaking for two reasons. Firstly, it inevitably meant going through the Europeanization process, which entailed making serious political, economic and legislative changes and accepting various painful conditions which often contradicted Serbian national interests.35 Secondly, in Serbia Europe is widely perceived as both a

35 The most controversial demand of the European Union is to waive their right for Kosovo. 70 desirable and an abhorrent place at the same time. These complex and mixed feelings of “otherness” are omnipresent in Serbia and were only enhanced during the 1999 NATO bombardment of Serbia, when the European Union was perceived as an enthusiastic supporter and promoter of the aggression.

Europe as a real power Europeanization includes complex and strongly disputed processes wherein the amalgamation of knowledge, attitudes and values is emphasized (Karlsson 2010: 38). The meaning of this concept within the social sciences is both fashionable and contested. The most parsimonious definition of Europeanization is that of a process by which “states adopt EU rules” (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005: 7). It may also be understood as integration in to the European Union. Radaelli describes Europeanization as “a process involving, a) construction, b) diffusion and c) institutionalization of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, ‘ways of doing things’ and shared beliefs and norms which are first defined and consolidated in the EU policy process and then incorporated in the logic of domestic (national and sub-national) discourse, political structures and public choices.” Börzel (1999: 574) defines it as “a process by which domestic policy areas become increasingly subject to European policy-making.” Here I conceptualize Europeanization as the construction, diffusion, and institutionalization of formal and informal rules, and the creation of shared beliefs and ways of political practice in Europe (Radaelli 2003, Katzenstein 2006, Subotić 2011, Fink-Hafner 2007). Europeanization inevitably engenders an impact on national politics, domestic structures and local attitudes (Anastaskis 2005) with these becoming an intrinsic part of the process. In the case of Serbia just as in South East Europe, Europeanization is connected to applying for EU membership, supervised and monitored by the EU (Orlović 2007: 92). This is due to the fact that the European Union is the main protagonist of the Eastern European transition and the democratization process. The European Union has been the most powerful political and economic agent in a post-socialist Balkans, Europe’s most varied political landscape. But Europeanization also has its price. According to its 1993 Copenhagen policy, the EU is supposed to educate, discipline, and punish while offering EU membership as the prize. In other words, the European Union

71 superiority is built-in into this process and as being at the top of the hierarchical pyramid, the European Union dictates the conditions, tempo and the changing logic of the “game”36. In reality, even when goals within the Europeanization process were finally achieved, promises were not fully kept. For example, all but three member states from “old” Europe immediately imposed labor restrictions on the free circulation of citizens of “new” Europe, creating unequal European citizenship37. Thus, the European Union developed varied approaches to different countries: disciplining and punishing (Romania and Bulgaria), bilaterally negotiating membership (Croatia and Montenegro), punishing and rewarding (Serbia and Albania), managing (Bosnia), governing (Kosovo), and, finally, ignoring (Macedonia was blocked in the name of its dispute with Greece) (Horvat and Stiks 2012). In post-conflict countries, the democratization process comes with imperatives for implementing certain forms of transitional justice attached. Transitional justice refers to the set of judicial and non-judicial measures implemented in order to redress the legacies of massive human rights abuses. These measures include criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations programs, and various kinds of institutional reforms such as compensation for victims, lustration, establishment of museums and other commemorative activities. Politics of regret, formal and informal community initiatives are other examples of this phenomenon (Subotić 2009: 18). Transitional justice is enacted at a point of political transition from violence and repression to societal stability and it is informed by a society’s desire to rebuild social trust, repair a fractured justice system, and build a democratic system of governance. In the context of transitional justice, memorialization serves to honor those who died during conflict or other atrocities, to examine the past, to address contemporary issues and show respect to victims, to prevent denial and help societies move forward. Thus, adjusting values and ideologies by changing the image of the past is an important part of the demands of the Europeanization process.

36 My quotation marks. 37 Moreover, there is even a need for further “monitoring” of the “Eastern Balkan” countries whose citizens (legally EU citizens as well) are often treated as third-class citizens, as demonstrated in the case of those Romanians (most of them Roma) recently expelled from France as illegal aliens. 72

Europe as a symbolic power Demands for dealing with the past, together with other political, social and economic requests and conditions place enormous pressure on nation-states and currently play a central role in the process of memory construction. While facing these demands entailed in the triple-contested transitions, Serbia also has a deeply embedded ambivalent relationship toward the “northwestern European pole” (Prošić-Dvornić 2000: 323). Serbs, who inhabit the distant European periphery and who belong to the “Balkan pole”, have not only been marked as “different” but have also been regarded as the “inferior other” (Prošić-Dvornić 2000: 322). Todorova (1994: 455) describes how the Balkans, though geographically inextricable from Europe, are culturally constructed as "the other” becoming, over time, “a repository of negative characteristics against which a positive and self-congratulatory image of the "European" and "the west" has been constructed”. Western discourse has presented the Balkans through images of danger, instability, violence, irrationality and eternal conflict. The deeply rooted dichotomy between West and East eventually established conditions for its own contradiction (Bakic-Hayden 1995), where Europe as the ultimate symbol of the West is understood through categories of prestige, progress, modernity and rationality while the Balkans are perceived as primitive, irrational and dark (Đerić 2008), lazy, poor, uncivil and violent (Prošić-Dvornić 2000: 322). Milica Bakic-Hayden and Robert Hayden (1995) employed an orientalist framework for the analysis of otherness inside Yugoslavia, by relying upon Said’s argument that West and East are much more a project than a place, enabled by the rhetoric structure of political and economic relationships of domination and submission. Prošić-Dvornić (2000) and Jansen (2002) further analyzed the construction of everyday orientalism in the Former Yugoslav spaces and the use of the most potent metaphors to create inclusion and exclusion during the wars of the 1990s. In addition, Volčić (2005: 169) showed how after the wars of the 1990s “the Balkan stereotype becomes appropriated and commoditized, only to be resold to the West” through the process of self-exoticism (Volčić 2005). It has been argued for quite some time that Serbia in particular has a fundamentally complex and contradictory relationship with the West (Čolović 1993,

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Volčić 2005; 2008, Lazić 2003). Lazić clearly shows that historical and cultural patterns in Serbia are marked by contradictions, especially when “considering the encounter between the East and the West, traditional and modern” (Lazić 2003: 193). He explains that these contradictory patterns are the direct result of Serbia being a border area, or at least being perceived as such. Volčić (2008: 403) places Serbia, together with Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia, in between, as a “bridge”, a metaphor which highlights “the in-betweenness of the ambiguous identities”. It has likewise been shown that both Croatia and Slovenia attempt to distance themselves from the barbaric and provincial, preferring to align themselves with a civilized Europe. Through the discourse analysis of the Europeanization process in the countries of the Former Yugoslavia, Petrović (2012), explicated the centrality of the notion “coming back home” as coming back to place where a nation naturally belongs. Nevertheless, being invited to enter the ‘European house’ does not necessarily mean automatically ‘feeling at home’ or that newcomers will necessarily be treated as ‘one of us’ by the current tenants (Stompka 2004). These attempts to position themselves toward Europe/ the west are common to all former Yugoslav countries. In that sense, “Yugoslavia” has not disappeared as a geopolitical space. At a certain level, there is a sense of the region’s unity, despite the conflicts, which has led Tim Judah (2009) to invent the new term “Yugosphere”. Nevertheless, these “spheres” are formed, not only by their internal centripetal forces, but more importantly by their external borders and isolation from other spheres. In other words, the common denominator amongst former Yugoslav countries38, just as Barth (1969) noted in his groundbreaking book Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, is that of the definition of borders in opposition to the others. Thus, Horvat and Stiks’ (2012) notion that the very concept of ‘transition’ as an ideological construct of domination based on the narrative of integration of the former socialist Europe into the Western core, actually hides the monumental power imbalance whereby this region is being converted into a dependent semi-periphery area. I strongly agree with their claim that the adjunct concepts of “weak state” or “failed state,” paper over the fact that these are not anomalies of the ‘transition’, but actually are circumstances which force nation-states to create

38 Minus Slovenia plus Albania. 74 mechanisms to help them juggle and overcome tensions between often contradictory external and internal demands.

Standardizing the European memory But how do these real and symbolic powers ascribed to the northwestern European pole affect the process of memory construction in post-communist, post- war and post-Yugoslav Serbia? Who generates the meanings of the past and who determines how to frame the contents of the past in the existing power relation structures? In other words, how does the process of Europeanization, by dictating power relations, shape the construction of the collective memory? As an essential part of the Europeanization process is adopting European norms and values, one has to ask what are those shared values, cultures and identities that represent the European heritage. The manifold forms of identifications with Europe are based on a ‘European civilization’, characterized by structural and cultural pluralism and related external and internal boundary constructions as well as long-term legacies and short-term memories. This civilizational identity refers to an encompassing identity of Europe as a geographical culture area with boundaries separating it from non-European civilizations (Spohn 2005). References are made to Europe’s heritage of classical Greco- Roman civilization, Christianity, and the ideas of the Enlightenment, Science, Reason, Progress and Democracy as the core elements of this claimed European legacy (Strath 2002: 388). Thus, according to the manifesto written by Derrida and Habermas published in 2003, membership to the European Union should be granted to social democracies and to countries whose foundations lie primarily on values of secular European Enlightenment (Levy and Sznaider 2010: 125). The core Europeans are not defined by an all-embracing "grand narrative", and the very basis for forging the imagined European community is grounded solely on European values: the social democratic model, post-national human rights and limited state sovereignty (Levy and Sznaider 2010: 131). However, the idea of Europe became, historically and sociologically, a political idea and mobilizing metaphor at the end of the twentieth century, particularly in the wake of 1989. The collapse of the communist regime changed the boundaries: both the tangible and symbolic borders separating

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Eastern Europe from Western Europe, and the content of the value-system with which the people had identified. However, while old boundaries were being taken down, new boundaries emerged or were strengthened. A stronger dividing line appeared from the East, separating East and Central Europe from the former Soviet republics. At a symbolic level, old resentments were dug out, dormant historical enmities were reawakened and the memories of Soviet domination and oppression were brought to the fore in public debates (Sztompka 490: 2004). But those imagined lines between the East and the West, also had real consequences as they highlighted some old unresolved disputes from the past, between the East and Central European countries both with Russia and with the European core. The gravity of the unresolved historical accounts central to the present divisions of European identity has been exposed through the ways in which the official versions of the war and postwar era have unraveled in the European core, especially since the enlargement of the European Union in 2004 (Judt 1992). The break-down of the Communist regimes and the political and social transformations in Central and Eastern Europe have occurred in the context not only of the reconstruction of national and European identities but also of the atrocious experiences of World War Two, the betrayal of Yalta leading to the installation of Communist regimes under the umbrella of the Soviet Union, and the hardened forms of ethnic nationalism to which the Communist regimes adjusted in various forms of national Communism (Spohn 2005). At least four major distinct mnemonic communities exist in the European memory landscape in relation to World War II: Atlantic-Western European, German, East-Central European and Russian. Their commemorations of the war focus respectively on D-Day of 1944 and the Allied Victory in Europe on 8 May 1945 39; manifold traumas resulting from the experience of bombing raids and total defeat; the trials of undergoing Nazi and Soviet

39 The existing memory clashes are the most explicit in the controversial meanings of ascribed significance of the 8th and 9th May. For Russians, 9 May 1945 is the date of the Soviet Union’s final victory over Nazi Germany, signifying the end of a war in which they suffered massive losses. Indeed, it was on 9 May 1945 that the war ended for the Soviet Union as the defenders of Berlin finally surrendered. For the Western Allies, World War Two ended in Europe on 8 May 1945 when the capitulation act of the German army was signed in Reims in France,11 and 9 May has a different meaning in the EU: it is celebrated as Europe Day. See more in: Malksoo Maria (2009) "The European Politics of Becoming European: The East European Subalterns and the Collective Memory of Europe", European Journal of International Relations 15(4): 653-680. 76 occupations in succession; and the comfort drawn from the part of the “European account” relating to the costly victory in ‘The Great Patriotic War’ of World War Two (Malksoo 2009: 65). Therefore, while Europe might be united, the European memory remained deeply divided and asymmetric. With the end of the cold war this imbalance came to the fore, as Western Europe increasingly focused on memories of the Holocaust while the negative features of their own nationhood have been mostly ignored and replaced by central and Eastern European moves to extend memories of victimhood beyond World War Two, and into Stalinism (Levy and Sznaider 2010). For example, the Baltic and Polish memory politics have brought up the controversial and intensely debated comparison between Nazi and Stalinist regimes and their respective crimes, thus contesting the uniqueness of Nazi crimes and questioning the singularity of the Holocaust as the crime against humanity of the twentieth century (Malksoo 2009). Nevertheless, the realities of war and post-war in Eastern Europe have generally been concealed in the Western public consciousness and have been marginalized rather than being institutionalized. Once again, it is the power relation of the structures and the hierarchies of “Otherness” that clearly dictate supremacies of memory contents and are yet another symptom of the European “feudal framework” (Kreminski 2005) and neo- colonial policies (Horvat and Stiks 2012). All post-communist countries, whether already accepted or still awaiting to become European member countries, face ignorance and non-recognition, with their historical memories being largely ignored. Levy and Sznieder claimed that “many of the new member states from the East seek to garner legitimacy for their particular experiences and memories, which disavow the centrality of the Holocaust in favor of their own victimhood under Stalinism” (2010: 126). While this is certainly true for the post Stalinist countries, in the post-Yugoslav countries the communist past was overshadowed by the violent wars in the 1990s. The unwillingness and/or inability to discuss the nature of the wars in the 1990s, was largely enabled by the Europeanization process and the imposed power relations, as will be elaborated upon in this research. Thus, instead of dealing with the roles and responsibilities across the ethnic lines, all post-Yugoslav governments are engaged in reframing and obfuscating the contested elements of their national past.

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Conclusion To conclude, I suggest here, that the process of collective memory construction in Serbia cannot be understood and explained only within the context of Europeanization and processes such as consolidation of human rights discourse (Levy and Sznaider 2006) and the cosmopolitization of collective memory (Levy and Sznaider 2010) nor solely through the given national context. It is the triple nature of Serbia’s contested past and the existing power relationships between the local, national and transnational memory entrepreneurs that eventually determine which concrete memories are transformed into abstract memory and which memories stay attached to ethnically bound frameworks. Serbian governments also have to filter and de-contextualize certain adverse memory contents to better their chances of being accepted into the European Union. These dual negotiations over visions of the past, between the state and the civil society on the one hand and between the state and the international community on the other hand generate the process of collective memory construction in Serbia today. The outcome is that at the top-down level ethnic nationalism is being reinforced and strengthened rather than being dissolved by the Europeanization process; while simultaneously at the bottom-up level a multitude of contradicting and competing narratives are created, which are preserved and held waiting in the sidelines for the apposite social setting to arrive in order to burst out. In the coming chapters I will present the mechanisms which are being employed by the state and civil society to address different memory agendas at both the domestic and international level. These mechanisms allow for varying emphasis, framing comprehension and perception of the social context in significantly different ways which can be adapted according to the respective audience. Three mechanisms through which memory contents are being framed are analyzed here: 1) filtering and decontextualizing memory contents through budgeting 2) creating social narratives of suffering and 3) promoting Holocaust memory as a screen-memory.

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Chapter 2

The Serbian case

While the unwillingness of the ruling political elite, as the state decision and policy makers, to officially and publically face their national contested past in certain circumstances is a universal feature (Gordy 2013), understanding why particular contents are transformed is always contextual. Thus, the mechanisms employed by the state to reframe and conceal contested elements of Serbia’s past have to be understood in the context of Serbia’s multilayered contested pasts and against the current backdrop of Europeanization. These contexts also impact upon the engagement of civil society in promoting other memory agendas. Dealing with Serbian history is, however, quite a tricky challenge, mostly because the simple facts don’t seem to matter much in the process of constructing a current collective memory. What matters is how memory entrepreneur groups perceive and interpret that past. In other words, whether Serbia actually embraced the idea of Yugoslavism as a means of placing all Serbian land and people under one roof or whether in fact it had contemplated a common South Slav future, matters only to the extent of how different groups are ideologically engaged in one or another version of the story. Thus, who actually started dismembering Yugoslavia first and why, doesn’t have much to do with forging a current collective memory, if and when memory entrepreneur groups become involved. An extensive body of literature suggests that the very events chosen as the “new beginning” are selected from a historical continuum based on their power to legitimate certain identities and understandings in the present (Zerubavel 1995). Therefore, when dealing with contested pasts, there is most often a huge gap between what really happened and how it is interpreted in the present. Another issue that needs to be addressed is that collective memory is never homogeneous, and multiple competing narratives are present simultaneously, each being defined through power relationships and the availability of resources. Thus, it is understandable that, for example, even after the bloodshed of the 1990s, while all former Yugoslav states officially spoke of the

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Yugoslav phase as life in a “dungeon”, private memories reflected nostalgia or ambivalence (Marković 2009: 202).

Serbian history: Facts, figures and disputes The process of consolidating a collective Serbian identity has, first and foremost, been characterized by the absence of a successive regime, territory or culture throughout history (Jovanović 2009: 159). Every turning point in Serbian history brought with it great changes in the way that Serbia forged its collective identity. Slavic tribes began to settle in the Balkan region from the seventh century. Evidence of Serbs and other tribes appear in a variety of sources from the sixth century however it is impossible to definitively discern which tribe arrived first and when and where they settled (Ćorović 1997). In the ninth century the Serbs converted to Christianity and from the twelfth century, under the leadership of Stephen Nemanja, they built a kingdom and spiritual centre of Serbian Orthodoxy in the area of today’s Kosovo, which started fading after 1389. In this year the mythological battle between the Serbs and the took place and over centuries to come, this particular myth was used to fuel Serbian ethnic nationalism. The not only signified the end of the kingdom’s golden age and the Serbian dynasty, but also the beginning of the Ottoman/Turkish occupation that continued for a further 500 years. According to resources available today, it seems as if the first collective Serbian identity in the centuries following the Kosovo Battle was predominantly based on the general components of Orthodoxy. In other words, the common denominator forging Serbian identity at the time was based on differentiation from “the other” in religious terms. As the geographic location of the Serbs is spread across the great imperial borders, the history of Serbia is pervaded with wars and immigration. Because of this and due to the constant contact with "the other" up until the end of the eighteenth century, Serbs began to form an ethnicity based on the collective memory of those same centuries where a "Serbian" was clearly differentiated from "the other" not solely on the basis of religion, patriarchy and tradition.40

40 Evidence of the formation of ethnic Serbian identity may be found in the massive corpus of folk literature that became available in writing in the nineteenth century. Folk literature in general and epic 80

The turning point which allowed Serbians to begin the process of establishing national independence took place between the years 1804-1813, when Serbians began the struggle against Turkish occupation in an attempt to form an independent state. The 19th century was characterized by the early stages of the formation of a national-ethnic Serbian identity, with the aspiration for governmental, territorial and cultural independence at its core. When Serbia gained independence in 1878 central myths underwent canonization, with the intention of representing historical events in a way that authenticity, continuity, pride, fate and attachment to the homeland would differentiate a specific nation from all other nations (Smith 2001). The Kosovo Battle of 1389 was forged into a central unification myth (Bieber 2002), presented as a heroic fight against the Turks which ended with a great loss and a period of five centuries under Ottoman rule. Framed in Biblical-Christological patterns “as a fateful loss of the Serbs” (Šuber 2006), it relied on three central motifs, each of which was exploited by the regime of the 1990s: sacrifice as a heroic choice, betrayal as the most disgraceful act and the idea of a chosen people. This framing of a fateful loss by the Serbs became enrooted in spite of the fact that both the Serbian king Lazar and the Turkish sultan Murat were decapitated and the earliest historical sources demonstrate Serbian victory (Veselinović and Ljusić 2008). Thus, the myth of the Battle of Kosovo became the primary source of patriotism, justifying the argument for authenticity and Serbia’s right for territorial and cultural independence. Only forty years after the initial formative process of national identity and receipt of political independence, yet another change took place. As a result of World War One, during which the Serbian population was severely injured loosing 35% (Dimić 2009: 34) of its population to death, diseases and starvation, Serbia was transformed from being an independent state into a monarchy which included various different ethnic groups. In

poetry in particular constituted an integral part of all ceremonies in the daily life of Serbian villages. On Orthodox holidays and in ceremonies signifying transitions in individual life, (birth, marriage, death, etc.) the central event was a performance given by singers reciting epic poetry that described great acts of Serbian bravery from all periods of time. Each time, these singers produced the imagined community of memory based on socially desired norms and values anew, thus defining the mental boundaries of society and moreover shaping the collective identity Serbs sought to glorify. For more on this issue see Murko Matija (1929) [1990] "The Folk Epic Poetry in Yugoslavia at the Beginning of the 20th Century", : Champion; David, Lea (2009) “Sećam se dakle postojim – Identitet Srba kao refleksija kulture sećanja” in G. Đerić (ed.) Pamćenje i nostalgija. Fabrika Knjiga: Beograd 139-171. 81

1918 Serbia became an integral part of "The Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian Kingdom"41, (also known as the first Yugoslavia) which led to the centralization of government and the hegemony of cultural symbols from all ethnic groups (Hammel 2000: 22). However, this was primarily a marriage of interests, which proved to be irreconcilable in the long term. Until the creation of the Yugoslav state in 1918 Serbia “fought 5 wars in the attempt to solve its national question” (Stojanović 2009: 136) and the frustration of being a small, weak and dispersed nation, bordering with mighty empires, further deepened ethnic nationalism as the primary political option and strengthened “a warrior mentality and a patriarch-based model of heroic socialization” (Stojanović 2009: 137). Thus, for Serbs, entering the Yugoslav state was a solution of compromise, gathering all Serbs under one political sphere. For the other nations, (Croats and Slovenes) it was a way of receiving more rights than they previously had within the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Kuljić 2005). For Serbs, locating the center of this new state in Belgrade, Serbia, was seen as a logical and natural step, since they represented the largest ethnic group dispersed throughout Yugoslavia. For the other ethnic groups it was interpreted as imposing Serbian hegemony over them (Hammel 2000: 29). This led to national antagonisms, outright animosities and finally horrendous atrocities in World War Two (Prošić-Dvornić 2000). Whether the “authentic democracy of the Serbian kingdom” was cut off by joining Serbia to the first Yugoslavia, at the expense of Serbia or actually Serbia wanted to impose its “populist political model” over the others, remains at the heart of the current historical debate (Stojanović 2009: 117-118). It is however undisputable, that the nation’s formative process which had just begun in the nineteenth century, never fully took root and Serbia, together with the other ethnic groups in the Balkans, continued to rest on ethnic nationalism. The idea of being ethnically identified with a southern Slavic or a “Pan –Slavic” bloc had a brief lifespan as an ideology, but a Yugoslavia that included Slavs from the Alps to the Bulgarian border was more viable. A further sharp transition occurred as a result of World War Two, which caused Serbs to change their ideological prism which consequently led to reshaping their national identity - this time, from ethnic Serbian to

41 Kraljevina Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca 82

Pan-Yugoslavian. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ)42 was a multi- ethnic socialist state which included six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia, as well as two autonomous provinces within Serbia – Vojvodina in the north and Kosovo in the south. The "Yugoslavian" idea was founded on the slogan "Brotherhood and Unity"43, with the intention of emphasizing the common Slavic element as well as blurring ethnic and national differences (Dimić 2009: 21). However, the truth is that although the communist party had preached proletarian internationalism on the normative level, ethno-nationalism was the cornerstone of their operative ideology and an important source of internal legitimacy (Malešević 2006: 399). Although throughout the next fifty years World War Two was framed through the partisan narrative, for Serbia, it actually also represented a civil war between the partisans (who had been fighting against occupation and for the implementation of a communist regime) and the Chetnik’s movement.44 were Serb nationalist and monarchist paramilitary organizations which operated from the first half of the twentieth century. Formed as a resistance groups against the Ottoman Empire in 1904, they participated in the two Balkan Wars, One, and World War Two. During World War Two, the Chetniks were an anti-Axis movement carrying out a tactical or selective collaboration with the occupation almost throughout the war. The actions of the Chetniks were widely supported by the clerics of the Serbian Orthodox Church (Ristović 2000). These actions included the use of terror tactics against the Croats in areas where Serbs and Croats were inter-mixed, against the Muslim population in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Sandzak and against the Partisans and their supporters in all areas. The Chetnik terror activities took various forms, including the killing of civilians, burning of villages, assassinations and destruction of property. The violence used by the Chetniks against the Croats was largely a reaction to the mass terror perpetrated by the Croat Ustaše, whereas the terror against the Partisans and their supporters was ideologically-driven. All in all, at least 1,014,000 of a pre-war population of 17,186,000 were killed during the Second World War (Banac 1992:18).

42 Socijalistička Federativna Republika Jugoslavija 43 Bratstvo i jedinstvo 44 Četnici 83

Thus, after the war, stressing “brotherhood and unity” together with “the immediate solution of class identity” (Bjelić 2002: 53) was intended to replace previous national identities, providing the political elite with a means of simplifying and explaining cultural and ethnic differences. It has been argued that Yugoslavia survived mostly because of the regime’s firm grip over the national question (Prošić-Dvornić 2000). Thus, in order to unite such diverse ethnic groups, who had massacred one another during World War Two, the Communist Party as the governing entity glorified the World War Two and the partisan narrative as the myth of the Yugoslavian nation’s inception through the SUBNOR45 organization. The purpose of this war veteran organization, consisting of about a million members, was to propagate myths of homogenization regarding partisan bravery and further a new collective memory as a means of building national Yugoslavian identity. This is indeed illustrated by the scope of the organization’s activities, which until 1961 erected 2,940 monuments, memorial sites and cemeteries for the purpose of infiltrating educational messages concerning the desired norms and values of the Yugoslavian nation (Bergholc 2007: 63). In addition, throughout his long rule, Tito stressed that the space of the Yugoslav federation was a good space endangered by an antagonistic outside: from the initial opposition to fascism, to oscillating between the Soviet threat and the threat of the West (Bowman 2003: 45). In other words, all national identities were pushed aside in socialist Yugoslavia by the government project which sought to form a multi-ethnic nation – the Yugoslavian nation but at the same time nationalism was constantly instigated from above. From the late 1950s the party started to gradually transfer power from the federal to the republic governments. It was the decentralization of the state bureaucracy and the ramification of the self-management system in the mid 1970s that brought about the fragmentation of Yugoslav society across the ethnic lines (Prošić-Dvornić 2000). However, on the ground Serbs and Montenegrins were increasingly dominating the Yugoslav organs of government, especially the police and the armed forces. Consequently, the Slovenes and Croats have been unable to mentally disentangle federalism from communism and from Serbian hegemony (Hammel 2000). At the beginning of the 1970s Croatian communist leaders started to openly advocate decentralization and though Tito orchestrated a

45 Savez Udruženja Boraca Narodnooslobodilačkog rata Jugoslavije 84 counteroffensive and suppressed the mass movement, Tito de facto co-opted nationalist demands (Denich 2000) which led to the new Yugoslav constitution in 1974. The 1974 constitution, supposedly designed to prevent the disintegration of the country, actually created the legal foundations for meeting the secessionist demands (Prošić-Dvornić 2000, Denich 2000). Absurdly, by promoting a non-ethnic base for Yugoslav unity, the elite made nationalism the main rhetoric antipode to the dominant ideology of the regime. At the same time, by declaring everyone who opposed the regime a nationalist, the regime in fact promoted such nationalism as the main alternative (Jović 2001). The integrity of the Titoist Yugoslavia was further undermined throughout the 1980s by a systemic economic crisis it proved incapable of resolving. The death of Tito, in 1980, unfortunately coincided with the collapse of the debt-ridden economy which had artificially maintained the lifestyle he represented (Pavlowitch 1988). It also represented the end of an era where Yugoslavs could gather around their undisputable leader, who afterwards became both a symbol of hatred for those who saw in the Yugoslav project the source of all evil and a symbol of longing for those who perceived the Yugoslav period as their golden era.

The dismembering of Yugoslavia: What were we fighting for? Thus the death of Yugoslavia’s charismatic leader Tito in 1980, having left behind him a legacy of massive debt and no apparent heir, at a time of other critical changes on the international geo-political map, awakened a revival of ethnic nationalism and the beginning of Yugoslavia’s end. The collapse of the communist federal system’s legitimacy began in 1988-1989 when the Serbian nationalist leader Slobodan Milošević abrogated the autonomy of Kosovo and the Vojvodina and deposed the government of Montenegro. This initiated a search for new ways of legitimating power structures (which were in all instances already in place) throughout the republics of what was then Yugoslavia (Bowman 1994). After Milošević’s rise to power in 1986 he made it very clear from the very beginning that he was not willing to compromise with other republics or to accept the need for economic and political reforms. Aware that the socialist formula was no longer effective Milošević decided to take advantage of the large Serbian diaspora and to bring them all together under one ideological umbrella of Serbian nationalism (Prošić-Dvornić 2000). Serbian historians then began the process of re-examining the

85 prevalent narratives surrounding World War Two in Serbia, rehabilitating Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović along the way (Ramet 2004). The idea of secession was first put forward by the Slovenes and Croats and it was later adopted by other republics which posed a direct threat to the legitimacy of the Yugoslav government, its army and de facto Serbian hegemony. A planned military coup failed as the senior hierarchy had been purged by radical pro-Serbian junior officers, and the Yugoslav army (JNA) became a Serbian one virtually overnight (Hammel 2000). In 1991 Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence from Yugoslavia and a year later Bosnia and Herzegovina followed suit. The first of the six republics to formally leave Yugoslavia was Slovenia, declaring independence on 25 June 1991. This triggered an intervention by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) which turned into a brief military conflict, generally referred to as the Ten-Day War. It ended in victory for the Slovenian forces, with the JNA withdrawing its soldiers and equipment. Croatia declared independence on the same day as Slovenia. However, while Slovenia’s withdrawal from the Yugoslav Federation was comparatively bloodless, Croatia’s was not to be. The sizeable ethnic Serb minority in Croatia openly rejected the authority of the newly proclaimed Croatian state citing their right to remain within Yugoslavia. Actions leading to the breakdown of the federation met strong opposition in other parts of Yugoslavia, especially in Serbia, which had large minorities both in Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Radović 2004, Denich 1994). The leaders of Serbian enclaves in Croatia stated that if Croatia should choose independence they would demand the redefining of internal borders and the secession of the Serb-majority districts from Croatia and their annexation to the Republic of Serbia. Serbia supported this request, asserting the Croatian Serbs’ right to self-determination. With the help of the JNA and Serbia, Croatian Serbs rebelled, declaring nearly a third of Croatia’s territory to be under their control as an independent Serb state. Croats and other non-Serbs were expelled from this territory in a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing. They exploited the nationalist media and politicians to revive the memories of various actions taken by the authorities, including, the pogroms and mass killings of Serbs under the fascist Government of the Independent State of Croatia, created with German and Italian assistance during the Second World War (Denich 1994, Prošić-

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Dvornić 2000, Gruizing 2007, Hayden 1996). These traumatic and symbolic recollections and contentious revelations about mass executions of both Serbs and Croats during World War II together with the exhumations of burial sites provides a key to understanding how the atrocities of the past were revived in the emotions and political consciousness of the present (Denich 1994). Thus the symbolic recall of ethno-nationally divisive collective memories supported the resurgence of nationalist ideologies by evoking highly emotive and polarized responses with opposite meanings for those identifying themselves as either Croats or Serbs (Denich 1994). Under the leadership of Slobodan Milošević, Serbia took control of the upper echelons of the Yugoslavian military (including weapons and military bases) and began its war against each seceding republic, using the excuse that they were protecting the borders of Yugoslavia. The escalation of extreme ethnic nationalism across all ethnic lines was rapid and its consequences were evident in the crimes and atrocities committed on all sides, but first and foremost on the part of Serbia as they were in possession of the JNA weapons. Systematic terror was used in the civil war by all the warring ethnic factions (Serbs, Croats, and Slavic Muslims) to displace ethnic populations and establish control over territory. Armed forces committed atrocities against civilians to intimidate them into fleeing as refugees. While the basic methodologies were shared by all sides, the largest scale of atrocities reported were committed by Serbs against Muslims, and the greatest numbers of refugees were Muslims, fleeing as Serbian forces took control over Bosnian territories (Denich 1994). In 1968 the term ‘Muslim’ had been adopted to indicate the member of a nation within Bosnia-Herzegovina and in 1991 the census showed that the Muslims were the largest ethnic group in the republic (43.7% of population), while the Serbs accounted for 31.3%, and the Croats 17.3%. However, these three national groups living in Bosnia and Herzegovina were neither concentrated in homogenous areas nor evenly distributed throughout the republic, although some districts did have a clear majority of one of these three nations. In October 1991, the Muslim and Croatian members of Parliament adopted documents that paved the way to the secession of the Republic from the Yugoslav Federation. Most of the Serbian representatives had previously walked out of the session. The tensions among ethnic communities significantly increased following the

87 independence referendum in BiH (which Serbs boycotted) and a series of violent events took place involving armed civilians, police and paramilitaries of various nationalities. Following the international recognition of BiH independence, fighting soon engulfed the entire republic. The escalation was fast and Serbs rapidly managed to take control over large parts of the territory since the JNA troops, (controlled by Serbs) mobilized Serbian reservists and paramilitary units which were extensively present in BiH with many JNA units having arrived in Bosnia after the withdrawal from Slovenia and Croatia (Radović 2004). In Central Bosnia, the mainly Muslim army had already been engaged in fighting a separate war against Bosnian Croats who wished to be part of a greater Croatia. The Serbs who lived there were fighting the Muslims and received strong backing from extremist groups in Belgrade. They were determined to help build a greater Serbia and on several occasions drove Muslims from their homes in carefully planned operations that became known as "ethnic cleansing". The presence of UN peacekeepers to contain the situation proved ineffective. After the Serbian genocide of Muslims in Srebrenica, American pressure to end the war eventually led to the Dayton agreement of November 1995 which created two self-governing entities within Bosnia - the Bosnian Serb Republic and the Muslim (Bosnjak)-Croat Federation. Kosovo had been an autonomous province in southern Serbia until 1989 when the Serbian regime drastically abolished their autonomy. In 1998 after the bloody wars in Croatia and Bosnia had ended the Kosovo Liberation Army - supported by the majority of ethnic Albanians - came out in open rebellion against Serbian rule. The international pressure grew on the Serbian strongman, Slobodan Milošević, to bring an end to the escalating violence in the province. Threats of military action over the crisis by the West culminated in the launching of NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia in March 1999. These strikes focused primarily on military targets in Kosovo and Serbia, but extended to a wide range of other facilities, including bridges, oil refineries, power supplies and communications. Within days of the strikes starting, tens of thousands of Kosovo Albanian refugees were pouring out of the province with accounts of killings, atrocities and forced expulsions at the hands of Serb forces. The consequences of the wars of the 1990s were enormous. Mass violations of international humanitarian law were reported within the territory of the former

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Yugoslavia, and especially in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, including mass killings, massive, organized and systematic detention and rape of women, and continued “ethnic cleansing". An examination of the figures put forward reveals a vast divergence both in terms of the total number of dead and the proportion of deaths suffered by each ethnic group. Emotionally charged disputes on the number of victims of national conflicts dating back to the time of the Second World War were used to fuel the new of the 1990s. For example, while one can state with a high level of certainty that in Slovenia seventy seven people lost their lives, in Croatia the numbers range from 17,000 – 22,000 dead on both sides (approximately 15,000 Croats and 7,000 Serbs). In BiH in the period from 1992-1995 the number of killed and missing persons amounts to 278,000 where the majority of victims (140,800 dead) were Bosniaks, mostly civilians, followed by the Serbs (97,000 dead) mainly soldiers, and Croats (28,400) (Radović 2004). In Kosovo alone from 1998 until 2000 this number is 13,167, including 10,533 Albanians and 2,080 Serbs.46 Regarding the number of missing persons it is estimated that in Croatia alone there are somewhere between 2,800 and 5,000 missing persons. In Bosnia there are more than 27,000 missing according to Amnesty International, whereas according to the BiH State Commission on the Search for Missing Persons, International Red Cross of BiH, the number of missing persons is currently deemed to be 16,862 Bosniaks, 2,522 Serbs, 711 Croats, thirty five Albanians, eleven Montenegrins, nineteen Roma, six Ukrainians, four Slovenians and two Hungarians (Radovic 2004). In addition Serbia has around 275,00047 refugees and approximately the same number of internally displaced people.48 At least 200,000 Serbs were forced to emigrate from Croatia after the operations “Storm” and “Flash” in 1995. Many more were forced to leave Kosovo in the period after the signing of the agreement in 1999. As part of this difficult legacy, Radović (2004) emphasizes three specific features of the wars in ex Yugoslavia: ethnic cleansing, prison camps and paramilitary formations.

46 Humanitarian Law Center, annual report 2010. Those data are by far the most reliable. In 2013 the Center published the “Kosovo book of dead” presenting short descriptions on every single person that lost its life. It is based on years of pedant and well coordinates research where both Serbian and Albanian researchers took part. 47 U Srbiji najvise izbeglica u Evropi, 20 June 2011. www.e-novine.com 48 Radović introduces figures such as 291.415 refugees and 256.891 IDPs on the Serbian part alone. Living in the Post-war communities: A brief retrospective on the problem of refugees in Yugoslavia 1991-1999, International Aid Network: Belgrade 2005, 11-26. 89

While all parties involved in the conflict committed severe violations of international humanitarian law, such as the killing of civilians, rape, torture, and the deliberate destruction of civilian property, including cultural and religious property, such as churches and mosques, there were significant qualitative differences. Most of the violations were committed by Serbs against Bosnian Muslims (Radović 2004). Moreover, there was a large number49 of prison camps and places of detention some of which were under the control of the regular armies, while others were of an unofficial, almost private character, under the control of local military and paramilitary heavy weights. While some functioned as ordinary places of detention, others had special purposes, for example, the detention of women and their sexual assault and rape. Classical prisons and correctional institutions were used as well as military barracks, police stations, primary and secondary schools, sports halls and various industrial, traffic and trade facilities, abandoned mines, warehouses, agricultural states, silos, catering establishments (hotels, motels, inns, disco clubs), as well as private houses. According to the United Nations final report there were at least 83 identified paramilitary groups operating in the territories of the former Yugoslavia: 56 of them supported Serbia and the self-declared Serbian Republics; 13 supported the Republic of Croatia; and 14 supported Bosnia-Herzegovina.50 The number of paramilitary groups, and the size of each group, varied throughout the course of the conflict. However, those reports indicate only a rough approximation of paramilitary troop strength. The number

49 Again this issue is highly contested across the ethnic lines. Radović wrote: “In the territory of Bosnia- Herzegovina there were 614 prison camps and various places of detention established. About 250,000 people passed through camps, confinements and improvised places of detention. The Serbian faction held 572 camps, Croatian 39, and Bosniaks 3 ones as estimated by the organisation Centre for Torture Victims from Sarajevo. It should be mentioned that there have been no official Serbian-Montenegrin data on the camp survivor number yet and that the allegation of the Association of 1991-95 wars ex camps survivors on 5,000 victims should be confirmed by a detailed register of all the torture victims known to this Association. ‘’Yet, much more data on the suffering of the Serbian side are provided by the Association of Republika Srpska (BiH) ex camps survivors, established in December 2002 in Banja Luka. Namely the Association states that it is in possession of the documentation on 55,000 Serb ex-camp survivors who were detained in 536 camps for Serbs in the territory which today constitutes the Federation of BiH, as well as of the list of 3,156 persons –givers of orders and perpetrators of crimes committed against the imprisoned Serbs’’.64 we learned that the Croatian Association of Croatian War of Independence Camp Survivors [Hrvatska udruga logoraša Domovinskog rata], “numbers 8,060 Croatian – civilians and soldiers – who spent shorter or longer period in Serbian prisons or camps.” 50 Final report of the United Nations Commission of Experts established pursuant to security council resolution 780 (1992) - Annex III.A Special forces, UN document S/1994/674/Add.2 (Vol. I), 28 December 1994 90 of persons in paramilitary groups fighting in support of BiH ranged from 4,000 to 6,000; between 12,000 to 20,000 supported the Republic of Croatia; with between 20,000 and 40,000 paramilitaries having fought on behalf of the self declared Serb Republics.51 In spite of the extremely large figures of the dead and missing, for the Serbs living in Serbia, these wars were perceived as occurring somewhere else, away from home. In spite of the war raging in the region and in spite of the existence of numerous informal indications as well as the allegations of various international bodies that some citizens of Serbia and Montenegro52 took part in the war in Croatia and BiH, the authorities behaved as if Serbia and Montenegro had nothing to do with it. The official state policy was that Serbia was not at war. However, for people living in Serbia, it was a decade of hardship and they were concerned with their own day-to-day survival rather than with the wars in the former Yugoslav countries. In addition to having lost three military conflicts, the country was also suffering from the highest level of hyperinflation witnessed in modern times as well as from international sanctions and isolation. Unemployment levels reached fifty percent during the 1990s and per capita income dropped by more than two-thirds after 1989. This intense social crisis threatened the stability of the regime. In response the Serbian government headed by President Slobodan Milošević attempted to consolidate their position by promoting extreme Serbian nationalism. As an integral part of this process they rehabilitated the Kosovo myth as the master commemorative narrative of the Serbian people (Bieber 2002). With the wars taking place in the background, Serbian leadership embedded the Kosovo Battle as a newly discovered set of values where the “glorious traditions of Serbian liberation warriors” represent the “essence” of the Serbian “soul”. Through the intense process of mythologization of the Kosovo battle (Nedeljković 2006), men were portrayed as warriors: they battled the Turks and chose the “heavenly kingdom” rather than the worldly one. In the post-Kosovo cycle men are presented as rebels, Balkan versions of Robin Hood, who fought for freedom and protected peasants from the Ottomans (Milićević 2006). This was further legitimized through the purposeful creation of the discourse of the “other” which was presented as

51 Ibid. 52 Until year 2006 Montenegro and Serbia were in the same state. 91 the real or potential enemy (Vasiljević 2008). Thus, for example, during the war in Croatia, Serbian newspapers constantly reported alleged atrocities conducted by Croatians writing, amongst other things, that “though we do not know for certain at the moment who slaughtered those 40 innocent children, it is clear only Ustashe could have done it” (Vasiljević 2008: 351). Narratives of victimization and threat linking the present with the past and projecting onto future had a powerful effect on individuals previously uninvolved with, or opposed to nationalism. Gordy (1999: 14-15) explained the relative success of the Milošević regime showing the gap between the strong distributive apparatus and weak sites of political decision: “The communist monopoly outlived communism in Serbia as in the other successor states of the former Yugoslavia, maintaining its machinery and its technologies of distribution long after its carriers abandoned Communist ideology. As a result, nationalist successors share a syndrome: Like their predecessors, they operate governments that are intentionally kept weak as sites of political decision, but that maintain the strong distributive and repressive machinery they inherited from their predecessors.” In practice, this meant that the narrow ruling elite purposefully kept weak governments unable to oppose them, but a strong operative ability to perform the desired actions. The resulting mélange of nationalist propaganda, kitschy dance music, explicit sexuality and deliberate sensory overload became one of Slobodan Milošević’s most important methods of retaining power. His saturation of the airwaves with this "Balkan Hardcore" was part of a coordinated campaign to "eliminate alternatives" within the info- sphere, a tactic that took advantage of the existing divisions of the rural and urban Serbian population. Thus, by heightening and intensifying social divisions, the combined impact of dictatorial strategies, national homogenization, international isolation, and war made the destruction of alternatives easier (Gordy 1999: 7). The consequences of this planned destruction go beyond the 1990s. Providing a successful platform for the promotion of violence, fast money and cheap sexy women, in reality helped the Milošević regime to mobilize Serbian citizens to fight in the wars. Making Ceca,53 the most famous Serbian folk singer, and her husband Arkan,54 the leader

53 Svetalana Ražnjatović 92 of one of the cruelest paramilitary units,55 Serbia’s national idols, made previously present social divisions deeper and harder to bridge. This division between so called First and Second Serbia (or rural and urban) is present to this day and it continues to shape both the current national identities as well as the politics of commemoration. This is particularly evident in the Monument Affair where the mnemonic battles between the various veteran organizations and the Monument Group were fought precisely along the imaginary lines dividing the rural and and urban perceptions of national identities.

Serbia after year 2000 Current attempts to establish a new “master commemorative narrative”, a story of a new beginning (Zerubavel 1995) in Serbia have been met with considerable resistance, chiefly because Serbian participation in the wars of the 1990s was anti heroic, filled with violence, atrocities and bloodshed. Moreover, it lacked any public consensus and was contested in multiple ways. A series of events occurred in 2000 following the presidential elections and culminating in the downfall of Slobodan Milošević’s government on 5 October 2000. These were the result of a year-long battle involving thousands of Serbs in a strategy to strip the leader of his legitimacy, turn his security forces against him, and force him to call for elections, the result of which he would not acknowledge. Milošević was cracking down on opposition, non-government organizations and independent media. From 1991 onwards there were campaigns of civil resistance against his administration that were to culminate in the largely non-violent revolution of October 2000. As the end of his third term in office of president approached (he had previously been elected in two terms, from 1990 to 1997), on 6 July 2000, the rules of the election of the president were changed. Several serious irregularities were found in the parliamentary elections in 2000 which triggered a spontaneous civil protest. The protest reached its height on 5 October 2000. Two days layer Milošević was forced to resign. Six months later, as the first palpable gesture of Serbia’s willingness to start a democratic political review, on 1 April 2001, Milošević was arrested by Serbian police and was subsequently transferred to The

54 Željko Ražnjatović assassinated in 2000. 55 Srpska Dobrovoljačka Garada 93

Hague to be prosecuted, where he died in 2006, a few months before the conclusion of his trial. Even after the overthrow in 2000, the Serbian government never took full, or indeed any, responsibility for its part in the wars of the 1990s. While the rhetoric regarding the wars of the 1990s during the Milošević regime espoused Serbia’s righteous struggle to free the Serbs and all alleged Serbian territories, the official attitude toward the wars after the year 2000 remained more or less the same. All governments elected since 2000, in spite of different rhetoric and agendas, presented center or right wing ideologies.56 Thus, while allegedly propagating the candidacy in the EU, all were, at some scale, promoting ethno-nationalism. This silent vacuum was a product of an intentional blurring of the links between the state and the army during the wars of the 1990s as well as a distortion of individual responsibilities and political aspirations. For the past 15 years, there has been a tendency in Serbia to blame the atrocities allegedly committed by Serbia on the paramilitary units, as if they had nothing to do with official Serbian policy. It has been shown however, predominantly through the work of investigative journalism57 and through research conducted by certain NGOs58 that nearly all paramilitary units actively cooperated and collaborated with the Milošević regime. Moreover, the regime and political elite made

56 In the federal presidential elections held on 24 September 2000 the candidate of the Democratic opposition of Serbia, DOS, Vojislav Koštunica, won. Milošević was forced to admit he had lost after mass protests overwhelmed the regime on 5 October. After the collapse of the Milošević regime, the SPS (Socialist Party of Serbia), DOS (Democratic opposition of Serbia) and SPO (Serbian Renewal Movement) reached an agreement for the three parties to form a transitional Serbian government while Milutinović (SPS) agreed to called early elections. The leader of Democratic Party, Zoran Djindjić, formed a new government in January 2001 and immediately started reforms. In April Vojislav Koštunica and his Democratic Party of Serbia, the DSS, left the DOS, accusing the rest of coalition of having connections with organized crime. The assassination of Djindjić in March 2003 further delayed elections, as the country proclaimed a state of emergency. In June 2004 the two favorites in the elections were Tomislav Nikolic - who became leader of the Radicals after the party’s president, Vojislav Šešelj, voluntarily surrendered to the Hague Tribunal - and Boris Tadic who had become the new leader of Democrats after the assassination of Djindjić. After 18 months under an acting president, Serbs elected Boris Tadić as President. As the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro dissolved after Montenegro declared independence in May 2006, Serbia adopted a new constitution in November. According to the Constitutional Law, general elections were to be held in January 2007. Koštunica’s DSS again formed a government. The elections were scheduled for January 20, 2008. After winning the elections, Tadić remained Serbian President. On May 2012, nationalist leader Tomislav Nikolić, from the Radical party, wins over Boris Tadić in presidential elections. 57 More on this issue see in Eric Gordy, Guilt, Responsibility and Denial, The Past at Stake in Post- Milošević Serbia (University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, 2013), Ch. 6. 58 Particularly the Humanitarian Law Center. 94

“deals” with them, having certain rules in place; for example, paramilitary units were to go in first and “clean” the area (kill, burn and plunder) and only after this, the official Yugoslav army was to come in and annex the territories. This however, has never been publicly acknowledged by any Serbian government to this day. The ambiguity further arises from the state’s silence as to whether or not paramilitary units were under the state’s military command and performed tasks with the approval and consent of state authorities. Moreover it is important to note that this silence is a direct result of the fact that the majority of the current leadership was already in some position of decision making during the wars (Gordy 2013). As a part of the democratization processes, the international community conditioned Serbia’s financial well-being and its candidacy for the EU on the continuing stream of transitional justice mechanisms. Serbia was (and still is) tightly monitored and European integration has impacted on the majority of parties who made adjustments to their programs, platforms and public statements accordingly (Orlović 2007). On the one hand, though Serbian governments were not willing to organize, promote or support any significant public debate on what transpired in the wars of the 1990s, due to the international pressures, some partial acts towards reconciliation were made. After much turbulence59, Serbian governments fulfilled their obligation to extradite to the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) key figures responsible for atrocities in the wars of the 1990s, among them Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić.60 Also several dozen domestic trials took place, though they mostly addressed minor crimes and even these faced multiple obstructions. From 2000 some attempts were made to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Committee, similar to those established in El Salvador in 1997, Guatemala in 1998 or in Northern Ireland in 2000. However by 2003, the TRC died quietly, when the president Koštunica tried to make it a platform for deciding “who was to blame” 61 rather than for conducting hearings with witnesses and survivors of human rights abuses (Subotić 2009: 53-55). In addition to some financial

59 For more on this issue see Subotić Jelena (2009) Hijacked Justice: Dealing with the Past in the Balkans. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, pp. 15-38. 60 Both, Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić were found hiding in Serbia under pretence names. Karadžić was sent to Haag in 2008, and Mladić only 2011. All in all, 94 Serbs were indicted. 61 More on this issue see: Nenad Dimitrijević (2003) “Suoćavanje sa lošom prošlošću: Treba li Srbiji i Crnoj Gori komisija za istinu i pomirenje?”,Reč 71(17): 65-83; Dejan Ilić (2005) “Jugoslovenska komisija za istinu i pomirenje.” Reč 73(19): 53-78. 95 reparations, there were several attempts to formally apologize in the name of the Serbian people. However, those attempts were partial at best, seeking to diminish or excuse Serbian responsibility for the misdeeds in the war, rather than claim full responsibility. For example, in 2006, during his first visit to Sarajevo, the Serbian president Boris Tadić said that the crimes were not committed by the Serbian people since the crimes are always committed by individuals. Thus, he stated, it is impossible to accuse an entire people of the crimes that were also committed against the Serbian people.62 In March, 2010, the Serbian parliament passed a resolution apologizing for the 1995 massacre of thousands of Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica and later that year President Tadić visited Bosnia for the ceremony marking the fifteenth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. In November 2010, in what is seen as a significant act of reconciliation between Serbia and Croatia, President Tadić visited the Croatian town of Vukovar, where he apologized for the 1991 massacre of 260 civilians by Serb forces. However, he constantly emphasized that it was not the Serbian people who were to blame but particular individuals, again blurring the responsibility of the Serbian political and intellectual elite. This was another proof that the current democratic Serbian governments continued to avoid dealing with Serbia’s role and responsibility in the wars of the 1990s. They tried “to put the entire enterprise of justice back into the service of nationalist ideologies” (Subotić 2011), and the debate regarding what transpired in the wars of the 1990s, and by extension Serbia’s role therein, has essentially never been initiated or supported by the state. Moreover, until this day there is no official body in charge of gathering data on the dead, wounded, missing people, refugees or internally displaces persons. On the other hand, the civil society in Serbia did make some serious efforts to initiate a significant and meaningful debate on the role and responsibility of Serbia for the atrocities in the wars of the 1990s. NGO’s, mostly financed by the EU, addressed a series of issues regarding the violations of human rights by the regime both during the Milošević period and after year 2000. Among other things, NGO’s organized numerous debates on the legacies of the 1990s wars, various “Facing the Past” projects, extensive documentation on war crimes, testimony collections, legal support for indicting war

62 Humanitarian Law Center http://www.hlc-rdc.org/?p=13592#more-13592 96 criminals, tours to Srebrenica and education for peace, etc. The most serious and organized initiative with this regard has been RECOM, the Coalition founded by the renowned humanist Nataša Kandić - a regional group of apolitical civil society organizations. This Coalition has gathered approximately 1,800 non-governmental organizations, associations, and individuals who advocate the establishment of a Coalition for the purpose of establishing an independent regional commission mandated to establish and publish facts about war crimes and human rights violations and to disclose the fates of missing persons during the wars on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, in the period of 1991-2001. The Initiative for RECOM has united civil society from all successor states of the former Yugoslavia that mutually signed a single petition, around the idea of a Regional Commission for establishing and publicly disclosing facts about victims and war crimes. However, without becoming a state project, chances are small that this initiative will make a real difference.63 While all Serbian governments since year 2000 tried to avoid dealing with the contested elements of the past, the last ten years have been sufficient to teach us about the general tendencies in constructing (or better to say recovering) the damaged memory in Serbian. When dealing with its communist past, the officially framed tenor is anticommunism, mostly serving not as an order for remembering but as one for forgetting, where the role of the communist struggle in World War Two is purposefully downplayed (Kuljić 2005).Yet, other historical layers are being revitalized, first and foremost, the Serbian monarchy and the Chetnik movement. Historians and sociologists have showed that, surprisingly, the major current public debates are focused on reassessment of the role of Serbia in the World War Two. There is a strong tendency to equate the partisans and the Chetnik movement and they have been ideologically leveled in both professional historiography and history textbooks (Cvijić 2008). However, the question of how the wider audience remembers the wars of the 1990s is much trickier. This is due to the fact that the three spheres: state, civil society and wider society, developed throughout the Serbian history independently without being mutually synchronized (Stojanović 2009: 118). Thus, while in various historical periods

63 This is also the main concern of the RECOM leaders. They understand their current priority has to be to recruit domestic governments to become initiative` promoters. This, however, is not in sight, as Natasa Kandic told me during our conversation in December 2012. 97 some governments and the civil society may have been developed and even progressive, the wider society stayed undeveloped, uneducated and mostly rural. This has an enormous impact on the ways in which current collective memory is being forged. It was the strata from this undeveloped wider society who primarily identified themselves as warriors who were easy to recruit over and over again irrespective of the ideology involved (Bieber 2002, Milicević 2006, Stojanović 2009, David 2009). They were able to identify themselves with the warrior element of the both partisan and Chetnik movements, the political ideology being less crucial. With this being the case, what is the current role of the war veterans in forging a collective memory of the wars of the 1990s? Under the socialist regime war veterans played an important role in the distribution of warfare memories. However, following Serbia’s losses in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, Serbian war veterans became outcasts. Thus veterans have suffered from a dramatic change of status. They are now commonly publically treated as criminals, Milošević’ mercenaries and uneducated monsters. All of Serbia’s governments have realized that praising veterans of the recent wars that were lost is neither popular nor economically rational. Currently, there are approximately 400,000 – 800,000 64 war veterans in Serbia who participated in the wars of the former Yugoslavia Republic. The difficulties in forging a common collective memory project are also the result of a deeply fragmented Serbian society, apparent in the tremendous number of different veterans unions. Indeed, in the Belgrade municipality alone, more than sixty such organizations exist. The diversity is enormous and based on different criteria such as: the fighters common origins (from the Krajina region, northern Herzegovina etc.), common battlefields (Slovenia, Kosovo etc.), a common past in a paramilitary or army unit (Yugoslav army, Scorpions etc.), a common status (invalids, families of deceased, missing, wounded etc.) and so forth. The list is almost endless. I denote them by the term “veteran population”, referring to all those who participated in the armed struggles of the 1990s, notwithstanding their

64 Numbers vary greatly and are a contested topic since there is no official institution that has systematically collected data on the veteran and related populations. There is not an exact number of people, neither of those officially recruited nor of volunteers who belonged to various paramilitary units, nor of the wounded or dead. The most reliable figures can however be found in the database of the Humanitarian Law Center – Belgrade which conducted extensive investigative research on collecting such data. On this issue there is more to be found at http://www.hlc-rdc.org/?cat=281&lang=de. 98 very different and sometimes even contradictory agendas. Different positions entail, first and foremost, a different perception of what happened in the wars of the 1990s. These different perceptions have very significant implications for the process of the intersubjective social construction of memory in Serbia. Due to this endless fragmentation, veterans lack almost any social or political power as they lack the ability to create one unified narrative to gather around. Thus, as a mnemonic group which directly experienced the wars, they will only be able to shape the national memory if they command the means to express their vision. More importantly, their narratives will only be incorporated in the official national past if their vision is compatible with social or political objectives and inclinations among other important social groups, like political elites and parties (Kansteiner 2002 : 188). Without top-down support, and memory projects sponsored and promoted by the state, the counter- memories veterans create will only survive as a result of persistent struggles to maintain them alive. This being so, how can one understand the ways in which Serbia is creating processes of assigning and changing meanings of the contested elements of its past? Who is in possession of power to generate meanings of the past and to determine how the contents of the past are framed? Namely, what is the logic of the process of socially organized amnesia and memories currently taking place in Serbia? In order to investigate these questions I started my research focusing of the memorial Monument debate, now I want to introduce the Monument open competition affair.

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Part II

Chapter 3

Ethnographic work – methodology

Let me start from the end. It was everything that I had wished for and nothing that I had expected! When deciding to get involved with the Monument Affair, I had an image in my mind of going to Serbia to undertake a small, detective style, research study, which would enable me to conduct a micro analysis of the process of memory construction. Most importantly, the research was meant to be a “safe zone” where I could hide under the pretence of being the observer-participant, maintaining the right at all times to ask but not necessarily to answer questions. I wanted to feel good about my self while showing others that I am investing my life in moral issues of the highest importance, such as responsibility and denial of the past crimes. The Monument Affair which I scrutinized so meticulously developed into being just a lure, the beginnings of a much bigger picture with my reserarch subsequently becoming spread over three additional arenas. Though the foundations for these new analytical directions were already grounded in the data I had collected on the Monument Affair, I was forced, 65 not only to make an additional trip to Serbia (August 2012), but more importantly, to expand both my data collection and my theoretical approach. All three additional case studies - 1) the state treatment of the war veterans, 2) the evolution of the national calendar and 3) the promotion of Holocaust discourse, can be treated (and read) separately, however, they all echoed in the Monument Affair. Moreover, they significantly improve our understanding of the variety of choices and strategies embraced by different mnemonic groups, at both the top-down and bottom-up levels. They also bring to the fore the complexity engraved in the texture of dealing with the contested past.

65 Together with completely unpredicted fact that in 2012 the Monument was suddenly erected. 100

Apart from being drawn into intellectual inquiry that altered the course of my thesis, entering into other areas of memory formations made my efforts to “peacefully watch from the side” practically impossible. Once my research pointed directly to particular agendas hidden behind the memory politics, it got ugly to the point I was even at some point cursed and verbally attacked (and it seemed as if it was going to get physical) ,66 which, I honestly never dreamed could happen in this profession! Obviously, my effort to refute Kansteiner`s claim that “the study of memory turns academics into concerned citizens” (2002: 179) failed poorly. Doing research meant taking a stand.

Reflexivity It was one thing to sit comfortably with my partner, with the TV on in the background and to contemplate the issues regarding different roles played by Serbia. It was however, something completely different to become engaged and to start actively looking for answers. And when I say looking for answers, I don’t mean answers I would write in informal emails to friends and family. I mean to go the full distance, to jump into the unknown and play the game with the grown-ups by waiving my own safe position as an observer on the sidelines and to became a participant, and even harder, to take a stand. What is more, it meant digging into my own past: what was my role and where does my responsibility lie for the wars in the 1990s? Where was I? What did I do? What did I not do? What should I have done? Again, the intellectual part of the riddle was not the scariest one by any means. To allow myself to feel – to not only to intellectually understand factual aspects, but to face up to and deal with the emotional layer of memories, was the genuine challenge for me. What were the real casualties in my own life from the wars in the 1990s? What had I lost on the way? Friends, family, home, native soil, the right to keep my own memories in spite of the fact that they were being socially and culturally reframed? Had I even lost my own identity? Thus, by all means, it sincerely was an intellectual journey in search of emotional closure.

66 “The Holocaust in Yugoslavia: History, Memory and Culture”, Conference at Yad Vashem Museum, Jerusalem, 24-28 June, 2013.

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From the time when I moved to Israel in 1999, in the midst of the NATO bombardment, I had filed most of the 1990s into a brain folder not to be reopened. Whatever had happened then did not make any sense to me whatsoever. Being mentally and culturally displaced in Israel, the 1990s turned into a black hole, a time of disconnected random sequences, images of cultural implosion. Besides, the unbearable Israeli (or generally human) ignorance of even the most elementary facts of the situation and my inability to stick to my own identity, made me not want to engage in any meaningful conversation, not only about the wars of the 1990s, but also first and foremost, about my personal life. I found myself answering positively when asked whether Serbia was one of the Former Soviet Republics, just to escape any further conversation. Or, whenever I was ascribed “Serbiness” (a similar affliction with negative connotations to that of Israeliness), and was supposed to take the burden of all Serbian “baggage” on my own shoulders, I purposefully exoticized the “faraway crazy, irrational and blood thirsty Serbian people”, adding charmingly, I might be hungry later, so it is not recommend to get closer. This overly explicit introduction to the ethnographic methodology was not meant to disclose the emotional pornography of my soul but to point to certain methodological advantages and disadvantages I had to face during the field work on my case study. In ethnographic work, self-positioning is of utmost importance, working like a filter. It affects a researcher in multiple ways: what he asks, what he hears and how he interprets sequences he witnesses. Apparently my super sensitivity to certain issues was an outcome of my personal accounts of belonging, a genealogy of my inverting identities. I am Yugoslavian by birth. In 1991, when Yugoslavia began disintegrating and wars commenced between the different ethnic groups, I “became” a Jew, my name gave me away. When, in 1999, I reconciled myself to my new identity and immigrated to Israel, the Ministry of the Interior and my Slavic accent rendered me a Serbian. As my identity evolved, so did my memories, at least those I cared to remember. The metamorphoses within me took place against the backdrop of Israeli society’s constant pursuit of memory and its obsession with commemorations. Thus, it is this personal history that I have taken with me to my field study.

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Data collection From the very beginning, when I found an article on the internet portraying the difficulties in erecting a central monument “dedicated to the wars of the 1990s” (with its broad interpretations) I understood that my case study would require a mixture of research methods. The core of my research was the framing of memory contents from the 1990s wars, with both the state and segments of civil society being able to negotiate and promote different agendas. Thus, I had to address at least two aspects of the process: its discursive dimension and its spatial/temporal dimension. Analyzing these dimensions is meant to address the Grinbergian notion of the “changing dynamics of the political space” (Grinberg 2011: 24) throughout the Monument affair. My assumption was that grasping precisely this changing nature of the political space formed around the Monument affair, on a macro level, would indicate the ways in which a modern Serbia is dealing with its contested, multi-layered past. I had several different questions to ask about this. Firstly, what could be learnt about the process by which collective memories had been constructed in Serbia after the wars of the 1990s. Secondly, how are certain categories of memory being appropriated, internalized, subverted, evaded or transformed by various memory agents through the process of Europeanization. Thirdly, what are the ways in which different memory entrepreneurs create processes of assigning and changing the meanings of the contested elements of Serbia’s past? Finally, what is the logic behind the process of socially organized amnesia and memory that is currently taking place in Serbia? For the purposes of research questions designed in this way, I found that multi- sited ethnography supplied the best fitting methodology with the research tracking a subject across both spatial and temporal boundaries. Multi-sited ethnography is an interdisciplinary approach to fieldwork that brings together numerous methods across different disciplines, as means of collecting data. This is the most reliable method of data collection for research questions that cut across the boundaries of a single traditional field, since in multi-sited ethnographic research the object of study is inherently fragmented and multiply situated; therefore, comparison is an integral dimension of the research design. In his seminal work on multi-sited ethnography, Marcus (1995) showed

103 that this method, in particular, allows for researchers to understand how power structures from seemingly disconnected spaces ultimately produce real impact across spatial and temporal dimensions. A multi-sited ethnography is indispensable when the object of the study spans more than one social world and more than one field of knowledge. At the empirical level, the research employed a combination of methodological techniques: semi-open interviews, archival research, and the collection of documentation from newspapers. During the period from 2009-2012 I conducted around 40 interviews67 with representatives of the memory group entrepreneurs who participated in and influenced the political space surrounding the competitions to erect the monument. They were divided into three groups. The first group was comprised of state representatives, politicians and professionals engaged by the state. The second group consisted of representatives from the veterans associations, families of missing persons and casualties. The third group consisted of ’Monument Group’ members. Prior to interviews with them, they received an in-depth explanation on the subject of my research, who is I seek to interview and why. I also answered questions thay had both regarding the interview` content, how the recorded material would be used and about my self. All gave consent to

67 On behalf of the state representatives I spoke with six members of “The Committee for Monuments, Names of Squares and Streets”: Zoran Alimpić - Belgrade Major Deputy, Bojan Kovačević - architect, Milorad Mladenović – sculptor and architect, Dragomir Vasić – bereaved father, Predrag J. Marković - historian and Ratko Zorić – war veteran. In addition, I spoke with a clerk (who asked to remain anonymous) at the Belgrade Municipality. She provided me with valuable correspondence that took place throughout the entire period of the “monument affair” (from 2002 till 2011) between Belgrade municipality representatives and various civil groups, mostly war veteran organizations and a group of contemporary artists and intellectuals self-titled “The Monument Group”, as well as other various individuals. Though the documentation of the three open competitions to erect a central monument to the wars of the 1990s was reckless and contained some substantial gaps, together with documents I gathered from other sources, I was able to reconstruct the entire affair quite accurately. I focused my attention on two major civil groups which actively influenced the open competitions' developments: firstly, several veteran organizations and secondly “The Monument Group”. I interviewed Željko Vasiljević and Zoran Marković from “War Army Invalids” (RVI), Ratko Zorić from “Fighters of the War of the 1990s” (BR), Bane Pejčinović from "NGO Families of the Killed and Distressed" (NOPNU), Mile Milošević from “Serbian War Veterans” (SRV), Sava Paunović from "Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the Line of Duty During the 1990-1999 Wars of the Republic of Serbia" (UPPB) and Dragomir Vasić from “The Union of the War Veterans and Invalids” (Union). Additionally, I interviewed Colić from “The Center for War Trauma” and Ivana Franović from “The Center for Nonviolent Action”, both experts on veteran populations. Apart from representatives of the war veteran populations, I conducted interviews with six contemporary artists and intellectuals (Milica Tomić, Branislav Stojanović Trša, Darinka Pop-Mitić, Svebor Midžić Miđan Bajić, Nebojša Milikić) all of whom were members of “The Monument Group” and actively opposed the erection of the proposed monument. 104 be recorded, apart from two interlocutors that agreed to answer my questions but asked not to be recorded and requested that they remain anonymous. Archival research was mostly conducted at the Belgrade municipality – Sector for Culture and via the governmental site of the Ministry for Social Policy. Newspapers’ documentation contained articles along four themes: on the Monument affair, about the veteran’s organizations, on the national calendar and Holocaust memory discourse. All of the analyses make use of empirical material in the Serbian language, including newspaper articles, interviews and other media contributions, sermons, addresses, and speeches by members of the political elite. These materials helped me understand the strategic interests, motives and modus operandi of each of the actors present in the political space at a specific point in time. Besides that, it helped me recognize both the mechanisms through which the state is reframing Serbia’s contested past and the practices such mechanisms activate at the bottom-up level. By the time I started investigating the Monument affair, the last open competition had closed, apparently unsuccessfully, several years earlier. The first open competition that had been the outcome of long years of struggle by the veterans had been held in 2002, while I only started dealing with this issue in 2009. I was certain that the whole affair was finished. To everybody’s surprise, myself included, in March 2012 the Monument was erected and unveiled. By that time, the biggest portion of my data collection was over. However, this tremendously changed the course of my analysis.

1. Semi-open interviews

“Say hello to your sister”68: interviewing the intellectual and artistic elite The Monument group was a key actor in the Monument affair. Shortly after the publication of the first open competition a group of artists, theoreticians and intellectuals recognized a perfect platform for civil engagement through the work of experimental art, in the open competition. The group, whose size varied from a handful of people to 40 at different times and was headed by Milica Tomić and Branislav Stojanović, took an

68 Having reached their phone numbers through my sister, most of them said this sentence at some point during the interview. 105 active part in the following open competitions, trying to gain both personal/group and collective benefits from them. At the personal/group level they used the Monument affair as a platform for a series of artistic works and performances and as a way of self- positioning themselves in the local and international artistic intellectual scene. At the societal level, they tried to leverage the Monument affair as a springboard for a national debate on Serbia’s contested past. After prolonged and ugly quarrels between the members and its final split, those who continued the work in the Monument group69, succeeded to successfully brand themselves as a politically engaged group fighting for “memory politics rights”.70 However, their attempts to elevate their activities to a serious public debate on the role of Serbia and its responsibility in the wars of the 1990s failed miserably, as will be explained in greater detail in the next chapter. Thus, in 2009, at the dawn of my research, when I made my first trip to Belgrade, I interviewed the leaders of an artistic/intellectual group called ’Grupa Spomenik’ or the Monument Group’, Milica Tomić and Branimir Stojanović. This helped me understand the genealogy of the Monument affair and their part in it. What is more, as they treated the monument affair as their intellectual-artistic project, they had gathered valuable documentation which they were kind enough to share with me. After spending a month in Belgrade, I came back feeling very optimistic. This was not only because I felt that, by talking to the Monument group’s leaders that I had finally started to disentangle the Monument affair, but also because it appeared that very limited ethnographical work has been done on memory construction and memorialization projects at all. During my stay I participated in a conference on “Social remembrance and post-conflict discourses of otherness”71 where researchers discussed different aspects of my core research concept - constructing collective memory after the wars of the 1990s – in all former Yugoslav spaces. It was clear that this subject was vastly under-researched and that only bits and pieces of studies on the subject exist. Although I had some reasons to be optimistic after my pilot field trip, I knew that there would be a completely new level of difficulty to be faced once I started to actually

69 Milica Tomić and Branislav Stojanović, interview conducted on 20 October 2009. 70 My term. 71 Conference on Social Remembering and Post-Conflict Discourses of Otherness, Belgrade, Serbia, 22-23 October, 2009. 106 conduct the research in Belgrade. The members of the Monument group were an easy target: they all belonged to my own intellectual milieu. What is more, my sister appeared to be a key contact and she also connected me with dozens of other contacts who could supply information. She played a double role both as an irreplaceable resource for getting in touch with numerous contacts and as a source in herself as she too had submitted a project for the third open competition. At the time of my interviews she held a high cultural position being an architect, artist and art manager who was very well connected. This undoubtedly helped opening many doors. Thus, the interviews involving people from the Monument group took place in a very casual atmosphere. They were more like a relaxed chat. People from the group wanted to know what it is like to live in Israel, about the weather, the political situation, humus and the Dead Sea. I wanted to know about their part in the Monument affair. In between answering questions on the Israeli army, falafel and Jerusalem, I was able to be firm enough to get the answers to the questions I had carefully prepared prior to my arrival in Belgrade. All interviews included questions on three levels: 1) what is their agenda and why; and who did they perceive to be “the good” and “the bad” in the recent wars? 2) How did they try to achieve their goals in promoting a certain memory agenda? 3) What had been achieved so far? I purposely blurred the boundaries between us: me being a researcher and them serving as informants. I was aware that Serbian people, following a decade of living in cultural and economic isolation, tend to become very defensive when they feel interrogated. Furthermore, there is always tension in the air regarding “those who stayed in Serbia as opposed to those who left” during the years of the wars. It constructs new imagined hierarchies, as if those who left are living their “American dream”, wherever they are. In reality, encounters of those who stayed and those who left are always a bit sad: those who stayed assume that those who left live incomparably better lives somewhere else; those who left hide the real hardship of their lives – the loss of their familiar, cultural, mental and social spaces. Their payoff is that, at least in the eyes of those who stayed, they prospered. Ultimately, this tension was built-in to all the encounters I participated in, though at various intensities. Thus, it was my strategic decision to relate to this group of informants as if I was meeting long forgotten friends,

107 though I took care to explain my research in detail to each and every one of them and asked for their permission to record our interviews72 and to use the data.

“We take care of the citizens’ needs – whatever they wish, we promise them!”73: interviewing the war veteran elite In April 2011 I left for Serbia to finally gather data and conduct interviews. I was very anxious about the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to get in touch with the war veterans. My fear was justified. I did not have a clue how to get in touch with them. And what is more, even if I did find them, it wasn’t likely that they would agree to talk to me. I assumed that they might not want to meet with me not only because I was female and came from Israel (which I assumed might work in part in my favor but also partly against me), but also mostly because of their fear of being accused of misconduct during the wars of the 1990s. There was an overall atmosphere of secrecy among the veterans who had opted not to talk about the wars; they received no support from officials or from the civil society. In addition, they experienced a sense of frustration that “they sacrificed their lives just to be sold to the west”,74 i.e. to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). This left almost no room for optimism, especially as I had come to Belgrade with my one year old twin daughters and my partner, making my time extremely limited. I felt that I had one shot and one shot alone. But that is the thing about ethnographic data: no one can tell you what you will find and whether it will be a successful journey or not. Since there were plenty things that I wanted to achieve and extremely limited time (seven weeks altogether, April - May 2011), I was ready to dive into the unknown and to be taken along with the flow in any direction that my research started to move in. It all started out very disappointingly. I suggested to Milica Tomić and Branimir Stojanović, leaders of the Monument group whom I had interviewed in 2009 that they might organize a mutual panel, where the war veteran representatives and the city representatives could meet to discuss the fact that in 2011, after three open competitions, the monument still did not exist. I knew it was a

72 In two cases I was denied permission to record but allowed to write it down, and in one case I was asked to send a copy of an interview which I did. 73 Sava Paunović, "Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the Line of Duty During the 1990- 1999 Wars of the Republic of Serbia" interview conducted on 18 May 2011. 74 Motive that was constantly repeating in my interviews. 108 risky move since it meant that it would be hard for me to stay neutral and it could compromise my role in the research. I thought, however, that this was the best way to make contact with both the state representatives and the war veterans. Unfortunately, the Monument group informed me, after not responding for quite some time, that they were done with that story and that they had moved on. Thus, when I arrived in Belgrade I was back at the square one. I made immense efforts to contact veteran organizations who had been involved in the Monument affair, but the fruits of my efforts were extremely limited. As described in the previous chapter, the list of the existing (and phantom) veteran organization is almost endless. I call them here ‘veteran organizations’, referring to all those organizations which address the needs of the war participants, even though they have very different and sometimes even contradicting agendas. In this case, different positioning means, first and foremost, a different perception about what happened during the wars in the 1990s. The main goal of every single veteran organization, regardless of its political agenda, is to legitimize its own narrative and to gain social status and benefits. However, being fractured and largely disconnected one from another and lacking the ability to create one unified narrative to gather around, veteran unions lack almost any social or political power and are an easy target for political manipulation. What is more, the state is dealing with its contested past in such an ambiguous manner, that there is no common denominator around which the veteran population could gather. Thus, any attempt to find contact numbers, web sites or other relevant information proved to be an unexpectedly difficult task. There are only several veteran organizations with web sites and even then, it was literally impossible to determine whether those particular organizations had been involved in the Monument affair or not. This is due to the fact there are dozens of veteran organizations with the same or similar names, and there is no way of knowing whether a particular organization exists or is a phantom one.75 I was of course keen to get in touch with veteran organizations that took an active role in the Monument affair. From the documentation I had received from the Monument group’s leaders, I knew the exact names of these organizations as well as their leaders’

75 Which will be discussed in length in the coming chapters. 109 names: 1) War Army Invalids76 (RVI); 2) Fighters of the War of the 90’s77 (BR); 3) NGO Families of the Killed and Distressed78 (NOPNU); and 4) The Union of the War Veterans and Invalids79 (Union). My very first contact with a war veterans’ organization was with the group called the Serbian War Veterans80 (SRV), which was not directly involved with the Monument affair. This meeting, however, proved to be extremely valuable and it helped me immensely in mapping the main issues that all war veteran organizations are dealing with. It had been fortuitous circumstances that took me to this veterans’ group. I had arranged a meeting with Branislav Stojanović from the Monument group, who was at the time my only lead to the other participants in the Monument affair, and though, to my great surprise he refused to be interviewed, he introduced me to Goran Dokić, an anthropology PhD student at Manchester University who was conducting research into social benefits amongst the veteran population. Goran had already been in Belgrade for several months and was doing field research at the Serbian War Veterans association. He was kind enough to invite me to join him on his visits there. Since we had some overlapping interests, we conducted joint interviews with war veterans during the coming weeks, following both his line of inquiry as well as mine. Thus, my very first encounter with the Serbian war veterans was with the Serbian War Veterans’ association. Their president, who was both talkative and charismatic, was the only one amongst the veterans who claimed to have had a Yugoslav identity before the wars. This was in complete contrast with most of the group’s extremely nationalist, pro-Serb agenda (with a huge sign at the entrance: “Safe house for Ratko Mladić81”). It was a completely new organization, founded in 2008 when the current president decided to secede from another organization called the Fighters of the War of the 90’s Organization. In the outskirts of Belgrade, he and his fellow friends had built a light- frame construction house, without any governmental help, and without any building permissions. The group president stated that his organization has 9,000 members and is

76 Ratni Vojni Invalidi 77 Borci ratova 90ih 78 Nevladina organizacija porodica napaćenih i unesrećenih 79 Unija ratih vetrana i invalida. 80 “Serbian War Veterans” 81 Less than two months after my visit on 31 May 2011, Mladić was extradited to The Hague, where he was accused of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. 110 by far the strongest veteran organization, not being based on “fictitious members as is the case with other organizations”.82 There was, as in other veteran organizations, some slight confusion around the figures: there are indeed 9,000 members altogether, with this number including family members and the families of the fallen soldiers, and the war invalids, and 300 honorary members, yet all 9,000 are members recorded as fighters. The president was frustrated since the group was constantly refused any state financial help and he kept telling me repeatedly how the governmentally sponsored organizations, exactly those I wanted to get to know83, are corrupt and have dubious deals with the state. The fact that his organization is not financially supported by the state played a major role in his attitude towards the other veteran organizations. Thus, he openly spoke about “the veteran mafia” and people who were, as he put it, “state mercenaries”.84 All issues that were raised at this meeting, such as the ongoing fragmentation among the war veteran organizations, budget concerns and documentation and membership figures, were later repeated in all of the other interviews I conducted with the war veterans’ representatives. It was clear that this is the particular context through which I was to understand war veterans’ strategic choices when talking about the Monument affair. While interviewing the Monument group members, I had paid little attention to the locations of our meetings. I was in my natural environment. They were all part of the intellectual elite, and our meetings were conducted either in some bohemian coffee shop or in their places of work - art studios, museums or other relevant intellectual centers. Our meetings always ended with personal stories and discussions on the current political situation. I always left with exhibition flyers, museum catalogs, their art collection booklets and invitations to upcoming relevant panels. With the veteran organizations the case was quite the opposite. I insisted on meeting them at their war veteran organization offices, in order to get at least a glimpse of their natural working environment. While the encounters with Serbia’s intellectual and artistic elite exuded progressive ideas and thoughts, entering the war veterans’ offices

82 Mile Milošević, “Serbian War Veterans” interview conducted on 26 April, 2011 83 War Army Invalids– RVI, Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the Line of Duty During the Wars 1990-1999 of Republic of Serbia – UPPB and Fighters of the War of the 1990s - BR 84 Mile Milošević, “Serbian War Veterans” interview conducted on 26 April, 2011 111 was like going on a journey back in time. Apart from “NGO Families of the Killed and Distressed” that did not have any office space, all of the other organizations I visited85 were situated in old, fusty offices, with massive iron or wooden furniture that apparently was inherited from the communist era. In all of these offices there were dusty, stained carpets covering the floors from wall to wall; heavy wobbly furniture; ashtrays full of cigarette butts; plastic flowers; newspaper articles on their fallen fellow fighters attached to walls, together with images of orthodox saints and Serbian flags. After interviews that were several hours long I would come out stinking of cigarette smoke, with my hands full of independently published books, with hardcore patriotic stories on the Serbian bravery in the wars of the 1990s. Surprisingly and against all of my stereotypic fears which I brought to these meetings, they all not only agreed to talk, but were eager to tell their stories. Though I was vigilant not to ask questions about their part in the wars, most of them voluntarily talked about this. Later on I understood that these attitudes were, first and foremost, a product of the negligence and indifference they persistently encountered from both the civil society and the state. Faced with this callous disregard, the veterans were willing to talk to whoever wanted to listen. Actually, the fact that I lived abroad worked out in my favor. Apparently, they were used to requests coming from various researchers to interview them. While they mostly felt used and abused, they realized that there could be potential benefit arising from these situations. Just as the researchers needed them, the veterans needed the help of people who understood various aspects of the Europeanization process which were now directly affecting them. Among other concerns the veterans needed to learn how to write grant proposals, to become acquainted with the concept of transparency and to improve their computer skills in order to start to adapt to the intense Europeanization process.86 My Jewishness and Israeliness both played in my favor. On the one hand, most of the veterans felt that they had something in common with Israeli soldiers and could easily relate to their situation. They admired and praised the Israeli state’s attitude to its

85 The Serbian War Veteran` association; Fighters of the War of the 1990s; The Union of the War Veterans and Invalids; Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the line of Duty During the Wars 1990-1999 of Republic of Serbia (UPPB) 86 This will be elaborated in length in the fifth chapter. 112 soldiers. It was their deepest aspiration to receive similar treatment in Serbia in the future. My Jewishness, on the other hand, primarily exposed through my name, produced some more complex reactions. What at the time seemed to be annoying anti-Semitic remarks, later on appeared to be a reflection of a much bigger and more complex picture, that finally turned into a whole chapter.87 Later on I eventually understood that my Jewish name triggered reactions that were not of an anti-Semitic nature, but were an indicator of a real struggle where the war memories of the 1990s are competing with those of the Holocaust. As for me being female in a highly male environment, this had, I assumed, a certain impact on the kind of filtering my informants used. I assume however that this effect was partially neutralized by the fact that most of the interviews with war veterans were conducted together with Goran, my PhD associate. The interviews I conducted alone, however, had a different rhythm. For example, I met with Dragutin Vasić, a bereaved father and a war veteran himself, and also a key figure in the Monument affair, in a small office in a derelict shopping mall located at the outskirts of Belgrade. Our conversation took much longer than I expected and both of us had to reschedule our afternoon plans so as to finish that which we had started. At first he stuck like glue to my questions, as if he was trying to figure out what I actually wanted, but slowly, the conversation started to develop, becoming emotional rather than just informational. For some reason, maybe because it was not a strictly male environment, he allowed himself to open up and to tell me about his deep and unhealed grief for his fallen son, who died in the war, somewhere in the heart of Croatia. I found myself in a surrealistic scene: sitting in a dark room without any windows and with one light bulb lit across the room from a man in his sixties who I had met that morning for the first time in my life, who was crying, moaning and shaking in his hope to be freed from his never-ending pain. However, what seemed to be really crucial to reaching fluent and open conversations with war veterans rested on my ability to drink alcohol. That was, maybe, one of my first realizations when I started interviewing veterans – not to forget to eat before our meetings! Thus, on several occasions, I found myself at 9 in the morning

87 See the seventh chapter. 113 drinking rakija88, glass after glass, as otherwise they would refuse to talk. It is in the absence of any societal recognition, that alcohol became their ultimate refuge and the way to create intimacy and ventilate their war experiences.89

“Until this day it is unclear whether it was one long and complicated war or a few different wars”90: interviewing the Belgrade municipality elite Interviewing the Belgrade municipality officials was challenging mostly because of the broken bureaucratic apparatus through which the system apparently works. The transition to democracy and the process of Europeanization have together brought never ending changes to regulations, changes that are hard to follow, not to mention to carry out. Political and bureaucratic officials are constantly on the move, changing positions in accordance to the state and the local elections. Thus, everyone is taking care of the business that someone else started, through procedures that have been changed, often with internally contradicting political agendas. Thus, interviewing the Belgrade municipality elite was exceedingly frustrating since it was almost impossible to grasp the wider picture. Everyone shed some light on an isolated fragment, one small broken piece, but no one could tell with any certainty how to connect these shattered fragments together. I was interested in understanding the core issues – those which somehow could be unearthed between the political rhetoric and the bureaucratic inefficiency. Thus, I was mainly interested in finding members of the two relevant committees, “The Committee for building the Monument to the victims of the wars from 1990 to 1999 in the Former Yugoslav territories” appointed by the “Committee for Monuments, Names of Squares and Streets” and the “Professional Jury committee” since they both functioned at the operative level. The first “Committee for building the Monument to the victims of the wars from 1990 to 1999 in the Former Yugoslav territories” was in charge of the Monument content: they had released open competition calls and they had determined their textual formulation and demands. This committee consisted of four sculptors, one

88 Fruit brandy with 45% alcohol content. 89 More on this issue in Chapter 6. 90 Although this quote is taken from the interview with the Vice President of the Belgrade Assembly, it is conspicuous among almost all interviewees that when talking of the wars of the 1990s, regular expressions used are “messy wars”, “tragic wars”, “complex wars”, “specific wars” and so on. 114 historian, a professor at the Faculty of Architecture, a professor at the Faculty of Chemistry, an architect, an archeologist, a lawyer, a journalist, a Yugoslav Army representative, the “War Army Invalids” representative91, the “Fighters of the War of the 1990s” representative92 and an Executive Member93 of the Belgrade City Assembly serving as Chair of the committee. The second committee was comprised of professionals, mostly architects and sculptors, and was in charge of discussing the relationship of the monument’s form with its content: not solely for its artistic value but also regarding the wider spatial and temporal context in which this monument should fit. It wasn’t particularly hard to find members of these committees. Again, I reached those in the fields of art, sculpture or architecture with my sister’s assistance. I had already conducted interviews with the war veterans in their organizations. I ‘googled’ other committee members and they agreed to provide me with information for my research project. However, there were two interviews which were irreplaceable for the understanding on the one hand, of the political background to the affair and on the other hand, its bureaucratic unfolding. The first was an interview conducted with an official who was the Belgrade Deputy Mayor at the time of interview,94 who spoke openly of a bigger picture and particular political interests and intrigues behind the scene. The second interview was with a municipality clerk, a kind woman, who provided me with valuable information on the formal side of the monument competition together with the ‘behind the doors’ reactions throughout the different stages of the memory affair. I hadn’t initially known about the part this woman had played in the affair. I met her through my best friend. My friend, knowing about my research project, told me that she had met “a guy in a park who knew a lot about it”. He was the father of one of her children’s friends who even claimed, as my friend said, “to know someone who was administratively in charge of the affair”. Amazingly, after two or three phone calls, I reached the woman mentioned above, who had been one of the administrative managers at the Ministry of Culture. She, however, asked to remain anonymous.

91 Dragomir Vasić, “The Union of the War Veterans and Invalids”, interview conducted on 10 May, 2011. 92 Ratko Zorić,“Fighters of the War of the 1990s”, 6 May 2011. 93 Slobodan Ilić 94 to whom I was introduced by the War Army Invalids president Željko Vasiljević 115

2. Archival research

Apart from conducting interviews I also collected rich archival materials on the Monument affair. I reached some of these through the official governmental web sites and archives and gained access to others while conducting interviews. A large amount of data was found in two archives: that of the Belgrade Municipality and that of the members of the Monument Group itself. The Belgrade Municipality documents include records of committee meetings and the Municipality’s correspondence with the veterans’ associations and the Monument Group. The archives also include requests and complaints submitted by different Veterans’ Organizations and individuals to the municipality. Perhaps most interestingly, there was also documentation of the precise formulations of the competition, the announcements of the competitions’ opening and the explanations given for their cancellation. Media responses to the case and to the open competition were also catalogued. Although there is no public access to this documentation, my informant, who wished to remain anonymous, allowed me to copy it. In addition to these archives I also gained possession, courtesy of the Monument group members, of detailed records of video and audio correspondence from amongst members of the Monument group and between them and the Belgrade Municipality relating to the project proposals they submitted as an alternative to the monument project. The documentation consists of group members’ correspondence on various topics regarding the Monument affair: on the project they submitted, different ideas and approaches to the memoralization issues in general and the Monument affair in particular, artistic ideas, and so on. I also used the official internet site of the city of Belgrade95 together with the site of the Ministry for Work, Employment and Social Policy96 with the archives on tenders and open calls having been helpful in familiarizing myself to with the ways by which various veteran organizations are granted financial support, as elaborated in the chapter on Law and Budgets. These sites also provided me with precious information on the

95 www.beograd.rs 96 www.minrzs.gov.rs 116 ways in which the state both filtered and endorsed certain organizations whose aim is to promote particular memory agendas.

3. Newspapers documentation

The newspaper research included four thematic units: 1) on the monument affair, 2) on the veterans’ organizations in general and those that participated in the Monument affair in particular, 3) on national holidays and the national calendar and 4) on Holocaust memory discourse. I collected relevant articles on these four thematic issues written roughly from 2000 and up to the opening of the Monument in 2012, all together a few hundred articles. I used a variety of daily newspapers and the internet site “naslovi”97 through which I could list all articles relating to any particular topic.

The hermeneutics of suspicion As pointed out in the previous chapters, collective memory is understood and analyzed from the perspective of competing narratives within a socio-cultural context, and these are examined according to their capacity to serve as cultural tools for members of a collective as they recount the past (Wertsch 2008). Thus, the main challenge, after gathering the data was to move from text to meaning. All texts, regardless of whether we are concerning ourselves with a written text, a conversation or any other communicative event, are multilayered with symbols being over determined, thus, there is always an abundance of meaning. Heidegger placed hermeneutics, as the art of text interpretation, at the center of the analysis of existence, showing that interpretation is not an isolated human activity but the basic structure of our experience of life. Hermeneutics can be defined as the attempt to overcome the distances in human experiences, thus there is always a gap between the text (or any other significant semiotic event) and the meaning that must be bridged (Gadamer 2006). Scholarship and research using the interpretive approach aim at the interpretation of meanings produced through the analysis of discursive practices, genres, plotlines, thematic structures, symbolization or cultural referents. From Derrida’s

97 www.naslovi.net 117 perspective, interpretation involves placing a text in a different context. This does not necessarily produce a greater understanding of some original or “deeper” truth of the text, but it does create new relations that may enlarge conceptualization or theory. Josselson (2004) suggested that all narratives can be analyzed either from the point of view of a hermeneutics of faith or from the vantage point of a hermeneutics of suspicion. In the hermeneutics of faith, the interpretive effort examines the various messages inherent in a text, giving “voice” in various ways to the informants while the hermeneutics of suspicion works from the perspective that the offered narrative is problematic and strives for explanations beyond the text. Within the hermeneutics of faith, which aims at the restoration of meaning, those meanings can nevertheless be implicit. They can lie “deeper” than the symbolization apparent on the surface, with the symbols being understood as manifestations of the depths. In the hermeneutics of suspicion or demystification, symbols are viewed as disguised or distorted pointers to other layers of meaning (Josselson 2004). It was Paul Ricoeur, one of the greatest Western philosophers who laid the groundwork to the hermeneutics of suspicion, and opened new avenues to the understanding of human experience (Scott- Bauman 2009). In this approach to hermeneutics, experience is assumed not to be transparent in itself: surface appearances mask in depth realities; a story told conceals another untold one. What may be taken for granted in a hermeneutics of restoration becomes problematic from this vantage point. The goal is not to challenge or disprove the informant’s meanings, but to regard with suspicion our conscious understandings and experience. "Beneath" or "behind" the surface lay causal forces that explain the conscious phenomena precisely because they lay bare the true meanings of these phenomena. Thus, the interpreter must assume that the narrative does not fully make sense on its own terms and is thus in need of further interpretation.98 Analysis from a position of the hermeneutics of demystification may seek pointers to what is unsaid or unsayable (Bar-On 1999). It assumes that any given story that is told also refers to an untold one. “The hermeneutics of suspicion is cognizant of the multi-determination of a life and the multivocality of an account” (Josselson 2004: 16). The hermeneutics of suspicion

98 Geertz’ classic interpretation of the signification of cockfighting in Balinese culture is an example. 118 approach aims to provide interpretations of meaning-making processes both at the top- down and the bottom-up level and it takes into account both the temporal/spatial and discursive layers of the examined phenomenon. The hermeneutics of suspicion approach enables the placing of large amounts of raw data into categories based on the examination and interpretation of their power-structure relationships. Most importantly, this type of analysis, rather than focusing on the informational content of data, brings to bear theoretical perspectives. Since discursive patterns embedded in the spatial/temporal dimensions of the events between the various memory entrepreneurs are central to my inquiry, I find the hermeneutics of suspicion to be an irreplaceable methodological tool for analysis. In the chapters to come, this interpretive approach enabled me to decode the main markers in the process of the collective memory construction in modern day Serbia, while addressing both the existing commemorative patterns and the missing and silenced fragments of past.

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Chapter 4

The closure of political space: Multiple lives of the imagined monument

In this chapter I will present the Monument affair and show how the political space, which could have served as an arena for negotiations between the state and the civil society, was in practice “hijacked” by the state99, due to the state’s uncompromising interest in maintaining its position and power. Drawing on Lev Grinberg’s concept of the dynamic opening and closing of political space, I show here that, though the open competitions to erect a monument dedicated to victims or fighters or defenders 100 of the wars of the 1990s were an opportunity to mediate different (memory) agendas between the state and various segments of civil society, the state, as the dominant actor seized total control over the political arena, aiming to close the political space for civil society representation. The case of the monument affair serves as an example of how the state steered clear of any public discussion on the role of Serbia in the wars of the 1990s, while surreptitiously promoting its own memory agenda instead. The questions of whether Serbs who participated in the wars of the 1990s are heroes or victims and whether Serbia should commemorate “innocent victims” or celebrate Serbian bravery, are not simply the byproducts of a lack of consensus regarding what happened in the wars of the 1990s, but are rather a reflection of the current political situation in Serbia. Over the last decade, in the changing national and international contexts, Serbia’s political elite have had to face the demands of the Europeanization process, with these demands often contradicting the interests and wishes of the domestic community. It is this conflict of interests which becomes vividly apparent in the political space created around the Monument affair. Contrary to the other transitional justice mechanisms that were forced upon Serbia by the international community and the Human Rights Regime, the demand to erect a monument came from the grass-roots level of Serbian society and

99 In his research, Grinberg, uses the term “occupation” when discussing political spaces. 100 This was the most contested issue and to whom the monument should be erected was changed in every open competition formulation. 120 was not monitored, sanctioned or censored directly by any international body. When considering the repeated demands to erect a monument the political elite were supremely aware of the necessity of mediating between international and domestic responses to their actions (or to their lack of action). On the one hand Serbia is eager to create a democratic image as a means of gaining benefits from the EU, while on the other hand it has an exclusively nationalist agenda at the local level, by which Serbs should be able to mourn openly, not over the victims of the wars but over the righteous wars that were lost. An important part of the democratization and Europeanization processes imposed on all of the governments after the 2000 overthrow was for Serbia to acknowledge, even tacitly, the misconduct on its part in the wars of the 1990s. It is clear that the decision as to whether the Serbs would define themselves as martyrs, fighters, victims, executioners or cosmopolitans in relation to the wars of the 1990s has many implications, including those of a political and economic nature. Thus, allowing the war veteran organizations to engrave their narratives into a corporeal monument in the very center of Belgrade was not an option. In this chapter I present a detailed description of the Monument affair in the period from 2002 until 2012 and the dynamics of the political space around the Monument. Since “the centrality of words and their meaning is crucial to the analysis of political dynamics” (Grinberg 2010: 15), it was only after putting all of the pieces of the puzzle together and understanding the precise settings, manipulations and interactions, that it was possible to reveal the meaning-making processes, and the ways by which the state took control over the political arena and tried to close any political space. It will be shown that, although there appeared to be negotiations over the content and the form of memory throughout the whole affair, in fact the unwillingness of the state to leverage state-sponsored public debate pertaining to Serbia’s role in the wars of the 1990s meant in reality that the state retained full control over both content and forms of the memory. The three-fold process which reflects the evolving state memory agenda is presented here. The first two open competitions (2002 - 2004) reflect the enthusiasm of Serbia’s political elite towards, as well as their trust in, the Europeanization process just after the overthrow of Milošević (2000). The approach taken in these competition evince the state agenda of reaching an “easy fix”: they planned to acknowledge civil victims

121 from all sides, which meant expressing sympathy across the ethnic lines while not taking any responsibility for Serbia’s part in the wars. The third open competition discloses the second phase, when it finally became clear that accepting Serbia into EU might take another ten or fifteen years. This further strengthened Serbia’s nationalist agenda. This stage saw a slow shift in the framing of memory contents wherein the war veterans were included in the category of “victims”. Thus in the third phase, the feelings of estrangement from the EU were directly translated into the memory agenda with the category of “victim” being expanded to include all Serbs, further blurring responsibilities with sympathies. Notwithstanding the differences between the three stages, one thing remained constant: Serbia’s political elites remained in full control over the dynamics of political space throughout, repressing balanced negotiation and open debate between different segments of society. By the elites I mean social groups who possess concentrated control over accumulated resources that are necessary for reproducing the basic conditions upon which a given (or potential) social mode of production rests, and who play an active role in reproducing these conditions (Lazić 2006). Such control in socialism was in the hands of nomenklatura (or class of collective owners), the ruling group that was strictly hierarchically organized. In the post 2000 period, while some space for the new political actors has been allowed, the majority of the political elite still belonged to the old nomenklatura. Throughout the post-socialist world in general and in the post-war former Yugoslav states in particular, turbulent changes have generated strong emotions. The initial hopes and excitement in anticipation of democratization and Europeanization, were frequently followed by disappointment, anger, envy, or hopelessness (Schauble, Rakowski and Pessel 2006). In the period following the year 2000 the initial enthusiasm gradually subsided. Instead of tracing the path towards a pluralist democracy, a market economy and the rule of law, modern political institutions have served as a ruse for covering, or rather legitimising, a wholly archaic and anti-modern political project. A report on Serbia from 2007 showed that a patriarchal, authoritarian and strongly monistic culture had by then emerged into full light. While its internal image was distinguished by egalitarianism and intolerance towards the other or the different, its external image

122 depicted ethnic nationalism and militarism (Obradović 2007). In 2011, the Helsinki Committee reported that the mainstream political and intellectual elites were not looking to the future and that the unreadiness of the society as a whole to cope with the past played into the hands of the political right. In general, when discussing the role of the state I address both the political elite responsible for policy and decision making and its bureaucratic apparatus: the administrative staff that is in charge of policy execution. In this particular case I refer to the ruling political elite addressing the policy and decision making and its execution at the Belgrade Municipality; with those being directly in charge including the Secretary for Culture and the Committee for Monuments, Names of Squares and Streets, and the Committee for the realization of the Monument. I suggest here that the context discussed above, characterized by contradicting demands at the international and domestic levels, placed the political elite, as the state representatives, in a position where they felt unable or unwilling to negotiate with the other groups over the content of memory, preferring to dominate and control the political space around the monument.

The dynamics of the political space in the Monument affair

Phase I: Civil victims As far back as 1992 and 1993101, piles of letters supporting initiatives to commemorate those fallen in the wars of the 1990s had already ended up on the desk of the clerk at the Assembly of the City of Belgrade. In 1995 and 1996102, during the Milošević regime, in between the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, several meetings on the subject were held at the Assembly of the City of Belgrade. In the atmosphere of political turbulence at the time, having just lost the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, there was no motivation in the City Hall of Belgrade to provide any statement regarding the nature of the recently finished wars and Serbia’s role in them. Until the year 2000 and the October

101 Document “Protocol” from 18 September, 2002. 102 In the document written by the "War Army Invalids" and "Fighters of the Wars of the 1990s" organizations, delivered to the Assembly of the City of Belgrade – The committee for monuments, names of squares and streets on 8 December 1997, it is written that on 22 March 1995 and during 1996 they had several meetings “but nothing was done”. 123

5th overthrow103, those people promoting monument initiatives consistently received the same answer from the Chair104 of the “Committee for Monuments, Names of Squares and Streets” saying that “not enough time has passed and due to this non-existent lapse of time, it impossible to introspect on those historical events and comprehend the participation of the fallen in those wars”.105 After the year 2000, with the colloquy and enthusiasm of democratic changes, the mayor106 was, amongst other (more urgent) issues, introduced to the growing pile of letters coming from different veteran organizations. At first glance these seemed to provide an excellent opportunity to set in stone the new tone of Serbian politics and to dissociate the new regime from the deeds of the previous regime. Appropriating new meanings and connotations to the war veterans’ initiative, the Mayor suggested that the monument be built in the forest, in an area peripheral to Belgrade, and that “the mayors of , Sarajevo and Srebrenica should be invited to its opening”.107 As Serbia finally turned towards to the European Union, consequently undergoing a process of democratization by gradually implementing European standards, the building of a monument, concrete physical evidence commemorating wars of the previous regime, was still not a popular political decision. However, in mid 2002108, the Assembly of the City of Belgrade reached a decision signed by the mayor, to build a monument “to the victims of the wars from 1990 to 1999 in the territory of the Former Yugoslavia, including those killed during the NATO bombardment”. The Mayor at the time had recognized a political opportunity in building a monument commemorating all war victims from the 1990s, as this included victims of other ethnic groups too. Such framing

103 The October 5th 2000 Overthrow represents the downfall of the Slobodan Milošević regime and the beginning of a democratic and pro-European Serbia. 104 This is a statement attributed to Danica Drašković, at the time the Chair of the “committee for Monuments, Names of Squares and Streets”. 105 Words of ŽeljkoVasiljević, published in a booklet called “Memory Politics” (p. 4) made by the “Monument Group” as part of their artistic project. These words refer to former statements made by Committee Chair Danica Drašković, also the wife of Vuk Drašković, a very nationalist oriented and influential politician at the time. She was determined that erecting such a monument was a politically wrong move. What is more, Željko Vasiljević, the president of the War Army Invalids, repeated these same lines during our interview conducted on the 28 April 2011. 106 Radmila Hrustanović 107 “Memory Politics”, pp. 4-5 108 On 31 May, 2002. 124 would present Serbia in an extremely positive light. It would moreover constitute a silent recognition of Serbia’s misdeeds in the wars of the 1990s without actually taking any operative responsibility, while also equating victims on all sides of the wars. It was intended to be a low cost solution to a high cost problem, i.e. it would bring Serbia a step closer to the European Union with minimal acknowledgement of Serbia’s involvement in the wars of the 1990s. Inviting the mayors of Zagreb, Sarajevo and Srebrenica was a necessity in completing the spectacle geared toward Europe. During the following few months the Assembly of the City of Belgrade formed a committee responsible for 1) carrying out the decision to erect a monument in Belgrade to the victims of the wars from 1990 to 1999 in the Former Yugoslav territories, including all necessary technical and administrative assistance; 2) preparing and publishing detailed documentation required for the open competition; 3) appointing a professional jury which would evaluate the submitted projects.109 The committee consisted of various public figures, most of whom were affiliated with certain political parties, together with two war veterans’ organizations representatives who had initiated the erection of the monument. The protocol of the first meeting reveals that only 7 out of the 16 members turned up to the meeting.110 Apart from the technical information regarding the open competition’s procedure, most of the meeting was apparently dedicated to an oration by the war veterans’ committee member111 on the urgency of such a monument, the nation’s moral duty to ensure its construction and the years of frustration the veterans had endured waiting to see to its construction. In response, the Executive Member of the Belgrade City Assembly serving as Chair of the committee112 stated during the meeting that the sculptural projects to be submitted should emphasize the piety of those killed. Moreover, the monument should bear a message of peace, and an admonition to the next

109 Document “Decision” from 31 May, 2002; Document “Reminder” from 4 September 2002; Document “Agenda” from 4 September, 2002. 110 Document “Protocol” from 18 September.2002, present Dragomir Vasić from the Army War Invalids, Ratko Zorić from the Fighters of the Wars of the 1990s, SI Committee Chair, Yugoslav Army representative and three sculptors 111 From the interviews conducted with all veteran members personally involved in the “monument affair”, it is exceedingly clear that Dragomir Vasić, a member of the committee, was solely responsible for pushing the initiative. 112 Slobodan Ilić 125 generations, particularly the future political decision makers. These assertions disclose an interesting matter; the entire text addresses the enormous losses but without any mention of the war veterans’ bravery and heroism. The committee Chair found himself in quite an unenviable position. He had to follow the directive given from above and promote “The Monument to the victims of the wars” while secretly supporting and "sympathizing with the cause”113 where the veterans are perceived as heroes and real patriots. This consequently led to two different formulations of the open competition’s text which appeared both in the detailed elaboration of the project’s requirements,114 and in the digest version of the open competition advertisement. One text formulation only addressed victims while the other also addressed the fighters. Both versions appeared in the following announcement: The Assembly of the City of Belgrade The Committee for building The Monument to the victims of the wars from 1990 to 1999 in the Former Yugoslav territories Announces an Open Competition For the sculptural solution of The Monument dedicated to the fallen fighters115 and the victims of the wars from 1990 to 1999 in the Former Yugoslav territories Open from 01.11.2002 to 31.03.2003. (...) Thus whether the monument was to be dedicated to the victims, the fallen fighters or both was left to individual interpretation. On the 6th of January 2003, in the middle of the competition, all Belgrade Assembly members, numbering 110 in total, received a one page document proposing the suspension of the competition and the initiation of a public debate on this issue. The document, signed by the group of artists and intellectuals, later named “The Monument

113 Conducted on 10 May, 2002. 114 Such as topography of the terrain, requirements for the project's submission, awards and so on… 115 My emphasis 126

Group”, elaborated the problematic nature of the competition on several counts.116 The first refers to the very formulation of the open competition, where among other things, they raised the following questions: “Who are the victims that the monument seeks to commemorate? Who are the fallen fighters? Is it even possible to group victims and fighters into one agglomeration of victims?” The second count requested to halt the open competition for the monument,117 implying that adequate debate had not been conducted. The third count disputed the location offered for the monument, Zvezdara forest, several kilometers away from the urban center, stating once again that no public debate had been held on this issue.118 These concise but well worded documents seemingly led to the competition’s cancellation. At least, the document provided an excuse to cancel the open competition that suddenly was to commemorate not only victims but also the fallen fighters. People at the Belgrade municipality were furious. Not because the victims were leveled with fighters, but out of concern this might lead to a spontaneous public debate, which meant opening the political space to new political actors. A clerk119 in charge of the file at the Secretariat for Culture said while being interviewed120 that "until this day no one knows who added the ‘fallen fighters’. It just appeared in the newspaper advertisement". Though the first open competition had been closed on 31th of March 2003 and 54 projects had been submitted for evaluation, three months later, on 24th of July 2003, the committee held a meeting where it was decided that the competition would be suspended, due to a “problematic text”.121 Here, a “problematic text” refers to this mysterious addition in the formulation of the open competition text: “the fallen fighters”. Contrary to the impression that the Belgrade municipality officials gave to the wider public, this

116 Submitted on 06 January 2003. in 130 copies, “Predlog za obustavu Konkursa za skulptorsko rešenje spomen-obeležja palim borcima i žrtvama ratova 1990-1999 na prostorima bivše Jugoslavije i pokretanje javne rasprave o ovoj temi”, signed by 19 members. 117 Published in a daily paper “Glas javnosti, on 13 December 2002, in the article “Traže spomenik u centru grada” 118 The fourth point concerned the artistic and aesthetic aspects of the open competition. The fifth count raised a general, philosophical question: “is it even remotely possible to adequately address the decade of the wars, where hundreds of thousands lost their lives and millions suffered trauma, through the stipulations of the open competition?” 119 The clerk asked to stay anonymous. 120 Conducted on 09 May, 2011. 121 Slobodan Ilić, Chair committee, quoted in the daily paper “Kurir”, in the article “Spomenik nije za borce?!” ND. Print. 127 problematic wording did not aim to address the blurred categories of “victims” and “fallen fighters”. This was publicly disclosed only a week later, on the 31th of July 2003, when the call for the second open competition was published in the daily papers. The “problematic text” was resolved in a very simple manner. Everything stayed exactly the same except for “the fallen fighters” which disappeared from the announcement. The committee chair122, the very same person who allegedly had promoted and pushed for “the fallen fighters” in the formulation of the first competition, contrary to the permissions and decisions of the Belgrade City Assembly, had to backtrack. He explained in an interview for a daily newspaper that “in the end, everyone was a victim”,123 presenting a new agenda that would be fully disclosed in the next competition. The second open competition was worded as follows: The Assembly of the City of Belgrade The Committee for building The Monument to the victims of the wars from 1990 to 1999 in the Former Yugoslav territories Announces an Open Competition

For the sculptural solution of The Monument dedicated to the victims of the wars from 1990 to 1999 in the Former Yugoslav territories open from 01.08.2003 to 01.12.2003. (...)

In the description of the open competition’s specifications, it was stated that "the aim of the open competition is to express the sanctity of the victims of the cruel drama of death via expressionist sculptural language."124 Instead of any significant debate regarding Serbia’s role in the wars of the 1990s, the committee decided to simply appoint

122 Slobodan Ilić 123 Published in a daily paper, “Spomenik nije za borce?!”, Kurir, ND. Print. 124 Skupština Grada Beograda, Odbor za spovođenje odluke o podizanju spomen-obeležja u Beogradu žrtavama ratova 1990-1999 na prostorima bivše Jugoslavije, Konkurs 128 two Monument group members who had signed the document which had been submitted to the members of the Belgrade Assembly, in an attempt to resolve their dissatisfaction.125 This gesture was the direct outcome of the official policy of evasion vis-à-vis issues pertaining to the 1990s wars and led to the idea of appointing someone from the independent intellectuals as a means of both keeping them quiet and keeping the debate outside of the public sphere. The Monument group members refused to accept this proposition. Between the 15th and 24th of January three jury meetings were conducted126 in an attempt to announce one of the artistic projects as the winner of the competition. The protocol from the third meeting addresses the jury’s inability to award any of the submitted projects as the winner. It was explained in the protocol that, while formally the open competition was a success, the quality of the submitted sculptural solutions was very poor. The chair of the jury stated that this might be due to the fact that insufficient time had passed since “the tragedy which befell us, this absurdity of our times, in which a small people were demolished by immeasurably bigger forces.” 127 In contrast to the Committee, most of the members of which were affiliated to some political party, the jury was composed of the professionals who treated the competition as a side interest not really worthy of any personal and political engagement. The jury’s decision, not to award any of the 57 sculptural projects that were submitted to the second open competition as the winning project, was followed by ferocious responses from the veterans’ organizations and the sculptors’ guild. The eight page long response composed by the sculptors described the work of the jury as invalid, as the members of the jury were incompetent and moreover, their thesis that “all works are missing the spirit of our time and the symbolic of piety”128 was “a poor phrase used when someone has nothing clever to say.”129 Those outcries, however, stayed unanswered. In addition to this, the Veterans’ organizations wrote an angry letter primarily expressing their helplessness and fear that this suspension of the competition would mean

125 A letter from the committee, addressed to Nebojša Milikić, a Group member, on 11August, 2003. 126 On 15.January, 2004; 21 January 2004, and 24 January 2004. 127 Document “Protocol”, 24 January 2004. 128 Ibid. 129 Document “Protest zbog skandaloznog načina na koji je ogranizovan i završen konkurs za skulptorsko rešenje spomen obeležja žrtvama ratova 1990 – 1999 na prostoru bivše Jugoslavije i u bombardovanju NATO”, 24 February 2004 129 the end of the story. They explained that a decade after submitting their first proposal to build the monument, with two open competitions having been held, they simply could not grasp "why we cannot finally erect a monument to the fighters of the wars of the 1990s?”130 The letter stresses that even though their proposal to build a monument to the fallen fighters was ‘pushed aside’, they had demonstrated their willingness to make enormous compromises by collaborating with the committee and accepting all victims".131 However, their appeals also stayed unanswered. Later that year in April 2004, the City of Belgrade’s Secretariat of Culture received a proposal from the Monument group, the same group of intellectuals and artists who had tried to suspend the previous open competitions to start the “Facing the Past” project, meaning a series of public debates based on the monument affair. According to the project the group of artists and intellectuals proposed to arrange and mediate “a number of discussions, lectures, presentations and workshops … in order to conceptualize and define a proper framing for dealing with the subject of this open competition.”132 The officials in the City Hall chambers were aware that they had to navigate their way out of the fiasco caused by the two open competitions’ cancellations. The Monument group’s proposal seemed like a perfect opportunity to open some more significant spaces for discussion of the contested wars of the 1990s, but City Hall not only did not support such an opportunity but they also regarded it as a serious headache that had to be avoided at all cost. In order to reduce some of the pressure on the committee and jury members, and to please other civil factors involved133, on the 25th of June 2004 representatives of the Secretariat of Culture at the Belgrade municipality organized the first public discussion. While there had been great expectations for the upcoming discussion, in the end, those expectations were premature and they failed to deliver. The Belgrade municipality facilitated a discussion not about the core issues of the wars of the 1990s, but only about the artistic and aesthetic elements of the future monument. Any attempt to discuss the wars, and Serbia’s role in them, was bluntly discouraged as

130 Document submitted on 30 April, 2004. 131 Ibid. 132 Document submitted on 19 April, 2004. by the Group 133 Mostly veteran organizations and the group of individuals and artists involved in the affair. 130 inappropriate for the present panel. At the debate’s closure, a mediator stated that: “different opinions were heard and though conclusions were not reached, those opinions might be constructive in the days to come.”134 The overall tendency to blur who said what, and why, as well as to demean or ignore core issues regarding Serbia’s contested past, was at the very heart of the official strategy as a means of control over political space.

Phase II: Equating civil victims with “defenders of the homeland” It took another 10 months and an enormous effort by the veterans to reopen the entire issue again. On March 31st, 2005, on the initiative of Belgrade’s new Mayor 135, the City Assembly reached a decision to erect the monument to “the victims of the wars and defenders of the homeland”. In the section called “Argumentation” of the same document136, the decision was further elaborated as follows: “During the wars of the 1990s in the territories of the Former Yugoslavia, Serbia had many victims. Many soldiers were killed as well as people who were recruited or taken to the battle field, and civilians. The families of the killed believe it is their right to have a place to commemorate their love ones. The war Serbia did not declare took many lives. Only a few were led by personal motives whereas the majority was drawn by patriotism.” In March 2005, six months before the official opening of the third competition the Monument group submitted a new upgraded version of the “Belgrade monument case” project proposal to the City of Belgrade, advocating the opening of public discussion and suggesting the following steps: Gathering information about the competition for the memorial to victims of the 1990-1999 wars in the territory of the former Yugoslavia for public discussion; Preparation and organization of a series of public discussions concerning the competition; Realization of artistic works which deal with the subject of the competition and the events surrounding it, as well as with its consequences in the

134 Document “Zapisnik sa javne rasprave na temu konkursa za podianje spomenika u Beogradu održane 25 Juna, 2004. godine sa početkom u 18 casova u Umetničkom paviljonu Cvijeta Zuzorić”, 135 Nenad Bogdanović – member of Democratic Party 136 Document “Odluka o podizanju spomenika “Žrtvama rata i braniocima otadžbine 1990 -1999”, 31 March, 2005. 131 field of art, politics and contemporary social relations.”137 The overall estimated costs were close to 20, 000 Euros. Yet again, the Belgrade municipality had no interest to open, organize, not to speak of financially support such a project which was perceived as being a Pandora’s box. On the contrary, life was much easier without it and, once again, all efforts were directed towards concealing this proposed project rather than supporting it. Erecting a monument which can serve multiple purposes is one thing, and releasing the ghosts from the past quite another thing. A new committee for building a newly formulated open competition text for the monument to “The victims of the wars and defenders of the fatherland from 1990-1999” was only established on the 8th of April 2005. It had 16 newly elected members, of whom only two138 were veterans’ representatives who had also been present in the previous committees. Changes in the composition of the Committee’s membership also marked alterations to the promoted memory agenda. As the previous enthusiasm towards the EU had now been replaced with a more faltering support, the newly elected Mayor139 set a new tone to the affair, further promoting the nationalist agenda. Prior to the committee’s establishment, the newly elected Committee Chair140, an alderman in the Belgrade City Assembly, held an important meeting with the Belgrade deputy Mayor .141 The purpose of the meeting was to precisely define for the first time who exactly was to be included in the Monument, defining who the “victims” and the “defenders of the homeland” actually are. It was stated that: “- the defenders are considered to be regular JNA (Yugoslav Popular Army ) soldiers that were killed in 4 wars (Slovenia, Croatia, BiH and Kosovo, during the NATO bombardment) until the time that the JNA was officially withdrawn from the Former Yugoslav territories - fighters of paramilitary formations and other volunteers of any kind shall not be taken into account - to include all civilian victims”

137 Taken from the website of the Monument Group http://grupaspomenik.wordpress.com/timeline/ 138 Dragomir Vasić i Ratko Zorić 139 Nenad Konstantinović 140 Nenad Konstantinović 141 Radmila Hrustanović, a previous Belgrade mayor. 132

Such framing was of course highly debatable and left all of the parties involved displeased. This issue required further clarification as the question of who was to be included in the definition of "defenders of the homeland" lies at the very heart of understanding Serbia’s role and responsibility in the wars of the 1990s. It is crucial to understand the opacities which exist between various groups in defining who is to be considered a war veteran: soldiers, volunteers or fighters from paramilitary units? A soldier was a person who was in regular service when the war broke out, or a person called up from civilian life to serve in the reserve forces; a volunteer might join either a state army, or he could join a paramilitary unit. All paramilitary units, however, were comprised of volunteers. But the most crucial issue, as will be further elaborated in the next chapter, is that most veteran organizations were accepting both paramilitary units and official army members as their veterans, and both were receiving support from the state. Thus, though the state was escaping any direct connection with paramilitary units, and was silent as to whether those units were under the state’s military command and were or were not performing tasks with the approval and consent of state authority142, in reality the state was assigning the same rights and social privileges to both groups. Veterans who fought in paramilitary units constantly reiterated that there was no difference between them and the other categories, as they were also under the state’s military command.143 Consequently, not taking paramilitary units or volunteers of any kind into account was simply unacceptable to most of the veteran population.144 In other words, this document was evidence as to how the Milošević regime’s politics were being perpetuated while burying and blurring the facts and truths of Serbia’s role in the wars of the 1990s. The publication of this document at the time would probably have evoked some kind of debate and possibly a suspension of the open competition, as the veteran population could not accept such definitions. It is also reasonable to assume that certain segments of the civil society145 would also have responded vociferously. Yet, as part of

142 This silence is a direct result of the fact that the majority of the current leadership were in some decision making position during the wars. 143 Ratko Zorić, interview conducted on 6 May 2011; Mile Milošević interview conducted on 26 April 2011. 144 It is important to mention that there are also significant disagreements amongst them. 145 Human rights NGO`s and some intellectuals. 133 the strategies of preventing the opening of political space, this document was never published in any form and served only as a guideline manual for the committee chair, edited for internal purposes.146 Amazingly, right up until this day, the parties involved in the proposals for the monument have never known of this document’s existence. The alterations in title formulation and the adoption of the “defenders of the homeland” were not the only changes in the memory agenda presented in the new open competitions. The location had changed and instead of the Zvezdara forest, peripheral to Belgrade, a new location was suggested. It was now proposed that the commemorative monument was to be erected in Savski square, placed between the Central Train Station and the building which served as the central office for several veteran organizations.147 The Central Train Station building, and the line of buildings in which the veterans’ organizations are situated were all beautifully crafted at some time between the end of the nineteenth century (the Central Train Station was opened in 1885) and the beginning of the twentieth century. Over the last forty years however, this entire area had become better known as being a filthy and neglected area characterized by the lowest kind of prostitution, sex shops and drugs. Once the discussion regarding the monument was reopened, it was decided to “utilize” the whole concept and replace the previous location of the Zvezdara forest with Sava square. This decision took place somewhere in the halls of the Belgrade municipality, between the Mayor’s office and the city architect.148 The location was relatively close to Belgrade’s city center and was actually right in front of the Army War Invalids organization’s central office. The latter was one of the initiators of the monument’s erection, and the location was thus “sellable” to the veterans. As part of the decision to change the location and implement the selected architectural proposal as an urban solution149, the whole project was transferred to the Society of Architects and Urban Planners to prepare, organize and lead the open

146 The document also lacks any date but it is easy to place it somewhere before the announcement of the new committee gathering, i.e. meaning in the second part of 2004. I received it from an employee of the Ministry of Culture. 147 The Union of Veterans of the World War One, the Union of Veterans of the Second World War and the Army War Invalids (from the wars of the 1990s). 148 Djordje Bobic. 149 There had been a plan for a long time to restore the entire area and make some major changes regarding the traffic. This, of course, meant serious work and investment. The drainage and sewerage system were to be replaced together with pipes, installations and other massive infrastructural work that needed to be done. 134 competition. The third open competition was closed to sculptors and directed toward architects and urban planners alone. The primary task of the competition was to redesign and urbanize this city area with the memory site becoming some kind of additional decoration with obviously reduced significance. It was further stressed that the main purpose of the competition was to provide an urban solution for the square integrating a memory site to the victims and defenders of the fatherland into the overall plan. No explanation regarding the wording “victims of the wars and defenders of the fatherland” was provided. On December 24th, 2005 the third open competition was opened and published in the daily newspapers: Open competition For the conceptual art and urban architectural Sava square solution in Belgrade with a memory site dedicated to the victims of the wars and defenders of the fatherland from 1990-1999 (open from 24.12.2005 till 05.09.2006) The reactions to this framing of the competition were furious. In an open confrontation with the organizers of the competition and the Society of Architects and Urban Planners, the enraged sculptors’ guild requested “to urgently correct this mistake, as they had been rejected in advance, hurt and completely disqualified, as individuals and as artists!”150 In addition, the Monument group posed questions requesting “historical facts and clarifications” on the subject. “What are these armed struggles in which we commemorate the victims? What is the homeland defended by the defenders in these armed struggles from 1990 till 1999?”151 The organizer of the competition, the Belgrade Municipality, aware of the unpredictable nature and potentially volatile effects of opening a public debate on their political seats, made, once again, enormous efforts to avoid any further debate on the subject, providing short answers to these questions. It was stated that the most important thing was “to put these tragic events into a human context. The topic is the suffering of innocent victims as well as the murder and injury suffered mainly by this country’s youth. The focus should be on the tragic act of violent death; the reasons and motives for such

150 Document “Odgovori na pitanja učesnika”, 12 February 2006. 151 Ibid. 135 killings should be placed in the background, as this may lead us into a delicate and conflicting sphere.”152 The third open competition was closed in September 2006 having effectively and successfully avoided any public debate on the subject. The nine jury members153 reached a decision not to award the first prize. The second prize was however awarded to two young architecture students and recommended for realization. The winning design provided “a dialogue with its surroundings through non aggressive and silent moves as well as its simplicity". It also “form[ed] a frequent and dynamic magnetic pole in which passengers, travelers and passers-by bec[o]me active participants in the memorial itself. Thus, through the affirmation of life we pay respect to the dead. … The ultimate value of this work is the urbanization and utilization of the location’s potential.”154 However, what is essential to an understanding of the multiple lives of the imagined monument is that the chosen solution left a great deal of room for contradictory interpretations. This was not only due to the fact that the chosen project was pale and anemic. It was rather primarily because the various parties engaged in the political space created around the monument were led to believe that there was a mutual understanding between them, when in fact, every single party had something else in mind. For example, it was taken for granted by all of the veterans that the primary purpose of the memory site was to commemorate their loved ones and “have a place to leave wreaths of flowers”.155 In contrast, the jury’s and participants’ main intention was to find a project that would uplift the whole city area. The Belgrade officials had yet another concept in mind. They needed a place for staging official ceremonies that would further promote the sacrificial character of Serbia. While the ability of a monument to obtain and produce multiple meanings is at times a marker of its success in communicating different messages to different mnemonic groups (Young 1993), in the case of the Belgrade monument, these multiple meanings were purposefully produced by the Belgrade Municipality. They

152 Ibid. 153 Composed mainly of architects and urban planners, historians and sculptors. 154 From the open competition booklet “Konkurs za idejno rešenje spomen obeležja žrtvama rata i braniocima otadžbine od 1990 do 1999. godine u Beogradu i likovno, arhitektonsko urbanistićko rešenje Savskog trga”, Skupština grada Beograda – Sekretarijat za kulturu, Društvo arhitkata Beograda i Društvo urbanista Beograda, Akademija, October, 2006. 155 This was stated over and over again, without exception, in all the interviews I have conducted with members of various Veteran organizations and their families. 136 served the municipality’s agenda of creating the impression that the monument addresses the needs of all parties involved, while in practice there was a strategic distortion of information and facts aimed at maintaining the control of the political arena in the hands of the state.

Phase III: We all are victims During the coming six years the Monument affair was completely silent. Apart from the sporadic encounters between the Belgrade Municipality representatives and the war veterans, the whole affair looked as if it had been completely forgotten. After the second open competition the Monument group had stepped away realizing the unwillingness of the government to set any public debate on Serbia’s contested past in motion. In retrospect, it appears that things were in fact moving slowly but steadily. Unexpectedly, at the end of January 2012 several articles were published in daily Serbian magazines, announcing that “a new monument is under construction in Belgrade’s Sava Square which will serve as a memorial to the victims of the 1990s Balkan wars”.156 The short press release launched by the Belgrade Municipality contained four outstanding points apparent in all the published articles. Firstly, it was emphasized that the monument would serve as a memorial to all innocent victims of the wars that took place in the region, during the 1990s. This by definition is a very suitable outcome for international display, where Serbs may claim their cosmopolitan and democratic character. Secondly, the defenders of the homeland are mentioned as initiators of the monument and in the name of the open competition while describing the project’s history. However, from what has been said previously, war veterans were also included in the victim category. Thirdly, the monument is scheduled for completion on March 24th, which is the 13th anniversary of the start of NATO’s bombing campaign. Its opening was to be merged together with the only day in Serbia which commemorates the wars of the 1990’s, further claiming Serbian victimhood and escaping any responsibility. Finally, the monument’s opening was directly linked with a future memorial to Holocaust victims, essentially saying that both memorials are meant to serve as reminders of all the innocent who lost their lives due to their ethnicity or religion:

156 “Belgrade honours victims of the 1990s conflict”, in Belgrade insight, on 13 February, 2012. 137

“This monument, just like the future memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, should remind us of all the innocents who lost their lives because they were of a different religion and nation. For this purpose, there was also an exhibition at the Museum of Yugoslav History entitled "The Holocaust in Serbia 1941-1944", the one place where all interested parties can learn about the almost forgotten Holocaust in Serbia, and see a number of exhibits, video -records and testimonies of survivors.” 157 With such a formulation, the cycle is completed: Serbs are victims, and as such, they are equated with Holocaust victims. This newly tailored memory agenda, where the Serbian defenders and victims from the wars of the 1990s were equated with the Holocaust victims was an outcome of the ruling political elite’s determination to reframe Serbia’s role in those wars – Serbs were victims and not perpetrators. In addition, relating Serbian victimhood directly to the Holocaust was meant to portray Serbia as having a deep appreciation for human rights violations, thus increasing Serbian entitlement to joining the EU moral community. Finally, on 24th of March 2012, on the 13th anniversary of the NATO bombardment on Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro, the monument dedicated to “the victims of the wars and defenders of the fatherland from 1990-1999” was officially opened. The exact hour of the opening was kept secret, and except for the press release from late January, the wider public discovered the monument only after it was unveiled. This surprising decision was the outcome of the series of noisy demonstrations held by the “Women in black” human rights organization, protesting against the future erection of the monument to the “Milošević’ legacy”158 as a “permanent mark of [Serbian] crimes”,159 saying amongst other things: “The city government built one and the same monument to the killers and to the killed, to the defenders of the fatherland and to the people who allegedly defended Serbia several hundred kilometers from the borders of Serbia. It is unacceptable.” It is precisely this impact of the human rights regime on both Serbia’s political elite and the civil NGO sector that imposes the cosmopolitization of memory (Levy and

157 “Podsećanje na žrtve devedesetih”, www.pressonline, www.b92.net/info 30 January 2012. 158 “Spomenik Miloševićevom nasleđu” www.e-novine.com 23 March 2012. 159 “Žene u crnom povodom podizanja spomenika “svim žrtvama i braniocima - Trajni beleg zločina” 23 September, 2012 www.e-novine.com 138

Sznaider 2010). The cosmopolitization of memories refers to practices that shift attention away from the territorialized nation-state and the ethnically bound frameworks that are commonly associated with the notion of collective memory. Thus, the state, i.e. the ruling political elite is constantly under tension and needs to find ways to bridge the opposing demands. While the local community wants to be accepted as the righteous party in the conflict, the international community together with local human rights NGO’s, are forcing the state to face its past atrocities. It is this role of the state as a gate keeper and a mediator that forces its political elite to use creative ways to reduce the tension between the international and the local demands. Thus, the time of the opening remained unannounced. The officials had feared that if the precise time of the opening was known, the event, together with the inherent possibility of a few good photo opportunities and some positive press coverage, would be ruined. However, some veteran organizations were informed of the exact time schedule, not only as they were the initiators of the project, but mostly because they were specifically targeted by the City officials as those who they believed were the biggest supporters of the event. However even though the official representatives succeeded in avoiding a wider public presence, a good few bereaved parents created a huge commotion, preventing the City Mayor160 from placing the wreaths161 on the monument. The absurdity of the situation was, that those parents were not protesting because the categories of victims, fighters and defenders had been merged and blurred; but because of the shameful design of the monument.162 Namely, the source of their dissatisfaction was threefold: there were no names of the fallen, there was no orthodox cross engraved and the monument wasn’t in the figurative form but just a plain steel board, a contemporary urban solution, hard to emotionally connect with. The City Mayor, being unpleasantly surprised, gave a short speech and then hurriedly left the scene. He ended his speech saying: “We will remember those people who were victims of this civil war or died believing they were fighting for the freedom of their homeland.”163 In other words, both, the civil victims and those who believed they

160 Dragan Djilas 161 “Djilas sprečen da položi venac na spomenik žrtvama ratova 1990-1999”,24 March, 2012 www.blic.rs 162 “Uz proteste otkriven Spomenik žrtvama rata”, 24 March, 2012 www.mondo.rs 163 Govor gradonačelnika Dragana Djilasa na otvaranju spomenika 139 were fighting for the freedom of their homeland were equally considered as victims. Such wording, delivered during the commemorative ceremony on the 24th of March, the very beginning of the NATO bombardment, created connotative meanings that entrenched the idea that all Serbs were victims in the wars of the 1990s.

Conclusion But why erect the monument at all? And why now? My answer to these questions cannot be decisive. However, it is safe to conclude that, though the political elite tried its best to delay the erection of the monument for as long as possible, the pressures coming from the veteran organizations in the end, did make a difference. It seems that the current Belgrade mayor Đilas, calculated that the erection of the monument would be a move with a positive political payoff. On the one hand, he expected both to create a space for future official commemorations and gain the electoral support of the veterans. On the other hand, he rightly estimated that the apathy in general society would enable him to erect the monument without provoking public reactions that might endanger his political career. He was partially right in his predictions: while the Human Right NGO’s protested the monument opening, they did not provoke any serious reaction and the monument did not get much attention afterwards. However, it rather seems that the veterans and their families stayed divided as to whether the Belgrade mayor earned his votes or not, as some of them severely criticized the fact that the names of the fallen are absent from the monument plaque. Finally, at the end of the decade long Monument affair, the official Serbian policy was to manage its contested past through cover ups and cultural reframing rather than public acknowledgement. The main argument portrayed in this chapter deals with the state control over the political arena which is supposed to function as a sphere of encounter between the state and the civil society, where negotiation between the sides should take place, opening political spaces of representation and negotiation. Several alterations were made over years in the monument affair, but, though at times these seemed to be derived from the involvement of some of the civil actors, I claim here that all of those changes served the state in promoting their agenda and that at all stages of the

140 affair the state tried to keep full control over the political arena, with varying degrees of success. I showed here that the memory agenda was gradually evolved according to the dynamics between the domestic political elite and Serbia’s chances of joining the EU. Though the erection of the monument was not monitored directly by the international community, the international community does provide a section on commemoration practices as a sign of the positive/negative progress toward accomplishing the process of the Europeanization.164 This indirectly impacts upon the ruling political elite’s decision making process regarding commemorative issues. As the enthusiasm toward the Europeanization process gradually waned, the nationalist agenda was reinforced. However, there is palpable evidence that supports the fact that at no stage was Serbia’s political elite willing to open the political space for debate and negotiation involving the different sectors of society. All changes adopted throughout the competitions were not a result of the “changing structure of possibilities in the political space” (Grinberg 2010: 24) but of the alterations in the interests and needs of the political elite, who tried to maintain control over the political space at all times and to find a proper satisfactory solution that could bridge the gap in the demands between the international and the domestic level. The first and second open competitions promoted “civil victims” as the main casualties of the wars, the third competition equated “civil victims” with the “defenders of the homeland” and the opening event revealed a newly tailored agenda whereby all Serbs were victims. Thus, the cancellation of the first open competition, was not, as it appeared, the direct result of the involvement of the Monument group, but just the contrary. The document, advocating the cancellation of the competition, sent by the group to all members of the City Assembly, was used to eliminate the mistakenly inserted wording: “defenders of the homeland” from the official text formulation and to reduce it to “civil victims”. This alteration went hand in hand both with the Monument group’s requests for the competition cancellation and the domestic political goals, where the agenda was, instead of claiming responsibility, to reframe the category of victimhood.

164 Such as the OSCE, Council of Europe for Human Rights, Helsinki Committee for Human rights and other relevant international organizations. 141

The same is true when analyzing the ostensibly huge modification in the location chosen for the monument. In the first two competitions the offered location was a distant peripheral area165, several kilometers away from the Belgrade center, but in the third competition, again seemingly due to the veteran organizations’ requests, the location was moved to an area relatively close to the center of Belgrade.166 This decision, though initially inspired by the furious reactions of the veteran organizations, had in fact more of a pragmatic nature. The newly chosen location was in an area already designated to undergo some urban and infrastructural changes so it did not present any additional cost. It was also easy to “hide” the open competition for this highly contested monument behind the contest for the urban solution of the square. Moreover, this location allowed different readings due to its dichotomous character. On the one hand, the square is situated at a strategic point of utmost importance and relevance – near the main train and bus stations, with a high density of passengers, an area that should in the long term be developped into a modern and luxurious zone. On the other hand, those plans seem to relate to a distant phantasmagoric future, if to anything at all. This area is well known for being a filthy and neglected area characterized by the street prostitution, sex shops and drugs. So, when it suits the municipality’s purposes, this space can be described as suitable for commemorative services. However when it is the municipality’s interests to diminish the importance of a disputed monument, the space is easily reframed back to its well-known “original” character, described, for example, as being a “Picin Park”.167 Alterations to the form of the monument, from being a classical figurative sculpture to an urban architectural solution, was another way of covering up and blurring where Serbia stands on the wars of the 1990s. An architectural solution would not need any clear figurative expression of meaning. While the monument, according to the third open competition jury’s opinion, could not be materialized in any way other than in a conceptual artistic form, the veterans had irrefutably envisaged a figurative monument corresponding to partisan artistic aesthetics. During my field work I was offered many different visions of how the monument should look so as to express the fullest deep feelings of grief and sorrow as well as those of pride and heroism/victimization. A

165 Zvezdara park 166 Savski Square, near the main Train Station. 167 Slot park. 142 bereaved father168 from the NGO "Families of the Killed and Distressed", claimed that the monument should be simple: “a women embossed in marble, a mother with a black scarf and child in her hands, and close to her feet a mourning father…”169 From the perspective of a veteran170 from the Fighters of the Wars of the 1990s, the embodiment in the monument that would best reflect the veteran’s feelings, would be the character of a national hero with a gun. He specifically said: "Boško Buha171 with a gun", alluding to a famous partisan teenage boy well known for his courage, whose bravery was immortalized in dozens of stories and art works. This image portrays “the-world-as-it- should-be” (Dzenovska 2005: 174), where the golden, partisan era reflects society’s admiration for its veterans, in opposition to this is "the world as it is", where the monument, once built, will still be invisible, without even an inscription about those to whom it is dedicated. Those figurative solutions were perceived by the official factions as being “dangerous”, and were dismissed with the excuse that they are not contemporary, since such artistic expressions leave no room for ambiguity. In Serbia figurative monuments are deeply rooted in commemorative practices of the post-second war period, and their semiotic meanings are well structured. They primarily express associating the role of the fighter with eternal heroism, bravery and patriotism. Adopting such a figurative style and its monumental form would mean, first and utmost, taking a clear stand on the role Serbia has played in the wars of the 1990s. The architecture of monuments and memory-sites is closely related to politics and resembles the embodiment of the ideological discourse, “a focal point of the complex dialogue between past and present” (Carrier 2005: 7). Though the monumental architecture during the post-World War Two period was not always effective and at times suppressed past events rather than commemorate them (Forty 1999), in the post-Yugoslav spaces, for many years, the ideological discourse remained unequivocal – the distinction between both the heroes and victims, and the perpetrators and defenders was sharp and unquestionable. Thus, moving away from the figurative representations of the past, widely spread in the post-World War Two memorial architecture, overlapped partially

168 Bane Pejčinović 169 Bane Pejčinović, "NGO Families of the Killed and Distressed", interview conducted on 19 May, 2011. 170 Ratko Zorić 171 Legendary teenaged partisan hero from the Second World War. 143 with the Serbia’s ruling elite’s agenda: it was both blurring and covering up the role and responsibilities of Serbia for the wars of the 1990s, moreover, it also promoted an image of Serbia as being progressive and democratic in terms of monument architecture. Another important dimension of the state’s closure of political space created around the monument affair is that the issue was almost completely absent from the public spheres and only sporadic and rare articles in the daily and weekly press were dedicated to the subject. Apart from those involved, the wider public had almost no access to information on the subject so the involvement of the civil sector was almost none existent. This does not intend to claim, however, that the state (or in this case the Belgrade municipality) is controlling media spaces, but that from the very beginning, the organizers managed to keep the whole affair quiet. It was portrayed somehow as irrelevant to the wider public, so as to not provoke any public reactions. As a result, apart from calls for open competitions which had to be published in daily newspapers and one press release in January 2012, no comments, documentation or interviews were provided by any official body. Rare articles addressing the “scandalous” monument affair were marginalized, and lacked any political power. Thus, while adjusting changing political reality to its memory agendas, the political elite tried with relative success to maintain control over the dynamic of political spaces at all times. The municipality’s endless delaying tactics and capacity to ignore petitions, together with their ability to blur bureaucratic procedures, all proved to be useful techniques in precluding other political actors and in successfully promoting their own memory agendas. Restricting the access of other actors to the political space was, first and foremost, aimed at repressing any open discussion on who was fighting on whose behalf and what the real consequences would be of such a debate to the political elite’s current position and power. It was also meant to mediate between international and national contexts by finding a gray area where those contradictory demands overlap.

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Part III

The ‘Monument Affair’ proved to be a political arena massively controlled by the political elite where the ruling political elite persistently tried to close the political space in which the state and the civil society could engage in significant encounters on Serbia’s contested past. The Monument was used primarily as a political device to claim Serbian victimhood, the agenda found to be appropriate when bridging the tensions between the demands at the international level vs. those at the local level. In practice, the reuse of the victimhood agenda meant continuing the agenda existing from the time before the overthrow of Milošević regime in the year 2000 (Bieber 2002, Dujizings 2007, Byford 2007, Stojanović 2011). This case study had been carefully chosen, as I had assumed that it was inevitable that some negotiations would take place between the state and civil society due to the character of the open competitions. As it transpired, these negotiations did not take place in any meaningful way. If the state was relatively successful at closing the political space surrounding the Monument, which contained multiple political actors and was designed with procedures to ensure relative transparency of all encounters with the wider society, then the question that has to be asked is what mechanisms are produced to assist governments in closing political spaces for additional political actors? In other words, what mechanisms have the political elites created in order to disable any open discussion of the role and responsibility of Serbia in the wars of the 1990s? This question is especially important since such mechanisms not only provide governments with tools for closing political spaces but also inevitably redefine a category of memory. Thus, in the chapter on war veterans I show that the state has managed to frame social settings in such a way that the war veterans were forced to reframe their memories in return for receiving very elementary financial benefits, agreeing in return to have their status reduced to the category of “victims”. The chapter on the national calendar brings to the forefront the strategies used by the state as a mediator between the international and the domestic communities. These strategies included efforts to frame different memory contents as appropriate to each different audience. The state is interested in framing one particular image to the international community, tailor-made

145 with carefully chosen memory contents, which it hopes will entitle it to receive both tangible and symbolic benefits. At the local level, different carefully chosen memory contents are designed to close political spaces in the hope of enabling the local community to grieve, at least within closed communities. The chapter on Holocaust discourse goes even further and demonstrates how the Holocaust was utilized to serve both international and domestic demands. On both fronts the Holocaust has been used as a means in attaining different ends. Various political actors in the Serbian society, such as the Serbian Orthodox Church, various Human Rights NGOs and the Jewish Community, all use Holocaust memory in order to promote their own political agendas within the state. The state promotes Holocaust discourse in order to display this to the European community so that in return the European Community will accord Serbia with concrete and symbolic benefits and settlements. This dual memory construction is a direct result of the changing role of the nation-state which now has to deal simultaneously with international and domestic challenges. Thus, actions are planned and mechanisms put in place that address both international and domestic demands. In the following three chapters I will elaborate upon three mechanisms that are used by political elites to simultaneously disable any open discussion on the wars of the 1990s and to further establish the victimhood agenda. The first mechanism deals with the ways in which the state is engaged in decontextualization of memory contents, whereby the concrete memories of the wars of the 1990s are replaced with abstract remembrance. The second mechanism addresses the politics of creating social narratives of suffering, where the use of impression management techniques helps in creating the state-sponsored national calendar. The third mechanism deals with the rise of Holocaust memory, which was found suitable for promoting very different political actors’ agendas.

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Chapter 5

Fragmentation and Decontextualization of the 1990s’ War Memories: War Veterans as Victims

After carefully constructing the meaning-making processes in the ‘Monument Affair’, I was still left with many questions unanswered. How were the war veterans so easily silenced? Why were they unable to promote their memory agenda and why did they have to settle for the status of “victims”? After all, they are the most meaningful and the largest mnemonic group and they were definitely motivated towards incorporating their memory agenda into the national narrative. This chapter addresses the protracted process initiated by the state aimed at alienating the war veteran population as well as at persistently fragmenting them, silencing them and finally at encouraging them to de- contextualize and reframe their memories by abstracting concrete historical suffering so as to suit the needs of the ruling political elites. The de-contextualization of memory contents, where the concrete memories of the wars of the 1990s are replaced with abstract remembrance, has been achieved by various means including a set of laws and regulations. These are used purposefully to re- frame the concrete contents of memory so that the entire veteran population is reduced to being “victims”. Such particular framing suits the need of the ruling political elite to re- position Serbia as a victim in the wars of the 1990s. In addition, by reducing war veterans to victims they become hostages to the grace and favor of the state, while the real power stays in the hands of the state. I suggest here that the Serbian case teaches us that as a result of the pressures brought by the Europeanization process, Serbian governments have had to filter and de-contextualize certain memory contents detrimental to their cause so as to better their chances of being accepted to the European Union. Reckoning with the past is an internal affair but it is steered and fueled by external actors and attitudes. Over the years, both external and local demands determined the ruling political elite’s attitudes toward the war veterans. The ruling political elite, which in this instance includes both the decision making and policy execution bodies, had

147 to find ways to deal with the “hot potato” called veterans. On the one hand, the ruling political elite wanted to disassociate themselves from the veteran populations as they were perceived to be a remnant of the Milošević regime, and as such, an obstacle to joining the EU. On the other hand, as the veterans represented somewhere in between five to ten percent of all Serbia’s population, it was necessary to prevent them from becoming a serious political power. Thus, as it will be shown in this chapter, the ruling political elite after 2000, regardless of individual political affiliations, tried over the years to reduce the veterans’ power and eliminate their potential political impact. While this policy was apparent in many political arenas, such as the Belgrade Municipality as was demonstrated in the Monument affair, the main political actor for suppressing veterans’ influence was the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy. The Ministry of Social Policy was directly in charge of all war veteran affairs, such as: welfare, social rights and benefits, employment and commemorative practices. Even the very fact that the Ministry of Defense had absolutely nothing to do with war veteran populations, reveals the national policy of marginalizing veterans and reducing them to a population with special needs. The apparently conflicting demands of simultaneously adapting to democracy and to the Human Rights regime whilst also mourning over the lost wars, have been settled through the processes of filtering memory contents and their and de-contextualization. These processes by which memories of concrete (particular) atrocities are transformed into abstract (universal) violations and the suffering of humanity, have proved to be crucial in satisfying the contradicting demands at the national and international levels. Over the last twenty years, a global norm has emerged proscribing appropriate ways for states to deal with crimes of the past (Subotić 2009), including primarily accepting the demands and values of the Human Rights regime. These demands from the international community are supported locally by certain segments of the civil society, however confronting one’s own crimes remains, for dozens of reasons, rather an unpopular process. Thus, the ruling political elite need particular mechanisms whereby they can accommodate the inherently conflicting demands. They succeed in doing this to a certain degree, by carefully balancing particular (concrete) memories in a given national context with universal (de-contextualized) memories.

148

Decontextualization of concrete memories in particular suits the needs of the ruling political elites in Serbia for closing political spaces, since it is in essence a form of forgetting (Levy and Sznaider 2010: 14). The institutionalization of the de-contextualized and filtered memories, which requires a shift from concrete memories to abstract remembrance of barbarous acts, always occurs at the expense of the barbarity of these acts (Levy and Sznaider 2010: 14). Though the ability to place lived through and witness embodied experiences into a larger context is always a part of the shift from the concrete to the universal (Assmann 2007), the framing of the larger context is crucial and often politically motivated. It is the state as the body with the most resources available that dictates the overall agenda. Thus, whether particular memories will be (de)contextualized so as to serve as a template for claiming national suffering, victim-hood, bravery or heroism depends on the availability of resources, the ability to mobilize wider support and the present power balance. It is this power structure that defines which memory will be heard and which will be silenced (Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz 1991; Olick and Robbins 1998), where the imposed “cultural criteria distribute accessibility to different collective memories according to social entitlement” (Lomsky-Feder 2004: 82). I show here how the Serbian political elite constructs the desirable “criteria for entitlement” via the filtering and decontextualization of who is entitled to remember and what is to be remembered at the expense of the war veterans’ lived through and witness- embodied memories. It is my argument here that one of the basic mechanisms developed in order to maintain control over political spaces, as part of the encounters between the state and the civil society to debate over the contested nature of the wars in the 1990s, is to be found precisely in the filtering and decontextualization of the memory contents. The particular social setting framed by the ruling political elite, forced the war veterans to frame their memories in accordance with the political elite’s agenda in order to obtain the very minimum benefits that they were entitled to.

Making war veterans invisible After the overthrow in the year 2000 and the fall of the Milošević regime there was a great sense of optimism and enthusiasm in Serbia. The democratic government heading the country was willing to turn towards the European Union and this was raising

149 the expectations for the country’s prospects high. However, these expectations mainly coming from the civil society were soon disappointed. The new government was soon paralyzed by internal arguments and finally split, amid accusations of collaboration with the domestic mafia. It became clear early on after the overthrow of the Milošević regime, that the newly emerged political elite were deeply and inextricably linked to the politics of the 1990s and the “fresh start” was not on the horizon. It also rapidly became apparent that Serbia was not likely to start to engage in any publicly transparent reckoning with the past. This process was viewed as not only prohibitively expensive but also politically undesirable as it would alienate huge segments of society. Those likely to feel aggrieved by any such public reckoning include not only those who participated first-hand in the wars but also the wide layers of society who supported the Milošević regime. Due to this polarization of Serbian society, where the vast majority of the population wanted to mourn over the lost wars that were perceived in general by Serbians as being righteous,172 all Serbian governments from the very beginning (including that of the assassinated president Đinđic173) have looked for ways to silence any public debate on the wars of the 1990s rather than accepting any responsibility. This, however, does not claim ideological homogeneity of the ruling political elites, but rather suggests that different ideological approaches were blended into a mutually accepted decision to obfuscate the role of Serbia and its responsibility for the crimes conducted during the 1990s.174 It was deemed preferable to close political spaces in order to avoid publicly dealing with the past rather

172 See Logar Svetlana and Bogosavljević Srdjan (2001) “Viđenje istine u Srbiji”, Reč 62/8 173 Premier Zoran Djindjić was assassinated in 2003 as he was perceived to be a threat to certain segments in Serbian society that were overtly involved in the crimes committed in the wars of the 1990s (such as the Račak massacre and the massacre in Dubrava prison), especially what was known as the “Crvene Beretke”. The Crvene Beretke was an elite Special Operational Unit of the Serbian Service of State Security. Patrons and numerous members of the unit and its predecessors were sentenced, accused or held responsible for numerous war crimes in the Yugoslav wars, as well as political assassinations in Serbia. For many years the connection between the state and this unit was kept in secrecy. In 2003, after assassinating premier Djindjić, this unit was closed and while some members were tried, many were simply moved to serve in the Serbian police. The fact that the Serbian governments have not been willing to open a discussion on the wars of the 1990`s can be traced up to the present day: in Tomas Hamarberg’s report of the Commissioner for Human Rights, in 2011, he expressed sincere concerns about the fact that some of the members of “Crvene Beretke” are officially in charge of the program for witness protection in the domestic trials for prosecution of the war criminals. See more in: Izveštaj Tomasa Hamarberga, komesara za ljudska prava, 22 September 2011. Council of Europe. 174 Some politicians and smaller political parties did try to implement at least partially the idea of acknowledging Serbia`s responsibility, such as LDP, but their influence was marginal. 150 than to take potentially politically damaging risks by openly confronting vast segments of the society, including the Serbian Orthodox Church.175 This silent vacuum was a product of an intentional blurring of the links between the state and the army during the wars of the 1990s as well as a distortion of individual responsibilities and political aspirations. For the past 15 years, there has been a tendency in Serbia to blame the atrocities allegedly committed by Serbia on the paramilitary formations, as if they had nothing to do with official Serbian policy. It has been shown however, predominantly through the work of legal bodies, investigative journalism (Gordy 2013)176 and research conducted by certain NGOs177, that nearly all paramilitary units not only actively combined forces and cooperated with the Milošević regime but also were formed under the regime’s sponsorship. Moreover, the regime and political elite made “deals” with them having specific rules, for example, paramilitary units were to go in first and “clean” the area (kill, burn and plunder) and only after this, the official Yugoslav army was to come in and annex the territories. This, however, has never been publicly acknowledged by any Serbian government to this day. This is , among other things, a direct result of the fact that the majority of the current leadership already held some position of decision making during the wars (Gordy 2013: 143). But how did the ruling political elites succeed over time in closing political spaces, preventing any new political actors from entering them, and thereby avoiding any significant dealing with the past? In particular, how did they manage to silence the veteran population that represents close to 10% of Serbia’s entire population? Furthermore, how did the ruling political elites succeed in amending war veterans’ lived through and witness-embodied memories to fit their agenda? This question becomes especially relevant when bearing in mind that the participants of the wars such as veterans, refugees or witnesses of atrocities, represent an inevitable factor in the post-war reconstruction period as mnemonic groups, and that national “healing” cannot be completed without addressing the suffering they endured in past wars. Thus in many

175 The Serbian Orthodox Church became an important political factor in the post war Serbia. On this see more in the Holocaust chapter. 176 More on this issue see in Gordy Eric (2013) Guilt, Responsibility and Denial, The Past at Stake in Post- Milošević Serbia, University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, Ch. 6. 177Particularly the Humanitarian Law Center. 151 senses, gaining control over the veteran population was a crucial step in achieving control over political spaces where any public reckoning with the past might be possible. In Serbia alone, it has been estimated that the veteran population from the wars of the 1990s numbers somewhere between 400,000 to 800,000 people.178 This means that up to ten percent of the entire Serbian population actively participated in the wars of the 1990s, for at least some period of time. According to the Centre for War Trauma in Novi Sad, about fifteen percent of Serbia’s male population are veterans of the Ex-Yugoslav wars. The Centre estimated that the overall number of people recruited in Serbia alone during the wars in the 1990s was around 700,000 with at least 10,000 combatants who fought in the various paramilitary units (Beara, Miljanović and Popov 2004: 47). The exact number is unknown. And while certain lists exist, they are incomplete and secretive. The formal policy line regarding the wars is that Serbia never officially participated in these wars, with this contention being further supported by terminology from the Milošević regime, where those wars were de facto just: “manoeuvres”, “armed conflicts” or “military exercises”. It is this stand taken by the ruling political elites, which has enabled a series of additional tactical decisions to be taken all of which were meant to hinder the veteran population in organizing themselves around a unified meta- narrative on the nature of the Serbia’s participation in the wars of the 1990s. There has been no official narrative whatsoever, especially when trying to understand how Serbia is positioned in relation to the five discrepant wars/armed struggles of the 1990s (Slovenia, Croatia, BiH, Kosovo, NATO bombardment). It is unclear to this day “whether it was one long and complicated war or a few different wars”179 and since the state is dealing with its troubled past in such an ambiguous manner, there is no common denominator around which the veteran population can become organized. Forging a common collective memory project, that is not backed-up by the state, has proved impossible. Already fragmented veteran populations, who could not become

178 Numbers vary greatly and are a contested topic since there is no official institution that has systematically collected data on the veteran and related populations. There is not an exact number of people, either of those officially recruited nor volunteers who belonged to various paramilitary units, or of even the wounded or dead. 179 Although this quote is taken from the interview with the Vice President of Belgrade Assembly, it is conspicuous with almost all interviewees that when talking of the wars of the 1990s, regular expressions used are “messy wars”, “tragic wars”, “complex wars”, “specific wars” and so on. 152 organized around one unified narrative relating to the events which transpired during the wars of the 1990s, suffered from further fragmentation. As was described in Chapter 2 this fact is clearly apparent in the tremendous number of different veterans’ unions existing. Indeed, for example, in the Belgrade municipality alone, more than sixty such organizations operate simultaneously. Currently, there are 22/24/25/40/50180 organizations that are operating at the state, municipality and district levels. There are many more active on municipality or district levels alone which means that a few hundred organizations related to the previous wars currently have or have had, at some point, some membership and activity. As stated above the diversity between the groups is enormous with each organization being defined by any one of a number of different unifying criteria such as: the fighters’ common origins (from the Krajina region, northern Herzegovina…), common battlefields (Slovenia, Kosovo…), belonging to a particular paramilitary or army unit (Yugoslav army, Scorpions…), a common status (invalids, families of deceased, missing, wounded…) and so on. The list is almost endless and includes very different and sometimes even opposing agendas. Notwithstanding this, different positioning means first and foremost a different veterans’ perception of what happened in the wars of the 1990s. It would be correct to argue that all Serbs fought for their homeland, yet apparently it was not clear to anyone what that homeland was: was it Yugoslavia, and if so in which boundaries? Was it Serbia, and in which boundaries (Milićević 2006)? Some were forcibly conscripted, while some were already serving in the Yugoslavian military at the time of the wars and were certain they were defending the integrity of Yugoslavia. Some saw the wars as a direct threat to Serbianism and enlisted in the sacred wars in the name of "The Great Serbia" and some exploited the chaos so as to increase their personal wealth, symbolic or material, through theft, shows of force (abuse, murder and rape) and dubious businesses. For example, a Serbian who lived and fought in Bosnia had nothing in common with a reserve soldier from Serbia conscripted against his will to fight in Croatia, or with a Serbian policeman who fought in Kosovo, or

180 Various numbers appeared: the president of the Army War Veteran claimed there are 22/24 state financed organizations while his vice-president talked about 40, the president of the “Fighters of the War of the 1990s” mentioned twenty five, the president of the “Serbian War Veterans” spoke of fifty such organizations but they all claimed they “knew” the exact numbers. 153 with a volunteer who fought on "weekends".181 All ultimately fought under the banner of "Serbian fighters", and it is precisely here that the difficulty lies when trying to understand what Serbia was fighting for during the wars of the 1990s. The veterans’ lack of cohesion together with their multiple positioning regarding the wars has resulted in the veteran population lacking almost any social or political power. In the course of the last decade, there has been an enduring and successful attempt to minimize any possible impact that the veteran population might have, with all governments having had similar policies toward the veteran population. They wanted to keep them silent and away from the public discourse. This was possible due to the fact that 1) there was no strong organization that could unify them, 2) many came back from the battlefield utterly damaged psychologically and physically, 3) a significant portion of them were Serbian refugees lacking social rights, and 4) the vast majority were extremely poor, uneducated and unemployed. Thus, since they were largely disconnected from one another as well as lacking the ability to create one unified narrative to gather around, they were an easy target for political manipulation.

Fragmentation and silencing of the veteran population: Social and economic benefits Praising veterans of wars that were lost is neither popular nor economically rational. Thus, all governments employed various techniques in order to disassociate themselves from these veterans and to belittle their potential united power. Not only did the ruling Serbian elite refuse to frame a unified narrative that could gather all war veterans under one umbrella organization, but they also actually actively encouraged their fragmentation to suppress their potential political influence and power. The most effective way of doing this was found to be through allocating different rights and privileges to different groups of veterans according to the place and time of their operations, thereby further fragmenting the veteran population. After the wars, the Law on Rights of Veterans, War Invalids and Families of the Fallen Soldiers from 1998 (amended in 2000 and 2005) was found to rapidly become

181sihT hT an expression for volunteers from Serbia who committed acts of theft as well as war crimes, and essentially went to "fight" in order to return with the spoils of war. 154 outdated and insufficient. The Law defines that veterans eligible for benefits are: “the Serbian and Montenegrin soldiers who participated in the wars between 1912 to 1918”, “participants in the anti-fascist struggle in World War Two in the allied troops and the participant of the army of the Yugoslav kingdom”182, “the participants at their army duty during the armed attacks after 17th of August 1990” and “soldiers on duty that participated in any activity for purposes of defending sovereignty, territory, independence of the Federal Yugoslav Republic”. 183 Though certain privileges were statutory, in practice the veteran population had to face enormous bureaucratic difficulties even to get registered with the appropriate status. There is no official body in charge of records of those who fought in the wars of the 1990s, and a significant part of the veteran population were also refugees or internally displaced persons, with these factors posing additional challenges to claiming veterans’ rights. In practice the treatment of the veteran population depended upon the good will of the political structures and of the bureaucrats at the local level. The veterans were often dependent upon the sympathy of local politicians, or upon the self- interest of these politicians, who may be induced to act out of the hope of gaining the veterans’ votes. For example, in Belgrade and nowhere else, veterans succeeded in receiving a permanent reduction of 50% for communalities expenses. However, also within Belgrade itself, there are significant differences between various municipality districts in the relation of the local government toward veterans. For example, only in the Cukarica district, do veterans receive financial support on an annual basis as this has been pre-planned in their budget.184 While some districts have shown willingness to support veteran unions, others ignored and obstructed them; nevertheless, the most common attitude was simply not to interfere. This is overtly evident not only in the illegal erection of monuments and memory plaques across both urban and rural spaces, but also in the construction of illegal facilities, where, regardless of the nature of the relationship between the local political structures and the veterans, the local governments preferred to look the other way and avoid any direct confrontation.

182 In 2004 The Law on rights of veterans, war invalids and families of the fallen soldiers suffered significant changes where partisan and Chetnik struggle was equated. This revisionism was a part of the ongoing strengthening of right-wing agendas which were directed both from the leading political elite and from the Serbian Orthodox Church. More on this issue see in the Holocaust chapter. 183 "Zakon o osnivnim pravima boraca, vojnih invalida i porodica palih boraca”, Službeni list SRJ br. 24/98, 29/98, 25/00, 101/05. 184 Zoran Alimpić, deputy Mayor, interview conducted on 4 May, 2011. 155

While it is true that the veteran population has succeeded in receiving some privileges over the years, these were all conditional upon them keeping publicly silent. Many of the war veteran informants testified that they had to avoid any encounter with the press in return for these social privileges. Veteran union representatives were frequently offered certain personal benefits in return for “shutting down the protests and avoiding the press”,185 “directing their union members to vote for certain political parties/figures”186 etc. The president of Army War Invalids187 illustrated this policy of the purposeful silencing of the veteran populations by stating that in 2003 the veterans’ representatives made an agreement with the General Advisor of the former , Boris Tadić,188 to receive financial support in return for avoiding any public appearances. An example of this financial support that is not known in public is that war veteran invalids receive, according to their injuries, enormous amounts of money by Serbian standards. This maneuvering seems to be exemplary of the adaptation apparent in post-communist transitional societies where the parties involved develop a talent for finding loopholes and beating the system. Behaviors adopted may include the evasion of laws, claimant attitudes toward the state, opportunism, nepotism, favoritism and clientelism, camouflage and double moral standards (Sztompka, 2004: 489). It is not that the state payments to the war invalids are against the law; the case is rather that the state simply never cared to share the full picture with the wider public. Even the Belgrade Deputy Mayor openly said: “Maybe they (war invalids) don’t have any symbolic power, but they receive more money than the President of Serbia himself”.189 The state kept the payments silent by camouflaging the veterans’ privileges in order to avoid public outrage and discussion of the related budget questions. This policy was part of the government’s strategy of maintaining the official rhetorical stance taken by the Milošević regime, namely that Serbia did not officially participate in any of the wars of the 1990s, and therefore a veteran problem from these wars could not exist. This stance was intended to resolve the high cost problem of Serbian war veterans as well as that of Serbia’s role in these wars, through a low cost

185 Željko Vasiljević, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 186 Mile Milošević, Serbian War Veterans”, interview conducted on 24 April 2011. 187 Željko Vasiljević, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 188 Gordana Matković 189 Zoran Alimpić, deputy Mayor, interview conducted on 4 May 2011. 156 solution, whereby the government could keep the veterans and the greater public quiet. This strategic cover up was the direct outcome of the clashing demands of the Europeanization process on the one hand, led by Serbia’s desire to increase its chances of joining the European Union and project an image of progress and stability, and the domestic request on the other hand to mourn the lost wars. The best example of the deliberate fragmentation and silencing of the veteran population which also illustrates the controversial attitude of the ruling elite toward the wars of the 1990s is to be found in the affair over per diem disbursement for the participation in the wars.190 After war veterans had engaged in years of unsuccessful protesting in their attempts to achieve social privileges, the “Per Diem Court Affair” in 2007 triggered some truly unexpected outcomes. This affair brought to light the extent to which the ruling elite had been strategically oppressing the veteran population in order to keep them from entering into negotiations over the nature of the wars in the 1990s. In the southern province of Serbia191, two war participants192, who happened also to be judges by profession, realized that the best way to achieve their social rights was through suing the state for not paying veterans per diem in the fullest for participating in the armed struggles in Kosovo in 1999. Since none of the state army representatives appeared at court, over the course of several months, those two veterans, followed by another 40 of their close friends and relatives won their cases and were granted serious sums of money.193 A veteran explains: “He starts bragging in a bar that he won (at the court) and then, suddenly that was not enough. His wife also suffered emotional damage when he was in the war and he won again. Now everybody wants to appeal”.194 As a result, over the ensuing months, there was an avalanche effect, with an additional 2,500 lawsuits having been filed. The Ministry of Defense then annulled all new processes claiming that “in the previous rulings there had proved to be serious irregularities and abuses of position, in addition to the fact that the lawsuits could not be placed due to the Statute of Limitations.195

190 The story was told by almost every interviewed veteran with slight differences in the details. 191 Opština Kuršumlija 192 Slavko Maljević and Radomir Jovanović 193 Around 600,000 dinars per capita (around 6,000 euros) 194 Željko Vasiljević “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 195 "Rezervisti Srbije: Južnjački inat i pare”. 21 August 2008 www.vreme.com 157

The discontent among the veterans was enormous and they started accusing and blaming each other for the situation. After four months of strikes, daily road and governmental buildings blockades and two weeks of persistent hunger strikes, the veterans from the southern province of Toplice finally succeeded in claiming their right to the same privileges that the judges and their families had received. According to the agreement that was signed on 11th of January 2008 by the Minister of Justice196 and the Minister of Finance197, the veterans from the seven districts of Toplice province198 who had fought in Kosovo in 1999 were to receive financial assistance in six equal installments to the amount of 200,000 dinars.199 However, again as a means of silencing the veterans, the money was qualified as “social welfare support for developing the Toplice province”200 and not as war compensation. This unexpected victory was explained by the veteran who I interviewed as another trick of the regime’s endemic: “The Tadić campaign was getting closer, then someone suggested – we have extra 2 millions of dinars in the budget. Let’s give that money away in the south (of Serbia). We will spread it among those 10,000 veterans, and they will vote for us in the coming elections”.201 Naturally, the veterans from other parts of Serbia saw in this agreement verification of their entitlement to gaining exactly the same benefits. In the course of the next year veterans’ protests were held all across Serbia. However, neither the blockades in the very center of Belgrade nor the hunger strikes brought about the desired results. For the Serbian government those were just minor headaches. As the protests lacked size, partly due to the freezing temperatures, these attempts failed to bring about any serious results. It looked as though the protests were taking place on the very margins of the society: not only did no-one care but the veterans were also openly mocked “that Milošević gang is allegedly having a hunger strike but they actually just hang around, eat and make noise”.202 After a series of promises, and even a governmental decision (in April 2008) to pass a statute that would systematically address the problem, in practice, nothing happened and the appointed committee in charge of formulating the statute never

196 Mirko Cvetković 197 Dušan Petrović 198 Kuršumlija, Lebane, Bojnik, Žitorađa, Doljevac, Prokuplje i Blice. 199 Around 2,000 Euros. 200 Rezervisti Srbije.... 201 Željko Vasiljević, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 202 Željko Vasiljević, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 158 was actually convened. The president of the Army War Invalids clearly illustrated this pattern of problem-solving: “In order to reduce pressures, they invent some procedure intentionally, knowing they will never finish it”.203 Numerous explanations were offered as to why the government was not meeting the veterans’ demands. The Serbian Prime minister204 stated that the problem lies in the fact that the reimbursement would cost the state “around 120 billion dinars205 and that in order to pay out so much money, it would first be necessary to pass a new law”.206 The Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Policy207 said that “if there are no clear criteria for granting the financial assistance to the reservists who were fighting in Kosovo, tomorrow there may naturally appear other reservists who were placed during that period in the military bases across Serbia, to ask for the same privileges”.208 The prolonged attempts to silence and fragment the veteran population eventually resulted in the unprecedented decision on behalf of the veterans to file a lawsuit against the Serbian state with the European Court of Human Rights. Following the decision of the Government of Serbia in January 2008 to pay wages to reservists from seven municipalities in the south of Serbia, the outraged reservists209 brought the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. According to Attorney Aleksić, while the government referred to these payments as “social welfare support”, they were paid exclusively to wartime reservists who were not asked to show any documentation proving that they belonged to a socially underprivileged category and that the lists for this support were composed solely for the purpose of paying wartime wages.210 Unexpectedly, on August 28, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled in favor of the war veterans and ordered Serbia to ensure the payment of war wages that were not paid to these reservists for their service during the NATO intervention in 1999. The Strasbourg Court concluded that the payment of wartime wages to a selected number of municipalities constituted discrimination against reservists from other parts of Serbia. In

203 Željko Vasiljević, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 204 Mirko Cvetković 205 1,200 000 euros 206 Rezervisti Srbije: Južnjački inat i pare”. 21 August 2008 www.vreme.com 207 Miro Čavaljuga 208 Rezervisti Srbije: Južnjački inat i pare”. 21 August 2008. www.vreme.com 209 The case was filed on behalf of 8,500 reservists under name “Vučković and 29 others against Serbia”. 210 “Strazbur: Rezervisti traže odštetu” 12 February 2012. www.b92.net 159

October 2011, the Court had delivered an advisory opinion that Serbia was obliged to facilitate a peaceful settlement of lawsuits relating to the payment of wartime wages by December 16th 2011. The Court then concluded that the failure of the courts in Serbia to act upon a number of lawsuits filed by war veterans claiming wages constituted a violation of Article 6 Paragraph 1 of the Convention on Human Rights. This decision is only a recent one, but it has already further deepened the existing gap between the state and the veteran population. The unbearable feeling of the war veterans who perceive themselves as having been betrayed by the state was very clear, both in the interviews I conducted211 and in the wider literature which brings forth war veteran’s narratives.212 “The state is our enemy”213 and “We are second class citizens in our own country” (Beara and Miljanović 2006: 109-110) are some of the most commonly expressed statements which strongly emphasize the veterans’ frustration with the ways in which the state has treated them since their return from the war. Veterans often stated that: “The state was serving its own interests (during the wars), never the interest of its people, never the interest of the participants of the wars (…). The state imposed the war and the combatants are just cannon fodder, expendable goods, nothing else” (Gojković 2003: 8). “It is the state apparatus that is based on a few individuals that promote their own interests under the party protection.”214 Moreover, such feelings of injustice, abandonment and betrayal are reinforced through the combatants’ perceptions of society’s attitudes towards them. Statements such as: “They see in me a monster, they are afraid of me, they think I’m dangerous to live next to” – are often expressed and reflect the extensively adverse effect of perceived attitudes on all war veterans.215 One of my informants216 told me the following story, saying that occurrences like it “happens all the time”. He said that every time a war invalid goes to the Veteran Administration

211 I conducted interviews in the period between 2009 and 2011. 212 Such as Jelena Grujić (2006) “Ratni veteran – factor nestabilnosti ili factor (u izgradnji) mira”, Termida 9(2): 33-37; Vladan Beara and Predrag Miljanović (2006) Gde si bio, sine moj? Novi Sad: Centar za trauma društva za zaštitu zdravlja ratnih veteran i žrtava ratova 1991-1999; Željko Spirić (ed.) (2008) Ratna psihotrauma Srpskih veteran. Udruženje boraca rata od 1990 opštine Zvezdara: Beograd; Drinka Gojković, Natalija Bašić and Valentina Delić (2003) Ljudi u ratu – Ratovanja I. Dokumentacioni centar Ratovi 1991-99: Beograd. 213 Željko Vasiljević, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 214 Zeljko Vasiljevic, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 215 As it is elaborated extensively in Beara and Miljanović. 216 Željko Vasiljević, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 160

Office, the clerk lady hates you pathologically for no reason, she sees that you receive state money, more money than her, and she hates you – and she is supposed to help you, to give you information, a service”. differences in their motivations for joining the war, the manner of their participation or its duration, upon their return the veterans were all faced with animosity and even hatred Regardless of the from the wider Serbian society. Society is not perceived as a source of support but rather a source of further alienation: “Society does not appreciate the fact that we went to war. Now they mock us at the pub. They keep harassing us: Where are you warriors? Where are you heroes, where are you robbers?” (Baera and Miljanović 2006). In particular the NGO sector that promotes democratic values such as human and minority rights, good governance, transitional justice mechanisms and facing the past projects are widely perceived by the veteran population as “collaborators with the west” and “foreign mercenaries”.217 “Most of those NGO organizations try to prove that the Serbs are guilty, that the veterans are guilty in order to justify the NATO aggression, banishment of the Serbs, unification of the Republika Srpska with Bosnia, to justify the Kosovo secession”.218 Or, as the president of “Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the Line of Duty During the 1990- 1999 Wars of the Republic of Serbia" who mentioned the RECOM project, the civil initiative to promote truth on the wars of the 1990s, said: “Yes, they (RECOM) called us, I would go to Nataša Kandić (the leader of the Human Rights fighters and the RECOM leader) but I am afraid the families of the fallen fighters will hang her. They spent half million Euros per year! What truth? Whose truth?”219 The absurdity is that though different veteran groups support a wide range of ideological agendas, their solitude and overwhelming feeling of betrayal by the state and society provides them with fertile ground for creating a commonly shared social narrative of suffering. The appeal to the Strasbourg Court finally brought the veterans together, but, though the results were undoubtedly in favor of promoting war veterans’ rights, it actually further helped the process of their alienation from the state and from wide parts of society. The Strasbourg Court decision labeled them as the official burden to society,

217Those expressions were often used to describe the most influential Serbian NGO`s, especially Humanitarian Law Center 218 Željko Vasiljević“War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 219 Sava Paunović, "Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the Line of Duty During the 1990- 1999 Wars of the Republic of Serbia" interview conducted on 18 May 2011. 161 as now significant sums of money were to be spent on them at the cost of other interest groups. In addition and contrary to what might be expected, the Strasbourg Court decision did not cause the opening of any political spaces where the national past could be finally publicly addressed. The decision to harmonize the rights and benefits amongst different veteran groups only reduced the prism of the contested issues of the wars of the 1990s to finding a legally suitable formula for paying off the veterans. Now, via the encounter between the veterans and the EU, all of the big questions on the role and responsibility of Serbia in the 1990s wars were narrowed down to an “inconvenient hassle”220 to the state budget. Also having gathered the entire veteran population under one unified legislative criterion, the crucial differences in Serbia’s involvement across the Former Yugoslav territories in the 1990s were all erased. In other words, though war veterans perceived the Strasbourg Court decision as “finally justice”, in practice, it actually further confined the possibilities of collectively debating the contested wars of the 1990s.

Filtering and decontextualization of the 1990s war’ remembrance The process of strategically silencing, fragmenting and alienating the veteran population proved also to be crucial in the course of forging a collective memory regarding the wars of the 1990s. Being estranged both from the state and from society at large, not only do veterans’ narratives lack wider support and resources, which prevents them from being promoted successfully from the grassroots’ level, but they are also framed and structured through the state mechanism of apportioning the necessary resources. In the course of adjusting its structures, norms and values to those of the European Union, the ruling political elite had to adopt a series of laws and regulations. While this was a direct outcome of the long term democratization policy and Serbia’s commitment to European standards, legislative changes introduced in the midst of the first decade in 2000, designed to strengthen civil society, were also deliberately used to weaken the veteran population and to filter and de-contextualize their memories. A significant change the war veteran population had to face was brought via the alterations

220 My expression 162 in the ways that the veteran organizations were to be funded, with this being brought about partially through the Law on Associations. As part of the implementation of European Standards, Serbia signed an agreement in 2003 through which it was obliged, amongst other things, to adjust the Law on Associations so that it matched that of the European Union’s. Previously, Association law had been covered by three different laws (from 1982 and 1990), with shared noteworthy overlaps, inconsistencies and significant “holes”. Under the fitting slogan of conforming to the “highest standards of the European Union”221, the new Law on Associations of 2009 222, proved to be a great opportunity for the state to additionally fragment the war veteran population. Instead of the requisite 10 members for the establishment of any civil association, the Law now required only 3 people. This not only further enabled divisions in the already extremely segregated veteran organizations, but also affected the distribution of the state budgets. This led to an increase in the competition over budgets between different veteran organizations which consequently led to some crucial changes in the manner in which veteran organizations were to be financed. Until the year 2000 the Serbian parliament had been in charge of allocating financial means to the veteran organizations. After the first parliamentary elections in 2000, this role was transferred to the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, when it became a political space of mediation. Out of several hundred veteran organizations, year after year only several organizations were granted funding from the state budget, with the selections being undoubtedly made through the use of very suspicious and unclear criteria.223 However, even those organizations accorded funding were receiving only 70% of their yearly budget, and they had to compete with each other for supplementary financial support. It is vital to understand the utmost importance of these veteran organizations against the backdrop of the war veterans’ ongoing struggle to recover their post-war lives

221 The manual written by the Ministry for Public Administration and Local Self-Government, Belgrade, 2009. It is stressed numerous times that this new Law on Associations is tailored by the highest European Standards. 222 Zakon o Udruženjima, Službeni list Republike Srbije, no. 51/2009, of 14 June 2009. 223 Those were: 1) War Army Invalids, 2) Fighters of the War of the 1990s, 3) Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the line of Duty During the Wars 1990-1999 of Republic of Serbia, 4) The Union of the War Veterans and Invalids 5) SUBNOR – The Second World War Veterans, 6) Association of the military and civil Army War Invalids. 163 in the prevailing atmosphere of tacit or open hatred toward them. The veteran population, including refugees, war invalids and families of fallen soldiers and civil casualties are generally neglected by society and live in typically harsh material conditions deprived of any social status and positive attitude towards them. Thus, the veteran unions were for many their last resource and refuge for addressing their financial and emotional problems. Veteran organizations also enabled “professionalization of the war status”224 and a re-positioning that, if handled rightly, might bring not only social connections and status but also a salary or (legal or illegal) benefits.225 In addition to the alterations in the Law on Associations, the state also changed the ways by which veterans’ organizations were to be granted financial support, again adopting the European standards. One can fully grasp the complex nature of the post- socialist transitions to open neoliberal markets by looking at the following example. Dobry (2000) explained this mix and merge of new standards with old values through two sets of facts linked together in real practices that are significant for East European transitions. The first set addresses elements inherited from the previous system, in particular their organizational forms and resources, informal networks and solidarity ties, as well as social capitals, habitus and routines of the actors themselves. The second set of factors deals with “the particular way for each country concerned to extricate itself from the previous system” (Dobry 2000: 56). Apparently, the state was encouraging democratic competition between various veterans’ organizations with each organization being entitled to financial assistance if it met certain proscribed criteria. Until 2010 the Ministry of Labor and Social Politics had budgets designed for different veterans’ organizations’ activities. However, the report of the NGO “481” dealing with the state financial transparency, pointed out that though ostensibly every single veteran organization was eligible for those grants, there had never been any open competition published what so ever.226 In addition to the Ministry for Labor and Social Policy’s

224 My term. 225 The President of the Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the line of Duty During the Wars 1990-1999 of Republic of Serbia stated that, if he is to help someone it is logical that he get something in return, for example, roasted pork, or domestic brandy, or in the case of a female, “some other favor”. 226 Pravni osnov za finansiranje NVO u budžetu Republike Srbije u 2010. godini: Finansijska održivost civilnog društva Srbije – Linija 481, Centar za razvoj neprofitnog sektara, Beograd, 2011, 25. www.crnps.org.rs 164 refusal to sustain transparency regarding the ways by which grants were assigned, there were in fact no strict legal foundations for granting financial support to veteran organizations, and the Law on financing veteran organizations of the liberation wars of Serbia (from 1990) was not even mentioned.227 In other words, this meant, that only those organizations that were close to the ruling political elite were in a position to receive financial support. Thus, the success of a veteran organization lay in its ability to find a direct political patronage. Every single interviewee had turned to a higher authority as a means of power.228 Whenever there was something in dispute, he (there is no “she” in this story) would come up with a story that supports his side, claiming that XY XY told him so and so. These “authority” figures are always influential politicians from the current political elite where it is not their political or professional agenda that matters but rather their position. These patrons are always “problem-solvers”, “a source of information” where all parties get something in return – politicians allegedly get members of the specific organization as their electoral body while the veterans’ board receives certain benefits: “they (politicians) always offer money, or, something like that, saying we will help you get an apartment, some personal goods…”229 This, over the years, of course, led to various malfeasances and countless accusations of embezzlement on behalf of both politicians and veteran organizations.

227 Ibid. 25. 228 For example, the War Army Invalids” president`s patron (and friend) is the Vice President of Belgrade Assembly and former Belgrade Mayor; "NGO Families of the Killed and Distressed" president`s patron is a current Belgrade Mayor; the patron of the "Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the Line of Duty During the 1990-1999 Wars of the Republic of Serbia” president is by far the most hated person for the others – the Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Policy (who is directly responsible for veteran population). The relationship between the two is expressed with words like “good pals; friends, mates” or with very intimate speech such as calling them by their first or even nick name, and telling stories that bolster mutual closeness. Sentences such as “I can come to his office without knocking”, “I spoke to him yesterday”, “He called me to tell…”; and so on, were abundantly present. The president of the "Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the Line of Duty During the 1990-1999 Wars of the Republic of Serbia” was much more aggressive and rude. Not only was his patron the most hated person in the system, a Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Policy, the one person with all the power in his hands, who also in 2001 approved him governmental support, but he was acting as if he was his patron and not the other way around. Several times he suggested he “has” something on him, and kept saying “If you knew what I know…they could all go down”. 229 Mile Milošević, “Serbian War Veterans” interview conducted on 26 April 2011. 165

Finally, in 2010 and 2011 the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy published open calls for “provisionally financing of project activities of the veteran organizations”.230 However, these were aimed at all veteran organizations and were not solely reserved for the veterans of the wars in the 1990s. They included organizations which promoted memory agendas of World War Two, World War One and even the Balkan wars (1912- 1913). In practice, this meant harsh and uneven competition: small veteran organizations had to prepare themselves overnight to compete against, for example, SUBNOR, the partisan World War Two organization that had more than sixty years of records, or with the veterans from World War One whose commemorations were sponsored by the state and were part of the national calendar. Those who did not get any state money, either because they did not fit the proposed criteria or did not have the right connections (it depends on who you ask) constantly complained that “those open competitions were setup”231 accusing other veteran organizations of illegal actions: “the president of the Army War Veterans (allegedly) has fifty two lawsuits pending against him, no one even knows whether he really was in the wars, and he gets the money!”232 Another difficulty was that the open competition was written in the language imposed by the European Union and the Europeanization process: criteria for competing for the budgets, emphasized “sustainability of the project”, “individual competence and accomplishment”, “representativeness”, “human resources, skills and cooperation with other institutions”, as well as a demand for “financial transparency and project evaluation and monitoring”.233 This was an entirely new way of receiving financial support and was again presented as part of “Serbia’s efforts to strengthen its civil society”.234 However, this posed further difficulties to the veterans, since not only was the language strange and unknown, but also the whole concept of “project” was very unfamiliar. The gap between the state’s demands and the reality on the ground was paradoxical: veteran organizations were supposed to write on “transparency”, “evaluation” and “sustainability”, despite the fact that the majority were either occupying communist style offices or illegally built

230 Odlika o privremenom finansiranju projektnih aktivnosti. Republika Srbija, Ministarstvo rada i socijalne politike. Broj: 404-01-135/4/2010-11. Beograd 231 Mile Milosević, “Serbian War Veterans” interview conducted on 26 April 2011. 232 Sava Paunović, "Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the Line of Duty During the 1990- 1999 Wars of the Republic of Serbia" interview conducted on 18 May 2011. 233 Republika Srbija, Ministarstvo rada i socijalne politike: Poziv za podnošenje projekata, Beograd. 2011. 234 Zoran Alimpić, deputy Mayor, interview conducted on 4 May 2011. 166 facilities, rarely computerized, where the only thing they had in common with the European community was the sky above them!

Pictures of rivalry: adopting the language of the competition The alterations to the Law on Associations and to the regulations for NGO’s applications for grants on a project basis, on the one hand produced a torrent of newly registered veteran organizations, but on the other hand, also posed a demand for a very particular framing of the Veteran organizations so as to fit the state criteria for receiving budgets. As the state call for submitting project proposals, via the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, proscribed eligibility conditions for receiving EU style grants, all veteran associations were immediately forced to adopt both the form and the language of the open competition and accordingly to contextualize their memory agendas. Among other legal demands for registration of the associations’, there were two main requirements regarding the projects to be funded: the project should either be aimed towards “cultivating the combatant traditions of the liberation wars of Serbia” or, it should deal with the psycho-social rehabilitation of combatants, war invalids, civil invalids of war and their families”.235 The suddenly enhanced competition between various veteran organizations - where simultaneously everyone is eligible to apply but no one knows how - led to the increased significance of the proper framing of the membership, documentation and their activities. Membership numbers suddenly became a huge issue and though it was not openly stated, throughout the entire call for proposals, the open calls were understood as meaning “the bigger you are, the more you receive”. Thus, membership became a device of claiming the organization’s “natural” right to receiving state grants. For example, the President236 of the “Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the line of Duty During the Wars 1990-1999 of Republic of Serbia” proudly stated that they were the biggest organization with 20,000 members, but later on they claimed to have at least 40,000 members. The “War Army Invalids” spoke of having a few thousand members,

235 See for example: Republika Srbija (2011) Ministarstvi Rada i Socijalne politike Poziv za podnošenje predloga programa/projekata, Sužbeni glasnik, www.minrzs.gov.rs 236 Sava Paunović, "Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the Line of Duty During the 1990- 1999 Wars of the Republic of Serbia" interview conducted on 8 May 2011. 167 though the President237 of the “Serbian War Veterans” denounced this, saying that they had registered 7,000 members of which 5,000 were with fake I.D.s. The President238 of the “Serbian War Veterans” claimed that he has not only the biggest membership but also the biggest number of active members, and continued, “not like the “Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the line of Duty During the Wars 1990-1999 of Republic of Serbia”, I can swear they don’t have even 2,000 members”. Another means for claiming the right to state grants which constituted the answer to the open competition demand for the newly adopted notions of representativeness, transparency, monitoring, efficiency (and so on), was apparent in the discourse on documentation. When talking about membership, various numbers are mentioned and always followed with sentences such as “we have everything registered, not like other organizations e.g. XY”, or “we have all the evidence in our books/registers/computers/CD-s, not like many other organizations e.g. XY”. Although in a couple of cases they pointed their fingers to shelves filled with folders, or for a second opened some files in the computer, I was never given a chance to go through those files by myself, or at least to see an exact number. Typically, they repeated the same story in which they assured me, that “it is easy to talk, but tell me, can they (competing organizations) prove their membership number? We have here, as you can see (at that stage he points his finger somewhere) names, pictures, everything. And do they have pictures? Of course they don’t!” The president of the “War Army Invalids”, for example, said several times that he made his organization by far the best, justifying it: “You can see our records! The committee members concluded that as far as representativeness is concerned, although we are not the biggest organization; we achieved the best program and documentation, and the best organizational history records”.239 Apart from membership and documentation, the main thing, however, that had to be reframed to meet the Europeanized demands for the call for proposals were the veteran organizations’ activities. Though the open competition demands were open to interpretation, there was a clear request to categorize the activities into one of two offered categories: either to promote the tradition of the liberation character of the Serbia’s wars,

237 Mile Milošević, “Serbian War Veterans” interview conducted on April 26 2011. 238 Mile Milošević, “Serbian War Veterans” interview conducted on April 26 2011. 239 Željko Vasiljević, “War Army Invalids”, interviewed on April 28 2011. 168 or to address psychological needs of the veteran population. It was stated that it is “an open call for the project proposal submission for the bettering of the state of veterans, disabled veterans, civil war invalids and their families in Serbia and nurturing traditions of Serbian liberation wars” whose aim is to address the “1) psychosocial rehabilitation of veterans, disabled veterans, civil war invalids and their families and 2) nurturing traditions of Serbian liberation wars.”240 Thus, what were previously annual activities soon became “project proposals” framed to fit the state demands. Most of the associations managed to organize activities such as yearly summer camps or a sporting events or spa holidays with reduced prices. To be granted funds, these activities had to be wrapped and presented as “psychological rehabilitation“, “psychological revitalization and re-socialization” or as a “climatic spa recovery”.241 The most common activity which actually took place in some form in almost all of the organizations was the celebration of the 8th of March, which was deeply rooted in the communist culture, but this became invisible and untraceable in the proposed projects. During the celebrations of the 8th of March, International Women’s Day, the veteran association representatives distribute “paketići”,242 i.e. small presents to war veterans’ mothers and children. The celebrations were usually held in a rented hall, where “we gather, evoke memories of the fallen, distribute small gifts, such as notebooks, some school equipment, appropriate books, some flowers, and everyone can get up on the stage and remind us that once they had sons and husbands”.243 The disappearance of this celebration from the list of projects that were granted money does not mean, however, that the activity ceased to exist, but rather that is hidden in the ambiguity of the Europeanized jargon. The same is true when speaking about publishing work of certain

240 Republika Srbija (2011) Ministarstvi Rada i Socijalne politike Poziv za podnošenje predloga programa/projekata, Sužbeni glasnik, www.minrzs.gov.rs 241 Odlika o privremenom finansiranju projektnih aktivnosti. Republika Srbija, Ministarstvo rada i socijalne politike. Broj: 404-01-135/4/2010-11. Beograd; Lista prihvaćenih projekata koje je raspisalo Ministarstvo rada i socijalne politike iz oblasti negovanja tradicija oslobodilačkih ratova Srbije i poboljšanja položaja boraca, veterana invalida i porodica palih boraca. Službeni glasnik Republike Srbije. Beograd. Br. 5/12. 2 January, 2012. 242 This issue will be elaborated upon in depth further on since it shows exactly the way previous cultural forms and existing context are shaped in the process of a state transition. This holiday is the inheritance of a previous communist system when on Women`s Day a work collective organized a celebration where women from the collective received flowers (carnations) and presents. In all three state sponsored organizations this custom is still present, though, with slight modification. In the organizations that were not sponsored by the state, this custom did not exist. 243 Ratko Zorić, “Fighters of the War of the 1990s”, interview conducted on 6 May 2011. 169 organizations. It is hard to say whether projects proposing some publishing work are hidden or actually none existent. However, it is mostly certain that the activities that pre- open competition were neglected and denied support were not even submitted. For example, the prolonged attempt to make TV or radio shows on the various topics on the wars of the 1990s by the President of the War Army Invalids, all failed, as no one, at the state or official level, agreed to grant him space for openly debating this subject.244

Revealing the state agenda: the war veterans as victims In 2011, twenty five projects were granted financial support, out of which fifteen awards were made to organizations for veteran of the wars in the 1990s, seven to the Second World War veteran organizations, two to the World War One and the Balkan wars veteran organizations and one to the “Serbian-Jewish Music Association”. In 2012, twenty seven projects were found entitled to the grants, out of which nineteen projects were for organizations for the 1990s wars, three to the Second World War, four to the World War One and the Balkan wars and one to the “Serbian-Jewish Music Association”. The grants were restricted to one million dinar245 per project. However, each organization was eligible to apply for grants on the basis of three different projects. Thus, in the year 2011, for example, the “Association of the fighters in the wars in 1912-1918 and their ancestors” were granted financial support for two projects in the amount of two millions of dinars, the “Association of the families of the fallen in the World War One” received 1,500,000 dinars and the “Serbian Chetnik Movement” received an astonishing amount of 2,304,272 dinars.246 We may learn from the overall list of projects that were granted financial support from 2008 that the state seemingly supports the inclusion of radically different memories across historical lines. It appears as though the state is not interfering and has adopted the European approach of allowing different mnemonic groups to develop their own agendas regarding memory politics and other activities. One can see, for example that from 2008

244 He succeeded in maintaining for five years a half an hour radio show at the local radio station at peripheral part of Serbia. Even there, he complained, no one cared, so he had to distribute prizes to motivate listeners to “learn” about the wars of the 1990s. Željko Vasiljević, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April, 2011. 245 Approximately 10,000 Euros. 246 “Budžetska linija 481” 25.12.2010. http://pescanik.net 170 on the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy granted money in the same breath to the World War One organizations, partisan organizations from the Second World War, descendents of the Balkan wars in 1912-1913, several organizations with some variations on the generic name “Homeland wars”, several war veteran organizations from the 1990s’ wars and several Chetnik organizations. Such a diverse palette of memory agendas is quite striking and once again, it might appear to reflect a true democratic change in Serbia. However, deeper analysis reveals particular trends, especially when it comes to framing the memory agenda regarding the wars of the 1990s. Before pointing out how those open calls framed war veterans’ memory agendas, it is necessary to address certain irregularities discernible in the ways the state grants were allocated. To begin with, the Centre for Non-profit Sector in Serbia published three extensive studies on transparency and financing of the NGO sector from the state budget. While the conclusions on each Ministry are diverse, the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy was the only one out of 18 that refused to participate and share its data base.247 In addition to the lack of transparency, the Ministry did not provide any reports on the work of the appointed committee. The analysis also reveals that no legal basis for granting support existed and consequently, it is unclear on what grounds the organizations granted support were selected leaving enormous space for manipulations. This resulted in, on the one hand, allegations by the Minister of Labor and Social Policy248 against veteran organizations concerning malpractices and embezzlement. For example, it was claimed that out of around 19,900 war invalids in Serbia, 60,000249 are allegedly registered as members of one or other of Veteran’s organizations!250 On the other hand, veterans blamed the Ministry for granting money to phantom organizations, such as the “Union of the War Veterans and Invalids” that was established the very same year as the grant process started, received an astonishing 3,800,000 dinars. In addition, from a careful analysis of organizations that were granted money, it becomes apparent, for example, that in 2012, the same organization, which submitted under different organizations’ names

247 Pravni osnov za finansiranje NVO u budžetu Republike Srbije u 2010. Godini: Finansijska održivost civilnog društva Srbije – Linija 481, Centar za razvoj neprofitnog sektara, Beograd, 2011, 25. 248 Miro Čavaljuga 249 Thought this issue raises many questions, in practice, every veteran and or war invalid could have been registered in as many organizations he wishes, the fact that might explain such a huge gap in numbers. 250 “Bitka za podelu novca među veteranima” 24 April.2011. www.politika.rs 171 identical projects, ended up receiving support twice (in different amounts!) for the same project.251 Though misconduct was clearly present, both on the part of the veterans and the Ministry, this does not negate the fact that the state was clearly engaged in promoting a particular memory agenda. Amazingly, in the course of 2011 when fifty nine organizations submitted projects252 and in 2012 when sixty five organizations submitted projects253, none of the veteran organizations’ of the wars of the 1990s submitted any proposals specific to the wars in which they fought. None of the projects granted money recollects any specific battle, event, troop or even individual; neither indeed do any of the overall submitted projects: any possible identification to indicate places, dates or people is omitted from all of the project proposals submitted by the war veteran organizations of the wars in the 1990s. Even the time orientation “wars of the 1990s” is non-existent in many cases. There is a series of generic names used: “war veterans”, “combatants”, “fighters” or “warriors”, but nothing to suggest whether a certain organization presents regular soldiers, reserve troops or volunteers, or where those were fighting: in Kosovo, Slovenia, Bosnia etc. On the one hand, this is, without any doubt, a direct consequence of the ruling political elite’s unwillingness to open political spaces for shaping national debate on the contested wars of the 1990s. On the other hand, the war veterans’ deliberate covering up of any specific details regarding their military service, is closely connected to the fact that the state itself is highly invested in covering up the decade of the wars. It is precisely the state silence that causes the very particular framing where the concrete is reduced so as to be transformed into universal. This process of abstraction embodies the state mechanism of escaping from dealing with the misconducts in the war of the 1990s and evading all responsibility. Not only is the state constantly blurring facts and responsibilities for the atrocities committed in the wars of the 1990s, but it is also actively employed in framing the war

251 “Udruženje srpskih ratnika Leskovac“ for the project „Edukacija i rehabilitacija učesnika ratova u normalne tokove društva“ received 600,000 dinars and „Organizacija boraca veterana 1991-1999 Republike Srbije Leskovac“ received additional 720,000 dinars for the same project „Edukacija i rehabilitacija učesnika ratova u normalne tokove društva“. 252 “Bitka za podelu novca među veteranima” 24 April, 2011. www.politika.rs 253 Obaveštenje o prispelim projektima po pozivu upućenom nevladinim organizacijama za unapređenje položaja boraca, vojnih invalida, civilnih invalida rata i porodica boraca u Republici Srbiji kao i negovanja tradicije oslobodilačkih ratova Srbije. Službeni glasnik Republike Srbije br. 6/12. 172 veterans from those wars primarily as victims. Out of the fifteen war veterans’ projects submitted in 2011, twelve dealt with the wars of the 1990s, with those selected and granted financial support dealing exclusively with psychological rehabilitation and in connection to the PTSD syndrome. In 2012 the pattern was the same as in 2011, with sixteen out of nineteen projects fitting these criteria. Thus, instead of possibly praising veterans as heroes or at least providing necessary frameworks for their acknowledgement in society, the state purposefully chose to frame them as victims. The deputy Mayor himself said: “We both know (the veterans and the state) that there is no prey to share. Because, let’s be honest, we lost those wars! It is not an official state policy but a psychological background. They (veterans) learn to accept it”.254 The silent protest to such particular framing but also the acceptance is best shown in the following explanation provided by veterans: “Victims and war veterans are not the same thing. It is only possible in Serbia, to equate victims with veterans. It is due to this international pressure, apparent in the media and NGOs. You cannot fight it. (…) The only way is to reach a compromise, to suck it up!”255 Or, “We are not in the position to demand things, we lost those wars, we have to understand it! So whatever they give we take!”256 Or, “This is shameful. They (the state) try to present us as poor, miserable and wretched. Veterans are not victims.”257 However, in spite of all those complaints, virtually every single veteran organization tries to formulate their organizational work plans and programs in accordance with the open competition demands. For example, the president of the Serbian War Veterans, that has never received the state grant, told me how the grant money meant for PTSD and rehabilitations are spent: “The Minister of Social Policy258 gave that money to his Deputy259 and he gave it out to the presidents of the Army War Invalids260 and the "Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the

254 Zoran Alimpić, deputy Mayor, interview conducted on 4 May 2011. 255 Željko Vasiljević, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011 256 Zoran Marković, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 27April 2011. 257 Mile Milošević, “Serbian War Veterans” interview conducted on 26 April 2011. 258 Rasim Ljajić 259 Miro Čavaljuga 260 Željko Vasiljević, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 173

Line of Duty During the 1990-1999 Wars of the Republic of Serbia"261. What did they do with the money? They bought vehicles. No one ever came to visit us”.262 Such particular framing is enabled through the instrumentalization of the universal notion that “wars make everyone a victim” which downplays the crimes through the idea that we are all victims (Levy and Sznaider 2010: 135). Psycho-social rehabilitation and revitalization, together with PTSD is used as a device for the purposes of renationalization of conceptions of victimhood. It is precisely this absence of hierarchies of victims and perpetrators that de-contextualizes and de-historicizes the actual deeds of the past injustice (Levy and Sznaider 2010: 131). Thus, contrary to how it might seem, the truth is that the apparent promotion of a diversity of memory politics is actually very convenient for the current Serbian agenda of blurring responsibilities. It allows all options to remain viable without committing to any specific agendas. It also maneuvers remarkably well between the demands for democratization at the international level and the demands to address the needs of the war veterans at the domestic level. On the one hand, the state grants financial support in accordance to the democratic regime, “to the European rules”, 263 where it seemingly both strengthens the civil society and enables everyone’s “right to remember”.264 On the other hand, the Serbian state, while granting financial support, does not publically promote any of the veteran organizations of the wars in the 1990s, but rather tacitly and persistently frames them as victims. On the contrary, the grants are given away as a payoff for keeping silent. Thus, in practice, the instrumentalization of the democratic processes enabled moving any form of discussion regarding the wars of the 1990s away from public discourse and relegating them to the margins of society. The war veterans were brought into a position where they preferred to reshape their memories in order to obtain only the very minimum needed in terms of rights and benefits, to survive. Thus

261 Savo Paunović, "Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the Line of Duty During the 1990-1999 Wars of the Republic of Serbia" interview conducted on 18 May 2011. 262 Mile Milošević, “Serbian War Veterans” interview conducted on 26 April 2011. 263 Zoran Alimpić, deputy Mayor, interview conducted on 4 May 2011. 264 The Ministry of Labor and Social Politics Miro Čavaljuga defended the probity of the open competitions claiming that “it is about time for everyone to understand that everybody has the right to remind us of their own sufferings “. “Bitka za podelu novca među veteranima” 24 April 2011. www.politika.rs 174 they settled for being labeled as victims and for keeping their private memories away from the public eye.

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Chapter 6

Social Narratives of Suffering: Impression Management of Serbia’s Evolving National Calendar

It is one thing to claim success over the labeling of a certain social group, however big it might be, as victims. It is a completely different thing, however, to construct wide sets of societal infrastructures in order to successfully inculcate certain visions of nationhood. The collective memory which a political elite seeks to formulate must appear to be a seemingly factual normative assessment of the past. Governments assert their power to create a normative narrative through rhetorical politics structured by a dominant frame. This framework articulates the fundamental notions of a group’s perceived identity and allows or disallows certain visions. Thus the dominant frame of rhetorical politics engenders a “collective field of imaginable possibilities”, which Kruz (2000: 227) defines as a restricted array of plausible scenarios of how the world can or cannot be changed and how the future ought to look. The boundaries are established at critical points in accordance with present sets of power relations where various settlements accompany their construction. Thus, in this chapter I explore the mechanisms exploited by the ruling political elite in order to deal with the opposing demands at the international and the local levels as presented in the newly tailored national calendar. Since national calendars are not an instrument for representing a historic reality, but rather are a device for setting forth certain agendas, the extent to which a narrative is convincing and credible, depends upon its rhetorical and performative power. I show that the memory agenda that was found to be suitable for both audiences was constructed through the social narratives of suffering. I suggest that the Serbian political elite employed Impression Management (IM) techniques in editing state-sponsored memory projects so as to reframe and conceal contested elements of their past. The main question I pose here is what is the rationale behind the way in which the new national calendar in Serbia is edited, instrumentalized and authorized? To answer this question, I conducted two separate yet connected lines of inquiry: The first refers to significant changes adopted in the Law on Holidays over the past two decades. The

176 second line of research addresses the construction of an official narrative in ‘The State Program for Commemorating the Anniversaries of Historic Events of the Serbian Liberation Wars’,265 henceforth referred to as ‘The Program’. This is a legally binding document, approved by the Serbian government,266 which serves as a written manual for the current calendar practices of present-day commemoration. Together with the changes apparent in the Laws on Holidays, one can get a deeper insight into how the political elite are using the current Serbian national calendar to reframe certain aspects of Serbia’s contested past. I also show that the Serbian political elite uses Impression Management (IM) techniques in the current Serbian calendar to avoid dealing with its contested past and better its chances of entering the European Union. This is understandable since the application of IM is useful in transmitting two different messages at the same time to the domestic and international levels respectively. The use of IM is well suited to conveying different meanings to different audiences simultaneously because its various techniques allow for varying emphases, thus framing the comprehension and perception of the social context in significantly different ways, depending on the audience. The exact ways in which agendas are justified and legitimated in the newly tailored national calendar demonstrate to us the IM techniques used in the attempt to persuade audience at both the national and international levels. I show here that while placating the international community by simulating the adoption of democratic values, the current Serbian calendar also legitimizes a wide range of emotions at the local level. The desired outcome is that the European reading of the current Serbian state would emphasize Serbia’s positive democratic changes supporting Serbia’s candidacy to the EU while the local Serbian population may at the same time find significant references in the new calendar, helping them to express their grievances, feelings of injustice and victimhood, and even to claim superiority toward their significant others, first and foremost  Europe.

265 Republika Srbija, Obdor za negovanje tradicija oslobodičkih ratova, “Državni program obeležavanja godošnjica istorijskih događaja i oslobodilačkih ratova Srbija”, broj 401-00-00024/2009-11/2, datum 11. Mart. 2009. Beograd. 266 On 11 March 2009, in Belgrade, the Board of the Republic of Serbia adopted The State Program for Commemorating the Anniversaries of Historic Events of the Serbian Liberation Wars. 177

Impression Management and Social Narratives of Suffering Though IM has its origins in sociology, in the works, for example, of Ervin Goffman (1959), it is also rooted in the literature of organizational psychology (Schlenker 1980, Tedeschi 1981, Riess 1982). The term “impression management” refers to the process by which individuals attempt to control the impressions of others (Leary and Kowalski 1990). Schlenker (1980) defined IM as the attempt to control images that are projected in real or imagined social interactions. IM presents constructive and favorable images to the public, encouraging a positive outcome. It is a common underlying process that bears social and cultural implications. In Goffman’s dramaturgical analogy it is explained that human interactions, like the interactions of actors in a play, are dependent on time, place (stage) and audience. Thus the perceptions of self are influenced by the performance of a particular scene being acted out. This analogy positions individual and collective human behavior in a social setting with real life interactions not only being goal related, but also being influenced in the same ways as theatrical ones are. The same is true when analyzing nation-states. States are goal-oriented and engaged in IM (Meyer, Boli, Thomas et al. 1997) for the purposes of controlling the “situational context” (Goffman 1959) in a global sphere. Like individuals, nation-states need to define both the situation and the several roles played by others in that situation. This is done through communicating each other’s identities and goals via strategic representations, designed to establish, maintain and protect desired identities (Rosenfeld et al. 1995). Using IM facilitates the development of those desired identities (Leary and Kowalski 1990). This is particularly important when analyzing how young nation-states present themselves globally, because today it is internationally accepted that every nation should create its own self-image to improve its chances on the global markets. Thus, I do not imply that national identity, or even national self-image, are solely artificial constructions, but rather competing, negotiated notions of individuals and collective selves that operate in a discursive terrain (Verdery 1991). Many elements of national image and identity intended for external display are inconsistent with local practices and beliefs (Strang and Mayer 1993). The discrepancy between a nation’s image as perceived by others and national identity as a reflection of self perception, expresses itself in two considerably different versions of “the-world-as-it-

178 should-be” (Dzenovska 2005: 174). This discrepancy contains some tension, and I suggest here it might be rather successfully overcome, or at least reduced, with the help of some IM techniques. The use of IM, generally in the politics of “naming the war” (Ashplant, Dawson and Roper 2000: 17) where the normative claims of the parties who participated in war are set, and particularly through the construction of the national calendar and other state-sponsored commemorative practices, may help the state in addressing the opposing international and local demands. The processes of producing a desirable narrative, through “memories that are placed in the service of the national project” (Lomsky-Feder 2004: 84), present powerful means to mark the discontinuity between past and present, as well as that between the new and former regimes (Misztal 2003). Furthermore, all narratives serve as shared formulations through which memory agents forge their memories. Wertsch (2008: 122) shows that narratives always contain two dimensions: specific stories situated in space and time, and “schematic narrative templates” that “produce replicas that vary in their details but reflect a single general story line. The most common schematic narrative templates created after wars are based on motives of heroism, bravery, patriotism, suffering and victimhood. The question of which narrative eventually wins out is a matter of performative power and the performative impact of textual enactment and in that sense, the commemoration of a traumatic event is critical to achieving symbolic extension and a wider audience’s emotional identification (Alexander 2004: 1-31). Social narratives of suffering present “a claim to some fundamental injury; an exclamation on the terrifying profanation of some sacred value; a story about horribly destructive social processes and a demand for emotional, institutional and symbolic reparation and reconstruction” (Alexander 2012: 16). However, it is of utmost importance to understand that social narratives of suffering are reflections, neither of individual distress nor of actual events, but of symbolic renderings that reconstruct and imagine them. Rather than being descriptions of what exists, they are arguments of what should have been and what should be (Alexander 2012: 4). They refer to a dramatic loss of identity and meaning, a tear of the social fabric where mass–mediated representations play a decisive role. Suffering can become collective if it is conceived as wounds to

179 society and to an imagined community of “us”. This community is always constructed via narrative and coding. One of the most efficient ways of producing social narratives is through national calendars. National calendars are particularly suitable since they serve as cognitive maps, organizing structures of national identification that primarily stress the importance of temporal continuity and periodization as a means of articulating collective identities (Zerubavel 2004). The institutionalization of commemorative holidays establishes an annual cycle of remembrance, designed to ensure mnemonic socialization through recalling certain “sacred” moments (Zerubavel 2003). Calendars do not so much measure time as they provide a rhythmic form (Munn 1992). Thus, national calendars may facilitate the embodiment of the social narratives of suffering, as they promote a wide range of nationally desirable feelings: from messages of grievance, feelings of injustice and victimhood to heroism and bravery. This was elaborated particularly well in Yael Zerubavel’s (1995) extraordinary book on the making of Israeli national tradition, where she presents accounts on the construction of Jewish national myths and consciousness by the Zionist movement. Highlighting particular events and themes of collective sacrifice, iconic heroism, and national unity, she explores how Israeli national identity has been built in part through the narrative reconstruction and reinterpretation of both ancient and modern military defeats. The relevance of the particular tailoring of national calendars was also well demonstrated in the work of Handelman and Katz (1995) 267 where they showed the significance of public events when analyzing how the current Israeli calendar reflects upon the country’s version of moral boundaries of societal exclusion and inclusion. Thus, thinking about the calendar as a site for the dramatization and visualization of collective memory allows us important insights into the analysis and further understanding of common struggles in many societies where memories are the object of disputes, conflict and struggles (Friedman 2015). 268 At the same time, this involves the need to focus attention on the active and productive role of participants in these struggles as “it is them

267 See more in Handelman Don (1990) Models and Mirrors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. 268 Forthcoming. 180 who generate the meaning of the past, framed by the power relations in which their actions are embedded in the present” (Jelin 2003). However, the current political reality in Serbia requires that demands be addressed at both the international and the domestic level. Extensive usage of impression management techniques enables this to be managed effectively allowing a different reading of the calendar at the domestic and international levels. In the creation of the current Serbian calendar, four dominant IM techniques were used as part of Serbia’s self- presentation: acquisitive ingratiation, conformity, exemplification and denial. The first technique, acquisitive ingratiation, occurs when one controls scarce or valuable resources that the ingratiator hopes to acquire at minimal personal cost (Jones 1964). It is also often called “attraction management”, where the task and challenge of the ingratiator is to discover what the audience finds attractive, and then provide it (Schlenker 1980). The second technique, conformity, relies on a general tendency to like those whose values and beliefs are similar to one’s own, and to express opinions or acts in a manner consistent with another party’s attitudes, beliefs and values in order to increase liking. Conformity is often used in situations where there are power differences: the more difference there is in the power between parties, the more likely it is that the lower one will imitate behaviors and values of the higher one (Rosenfeld et al. 1995). The third technique, exemplification, is commonly used to stress positive attributes through examples of good and moral acts, heroism and victimhood. The exemplifier wants to be admired and respected for its integrity, and usually presents itself as willing to suffer to help others, while in reality it also attempts to make others feel guilty because they are not acting according to the same morality and integrity values. The fourth technique, denial, occurs when one is confronted with a threat to one’s self-integrity, embodied by a stereotype that one believes is being applied to oneself. Of the many ways that people can cope with a threat to their self integrity, one of the simplest is denial. Individuals and groups that are concerned with impression management appear more likely to rely on denial in order to reduce the likelihood that others will adopt a threatening view of themselves (Von Hippel et al. 2005).

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Laws on Holidays Though the different layers of Serbia’s past have gradually started to disappear from the official discourse, they have continued to fester in various areas of life. According to the Law on National Holidays of 1997, the official holidays of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ)269 were: New Year’s Eve on January 1st and 2nd; The Day of the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia on April 27th; International Worker’s Day on May 1st and 2nd; Victory Day on May 9th, and Republic Day on November 29th and 30th. At the level of the Republic of Serbia, July 7th is commemorated as Uprising Day during World War Two, and there is also National Serbia Day on March 28th. This controversial date represents the adoption of several amendments, changing policy towards the autonomous regions of Kosovo and Vojvodina as well as the establishment of Milošević’s regime. Apart from these, St. Sava Day is celebrated in all Serbian schools on January 27th. Additionally, all employees are entitled to take one day off on the basis of their religion: Orthodox Christians on January 7th, Julian Orthodox Christmas, Catholics and other Christians on December 25th, Christmas Day, or on the second day of Easter, Muslims on Eid al Fitr or Eid al Adha, and Jews on Yom Kippur. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had essentially ceased to exist in 1991. Thus, the celebration of Republic Day was anachronistic and confusing, as it represented the establishment of Yugoslavia, nevertheless, it continued to exist until 2002. Consequently, in 1997 the state decided to amend the prior basis for celebration, and promoted it instead as the date when the Monarchy was replaced by the Republic in 1945. In July 2001, following the regime overthrow of October 5th 2000, several significant changes occurred within the Law on National State Holidays in the Republic of Serbia. Firstly, Republic Day, celebrated for almost six decades, disappeared together with Uprising Day on July 7th. Secondly, the Milošević period’s National Serbian Day on March 28th was abandoned, and the Day of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, symbolizing the 1992 Žabljak Constitution between Serbia and Montenegro (April 27th), gradually disappeared and was replaced with Serbian Statehood Day inaugurated on

269 SRJ addresses the union of Serbia and Montenegro.

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February 15th. Thirdly, St. Vitus Day (June 28th), a remnant of the Kosovo Battle, only began to be (officially) celebrated in 2001, though as a working day. Lastly, Orthodox Christmas and Easter officially became non-working holidays. As all religions had the right to have one non-working day based on their tradition, Orthodox Christians had to be placed on an equal footing and were thus granted the right to stay at home on their Saint Day.270 This seemingly minor correction demonstrates a new ideological trend, where differences on the basis of religion are utilized to stress and assert the indisputably Orthodox character of the Serbian nation. In 2007, the law amending the Law on State and Other Holidays in the Republic of Serbia merely added a few corrections of syntax, primarily in order to formalize the official break from Montenegro and the end of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

“The Program for Commemorating the Anniversaries of Historic Events of the Serbian Liberation Wars” The Program aimed to further explain, organize and shape knowledge, while stressing certain historical events and individuals as a means of rearranging a new and desirable set of values. It came to life after a process of debate lasting several years, in which an eight-member committee,271 together with various professionals, “negotiated” over Serbian history and past events. Though I was continuously denied access to the records of the committee sessions, a clerk in the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy provided me with some significant information regarding the process. He pointed out that the Committee held numerous meetings, and actively cooperated with “all historical institutes in the country, institutions of science, museums”. I argue that the nature of this process should be questioned, since all of the above mentioned institutions are state- sponsored, and their agendas are harmonized with the needs of the ruling political elite. In 2005 the first draft version of the Program was issued, while the complete version was published on March 11th 2009. It was published on Serbian Veteran’s Legacy, the official government website, by the Committee for Fostering Traditions of the Liberation Wars, a

270 Saint Slava. 271 President of the Committee of Public Service of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, members of the Committee were: 1) President of the Committee for Defense and Security, 2) Minister of Social Affairs, 3) Minister of Education and Sports, 4) Minister of Culture, 5) Minister of Religion, 6) Minister of Urban Planning and Construction, and 7) Deputy Minister for Social Policy. 183 permanent governmental body of the Republic of Serbia, established in 2001.272 Most of the work on the Program was done between 2007 and 2009,273 since “it was necessary to adapt it to local needs, and align it with international standards and with similar programs by governments in many European countries”.274 The document includes significant anniversaries, commemorative days, national and religious holidays, as well as important Serbian figures275, together with a brief description of why specific days are commemorated and exhaustive explanations of the protocol for each of them. Every commemorative day is followed by the date of its commemoration and a concise explanation regarding the date, place, interval and period of its commemoration or celebration. It is a sixteen pages document that introduces the reader to the “historical events of the liberation wars of Serbia”276, numbering twenty one in total. Out of twenty one commemorative days, one is dedicated to the distant past and celebrates the Kosovo Battle, eight are related to nineteenth century Serbia, six to the Balkan wars and World War One, five to World War Two, and only one to the recent wars of the 1990s. Two different but supplementary frameworks are apparent in this important manual: The first deals with the ways in which the current commemorative master narrative is adjusted to the values of the international community, while the second stresses the underlying subtext in constructing the significant “other” as suitable for the local purposes. Both frameworks refer to a set of strategies whose main purpose is to position the message in a precise semiotic context, and to build easily recognizable mental schemes and maps (Zerubavel 2003). Two complementary motives are present: The first is to assert Serbia’s democratic foundations, while the second stresses both the righteous and liberating character of all the wars Serbia has fought, as well as its victimhood.

272 “Odluka o osnivanju odbora za negovanje tradicija oslobodilačkih ratova Srbije”, Službeni Glasnik, 38/97, i 46/01 273 It seems that local elections had no significant effect on the work of the committee, and all its members stayed unchanged. 274 The advisor in the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy. 275 This will not be addressed here due to lack of space. 276 Republika Srbija, Obdor za negovanje tradicija oslobodičkih ratova, “Državni program obeležavanja godošnjica istorijskih događaja i oslobodilačkih ratova Srbija”, broj 401-00-00024/2009-11/2, datum 11. Mart. 2009. Beograd. p. 1. 184

Serbia’s Democratic Foundations: International Context The decision to place the master narrative in the 19th century is designed to legitimize the current Serbian nation-state as being born out of a prolonged and arduous struggle for freedom, based on democratic values. The nineteenth century does not only commemorate major battles and crossroads, but more importantly, the foundation of Serbia’s legal system and institutions. The reason for placing the master commemorative narrative in the nineteenth century is that this century, in the words of a committee member,277 is perceived as “acceptable by the European Union”, since “the twentieth century is colored with significant ideological differences and no common satisfactory event is to be found” (Kovač, cited in Petrović 2012: 11). The main holiday and ideal point of departure for Serbian nationhood was found in Candlemas (Serbian-Sretenje), the Serbian Statehood Day. This day combines two different events in one date: the (1804), representing the beginning of Serbian liberation, and the declaration of the Serbian Constitution (1834), encapsulating the beginning of Serbian existence as an independent state. The choice of this somewhat unexpected date is further explained by the Committee member278: “Of all the holidays throughout the calendar year, only one is national. There is no doubt that Serbia renewed its statehood, after the First Serbian Uprising. This has been also scientifically justified, thus, we chose 15 February to be our National Day. The Candlemas constitution is one of the most democratic constitutions of its time. It was made in the tradition of Belgian and French constitutional law. It was very liberal and modern, and it placed Serbia in the line with the most progressive constitution states”.279 However, the constitution was valid and lawful only for one week when the Kont Miloš suspended it out of the fear that the Constitution is too liberal. Candlemas is a religious holiday, also known as the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, and this further Christianization of Serbian national holidays reinforces the argument that the State is officially declaring the Republic of Serbia as primarily belonging to Orthodox Christians (David 2012). The two underlying events of the

277 Radoš Ljušić, a historian. 278 Dejan Ristić 279 Decenija nacionalnog praznika Srbije, 15 February 2012, www.politika.rs 185

Serbian Statehood Day are not widely accepted as the most important events in Serbian history (Šarić 2012). However, the holiday narrative establishes a symbolic link between the First Serbian Uprising against the Turks and the Candlemas’ Constitution to the later creation of state, where the Constitution narrative particularly emphasizes its modernity and focuses on human rights. The merging and matching of these two symbolically compatible events, that is the First Serbian Uprising and the Constitution’s declaration together with the Orthodox Christian holiday of Candlemas, was intended to bring together components that would portray the “New Serb” as enlightened and civilized, yet, again, traditional, religious and constantly fighting for freedom. Such concoctions, as will be further discussed, are present throughout the entire calendar. Serbia’s cultural affinity with European tradition is persistently emphasized through a set of “democratic values”. Naturalization of “European values” is achieved by presenting Serbia, from its early beginning, as developing according to democratic principles. The use of the conformity technique proves to be most effective when there is a change of opinion (Jones 1959): it is when the ingratiator switches from a divergent opinion to an agreeing one, that the target assumes the ingratiator values that opinion enough to make any necessary changes. This in turn strengthens the positive feelings the target has for the ingratiator. In Serbia, democracy is understood as harmonization with EU standards, and Europe is perceived as a power in possession of valuable and desired resources. Thus, strategically choosing events that potentiate democratic values and blur contested elements of Serbia’s past, as presented in the Constitution’s declaration event, was purposefully directed towards pleasing the international community. The national calendar conforms to EU democratic values while Serbia aspires towards acquiring EU resources at the lowest possible cost. Such reasoning resembles the IM technique of acquisitive ingratiates. The nineteenth century commemorated in the Serbian calendar is portrayed as being an enlightened period, a starting point for planting the seeds of further democratic development. The period starts from the establishment of an executive authority “Praviteljstvujušči Sovjet” (1805), and continues through the Second Serbian Uprising (1815) that primarily underscores successful “diplomatic negotiations” and the fact that Knez Miloš “spent fifteen years building, in a peaceful manner, the autonomous position

186 of Serbia inside the Ottoman Empire”280, finally leading up to the glorious declaration of the Constitution (1835). As the Program suggests, the complete independence from the Turkish occupation was only finally reached in 1878 at the Berlin congress, as a result primarily of prolonged diplomatic efforts and the early development of Serbia’s legal institutions. Another example of Serbia’s attempt to present itself in the best possible light in the international scene is apparent in the emphasis on Serbia’s part in the anti-fascist struggle. The Day of Victory, May 9th, commemorates not only the end of World War Two, but more emphatically, the Day of Europe, where Serbia bravely fought fascism and anti-Semitism while supporting “nonviolence and understanding”.281 The choice of 9 May was the inheritance of the Yugoslav legacies that officially recognized 9 May as the Victory Day over Fascism as an all-state non-working holiday. In addition, 9 May is also celebrated as the Day of Europe. Mixing and merging both the Russians’ meaning of 9 May as the final victory over Nazi Germany and the continental European meaning, where 9 May resembles the Europe day (Malksoo 2009) is aimed at emphasizing Serbia’s part in the antifascist struggle, which is directed towards promoting Serbia’s candidacy to the EU (Banjeglav 2012). Though this rhetoric is aimed at claiming Serbia’s democratic foundations, in reality, anti-fascism is continuously being nationalized, through the claims of equally legitimate movements, equating Chetniks with partisans. As part of IM conformity techniques, the attempt at being accepted into the “moral community of shared memories” (Margalit 2002) as a strong supporter of the anti-fascist struggle, is also expressed by the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide in World War Two, where Serbia commemorates the tragic killing of Serbs, Jews and the Roma people. This commemorative date, embedded with multiple meanings, symbolizes the breach of the Ustasha concentration camp in Jasenovac (Croatia). The Day of Remembrance had already been established in 1992, on the request of the Museum of Genocide Victims,282 whose agenda was to “demonstrate the suffering of the Serbian people via Jews” (Byford 2007: 56). Thus, this date represents continuity with the Milošević agenda, where the

280 Republika Srbija, Obdor za negovanje tradicija oslobodičkih ratova, “Državni program obeležavanja godošnjica istorijskih događaja i oslobodilačkih ratova Srbija”, broj 401-00-00024/2009-11/2, datum 11. Mart. 2009. Beograd, p. 6 281 Ibid. p. 6 282 “Službeni glasnik Republike Srbije“, 42/92 187 extermination of Serbs, Jews and Roma is equated; and while it aims to conform to the international demands of the Human Rights regime, at the local level, it actually enables further promotion of nationalism and victimhood. It appears that the strategy of the ruling political elite is to satisfy both demands: convergence with the European Union, and fortification of local nationalism (Subotić 2011). The use of IM techniques further enabled this two-fold strategy.

The Serbian Significant Other: Europe in the Local Context It is my opinion that by using IM techniques, the image Serbia’s ruling political elite portrays to the international public together with the national identity being forged for local purposes, discloses Serbia’s current construction of otherness. This argument is based on Appadurai’s (2000) notion that the subjective positioning of a particular nation within the world is of the utmost importance in making sense of existing imaginary categories. Thus, through the gaps in constructs of national image and identity, Serbia reveals its subjective place and feelings in relation to its significant “other”, in this case  Europe. It has been argued for quite some time that Serbia has a fundamentally complex and contradictory relationship with the West (Čolović 1993, Lazić 2003, Volčić 2008). The ambivalent relationship towards Europe is easily found in the calendar. On the one hand, Serbia is eager to join the European Union and is therefore adjusting itself to fit Europe’s agenda. On the other hand, it is perceived in Serbia that the West is responsible for “stealing” Kosovo, a Serbian “symbol of freedom, resistance, patriotism, national being, chivalry and heroism”.283 This is precisely the reason why incorporating IM into state-sponsored commemorative practice helps to better understand how political elites navigate between international and local concerns in order to please often contradictory demands. On the one hand, Serbia claims not only to belong geographically but, more importantly, culturally, to Europe, where, as explained previously, conformity proved to be a suitable technique to boost such a claim. Yet on the other hand, Serbia highlights its heroic

283 Republika Srbija, Obdor za negovanje tradicija oslobodičkih ratova, “Državni program obeležavanja godošnjica istorijskih događaja i oslobodilačkih ratova Srbija”, broj 401-00-00024/2009-11/2, datum 11. Mart. 2009. Beograd, p. 7 188 sacrifices for Europe and affirms Europe’s indebtedness to it, but also claims its right over Kosovo, which is abundantly stressed through the exemplification technique. At the local level, such tailoring of the national calendar leaves space for expressing grievances over Serbia’s losses, feelings of injustice for being “robbed” of Kosovo, victimhood and even moral superiority over Europe, as Serbia’s debtor. Contrary to conformity techniques, where the focus is put on deliberately creating an image that fits European values, in the IM technique of exemplification, moral deeds and sacrifice are put forward. Exemplification, as a tool of performance comparison, is extensively used to prove the righteous struggle and liberation character of all wars Serbia has participated in, and to portray this as an ongoing tradition. This manner of selection of events is intended to establish the fact that the common Serbian has some innate attributes of the highest moral standards, particularly those of heroism and sacrifice for the sake of others. This is apparent in the list of events chosen in the calendar, starting with the Battle of Kosovo (1389). It is also incorporated in the Serbian Statehood Day as the beginning of the First Serbian Uprising (1804-1813), which symbolizes the “inception of the liberation struggle to form an independent state”.284 The exemplification of moral excellence, as a suitable IM technique for claiming perennial and righteous aspirations for freedom, is further elaborated in the First Uprising, portrayed in the four exemplary battles: Čegar, Mišar, Ivankovac and Deligrad. They offer the perfect backdrop; evoking a mythical atmosphere in which a small and freedom- loving people fight against a giant and brutal “Other”. In the battle of Čegar, it is explained that the Turks monstrously severed numerous Serbian heads, building a tower out of their skulls, known as Ćele-Kula. The battle of Mišar is described as the battle of David and Goliath, where a small Serbian army of 7000 foot soldiers and 2000 vedettes bravely defeated 40,000 Turks. The battles of Ivankovac and Deligrad continue to portray heroic victory and unfair battles between the small Serbian people led by Karađorđe and a giant Turkish army. Next in chronological order, comes the Kumanovo Battle (1912). As opposed to the other battles highlighted in the calendar chosen to strengthen the perception of Serbian rightneousness and self-secrifice, this battle was purposefully

284 Ibid. p. 2 189 selected as an exemplification technique for claiming historical rights over the territories of Kosovo. Likewise, World War One receives a lot of attention and becomes the focal point of the great Serbian epos, in which a young and small nation heroically overcomes huge obstacles. It was due to outstanding bravery, that Serbia defeated a far more powerful enemy with tragic consequences to its own destiny. The narration in the document overtly uses the IM technique of exemplification to imply that Serbia paid an enormous price while fighting not only for its own freedom, but also for the freedom of Europe in its entirety. This saga is outlined through three great battles: the Battle of Cer (1914), the battle of Kolubara (1914) and the breach of the Thessaloniki Front (1918). Exemplification of the righteous struggle and self-sacrifice in World War Two follows exactly the same pattern. It starts with the symbolic beginning of World War Two in Serbia, on April 6th 1941, where not only “the casualties were great, but the destruction of educational, cultural and medical facilities of huge proportions took place”.285 Out of a considerable number of battles during World War Two, the Program chooses to single out the battle of Kadinjača, which successfully represents the essence of the heroic but tragic Serbian fight for freedom. For example, it is stated that “the soldiers of the Radnički battalion sacrificed their own lives to enable the rescue of enormous numbers of people as well as the continuation of the armed struggle for the liberation of the country”.286 The breach of the Srem front in 1945, a massive battle, is described as “the longest and hardest battle of World War Two”, where it is emphasized that, though victory belonged to the Yugoslav army, the battle took place on the Serbian land of Srem. Such a long list of heroic struggles and self-sacrifice is aimed at tacitly suggesting also the just character of Serbia’s participation in the 1990s wars. However, the most striking fact is that the use of the IM technique of denial allows us to see what is actually omitted from the calendar: instead of dealing with Serbia’s role and responsibility in the 1990s wars, this is hushed away by the image of the ultimate Serb – righteous and morally superior. Though nation-states rarely commemorate their own misdeeds, it is immediately noticeable that the only commemorative day out of almost ten years of war

285 Ibid. p. 3 286 Ibid. p. 10 190 in the 1990s, of which at least a portion was undeniably due to Serbian aggression, promotes the memory of Serbian victimhood during the NATO bombing as the wars’ central motif. On the one hand, this blurring of the crucial past events is possible due to the use of the IM techniques that help push forward certain visions of the past while simultaneously covering others. On the other hand, though the Europeanization process constantly inflicts pressure on the ruling political elite, the commemorative projects are in the end completely under the auspices of the state. It seems that the denial of negative attributes, such as a contested Serbian role in the wars of the 1990s, together with conforming to the EU standards, promoting self- sacrifice and the tradition of liberation wars over history, are all goal oriented IM techniques through which Serbia aims to acquire European resources at a minimal national cost. Thus, acquisitive ingratiation is built-in to the current Serbian calendar, and it presents strategic thinking designed to positively influence Serbia’s international image as a short-cut for gaining certain benefits.

Calendar – Work in Process On December 5th 2011, the Serbian parliament adopted the Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on State and Other Holidays, and so two additional none- working days where added to the calendar. The first is a Memorial Day for Serbian Victims in World War Two (October 21st), addressing the local needs for further claiming self-sacrifice and victimhood, but also “stressing the importance of Serbia in the anti- fascist struggle”.287. It sets apart Serbian from other victims (Roma and Jews), and in that blurs the historical facts and represents the continuation of World War Two memory agenda, again, further establishing the victimization of Serbs throughout history. It was the compromise between different political parties where finally a wide consensus was achieved by choosing 21 October, 1941, as representing the “bloody winter when German occupation forces conducted a mass murder of civilians across Serbia” (Govedarica 2013: 203). The Serbian president288 explained why 21 October is a “proper” date to commemorate the anti-fascist struggle saying that “during the popular

287 The Minister of Labor and Social Policy, Rasim Ljajić, quoted in “Poslanici o državnim praznicima”, 23 November 2011, www.rts.rs 288 Boris Tadić 191 uprising in which both the communists and the royalists (Chetniks, Nedić and Ljotić troops) participated (separately) from 1 August to 5 December 1941, 11,522 fighters lost their lives in addition to another 21,809 civilians including Jews and Roma”.289 Thus, while this date allegedly celebrates the anti-fascist legacy, it actually not only promotes Serbian victimization but also presents the collaborating forces as random victims. Precisely through emphasizing the Chetnik contribution to the anti-fascist struggle and ignoring their collaboration with the Nazis, the ruling political elite tries to reconcile the domestic demands to reinforce the nationalist agenda with the international demand to embrace the values of the anti-fascist struggle. The second holiday: Armistice Day for World War One (November 11th), the day when “weapons finally were quiet”290, already existed in the calendar as from 2005, but was now upgraded to a non-working holiday. The Minister of Labor and Social Policy291 justified these decisions as follows: “That is how it is commemorated in all victorious countries”.292 It also reflects, he continued, “the politics of peace, which are of utmost importance for Serbia’s future aspirations”. In addition, these additional two non-working holidays will get us closer to the European non working day average”. 293 Two additional alterations were made: Firstly, the Serbian Statehood Day is to be celebrated with two non-working days instead of one, which was meant to emphasize its centrality and to single it out from other commemorative days. Secondly, what was previously the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide in World War Two was now declared to be also the day of Remembrance for all genocide victims. Such framing leaves plenty of room for interpretations, since it commemorates everyone and no one at the same time.

289 “Tadić podržao Šumarice”, 20 September 2011 www.press.rs 290 Republika Srbija, Obdor za negovanje tradicija oslobodičkih ratova, “Državni program obeležavanja godošnjica istorijskih događaja i oslobodilačkih ratova Srbija”, broj 401-00-00024/2009-11/2, datum 11. Mart. 2009. Beograd, p. 9 291 Rasim Ljajic, quoted in “U skupstini predlozi za nove pranike i izmene postojecih”, 23 November 2011, www.rts.rs 292 Ibid. 2011. 293 Ibid. 2011. 192

Promoting the state agenda: Morally superior victims If one were to judge the Serbian nation over their recently adopted calendar, one may get the impression that Serbs are above all a democratic and peace and freedom- loving people, who were, throughout their entire history, oppressed and sacrificed. Such a tailored calendar serves multiple functions and meanings: on the one hand, it tends to present Serbia as a democratic and progressive state, but on the other hand, it legitimizes a wide range of emotions at the local level. The new Serbian calendar is made both to meet European expectations and to further Serbian interests in joining the EU, but also to allow wider audiences in Serbia to express feelings of animosity, injustice and frustration as a means of settling historical accounts. This, however, cannot explain the ways in which the new Serbian calendar is being accepted or rejected. It is also too soon to predict whether, and to what extent, the ruling political elite will be successful in adapting Serbia’s past to the present EU demands and who will gain what in the long term. However, the results of the research conducted in 2010 by the Strategic Marketing Agency show that only 56% of Serbia’s population knows that Candlemas is a national holiday. However, more strikingly, only 7% knew what was being celebrated on that day (Milošević 2012: 1004). In 2012 the TV station “Glas Naroda” made a short two and a half minute reportage asking random passersby why Serbia celebrates Candlemas. Out of 11 interviewed only one person knew the answer while others offered a wide range of responses such as: “probably because it has some historical significance”, “it is the day of love”, “it is probably a holiday” or “it is in the middle of winter, the days get longer”.294 It does suggest, however that at the international level, in many ways, Serbia is behaving like a job applicant who is “trying to look good and lies to do it”. It strategically embraces acquisitive ingratiation techniques as a short-cut to EU resources while both conforming to democratic values and denying any responsibility for the wars of the 1990s. Furthermore, a positive self-presentation is developed through the exemplification of Serbia’s “good deeds”, such as the struggle against fascism, a culture of negotiation, and continuously fighting anti-Semitism. By contrast, on the local level, the promoted

294 “Da li znate zašto se Sretenje obeležava u Srbiji kao nacionalni praznik?” 14 February 2012, www.glasnaroda.rs 193 memory of Serbian victimhood and the narratives of suffering are repeatedly exemplified and preserved. Nineteenth century Serbia has been revived and symbolically rebuilt, and the new Serbian commemorative master narrative has been placed in that century, thereby completely shutting its eyes to the wars of the 1990s. According to the current Serbian calendar, those wars and atrocities apparently never happened, and if they did, Serbia had nothing to do with them. More importantly, such tailoring of the calendar blurs Serbia’s responsibility and accountability for those wars. However, the process of hushing up of who did what, who suffered in which ways, and why (Gordy 2013) during the wars of the 1990s is not restricted solely to the construction of the national calendar. On the contrary, it goes far beyond this. In the coming chapter I will address another mechanism, in which Holocaust memory is used as a screen memory, again, to deflect the discussion away from the wars of the 1990s and Serbia`s role in them.

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Chapter 7

Holocaust Discourse as a Screen Memory: the Wars of the 1990s as an Elephant in the Room

When starting my research in 2009 on the process of constructing Serbian collective memory on the wars of the 1990s, the Holocaust discourse in Serbia was not one of the topics I was interested in, but beaten into submission by its relentless reappearance, I came to appreciate the importance of the issue. After tightly connecting Serbian victimhood with the Holocaust at the opening of the monument, and after realizing that the War Veterans perceive that the promotion of the Holocaust comes at their expense it became clear that this phenomenon needed to be explored. What seemed to me as an irrelevant reflection of my specific placement during the interviews (as coming from Israel and being Jewish), where some of my informants extensively spoke of the Jews and the Holocaust, was in fact of crucial importance. I suggest here that Holocaust discourse was deliberately promoted by the ruling political elite, once again, as it was found suitable for balancing the opposing demands at the international and the local levels. At the international level Holocaust discourse is used as a measure of Serbian morality, where, again, instead of dealing with its responsibilities in the wars of the 1990, Serbs are to be rated and appreciated in their role during World War Two. At the local level, Holocaust discourse is used as a wider context enabling Serbs to claim themselves as the ultimate victims. During the year 2012 at least four Serbian ministries participated in raising Holocaust awareness through various projects sponsored by: The Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, The Ministry of Labor and Social policy, The Ministry of Culture, Information and Information Society, and The Ministry for Human and Minority Rights. On 27 January, 2012 on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the very first museum exhibition named “The Holocaust in Serbia between 1941

195 and 1944” was opened in the Museum of Yugoslav History under the sponsorship of the Government of the Serbian Republic and in participation with the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the Belgrade municipality and Savski Venac district. The exhibition opening was followed by numerous discussions, panels and ceremonies and had been planned and prepared over several months. The President of Serbia, Boris Tadić, presented the exhibition as a symbol of the culmination of the decade -long post-war efforts towards achieving an open and democratic society in Serbia. Holocaust memory and Holocaust research had been non-existent in Serbia during the Milošević regime, just a little more than a decade earlier (Kerenji 2006). The little research on the Holocaust was largely inseparable from research into anti-fascist struggles, while Holocaust memory was used solely as a rhetorical device for claiming Serbian victimhood. MacDonald (2005) extensively analyzed how in Serbia, it became crucial during the disintegration of Yugoslavia during the 1990s, to view the self through the lens of a persecuted victim. He showed that the Holocaust functioned as a template for re-interpreting “self” and “other” where it served in popular discourse to legitimate the violent recreation of national space. In the quest for the most powerful metaphor, the most extreme analogy, the allegory that would top any other allegory, the Serbian myth-makers embraced a rhetorical strategy” Živković (2011: 198) named the “Jewish Trope”. Thus, rather than discussing the dynamics that underpin the marginalization of the Holocaust in the current Serbian public discourse, (as Jovan Byford successfully does),295 I analyze here what may appear to be the exact opposite phenomenon and ask how it is that in just in a few years the Holocaust has been revived and embraced by the domestic political elite? I suggest here that Holocaust memory discourse in Serbia has been recently promoted by the state in its efforts to conceal any political space where an encounter between the state and the civil society could possibly occur (Grinberg 2010) and to redirect public debate regarding the wars of the 1990s. This however, also goes hand in hand with Byford’s claims on the actual negligence of the Holocaust memory at official levels. I argue here that the official attitude of simultaneously both neglecting and

295 See Byford Jovan (2007) “When I say “the Holocaust” I mean “Jasenovac” - Remembrance of the Holocaust in contemporary Serbia.” East European Jewish Affairs. 37(1): 51-74. 196 embracing different segments of Holocaust memory is to be understood in the light of their instrumentalization of the Holocaust. In the 80s and the 90s, the Holocaust was primarily used as a rhetorical tool for gaining currency in Serbia for the claim that “both Serbs and Jews are the ‘chosen people’ – slaughtered, sacrificed, denied expression, yet always righteous, always defending themselves, never attacking” (Živković 2011: 200). In the post-Milošević Serbia, the same instrumentalization of the Holocaust memory disourse has been expanded beyond rethorics: to commemorative practices, museum exhibitions and most importantly, the educational curricula. This time, however, Holocaust memory is employed by the political elites as a means of dealing with the contradictory demands at the domestic and international levels and it is also used to enwrap any public debate on the wars of the 1990s. At the national level, singular political actors embraced Holocaust memory discourse to claim their particular agendas, among them, the Jewish community, the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) and Human Rights NGO’s. The Federation of Jewish Communities in Serbia (and Montenegro until 2006), a small and powerless community, continued organizing ceremonies and commemorations at various sites of the suffering from the Holocaust throughout the year, as it did under the Milošević regime. Throughout the decade after the overturn of the Milošević regime, NGO’s promoting democratic values, such as the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, the Youth initiative for Human Rights, Women in Black and others, referred to the Holocaust as “a unit of moral measurement” (some also did so during the Milošević regime) and presented it exclusively in relation to Human Rights violations (Levy and Sznaider 2002). The SOC however, proved to be a major actor in promoting the commemoration of the Holocaust, especially from 2003 when the Jasenovac Committee of the Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church was founded. The Jasenovac extermination camp (1941-1945) was not operated by the Germans but by the Croatian Ustasha, and had been among the largest camps in Europe. It represents a symbol of Serbian suffering and there is great controversy over the numbers of people killed there. The Jasenovac Committee aimed, first and foremost to claim Jasenovac as the new Serbian Kosovo, as the ultimate place of Serbian suffering while the Holocaust was used to provide a wider context. Byford (2007: 54) showed that

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“the fact is that the victimization of Jews is recalled and commemorated almost exclusively in the context of, and in relation to, the theme of Serbian suffering and martyrdom, which continues to dominate nationalist discourses.” At the international level, the Holocaust proved to be a suitable device for gaining certain privileges and for claiming membership in the international moral community. Mixing and merging different and at times even contradicting agendas promoted at the local and international level, the Holocaust came in handy for the Serbian political elite as a device for simultaneously satisfying both domestic and international demands. In other words, looking from outside of the European Union, embracing the Holocaust memory is understood as a necessary step suitable for international display that adds extra points and improves Serbia’s chances of getting accepted into the EU. This chapter addresses the threefold process relating to the construction of Holocaust memory discourse in today’s Serbia. Firstly, I analyze various agendas that brought the Holocaust to the fore through educational and commemorative projects. Secondly, I contrast the adoption of Holocaust memory discourse by the ruling political elite with other governmental practices that clearly suggest that Holocaust discourse is highly instrumentalized and serves other purposes rather than that of promoting Human and Minority rights. Thirdly, I suggest that these official attitudes should be understood as a “screen memory”, where Holocaust memory discourse represents another means for concealing an open debate between different segments in society about the Serbian role in the wars of the 1990s and for insinuating that Serbia actually played a righteous role in those wars.

Screen memory Screen-memory is a Freudian notion that addresses a memory of something that is unconsciously used to repress the recollection of an associated but distressing event. The concept of screen memory is seen as a bracketing mechanism that draws attention to the complexities of social memory, as it simultaneously produces and interrogates knowledge about the past as a way to both conceptualize and trouble contemporary notions of social memory (Freeman, Niensan and Melamed 2013).

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Having implications in a relatively globalized world, across many nation-states, the Holocaust is often used as a “screen memory… remembered in order to displace, repress or ‘screen’ other, perhaps more traumatic, local events and histories” (Levi 2007). As already supplied with a stock series of metaphors, images, and symbols for good and evil, righteous and demonic, the Holocaust has become increasingly influential in structuring and re-scripting nationalist narratives, especially since the seventies and eighties, when the Holocaust arguably became ‘industrialized’ (Finkelstein 2000). This is due to the fact that the Holocaust, as a cosmopolitanized memory, can be constitutive both for the European outlook, but also for the more nationalistic perspective (Levy and Sznaider 2010). According to Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider (2005), the global spread of Holocaust discourse has generated a new form of memory: “cosmopolitan memory”. The cosmopolitanization of memories refers to practices that shift attention away from the territorialized nation-state and the ethnically bound frameworks that are commonly associated with the notion of collective memory. In their view, as in Jeffrey Alexander’s (2009), the Holocaust has escaped its spatial and temporal particulars to emerge as a common moral touchstone in the wake of the Cold War, and can thus provide the basis for an emergent universal Human Rights regime. There have been examples in America, whereby fascination with the Holocaust may have functioned as a screen memory (Deckerinnerung) in the Freudian sense, covering up a traumatic event that cannot be approached directly, thus creating an ideological displacement (Zelizer 2000), or conversely thoughts about other traumatic recent events may have served as ‘screen-memories’ for the Holocaust. There were attempts to compare slavery or the Native American experience to the Holocaust, but these were vocally suppressed before they gained a wider audience. In Bernard-Donals’ (2005) research on the Holocaust Museum in Washington (USHMM) after the 9/11 attack, he showed a curious conflation of memories where the attacks in New York and Washington in September 2001 and those events taking place in Afghanistan were very much on the minds of visitors to the Holocaust museum - as screen memories for the Holocaust. A similar line of claims is to be found in Schiller’s (2008: 131) research on the discourse that followed the terrorist attack at the Munich Olympics in 1972, where the identification with the victims allowed for the “conflation between the real and symbolic

199 victims”. It is the return of the past that occurred against the backdrop of an event, Schiller claimed, that was meant to blanket over the memory of Nazism that became obvious through the discourse that stressed the identification with Israel and condemned the Arab states that supported the event. Michael Rothberg (2009: 16) has, however, harshly critiqued this approach of “competitive memory - a zero sum struggle over scarce resources” preferring to “consider memory as multidirectional: as subject to ongoing negotiation, cross referencing, and borrowing”. He argued that claims that remembering one thing must come at the cost of another are historically problematic, as well as politically and ethically unproductive. Instead, according to Michael Rothberg Holocaust consciousness serves as a platform for articulating issues of national interest and thus is activated as a screen-memory which does not simply compete with other pasts but also provides a greater level of comfort than that which confrontation with more local problems could allow. Rothberg claims that the Holocaust memory is ultimately interconnected with slavery, colonial domination and forms of genocide across the globe, thus it necessarily simultaneously furthers several discourses relevant to the given national context. This multi-dimensional approach to the Holocaust as a screen memory is presented, for example, in the late stages of the Algerian war for Independence where the resonance between the violence of decolonization and that of the Nazi genocide created a multidirectional network of memory that facilitated the emergence of survivor testimony as a powerful genre for exposing both forms of violence (Rothberg 2009). Following this line of argument, Levi showed that the Holocaust energized Australians to confront their own past with regard to Aboriginal Australians, with a number of historians producing impressive comparative studies (Levi 2007). Whether and under what conditions memories of the Holocaust provide a platform for embracing national histories, or for enabling their disappearance, is yet to be theorized. I, however, in contrast to what Rothberg (2009) and Levi (2007) suggested as to the Holocaust discourse enabling a discussion on contested past, find that the current Holocaust memory discourse in Serbia functions as a repressive force. It is a zero-sum game used by the Serbian governments to shut down debates on the role and responsibility of Serbia in the wars of the 1990s and to redirect this to a much more

200 suitable discourse on World War Two which also requires fewer resources and can be adjusted to both domestic and international demands.

The Serbian context and the perception of the Holocaust In socialist Yugoslavia, as in other communist countries, the suffering of Jews was interpreted as a generic manifestation of the broader terror regime instituted by the Nazis against the civilian population (Radović 2009). Although by 1952 the Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia had erected five major monuments across Yugoslavia to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, it was clear that Jewish suffering was part of the larger carnage suffered by the peoples of Yugoslavia during World War II (Kerenji 2006). Nazi anti-Semitism was treated as an expression of racism directed not just at the Jews but also at the Roma and the Slavs. As a result, Jewish victims of the Holocaust were, for the most part, subsumed under the category of “victims of fascism”, and remembered only in the context of the broader memorialization of the People’s Liberation War and anti-fascist resistance (Bajford 2011). The post-Communist transition in the region was accompanied by revisionist trends in national historiographies and the revival of right-wing and anti-Semitic political ideas that affected the public perception of the Holocaust. After 1989, the systematic suppression and organized forgetting of the Holocaust, which had defined the decades under Communist rule, gave way to new forms of trivialization of Jewish suffering under the Nazis. The Serbian intellectual elite had already adopted “genocide” discourse in the 1980s (Kerenji 2006). It was used to emphasize both the “forgotten” Serbian suffering at the hands of the various Yugoslav peoples - Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Albanians - during World War Two, as well as the hardships which the Serbs had been undergoing in the overwhelmingly Albanian province of Kosovo (Denich 1994, Živković 2011). As Yugoslavia officially started to break up in 1991, this date also marked the shift in the Holocaust memory treatment in all former Yugoslav countries. During the 1990s and early 2000s Holocaust memory per se received almost no attention, but was used strategically to promote Serbian narratives of martyrdom, of exile and expulsion, and of death and resurrection.

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In Serbia, during the Milošević regime Jewish Holocaust imagery did play a key role (MacDonald 2005) and it was manipulated as a rhetorical tool and “a symbolic prop whose purpose is to draw attention to and augment the significance of the main focus of memory, namely Serbian martyrdom” (Byford 2007). The unique performativity of the Holocaust is embedded in the idea that maintaining the identity of a victim and portraying oneself as a victim is sometimes difficult to discern for the simple reason that most people accept people, nations and institutions according to how they present themselves (MacDonald 2002). The availability and already developed performativity of the Holocaust has encouraged different national groups to adopt its symbolism, imaginary and vocabulary as means of articulating their own nation’s past history of victimization. Such performative reinterpretation of national histories allowed Serbia to justify the violent and illegitimate forms of statecraft they were pursuing during the wars of the 1990s. Apart from sporadic acts of acknowledgement of the Holocaust, the general attitude of negligence toward both Holocaust memory and the Jewish community reached its peak in Serbia in the 1990s developing into outright anti-Semitism during the NATO bombardment. The proliferation of the belief in Jewish conspiracy during the NATO bombardment brought numerous Human Rights violations in the aftermath of the Milošević regime, including acts of increasing anti-Semitism (Byford 2003). According to civil rights groups and other NGOs which monitor instances of ethnic hatred in Serbia, the number of threatening letters to Jewish households, attacks on Jewish owned property, as well as physical assaults on members of the Jewish community, all increased during the spring of 2001. Those kinds of excesses contrasted with the period after World War Two when anti-Semitism had been a marginal occurrence in Serbia. The ambiguous state attitude also continued after the year 2000 and is best illustrated in relation to the event in Poland commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. The event was attended by twenty five heads of state, delegations from fifty countries and about 10,000 guests. Serbia and Montenegro was the only European country that was not represented by a government official. The president of Serbia and Montenegro, Svetozar Marović, excused himself saying he had

202 come down with flu296, the plane of the minister of defense, Prvoslav Davinić, did not take off because of a mechanical problem.297 Serbian president Boris Tadić and prime minister Vojislav Koštunica never even considered going to Poland (Kerenji 2006). It was publically perceived as a “disgrace”298 for Serbian politics. It was even commented that: “They (politicians) don’t want to be reminded of Auschwitz, especially not these days, while they are still fighting to change the results of the wars of the 1990s. Auschwitz reminds too much of Srebrenica.” 299 This is one of many examples that show the degree to which official institutions, politicians, and discourses in Serbia were insensitive to any non-Serbian suffering, thus the question remains what motivated officials to suddenly change their stance and start promoting Holocaust discourse? The year 2005 was significant as two separate markers set processes in motion, processes that would over the years produce and shape the official attitude towards the Holocaust. The first was the UN Resolution whereby on the first of November, 2005 the UN General Assembly designated January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It meant, in practice, that every UN state member is obliged to commemorate the Holocaust at state level. This directive contrasted sharply with the state’s avoidance of the 2005 the Holocaust commemoration. Thus, just one year after refusing to participate in the sixtieth anniversary of the Auschwitz, in 2006, Serbia become obliged to commemorate International Holocaust Day and, over night, the official rhetoric became that of the Human Rights Regime. The second event, that initially appeared to be of a minor relevance, was the recognition of the Jasenovac Committee of the Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church as an example of good practice in the field of commemorating the Holocaust by the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) (OSCE Report 2005).300 This was immediately used by the Jasenovac Committee as they recognized the need to “draw the attention of the Ministries of Education of Serbia and Republika Srpska to the importance of the Declaration on Holocaust

296 Even though he appeared in a political talk show on a Serbian TV station that same day. 297 Delegacija posetical Ausvic, 2 March 2005, www.b92.net 298 Komentari, Delegacija posetical Ausvic, 2 March 2005, www.b92.net 299 Forum Krstarice, 29 January 2005, forum.krstarica.com 300 OSCE report - Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. 2005. Education on the Holocaust and on anti-Semitism: Am Overview Analysis of Educational Approaches.43. 203

Education, which provides an opportunity for the tragedy of the Second World War to be accurately and properly presented and transmitted to future generations.” Thus, though Holocaust commemoration or Holocaust research is not the principal activity of the Jasenovac Committee, the OSCE recognition supplied additional confirmation that enabled continuing the Church agenda when equating Serbian with Jewish victims. Moreover, it proved that the Holocaust could be used successfully as a platform to promote “the cult of the New Martyrs of Jasenovac” (Byford 2007). The OSCE recommendation, composed without any full understanding of the particular framing the Jasenovac Committee gives to the Holocaust, gave official legitimacy to the Serbian Orthodox Church to pursuing further reframing of the Holocaust, not in relation to the extreme forms of the Human Rights violation but as the framework for claiming alliance between Jewish and Serbian suffering throughout history.

Educational projects: The Holocaust under the auspices of the SOC (Serbian Orthodox Church) Ever since the breakup of Yugoslavia and the decline of communism, the role of the SOC has been constantly changing and over years the Church has begun to claim its pre-World War Two power back. During World War Two, the SOC had fought against communism, as in other countries where it was becoming the prevailing ideology, giving its support to the monarchy and to the Chetniks. In the period after World War Two the Church had been utterly marginalized. Many of its properties had been confiscated and some of its clerical elite had been forced into exile. The wars of the 1990s marked a revival of the Church’s influence which increased significantly during the following years. By the eve of Milošević’s fall, the Church enjoyed relatively high levels of public trust and instead of becoming a leading institution that could approach questions of responsibility (Gordy 2013), the Serbian Orthodox Church became a leading right-wing nationalist force. The rising power of the Church, followed by the resurgence of and Serbian traditions is an omnipresent feature of both cultural and political life in modern day Serbia. Thus, the Jasenovac Committee of the Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church, founded in 2003, composed of respected Church representatives, immediately claimed its source of legitimacy in the

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SOC. The Committee developed a wide range of activities, whose primary aim was to create a local, “regional and international level of awareness of the suffering of the Serbian people and the Church in the Second World War and celebrating the New Martyrs of Jasenovac”.301 Though the main purpose of the Jasenovac Committee was to commemorate Serbian victims, Jews and Roma were included as “our brothers in suffering” (Byford 2007: 61). The Holocaust was perceived as the “historical context in which Jasenovac took place” (Byford 2007: 62). Thus, it was a part of the committee’s agenda to address the Holocaust. However, the main responsibility for shifting the uses of the Holocaust beyond its performative and rhetorical framing lies in the hands of a single person, the Hieromonk Archimandrite Jovan Ćulibrk, recently inaugurated as Vicar Bishop of Peć patriarchate in Kosovo. Jovan Ćulibrk is a new kind of a monk, capable of appealing to a wide range of audiences, who is currently a central public figure in Serbia’s religious and cultural life.302 He is also often called a “parachutist in priesthood” when addressing his military career as a reserve officer of the 63rd Airborne Brigade.303 Born in Zenica in 1965 (Bosnia and Herzegovina), he studied Serbian language and literature at Banjaluka University (Bosnia and Herzegovina), at Zagreb University (Croatia), and later on also studied theology at Belgrade University (Serbia). He attended postgraduate studies in Jewish culture at the Yad Vashem Memorial Institute and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he was the winner of the 2004 Golda Meir Award.304 In addition to being extensively educated, and fluent in several languages among them English, Russian and Hebrew, German, Greek and several Slavic languages, Ćulibrk is especially appealing to the younger generations as a proclaimed rocker. Prior to becoming a priest, he wrote a few works on contemporary music and culture, theory and practice of the contemporary media and the question of post and supra-modernism in professional magazines and journals.305

301 The Jasenovac Committee site: http://www.jasenovac-info.com 302 Also proclaimed as “The man of year 2012” by Vreme magazine. 303 Jovan Ćulibrk postao vladika, 8. September, 2011. www.pecat.co.rs 304 He defended his master thesis written under?? The late Dr David Bankier, the former chief of the International Institute for holocaust research at Yad Vashem. He is now preparing a PhD thesis on the same subject together with Dr Yoav Gelber (13.12.2011. www.spc.rs) 305 Bibliography of Archimandrite Jovan (Ćulibrk) elected for Vicar Bishop of Lipljan 31 August,.2011. www.spc.rs 205

His relationship with Israel is not restricted solely to the Holocaust studies. 306 His perception that the act of sacrifice and the role of the victim are central to the spiritual being of both fighter and priest guided Fr Ćulibrk in his search beyond the immediate attachment to a biblical spirituality of the Holy Land. 307 He thus also studied military- civil relations in Israel.308 Furthermore in answer to a request made by the Serbian Ministry of Defense, Jovan Ćulibrk coordinated the cooperation between the Military Archive of Serbia and the Archive of Yad Vashem, as well as several military delegation exchanges between Israel and Serbia. His major work, however, has been in promoting the memory of the Holocaust in Serbia. From 2001 when Ćulibrk visited Israel as a member of the state delegation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia309 he started building close ties with the Yad Vashem museum. Thus when in 2003 the Jasenovac Committee was established, it was immediately linked with Yad Vashem, as the institute embraced Fr Ćulibrk unreservedly. However, both Yad Vashem and OSCE failed to recognize the far-reaching consequences and the malicious potential of shifting the framings of the Holocaust from its universal meanings to serving the claims of a narrow Serbian nationalist agenda. The archive of the Jasenovac Committee offers a clear picture of the type of contact maintained between the Committee and Yad Vashem. Under the title of “educational seminars for teachers” prior to 2006, it can be seen that the SOC clergy participated in six of these seminars also “some forty of SOC candidates studied since 2003, sixteen of them under the auspices of the Jasenovac Committee or in coordination

306 From the summer of 2003 he enjoyed the hospitality of Mother Church of Jerusalem, where he served in 2005 at St. George of Hosevite Monastery, and then periodically also served the Sarandari Monastery - Mount Qarantal and other sanctuaries of the Holy Land. He is an associate member of the Theological Fraternity in the Holy Land, which deals with Christian-Jewish relations, for which he has given several lectures. He has published works on the theme of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade in 2009 he gave two lectures at the postgraduate workshop on Jewish history and culture. His biography is available at the Serbian Orthodox Church web site: http://spc.rs/eng/biography_protosyngellos_jovan_culibrk_elected_vicar_bishop_lipljan 307 Jovan Ćulibrk postao vladika, 8 September 2011. www.pecat.co.rs 308 At the Hebrew University with Professor Ben Ari 309The republics of Serbia and Montenegro together established a federation in 1992 as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia(FRY). In 2003, it was reconstituted as a state union officially known as the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. 206 with it”.310 The hieromonk Jovan Ćulibrk, as a protégé of Yad Vashem, played a central role in all of the seminars as a key note speaker and one of the organizers. At the state level, however, the Serbian political elite started to adopt and promote Holocaust discourse more intensively after the 2005 OSCE recognition of the Jasenovac Committee work on the Holocaust and the UN resolution on International Holocaust day. The involvement and the commitment at the state level gained a more official status after December 2006, when the Serbian delegation headed by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs311, Jewish community representatives and the Museum of Genocide representatives312, became an observer at the TASK Force for international cooperation on education about the Holocaust (ITF). This role meant that education about the Holocaust became obligatory, in line with demands of the international community, with the state being committed to supporting and promoting it. At this very meeting the Serbian Foreign Minister313 condemned Iran for denying the Holocaust. This was the same right-wing nationalist politician who wrote in 1985 his well known “Letter to the Writers of Israel”, in which he argued that “Serbs are the thirteenth, lost and the most ill- fated tribe of Israel” (Živković 2000: 236). Later in the 1990s he linked Serbia and Israel together, saying the both are living “in a hellish siege where the sworn goal is to seize them and to cover them with mosques or to Vaticanize the lands of Moses and the people of St. Sava patron saint” (Cigar 1995: 236). He was also a propagandist of the policy: where ever Serb graves are – there should be the Serbian state, where the true borders of Serbia were to be marked in the west by the Jadovno pits, the scenes of historic massacres of Serbs during World War II (MacDonald 2005: 17). Thus, at that point, when Serbia became an observer in the TASK force it became necessary to establish education on the Holocaust. However, the Holocaust research and consequently education was, as briefly described at the beginning of this chapter, practically none existent. However, it was not the Jewish Historical Museum, the Jewish Community or the History Department at the Belgrade University that was sponsored by the state to promote Holocaust education, but the Jasenovac Committee, the organization under the

310 Jasenovac committee delegation at a conference in Jerusalem, 2008. www.jasenovac-info.com 311 Zoran Popović 312 Obrazovanje o Holokaustu 2006. http://holoedusrbija.blog.rs/blog/holoedusrbija 313 Vuk Drašković 207 auspices of the Serbian Orthodox Church. This choice is understandable since the Jasenovac Committee promoted precisely the framing of the Holocaust that served the ruling political elite’s purposes: the Committee already had both well established connections with Yad Vashem and had some previous international recognition, such as the OSCE acknowledgment, and more importantly its promotion of the Holocaust was fitted to the claim of Serbian victimhood. Thus, since 2006 the Serbian Ministry of Culture, joined later on by other ministries, started sponsoring seminars at Yad Vashem organized by the Jasenovac Committee. Two seminars highly significant to the future Holocaust memory development were held in 2006 and 2008. The first, the “Academic exchange with Serbian scholars”314 was held in June 2006 at Yad Vashem. Here for the first time, the seminar was open to professionals and practitioners from the field of the Holocaust.315 Though the seminars were aimed at promoting research on the Holocaust and implementing its universal massage of the necessity for Human Rights, its agenda was similar, though much more sophisticated, to that promoted during the Milošević regime in the 1990s. The newly emerging agenda behind this promotion of Holocaust memory was not even close to being as blatant as that of the 1990s where the Holocaust was used openly in the right-wing politicians’ rhetoric to propagate the Big Serbia claiming that both Serbs and Jews are the “chosen peoples” (Živković 2000: 73). However, while being more subtle, the motive of equating Serbian victims with Jewish victims remained. For example, the topic of one of the seminars was the Staro Sajmište memorial museum, a central place of Jewish detention in Serbia. The necessity of the museum’s creation and its future disposition was, however, discussed in the context of the controversy regarding the new exhibition at Jasenovac, a concentration camp in Croatia (Byford 2007), again redirecting the discussion from the Holocaust to the Serbian victims. At the seminar in

314 Academic exchange of Serbian and Israeli scholars at Yad Vashem, 2006. www.jasenovac-info.com 315The group was headed by Ms. Silvana Hadži-Đokić from the Ministry of culture and former ambassador of Serbia and Montenegro in Israel Ms. Krinka Vidaković-Petrov, and included Jovan Mirković, Dragan Cvetković and Nenad Antonijević from Belgrade Museum of Genocide Victims, Srđa Trifković from the Rockford Institute (Chicago), Milan Ristović from the University of Belgrade, Milan Koljanin from the Institute for contemporary history, same as the crew of TV Logos that covered the visit. Mr. Dušan Krstić of Svetlopisno odeljenje from Belgrade joined the group on Thursday. 208

2008, again sponsored by the Serbian Ministry of Culture,316 “Teaching about the Shoah and anti-Semitism” at the International School for Holocaust Studies, organized and promoted by the Jasenovac Committee, the thirteen-member delegation (out of 20 Serbian participants)317 participated in the workshops.318 Even though both before and after the 2006 and 2008 seminars several Serbian delegations participated in various educational frameworks at Yad Vashem museum, those two seminars made the most serious impact. Both were published later on as article collections and were incorporated into history books defining both thematic and methodological approaches to the subject. The first book, a collection of articles on the Serbo-Israel scientific exchange in the study of the Holocaust was published and presented at the 2009 International Holocaust Day commemorations. The second book, “A guide for teaching about the Holocaust” was published in 2010. It dealt with the subject from various disciplinary and methodological perspectives: composed of nine thematic examples adjusted for Serbian lessons, five for civil rights lessons and nine for history lessons. Though it is a work of undoubtedly enormous value, once again, in defining the aims of the importance of learning on the Holocaust, the authors directly paired it with the significance of revealing “attempts to deny genocide conducted on Serbs” (Lučić 2010). Already in January 2007, slightly after the 2006 Yad Vashem seminar, the Ministry of Education319 sponsored the first seminar using the Yad Vashem methodology on the Holocaust for history teachers held in Novi Sad. In the coming December 2007, representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church, apparently already in charge of the Holocaust education in Serbia, visited the Yad Vashem museum and agreed upon further education for an additional 40 experts.320 In January 2009, another seminar for teachers across Serbia was conducted in Novi Sad and sponsored by the regional government of

316 International Seminar for Educators “Teaching about Shoah and anti-Semitism”, Instituta Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2008. www.inisbgd.co.rs 317 Obrazovanje o Holokaustu, 2008. http://holoedusrbija.blog.rs/blog/holoedusrbija 318 Silvija Krejaković from the Kraljevo National Museum with associates held an allegorical performance People-Books about the suffering in Kraljevo, , Sajmište and Jasenovac, well-known traditional Balkan singer Svetlana Spajić showed in her workshop how oral music traditions preserved remembrance of suffering and persecution and Jasenovac Committee coordinator Jovan (Ćulibrk) spoke about the interface between the Holocaust and contemporary culture as in the case of the British band Joy Division. 319 Obrazovanje o Holokaustu 2007. http://holoedusrbija.blog.rs/blog/holoedusrbija 320 Ibid. 209

Vojvodina,321 based on the Holocaust knowledge perceived and framed as a device for supporting claims of genocide against Serbs.322 This, on the one hand, resulted in Serbia becoming in 2009 an affiliated member of the ITF and in 2011 a permanent member which further reinforced its duty to develop education and research on Holocaust related issues. This gave an enormous boost to research into the Holocaust, providing motivation and even financial support to both experienced and young researchers. It also enabled opening academic courses on the Holocaust. On the other hand, Holocaust discourse, though adopted and promoted by the state, stayed completely under the auspices of the Serbian Orthodox Church. In other words, its framing remained suited to the services of Serbian nationalism, in that it provided evidence of the Serbian suffering during World War Two. All Serbian governments saw promoting Holocaust memory as a device for gaining certain benefits both, at the international and the domestic level. Thus, the Serbian political elite adopted already contextualized Holocaust memory discourse from the Church that resembled a more subtle version of the 1990’s hard-core nationalist discourse. By placing the Holocaust in the hands of and under patronage of the Church, the Serbian political elite found the way to both address the domestic demands for claiming Serbian victimhood and to satisfy moral demands of the international community. This pact between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the state provides the necessary legitimacy for the very particular framing of the Holocaust and for continuing to claim Serbian righteousness and its victimhood.

Commemoration projects: arenas of the colliding agendas Apart from being implemented into the educational system, memory of the Holocaust has been reinforced through three commemorative days: 1) The Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide in World War Two, (April 22) commemorated officially since 1992: 2), The International Holocaust Day (January 27),

321 Za seminar 800.000 dinara, 16.01.2009. http://www.naslovi.net 322 The lecturers were, among others, the Israeli Ambassador, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Serbian rabbi, Hieromonk Jovan Ćulibrk, as the representative from the Serbian Orthodox Church and others. 210 commemorated officially since 2006; and 3) and the International Day against Fascism and anti-Semitism, (September 9) commemorated officially since 2007. In 1992, at the request of the state-sponsored Museum of Genocide Victims founded by the Serbian parliament323, the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide in World War Two was established with its primary purpose being to “demonstrate the suffering of the Serbian people via the Jews” (Byford 2007). The Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide in World War Two is held on April 22, commemorating the liberation of Jasenovac extermination camp. This date represents continuity with the Milošević agenda, where the extermination of Serbs, Jews and Roma is equated, a trend that did not change much in the course of the post 2000 democratization in Serbia. The real ambition was to commemorate the Serbian victims executed in the Jasenovac camp, whereas the Jewish victimization was to be invoked only along with and in relation to the history of Serbian martyrdom at Jasenovac. This comparison between Jewish suffering and that of the Serbs is achieved while using both rhetorical and performative means. The program at the commemorations always follows the same pattern. For example, the president of Serbia (or someone of the highest rank) says that “today the memory of Holocaust victims is a warning to everyone in the world about Auschwitz, Jasenovac and other camps. They are a symbol of death and a reminder that these crimes must never be forgotten.”324 Jasenovac is always paired with Auschwitz, and they are both described as places where “a normal person cannot grasp what people can do to people, because even beasts do not do those things to other beasts”.325 Or at times Jasenovac is referred to even more explicitly as the “Serbian Auschwitz”.326 Then, if possible a Jasenovac survivor who “witnessed the atrocities committed by Ustasha” is called upon to say a few words: “We should condemn those who try to belittle the crimes of the Ustasha in Jasenovac, where over 700,000 people were killed.”327 It is always a Jewish survivor as this gives credibility to the statements. Thus, when the survivor says the number of people who died there, the claim of the “horror” becomes more valid. This is especially important in the light of the fact that there is a great dispute over the number

323 “Službeni glasnik Republike Srbije“, 42/92 324 “Međunarodni dan sećanja na Holokaust”, 27 January 2006 www.glasamerike.net 325 “Dan sećanje na žrtve u NDH”, 22 April 2011 www.b92.net 326 “Dan sećanja na žrtve Holokausta”, 22 April 2013 www.b92.net 327 “Akademija povodom dana Holokausta u Beogradu,” 27 January 2007 www.mondo.rs 211 of people that were killed in Jasenovac. The Museum of Genocide commemorating Jasenovac, together with the Jewish community and the Ministry of Religion, is the main organizer of these events. Generally, foreign historians and those unburdened with nationalism328, estimate that around 110,000 people lost their lives in Jasenovac. In addition, it is often emphasized that “most victims were Jews, Roma and Slavs, and Serbs and Poles in particular”. 329 Thus, the Holocaust as a political device was above all used to claim Serbian victimhood, a trend which continued to exist also after the overthrow of Milošević regime in the year 2000 (Bieber 2002, Byford 2007, Dujizings 2007). However, by including Jews and Roma victims as well, it also aims to address international demands of the Human Rights regime, this fact having been further expressed in the new law from 2011. According to the alterations made, April 22 was to be observed as the National Holocaust, World War Two Genocide and other Fascist Crimes Victims’ Remembrance Day. Such pretentious framing empties it from the content and leaves plenty of room for interpretations, since it commemorates everyone and no one at the same time. The second commemorative day, the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Holocaust Victims, January 27, was established by the UN resolution in 2005. Following the “Task force” recommendations, the EU explicitly and extensively supported specific policies of education regarding the so-called “transmission” of memory through learning, edifying trips to Auschwitz, etc. The International Holocaust Day was commemorated for the first time in Serbia in 2006 (Rousso 2007). On that occasion, the “Topovske Šupe” memorial plaque, in the shape of a Torah with the text engraved in English, Hebrew and Serbian, was unveiled. In 1941 for a short period of time, a concentration camp had been located there, having been operated by Nazi Germany with the help of Milan Nedić's quisling government. At the opening event the president of the Belgrade assembly330 said that “this event is especially significant today when Serbia is making huge efforts to join the European Union”331, suggesting the true

328 In July 2013 in Yad Vashem was held a four day workshop on the Holocaust in Yugoslavia and the numbers in dispute over Jasenovac victims ware discussed in length and this number was repeatedly presented. 329 “Dan secanja na žrtve Holokausta obeležen u Beogradu”, 27 January 2009 www.glas-javnosti.rs 330 Milorad Perović 331 “U petak otvaranje spomen-parka Topovske šupe”, 25 January 2006 http://www.beograd.rs 212 character of the Holocaust commemoration. This perception of the Holocaust as an asset necessary for entering the EU was shaped in relation to the major changes in many western European countries, Germany, France, , even in the United Kingdom, whereby the memory of the Holocaust became in the 1990s a major political issue at the highest level. Policies of apologies, policies of reparation, new museums and memorials, new commemorations like the growing tendency all over the continent to establish “negative” commemorations and the new wave of trials against former Nazis or collaborators, all brought about claims declaring that what has been done for the Jews has to be done for the others: Armenians, Algerians, Ukrainians, formers slaves, etc (Rousso 2007). It is this background which,in the coming years, enforced the link between Jewish and Serbian suffering addressing “Auschwitz, Jasenovac and other concentration camps” as symbols of death where Serbia will never forget those crimes…”332 again implying the genocide of Serbs in Jasenovac. The International Day against Fascism and anti-Semitism has been marked in most European counties (but not exclusively) since 1997, on September 9, the day that symbolizes the beginning of the Nazi pogrom in 1938, also known as the "Kristallnacht". On its first commemoration, in 1998 large demonstrations took place in Belgrade with between 1,000 to 3,000 people demonstrating to draw attention to the murder of Dušan Jovanović, a fourteen year-old Roma boy who had been killed by racist skinheads. The Jewish community organizations cooperated with the Roma organizations and with several other NGOs to protest against racial hatred. 333 However, while in the coming years this date was commemorated across Serbia through various actions and with varying success, the state, as an official organizer or promoter finally joined in only in 2007. From all that has been mentioned above, it would seem that around the year 2006 the Serbian political elite adopted an agenda of promoting Holocaust memory discourse. However, my argument is that, embracing the Holocaust was an instrument of the political elite’s rule not only for addressing domestic and international demands for

332 „Međunarodni dan sećanja na Holokaust“, 27 January 2006. http://www.glasamerike.net 333 “Disadvantages, Discrimination, Detention – the Responsibilities of the States, United against racism”, 9 November 1997. www.unitedagainstracism.org 213 promoting the values of a Human Rights regime, but also as a screen memory for the wars of the 1990s, and as such it was largely nothing more than a pretense.

The Holocaust memory discourse: a pretense At the same time as adopting Holocaust memory discourse, the Serbian political elite was occupied with promoting a fundamentally different agenda. In continuance with the promotion of the victimization agenda and before the adoption of Holocaust discourse, on December 21, 2004, the Serbian parliament voted in favor of the Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law Veterans’ Rights, better known as the Law on equating rights of partisan struggle with that of the Ravna Gora movement, i.e. Chetniks334. The law is edited in such a way that it directly ascribes the same rights and privileges to the participants of the partisan struggle and the participants of the Chetnik movement during World War Two (Radanović 2012). One of the hard core promoters of the academic historical revisionism and state-sponsored revisionism of the past, Kosta Nikolić, a research associate at the Institute for the Contemporary History, stated that: “it is of utmost importance to free oneself from the stereotype according to which the partisans were liberators and heroes [….] and stop acting as if Chetniks were traitors” (Nikolić cited at Radanović 2012: 85). However, this was not an isolated event. Less than four months after the first officially commemorated International Holocaust Day when the government promised

334 The various Chetniks were traditional Balkan guerrilla movements. Chetniks, or the Chetnik movements were Serb nationalist and monarchist paramilitary organizations from the first half of the 20th century, formed as a resistance against the Ottoman Empire in 1904, and participating in the two Balkan Wars, , and World War II. The name is today most closely associated with the World War II movement of Draža Mihailović, which was later renamed the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland (Jugoslovenska vojska u otadžbini). The Mihailović Chetniks were not a homogeneous movement. During World War II, the Chetniks were an anti-Axis movement in their long-range goals and engaged in marginal resistance activities for limited periods, but also carried out almost throughout the war a tactical or selective collaboration with the occupation. The Chetnik movement adopted a policy of collaboration with regard to the Axis Powers. The Chetniks were a partner in the pattern of terror and counter terror that developed in Yugoslavia during World War II. The Chetniks used terror tactics against the Croats in areas where Serbs and Croats were intermixed, against the Muslim population in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Sandžak, and against the Yugoslav Partisans and their supporters in all areas. These terror tactics took various forms, including killing of the civilian population, burning of villages, assassinations and destruction of property. The terror tactics used by the Chetniks against the Croats was largely a reaction against the mass terror perpetrated by the Ustaše, and the terror against the Partisans and their supporters was ideologically-driven. The Muslim population of Bosnia, Herzegovina and Sandžak was a primary target of Chetnik terror. 214

“never to forget” to fight against any kind of anti-Semitism, racism and fascism, on April 16, 2006, the Serbian parliament adopted the Law on Rehabilitation. It was tailored in the spirit of Resolution 1481 of the European Committee, which aimed to acknowledge the victims of various political persecutions. However, instead of condemning the communist regime as undemocratic and responsible for mass human rights violence after 1945 (Radanović 2012: 87) the Serbian Law did not include any criteria for establishing clear rights for rehabilitation. Instead, it provided a tool for ethical and political disqualification of the communist partisan movement as the liberation force in the World War Two. The main aim of the Law for Rehabilitation was the political rehabilitation of the Serbian participants of the quisling and royal corpus from World War Two. Thus, immediately after its adoption, a request for rehabilitation of Draža Mihailović, a Serbian Chetnik leader, was filed. In January 2007 the Belgrade district court opened the first hearing for the rehabilitation of Draža Mihailović. In 2008 the Serbian Liberal Party accompanied by ultra right-wing movements filed a request for rehabilitating Milan Nedić, a Serbian leader in the quisling government, who had been, among other things, in charge of the execution of the 6000 Jews and Roma in Topovske Šupe concentration camp, the very spot where both the International Holocaust Day and the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide in World War Two commemorations takes place. On December 11, 2008, two quisling’ gendarmes were rehabilitated in the Šabac district court.335 Judges justified this decision by stating that “they [the gendarmes] were executed without a judicial procedure prior to carrying out the order, and that their execution had been politically and ideologically motivated". These acts symbolize a rehabilitation of the quisling apparatus as well as the demarcation of the partisan movement as an oppressive and persecuting force (Radanović 2012). On September 16, 2011, the High Court in Belgrade adopted a request for the rehabilitation of Momčilo Janković and Milan Aćimović, two members of the Government of National Salvation of Milan Nedić, who had been the first to declare Serbia free of Jews. According to

335 Referring to the event that transpired on 7 July 1941 in Bela Crkva that until 2001 represented the Day of Uprising in Serbia in the World War One, World War Two. 215

Radanović 336 “this act represents an example par excellence of historical revisionism and reframing of historical facts during the first year of the German occupation in 1941”. Though in December 2011 some alterations to the Law on Rehabilitations were made, it still stayed unclear as to for whom the rehabilitation was intended. On December 15, the High Court in Belgrade rehabilitated Prince Pavle Karađordjević, head of state at the eve of World War Two, who had adopted policies of accommodation to the Axis powers. The judges claimed that the Prince was charged due to ideological and political reasons and thus has a right to be rehabilitated. Radanović explains that the rehabilitation of Pavle Karađordjević indicates that the message being sent by the state is not that signing a treaty with the fascist states was a mistake, but to the contrary, the uprising against it was. From the above, one can conclude that the strengthening of fascism was not only a marginal agenda in current Serbia. This project of disconnecting from the communist and partisan legacy, reestablishing the righteous character of the Chetnik movement and, in wider sense, general Serbian victimization, were all backed up, first and foremost, by the Serbian orthodox Church, but also by the ruling political elite that is prevailingly right-wing oriented. In addition, this project was strongly supported by some historians and social scientists. 337 Olivera Milosavljević 338 and other critical historians rightly pointed out that the rehabilitation presents yet another means of manipulation claiming the continuity of the Serbian national state and that it is directly motivated by the needs of the current political elite. But how does the rehabilitation of the Chetnik struggle correspond and blend with Holocaust memory discourse? When taking a closer look at the ways by which Holocaust memory education was constructed by the SOC, and consequently adopted by the state, one can understand that it is anything but naïve. The Hieromonk Jovan Ćulibrk understood the potential of

336 Sudska rehabilitacija ministra Momčila Jankovića kao važan korak u političkoj rehabilitaciji snaga srpskog kvišlinstva, Intervju sa Sveborom Midžićem o rehabilitaciji Draže Mihailovića, Milan Radanović, 30 March 201. www.starosajmiste.info 337 For the heated debate on this issue see for example: Belsin Milivoj i Petar Atanackovicć (eds.) (2012) Antifašizam pred izazovima savremenosti. Alternativna Kulturna organizacija: Novi Sad; Atanacković Petar (ed.) (2008) Nacija kako problem ili rešenje: Istorijski revizionizam u Srbiji. Futura publikacije: Novi Sad. Kuljić Todor (2002) „Istoriografski revizionizam u poslesocijalističkim režimima“, u Biserko S. (ed.) Balkanski rašomon: Istorijsko i literarno viđenje raspada SFRJ. Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava: Beograd; Kuljić Todor (2002) Prevladavanje prošlosti. Uzroci i pravci promene slike istorije krajem XX veka, Beograd 473-474. 338 “Istorija ne moze rehabilitovati četnike”, 14 May 2012 www.e-novine.com 216 connecting the Church agenda to Holocaust memory discourse, realizing that dealing with the Holocaust would grant him with both budgets and a cover for the further promotion of conservative, traditional and basically non-democratic views. It was not by coincidence that Fr Ćulibrk chose Yad Vashem. Not only is Yad Vashem a source of supreme legitimacy for dealing with the Holocaust, but it is also a preparation ground for providing specific settings for claiming victimization. The Yad Vashem architecture, semiotic sets incorporated in the exhibition, the museum guidance to the garden and paths designs, all emphasize personal suffering and eternal Jewish victimhood (Feldman 2007). Thus, for the SOC and the Jasenovac Committee the Holocaust serves as a wrapping or a wider context (Byford 2007) for the core matter: victimization of the Serbs. Both OSCE and Yad Vashem, only carried out very superficial research into and observations of the activities of the Jasenovac Committee and did not realize how the Holocaust was being utilized as a cover for the basically nationalist, right-wing agenda. When in 2006 the Hieromonk Jovan Ćulibrk held a lecture about the breakdown of Yugoslavia and its consequences on inter-ethnic relations at the International Conference at the Hebrew University, he presented the argument for the importance of naming both the victims and the perpetrators, demonizing and blaming socialism for the wars of the 1990s as an ideology that blurred those categories. However, the Holocaust was again reduced to a wider context serving solely as a platform for learning from the Israeli experience on how Serbia should correctly commemorate its own victims and perpetrators.339 For readers from outside the Yugosphere the argument that the Holocaust serves the purposes of reinforcing an already strongly embedded nationalist agenda, promoted by the Serbian Orthodox Church in general and the Jasenovac Committee and Bishop Culibrk in particular might seem premature and unfounded. However, it is my opinion that the evidence for pro-nationalist framing of the Holocaust in Serbia, where it serves to establish Serbian victimhood, should be understood and analyzed in relation to the wider context. Thus, I find it crucial to show that the Holocaust education leader, Bishop Culibrk, does not have in mind the universal message of human rights protection while promoting the importance of the Holocaust but the narrow agenda of claiming Serbian victimhood.

339 The lecture available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA97KQXi5xk 217

I will provide here three short examples to support my claim and to present the larger context of Bishop Ćulibrk’s ideological framing. Firstly, the very fact that he was elected to act as the Vice Bishop of Peć (Kosovo) already gives us a certain idea of his relation to the burning question of to whom Kosovo belongs. In his recent interview to the “Večernje Novosti” magazine he proudly stated that we finally can show to the world “who we (Serbs) really are and what enormous ordeals we suffered and survived here (in Kosovo)”340. Secondly, his best known work is an edited volume from 1996 called “Lamb of God and the Beast from the Abyss”341 on the philosophy of the war with selected articles written by the hard core Serbian nationalists342 including that of Radovan Karadžić, a former Bosnian Serb politician, currently being detained the UN, being accused of being responsible for crimes committed against Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats during the , as well as ordering the Srebrenica massacre. The book aimed to justify the atrocities committed by the Serbs during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. Thirdly, if all this is not sufficient to explain that Bishop Ćulibrk’s agenda is that of a “Big Serbia” where the instrumentalization of the Holocaust is another tool for embracing Serbian nationalism, here is another reference in his work. Bishop Ćulibrk was also the creator and promoter of a rock music project called “Above East and West” that gathered rock and pop singers across Serbia. With the slogan “Also rock music in service of God”, he produced a music project based on the lyrics of Serbian Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović (1881-1956), a Serbian Orthodox Christian philosopher whose writing includes overtly anti-Semitic passages. Bishop Nikolaj wrote openly on Jews as being the source of all evil, stating among other things, that “all the modern European slogans have been made up by Jews, the crucifiers of Christ: democracy, strikes, socialism, and atheism, tolerance of all faiths, pacifism, universal revolution, capitalism and communism… All of these are invention of the Jews and their father, the Devil.343 Having been vilified by the communist authorities in Yugoslavia as an anti-Semite, a traitor and a fascist, over the past two decades Bishop Velimirović has come to be revered within Serbian Orthodox circles as the greatest national religious figure since

340 Vladika Jovan: Obnavljanje temenja, 10 September 2012, www.novosti.rs 341 Mladenović Radoš i Ćulibrk Jovan (1996)Jagnje Božje i Zvijer iz Bezdana.Svetigora:Cetinje. 342 Amongst Amfilohije Radović i Atanasije Jevtić and Mirko Zurovac. 343 From Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović book “Through the prison window”, written while he was a prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp. 218 medieval times (Byford 2006). Yet, Ćulibrk’s open support of bishop Nikolaj was not an obstacle to his becoming a leading figure in the promotion of the Holocaust education either for OSCE and Yad Vashem or for the ruling political elite. The local Jewish community had to make a compromise and to support him, as the Jewish community now received for the first time official support in commemorating their loved ones. When asked specifically on this issue, one of the former presidents of the Jewish community explained it by saying: “We know that, [Ćulibrk’s support of Bishop Nikolaj] but the State accepted him, the Church accepted him, even Yad Vashem accepted him. There is nothing we can do”.344

What is omitted? An elephant in the room Alongside historical revisionism345 the Holocaust discourse is just another means for reframing the role and responsibilities for crimes in the wars of the 1990s where atrocities has been relativized, trivialized and slowly sent to oblivion (Kuljić 2009). It is meant to deflect discourse from the debate about the wars of the 1990s towards Serbian victimization throughout history. All governments after the overthrow in 2000 have closed any political spaces where the nation-state and the civil society could jointly debate a difficult past and the contested wars. Thus, I suggest that Holocaust memory discourse is being used to reinforce state control over a political space, where any collective and in-depth public reckoning with Serbia’s contested past would be possible. Moreover, it is utilized to indirectly construct and insinuate Serbian righteousness and victimhood in the wars of the 1990s and to simultaneously mask the role played by them as well as their responsibility. This attitude is easily recognizable in the rhetoric used at all official occasions. Year by year, and from one commemoration event to the next, all of the official speeches

344 Personal correspondence, 2013. 345 See more in: Petović Miloš (2008) “Nacionalizam i istorijski revizionizm kao posledice sloma društevnih vrednosti i društvenih normi.” Atanckivić P. (ed.) Nacija kao problem ili rešenje – istorijski revizionizam u Srbiji. Futura publikacije: Novi Sad. 88-93. Kisjuhas, Aleksej (2008) “Istorijski revizionizam kao preudoistorija.” Atanckivić P. (ed.) Nacija kao problem ili resenje – istorijski revizionizam u Srbiji. Futura publikacije: Novi Sad. 99-103. Kuljić Todor. (2002) “Prevladavanje prošlosti - uzroci i pravci promene slike istorije krajem XX veka.” Ogledi 3. Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji: Beograd; Stojanović Dubravka (2001) “History textbooks and the creation of national identity.” Teaching the History of Southeastern Europe. 26-32. 219 look exactly the same. It is not only amazing that identical wording is used but also that there is a consistent absence of what should be the closest and most relevant issue when one address human rights violations: the wars of the 1990s. For example, all speeches made by the governmental officials include phrases such as: “never to forget”, “denial is dangerous”, “Serbian governments will do everything necessary to remember”, “we send from here a message of peace and tolerance in accordance to the principles of a democratic Serbia”, together with commonly heard sentences such as “we are proud Serbia doesn’t have any anti-Semitism”, or “we are proud of our contribution in the field of the Holocaust education”. Serbian President Tadić, in the presence of the Israeli and German ambassadors claimed in his speech at the International Holocaust Day commemoration, 2010, at Staro Sajmište, that “Serbia will never agree to destroy others just because they belong to another ethnic, national, religious or political group”. 346 At a similar occasion, in 2012, President Tadić said that: “Serbia is eager to join the EU, thus, there is no place here for those who committed crimes against humanity…” 347 Making such statements without connecting them to the recent wars of the 1990s is purposeful and represents the strategy of “sweeping the wars of the 1990s under the carpet”. This also proves to be consistent with the current national calendar that promotes the memory of Serbian victimhood during the 1990s and only commemorates the NATO bombardment on Serbia whereas other events are buried in heavy silence. The incomprehensible fact that none of the officials has ever addressed the Major issue with capital M, - the Serbian responsibility for the atrocities in the wars of the 1990s - frequently pops up in talkbacks that follow the daily news articles that summarize commemorations and official speeches. Whether one supports a view according to which the Serbs were the ultimate victims or were those to be blamed, the wars of the 1990 are immediately brought up to the fore. The evidence of the resistance to the government’s use of the Holocaust as a screen memory that aims at redirecting the public discourse of the wars in the 1990s is best seen in talkbacks following the articles on Holocaust commemorations. It seems that the closure of the political spaces for debating the wars of the 1990s makes virtual spaces,

346 „Dan sećanja na žrtve Holokausta“, 27.January2010 www.vesti-online.com 347 „Dan sećanja na žrtve Holokausta“, 27 January 2012 www.glasamerike.net 220 by comparison, rather an open arena for settling historical accounts. Thus in talkbacks, people post their reactions openly against this cover up, saying, for example, that: “…the monument in Novi Beograd, dedicated to the victims of NATO aggression has been neglected since 5 October, 2000. It is shameful that the monument has not been renovated. You (Serbian governments) discriminate between victims who deserve and those who don’t deserve to be remembered – it is shameful!”.348 “And after all those terrible experiences from World War Two, again genocide on the European ground - in Srebrenica”.349 “If only there was a developed consciousness of the Holocaust among Serbs, Srebrenica would not take place.”350 “And as if we [the Serbs] forgot our concentration camps such as Keraterm, Omarska and others?” 351 “As if they did not exist at all…”352 Those commemorative speeches, with affirmative statements on Serbia’s dedication to fight against any historical revisionism, anti-Semitism and to embrace a Human Rights regime are often directly confronted. For example, one talkback commented: “While there is a debate on rehabilitating Draža Mihailović, the attention is moved from the crimes committed at the Ex-Yu territories between 1991 and 1995 and the genocide in Bosnia, so as to avoid actual criminal proceedings.”353 Or in a similar fashion: “The whole rehabilitation issue has only one real aim – to establish the righteous character of the wars in the 1990s.”354 Some talkbacks explicitly relate to the absurdity of the official’s speeches at the International Holocaust Day: “This sentence says everything. Ministry for Human and Minority rights of Serbia stated that “only honest and real facing the past, conviction of crimes, punishment of those responsible and reparations to victims represents a healthy foundation for the nation’s progress and for preventing future crimes”. And what did Serbia do on that matter? A resolution on

348 “Obeležen dan sećanja na žrtve Holokausta“ – komentari, 27 January 2012 www.blic.rs 349 „Dan sećanja na žrtve Holokausta“, 27 January 2011 www.b92.net 350 Intervju: Jovan Bajford, „O sećanju na stradanje Jevreja u Srbiji“, 30 October 2008 www.e-novine.com 351 Keraterm camp was a death camp established by Bosnian Serb military and police authorities near the town of Prijedor in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War. Omarska camp was a death camp run by Bosnian Serb forces in the mining town of Omarska, also near Prijedor in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, set up for Bosniak and Croat men and women during the Prijedor massacre. 352 “Dan sećanja na žrtve Holokausta – komentari“, 27 September 2009 www.b92.net 353 “Istorija ne može rehabilitovati četnike”, Olivera Milosavljević. – komentari, 14 May 2012 www.e- novine.com 354 Ibid. 221

Srebrenica cannot be passed in the Serbian parliament. Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić are still free. Reparation? Have we paid anything to anyone for the crimes committed in our name?”355 Such voices, however, are often heard spoken out loud, as, for example, at the panel dedicated to the International Day against Fascism and anti-Semitism. The president of the Independent Association of Journalists of Vojvodina Dinko Gruhonjić said that it is due to a refusal of the ruling political elite in Serbia to deal with the crimes committed in its name during the Milošević regime that further procreate fascist and neo-Nazi agendas, especially among youngsters.356

Hiding behind the Holocaust: Serbs and Jews – brothers in suffering All of the above teaches us that the Serbian state, when sponsoring Holocaust memory discourse, actually has other ideas in mind rather than promoting Human and Minority rights issues. My argument presented here suggests that the Holocaust memory discourse is utilized and tailored in such way that while in theory it preaches Human and Minority rights, in practice, it not only actually promotes nationalism and Serbian victimhood but also disguises the discourse on the role of Serbia in the wars of the 1990s. The current Holocaust memory discourse is eye-catching mostly because of what is absent in the discourse. The Holocaust is not supposed to be only a matter of the particular experience of the Jewish people, but also a force and an entrance point to a discussion and education on the wider human and minority rights issues. This was also confirmed at the International Holocaust Day, 2010, when the Agency for fundamental rights of the EU stated that the Holocaust and Human Rights issues are closely related topics and as such should be implemented into every national educational curriculum, stressing that the history of the Holocaust is by all means, a history of human rights violations. 357 At the same commemorative event, the Serbian minister of culture Nebojša Bradić, a head of the international delegation, proudly shared the successful implementation of the Holocaust theme into Serbia’s educational system. However, he omitted to say that the Holocaust memory is only used as scenery for claiming Serbian

355 „Dan sećanja na žrtve Holokausta“ – komentari, 27 January 2009 www.b92.net 356 „Svetski dan borbe protiv fašizma“, 9 November 2007 www.b92.net 357 “Dan sećanja na žrtve Holokausta”, 27 January 2010 www.rts.rs 222 victimhood and righteousness: not only that Serbs were sacrificing their own lives by saving Jews but that they were the real victims of World War Two. Such a contextual setting where the Holocaust is used as a reference for victimization in the contemporary world (Barclay 1996) is a copy-paste of the Israeli Yad Vashem ideological framework that is created in a way that embodies Jewish victimhood and as such provides a wider legitimacy for the current political actions, first and foremost toward Palestinians (Šnajder 2011). This dual use of the Holocaust, to reduce pressure both on the domestic and the international level is possible since, as cosmopolitanized memory, it is simultaneously constitutive of a European outlook as well as of the more nationalistic perspective (Levy and Sznaider 2010). However, while East European countries that have already joined the European Union try to expand their memory agendas by moving aside from the Holocaust memory (Rousso 2007), nation-states still waiting to enter the European Union, such as Serbia and till recently, Croatia,358 promote Holocaust discourse (with different degrees of success) as a precious signifier of their moral boundaries. Moreover, Holocaust memory became not only “a unit of measurement” (Levy and Sznaider 2002) in relation to the Human Rights regime but also a necessary toll paid in order to join the European free market and the delights of democracy (Rousso 2007). The question of Holocaust memory emerged through the process of forging national identities after 2000, influenced in Serbia as well as in Croatia by the EU demand to adopt human and minority rights standards. In Serbia, embracing Holocaust discourse was perceived as a perfect opportunity to both get some extra points from the EU and to settle historical accounts with Croatia, as Serbia was occupied during the World War Two – unlike Croatia which was aligned with the Nazi axis. While the wars of the 1990s were under the scrutiny of transitional justice mechanisms, and both Serbia and Croatia used different mechanisms to close political spaces which may have facilitated a frank and open debate, World War Two became an arena for reshaping nationhood. Thus, as a consequence of the intense Europeanization process and the obligation to adopt the Human Rights regime, a concern with the management of moral accountability of the past was transferred from the wars of the 1990s to World War Two.

358 Croatia has been accepted to the EU in July 2013. 223

Recognition of the Holocaust became a major indicator for the Europeaness – the “toll” paid to join the EU prestigious club –with Holocaust remembrance having become a crucial component of the official European ideology of human rights (Rousso 2007). This is precisely why the Serbian promotion of Holocaust discourse has so far been successfully framed for satisfying the “moral code” of the EU. Serbia became a full member of the TASK force, which placed it in line with the most advanced countries in the world. This also enabled Serbia to score not only significant symbolic capital but also real capital. It is not solely the image of Serbia that was improved but the images and the rhetoric of the close connection between the Serbian and Jewish peoples also proved to be important both in the ongoing strengthening of the economical and cultural ties between Serbia and Israel359 and as a moral measurement of Serbia itself, which brought it closer to the EU. At the local level, the promotion of the Holocaust was beneficial in several ways. The Serbian Orthodox Church, which promoted the subject in the first place, succeeded in effectively linking Jewish suffering with that of the Serbs. Moreover, implementing Holocaust education within the education curriculum and its tight ties with Yad Vashem helped the Church to both improve its severely damaged image360 and to receive credentials for being a progressive force and a Human Rights promoter. Human Rights movements bought the Holocaust discourse as a sign of their own victory in the ongoing struggle to implement the Hunan Rights regime. For the Jewish community, embracing the Holocaust discourse was a trade off. It was understood to be the best possible option where, though it was conditioned with pairing Jewish suffering with that of the Serbs, the bereavement of the community members was finally acknowledged at the official level. A prominent fighter for Human Rights in Serbia,361 Holocaust survivor, a fighter against anti-Semitism and a member of the Jewish community wrote to me on this issue: “The essence is that the nationalist ideology that is in power in Serbia accepts the Holocaust just as much as it can benefit from it. The Holocaust is acceptable only insofar as it can be compared with the suffering of Serbs in past wars. The discourse of the Church, as well as the wider public discourse, is that of anti-Semitism.”

359 See for example, reports on the last visit in Israel of Serbian the president Nikolić on 29-30 April 2013. 360 I refer here to the horrific sexual affairs, pedophilia, acts of violence and above all wide spread corruption among the Serbian clergy. 361 Filip David 224

Levy and Sznaider recognized that different people in different places frame the Holocaust in different ways and whereas the difference might be subtle, it is crucial (Levy and Sznaider 2004). There are those who frame it as the culmination of a history of anti-Semitism that only happened to Jews; or as the history of racism that can happen to anyone who is different or as a crime against humanity that considers a crime against the human condition (Levy and Sznaider 2004: 144). In Serbia, the framing of the Holocaust is narrow and though the official rhetoric is aimed at addressing the demands of the Human Rights regime, in practice, whenever the Jews are mentioned they are used to frame perceptions of Serbian victimhood. This role of victim turns out to be a convenient one for shutting down any political spaces where open public discussions on the role of Serbia in the wars of the 1990 would be possible: if I am a victim I cannot be responsible for anything, and no one can argue with me because it would be showing a lack of respect for a victim (Franović 2008). It is actually a powerful position and it is used to escape any responsibility for the crimes in the wars of the 1990s. From this perspective, one can understand that Holocaust memory discourse serves, not only to strengthen Serbian victimhood during World War Two but also to reframe the role of Serbia in the wars of the 1990s. The unspoken wars of the 1990s have become the enormous elephant in the room that everyone keeps pretending does not exist. But, is it even remotely possible to talk about killing, suffering and human rights violations without searching for justice and addressing the victims of those recent wars?

225

Final Remarks

From the compromising past to the compromised memories: The Monument revisited

“We live in a country where, as to this date, neither our victory nor our defeat has yet been declared in the wars, in which Serbia was not officially involved. It has not yet been said whether that war, to whose victims a monument should be raised was a war of aggression or defense; who the heroes are and who were the criminals and was it worth any of it (…) We live in the country where we are increasingly forced to learn the truth from others because we ourselves do not want to talk about it.”362

In August 2012, I went to see the Monument. It was 40C degrees in the shade at 10 o’clock in the morning. Two old men were sitting on the bench not far from the monument. I stared at it, through the lenses of my camera. Hasty passersby take a quick look at me, trying to figure out what I am staring at. I am amazed by the invisibility of the monument. It was inconspicuous, not drawing public attention. Without loud figurative elements, just a plain steel board with engraved words: “To the victims of the wars and defenders of the fatherland from 1990-1999”. And a fissure in the ground. One grayish-white dove curiously walks on the upper edge of the memorial plaque. For some reason, it looks amused. And then, without any previous hint, it simply defecates; nothing very dramatic, just a small yellowish stain. I smiled. I couldn’t resist the symbolism.

362 “Koliko traju večne vatre?” 16 January 2003 www.nin.co.rs 226

*** It is inconceivable not to ask how after ten years of mnemonic battles between veteran organizations, the Monument Group and Belgrade Municipality, the erected monument is simply invisible? Or at least – it is not visible to the wider public; just like the small yellowish stain. Would it make any difference if the opening had been followed by “sacramental military music”363, or if the monument had been placed in “the nicer, picnic area with a view on Danube”364, or if it contained the names of the killed365; or if its design was completely different: just “a slice of a high-way”, a symbolic representation of the corps found under the high-way in Croatia?366 Would altering its purpose make it more visible: if it had been dedicated to all victims from the former Yugoslav states367; or only to soldiers368, or to “the defenders of Serbian interests”?369 Maybe. But since Serbia was headed on its way to democratization and toward joining the EU, all choices the official bodies made carried with them a clear notion that somebody is tacitly and persistently monitoring them. In this dissertation, I suggest that the process of the construction of collective memory in Serbia after the wars of the 1990s and the ways in which categories of memory are appropriated, internalized, subverted, evaded or transformed through the process of Europeanization, first and foremost, by the ruling political elite, proves to be an exemplary case on how a post-conflict nation-state mediates its contested past when caught in the gap between the domestic demands and those of the international community. In Serbia, this tension is significantly magnified due to the fact that Serbia not only lost all the wars it fought during the 1990s but it was also globally perceived to be the main villain and the party responsible for the largest portion of war crimes committed. This is precisely why the enormous gap between the local demands to be recognized as a righteous party in the conflict and the international

363 Bane Pejčinović "NGO Families of the Killed and Distressed", interview conducted on 19 May 2011. 364 Dragomir Vasić “The Union of the War Veterans and Invalids”, interview conducted on 10 May 2011. 365 Ratko Zorić “Fighters of the War of the 1990s”, interview conducted on 6 May 2011. 366 Nebojša Milikić “Monumet Group”, interview conducted on 10 May 2011. 367 As proposed by a Mayor Radmila Hrustanović, the Former Belgrade Mayor. See in Grupa Spomenik. Politike sećanja. Beograd 2007, Print. 368 Bane Pejčinović "NGO Families of the Killed and Distressed", interview conducted on 19 May 2011. 369 Željko Vasiljević “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011.

227 demands to confront its problematic past serves as a magnifying glass and helps us analyze the ways political elites try (with relative success) to bridge this gap. The manner in which collective memory is constructed in a nation-state where disagreement regarding a difficult past exists is no longer solely an internal matter since the influence of external factors on local memory has been significantly increased (Blustein 2012). Post-conflict states, or more correctly, their ruling elites, face enormous pressures both from the domestic and the international audiences to please their often contradictory demands. They often struggle to find ways to simultaneously deal both with the Transitional Justice mechanisms and the Human Rights demands forced upon them by the international community and the local requirements to be acknowledged as the righteous party in the conflict. As all states are goal-oriented (Meyer, Boli, Thomas et al. 1997), they are managed in the attempt to both position and sell themselves globally (Volčić and Andrejević 2011) and to sustain loyalty at the national level. Their aim is, on the one hand, to simultaneously construct a certain sellable image for international display and on the other, to shape a certain national identity matching the local demands. Consequently, many tensions between global and local demands exist, and these tensions influence the process of reinforcing particular identities (Subotić 2013). Unlike in other post-communist states, such as Romania, Hungary or (Brubaker and Feichmidt 2002), or after the French Revolution, where states introduced a new calendar so as to mark the break with the previous regime (Connerton 1989), Serbia’s relation to its past was ultimately determined through both the uneven power- relation with the EU and its triple contested pasts: post-war, post-Yugoslav and post- communist. This disjuncture between post-Yugoslav realities, nationalist historiography and the neo-liberal transitology brought about significant alterations in the manner in which a collective memory is currently being forged. The ways in which Serbia is creating processes of assigning and changing the meanings of the contested elements of its past has to be understood in relation to the existing power balance configurations. The process of Europeanization, together with the Human Rights regime, inevitably brought about alterations in the selection of “usable” contents of memory. It is precisely this quest for a “usable past”, capable of providing the basis for a much-needed national unity, and

228 for presenting Serbia as a part of democratic Europe that is evident in all commemorative arenas analyzed here. The road to Europe comes at a price. Transitology has served as the ideological correlate of neo-liberal reforms in Eastern Europe, providing interpretive frames and justifications for the rise of the free market economy, electoral democracy, and the construction of civil societies. However, recent literature on the Europeanization process shows that integration into Europe goes hand in hand with ethno-national tensions, increasing disintegration, and various identity-fundamentalisms in the troubled peripheries of the European post-socialist and post-conflict countries (Schauble, Rakowski and Pessel 2006). Brubaker (2000) rightly noticed that ethno-national classificatory systems are still strongly institutionalized in post-socialist countries, thus, certain categories are readily and legitimately available for the representation of social reality, the framing of political claims, and the organization of political action. In his newest book Guilt, Responsibility, Denial: The past at stake in post Milošević’ Serbia, Gordy (2013) showed that such politics, that are rooted in the nationalist-authoritarian regimes, tend to abuse their power through corruption, repression, and some crimes against domestic political opponents—broadly put, wars of states against the societies they claimed to represent. He suggested though, that while these struggles were sometimes violent, they are usually carried out by administrative and cultural means, just as I show in this research.

Facing international and domestic pressures The conflicts in the former Yugoslavia took place under dramatically changed conditions of surveillance and attention (Gordy 2013), conditions which morally obliged the international community to get a full account of who did what, who suffered in what ways, and why. And though international pressure is a given, it is not a constant in its intensity, sustainability and reliability. Subotić (2009) describes three major types of international pressures Serbia had (and still has) to face. Coercive pressure directly ties compliance with international demands to material rewards such as financial aid and/or membership in international organizations. Symbolic pressure induces compliance through appeals to the state’s desire to be perceived as a legitimate international actor.

229

Bureaucratic pressure works when states choose to comply with international requests because they believe international actors can solve their domestic problems (Subotić 2009: 7-8). However, the challenge in facing international pressure lies in the fact that the Serbian political elite is “stuck” between the local demands to be recognized as a righteous party in the conflict and the international demand to “face its state criminal history” (Subotić 2009: 15). The ruling political elite’s responses to the international pressures have been evident in state-wide attitudes since the beginning of Europeanization in the year 2000. For example, less than five years after the NATO bombardment of Serbia and Montenegro, in 2004, Serbia decided to drop all 19 legal charges against the states that signed an agreement to bomb Serbia, just so as “not to resist European wishes”.370 This also overlaps with the purposeful top-down alteration in the public discourse on the NATO attack: from “NATO aggression” through “NATO bombardment” to the neutral “NATO action”. The force of international pressure is best illustrated through the story I was told during the interview I conducted with a father of a fallen soldier.371 During his meeting with the Belgrade Mayor372 he suggested naming one of the major Belgrade boulevards “Boulevard (dedicated) to the victims of the NATO aggression”. The Mayor bluntly responded: You know what? There is not even the slightest chance of doing that! If you insist, we can try to call it “The Bombardment Boulevard” – to make it collectively dedicated to all bombardments we suffered in the last century, and roundabout also the NATO attack.” In the same manner, the Deputy Mayor373 told me during our interview: “Well, of course, if there was not the EU, we would have not only a boulevard of the NATO bombardment victims but also a boulevard of Ratko Mladić!” The ambiguity and tension between communities of memory, retrospective responsibilities and a universalist vision of citizenship are quite evident in post- conflict states. At the political level, the processes of settling accounts with the past in terms of responsibilities, accountabilities and institutional justice are overlaid with ethical imperatives and moral demands (Jelin 2003). These imperatives, however, may be hard

370 Mile Milošević “Serbian War Veterans” interview conducted on 26 April 2011. 371 Bane Pejcinović "NGO Families of the Killed and Distressed", interview conducted on 19 May 2011. 372 Dragan Djilas 373 Zoran Alimpić, deputy Mayor, interview conducted on 4 May 2011. 230 to settle given the post-conflict political hostilities, in which social catastrophes unleash the destruction of social bonds. This seems to apply also to the ruling elite in Serbia that has found itself in a rather problematic position. On the one hand, the opening of the political spaces for a frank and truthful discussion of Serbia’s role and responsibility for the wars of the 1990s would cause “Serbia’s poor democratic potential to be trapped by its strong, populist right-wing”.374 The effect of opening political spaces for negotiation on the contested past, would not only cause general instability, burden the, already in deficit, state budget, but might actually cause riots and new social divisions. The process of reckoning with the past in Serbia means stepping into the unknown, opening a Pandora’s box in which shadows of the past are hidden, waiting to be unleashed. Ruling political elites (up until the present day) have perceived the opening of the Pandora’s box of Serbia’s contested past to be a dangerous matter. Some were deterred by their own personal involvement during the wars of the 1990s (Gordy 2013), some saw in it a possible source of political and economical instability, others feared their own political positions (Fink–Hafner 2007). Thus, all governments since 2000, regardless of their political affiliations, have understood that opening a discussion on the wars of the 1990s presents a clear threat both to the stability of the state and to further implementations of the European standards. On the other hand, by closing the political spaces, the international community accuses Serbia “of not taking any substantive steps in the domain of transitional justice which causes factors contributing to destabilization of neighboring countries”.375 Consequently, as long as it is fails to open its political spaces for reckoning with the past, Serbia is actually moving backwards away from the desired EU candidacy. Thus the dilemma all post Milošević Serbian governments have faced is how to publically address Serbia’s past wrongdoings that would come at the expense of social stability, while at the same time strengthening the social stability and implementing different sets of reforms. In other words, how to build a stable and progressive state while enforcing processes that cause instability? Faced with this dilemma where the situation is at best described by an

374 Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia (2012) Annual Report on Human Rights in 2011: European Options Obstructed: Belgrade p. 1. 375 Ibid. p. 1 231 oxymoron of building stability through enforced instability seems to leave no other choice but to manipulate these two very opposing demands.

The mechanisms used to close political spaces To deal with the dilemma described by this oxymoron resulting from conflicting demands, the ruling political elite created and adopted mechanisms which enabled closure of the political spaces for other political actors. These mechanisms suit the need for strategic maneuvering between the international and the domestic demands. All three mechanisms: 1) decontextualization of memory contents, 2) creation of social narratives of suffering and 3) promotion of the Holocaust memory as a screen memory, are strategies of closing political spaces which thus prevent public debate, representation, negotiation and compromise. Staying loyal to Ricoeur`s hermeneutics of suspicion, I searched for what was behind, or lay beneath the surface of, the causal forces that explained the evident phenomena precisely because they laid bare the true meaning of these phenomena. What seemed at the beginning like purposeless and unintentional governmental practices turned out to be strategic thinking - not always synchronized but at all times intentional and present. It appeared that all these are strategies of silencing that are meant to reduce the tension between the contradicting demands at the international and the domestic levels. “Silencing” means the closure of political space and the control of public debate. Thus, it seems that the ruling elite “hijacked” or “occupied” (Grinberg 2010) political spaces, symbolic spheres in which political actors represent and further their interests, in order to maneuver and mediate the international demand to confront Serbia’s criminal national past and the domestic demands to be validated as a righteous party in the conflict. It has been the strategic decision of the ruling political elite to find ways to keep political spaces closed for other actors, where the contested and painful national past could be shaped openly and frankly. That is precisely why Gordy rightly coined the unwillingness of the Serbian governments to open a political space for the public discussion on Serbia’s responsibility for the wars of the 1990s “the ongoing persistence of an authoritarian political culture” (Gordy 2013: 121). Political calculation, economic depression and social instability were at the root of the political elite’s strategic decision

232 to invest their resources in mechanisms that help in the closure of the political spaces as the best possible solution for reducing pressures between the contradicting demands at the international and the domestic levels. Serbia’s situation, being cast the role of the major villain in the wars of the 1990s, and the lack of a power balance between Serbia and the EU, limited the options available, finally resulting in the agenda of promoting a collective memory independently from the international pressure. The power-relations between Serbia and the EU was a crucial factor in the ruling elite’s decisions to opt for the particular strategies they elected to implement when dealing with the concurrent internal and external pressures. The strategies the political elite embraced to keep political spaces closed to other political (memory) actors, such as the decontextualization of memory contents, the creation of social narratives of suffering and the promotion of Holocaust memory as a screen memory, influenced and shaped the forging of the collective memory in Serbia. However, while the strategies determined how the process of the collective memory construction looks, Serbia’s triple contested pasts determined the question of the content, of what is to be remembered/forgotten. Serbia, similar to other ethno political groups in the former Yugoslavia, is deeply immersed in the role of being a victim (Franović 2008). However, I suggest here, that this choice is not a result only, as it has been widely argued until now, of the embedded historical and cultural patterns376, but it was the best suited option able to provide a satisfactory solution for both the international and the domestic communities. The role of the victim also enables nations to select one particular past that annuls and countermands other pasts. For example, potentiating Serbia’s sacrifices for the sake of Europe377 in World War One and their brotherhood in suffering with the Jewish people in World War Two allows issues of Serbian

376 See more on this issue for example; Bieber F (2002) “Nationalist mobilization and stories of Serb Suffering: The Kosovo Myth from 600th anniversary to the present.” Rethinking history 6(1): 95-110; Duijzings Ger (2007) “Commemorating Srebrenica: Histories of Violence and the Politics of Memory in Eastern Bosnia.” in Bougarel X, Helms E, and Duijzings G, (eds.) The New Bosnian Mosaic: dentities, Memories and Moral Claims in Post-war Societies. Aldershot, Ashgate, 141 – 166; Jansen Stef (2000) “Victims, Underdogs and Rebels Discursive Practices of Resistance in Serbian Protest.” Critique of Anthropology 20(4): 393-419. Michaela Schäuble (2011) “How History Takes Place: Sacralized Landscapes in the Croatian-Bosnian Border Region.” History and Memory 23(1): 23-61. 377 At the International conference on Mapping Boundaries, Identities and Contention: 20 Years after the fall of Yugoslavia, Tel Aviv University, (2010) the Serbian Chargé d’Affaires at the Serbian Embassy in Israel Milutin Stanojević said in his speech to the listeners the “Serbia gave so many lives in World War One to protect Christian Europe, that, it is Europe`s debt to pay them back”. 233 responsibility for other events in their history to be swept under the carpet. Considering the events of the 1990s wars, it becomes apparent that this is actually a very powerful positioning where one can play the role of an under-privileged and victimized nation that, on the one hand, cannot be held responsible for the wars, but on the other, helps forging a desired national identity.

Decontextualization of memory contents How, in the end, were the mnemonic battles surrounding the monument and the diverse and cacophonic versions of the past silenced and leveled, leaving behind only a steel plaque with the ambiguous and pale engravings To the victims of the wars and defenders of the fatherland from 1990-1999 ? It seems that the monument affair brought to the fore contours of the deepest societal rifts which may occur if an open and frank discussion on the wars of the 1990s were to actually take place: the war over memory. “The Monument Group”, rightly raised the questions and asked “Who are the victims that the monument seeks to commemorate? Who are the fallen fighters? 378 The Committee president379, responsible for the erection of the Monument, in an interview to the daily newspaper explains: “In the end, everyone was a victim”.380 Veterans protest this claim: “Victims and war veterans are not the same. It is only possible in Serbia to equate victims with veterans. 381 “I will, with my bare hands, come there and destroy that monument. I will throw a bomb if I need to. They cannot put me together with the ‘victims of wars’. ‘A child on a potty’382 is a victim, 17 people killed in the TV building,383 but what about all the others who were killed in the wars?”384 Moreover, those “all the others” is the unknown number. No one even knows how many people lost

378 Submitted on 6 January, 2003. in 130 copies, “Predlog za obustavu Konkursa za skulptorsko rešenje spomen-obeležja palim borcima i žrtvama ratova 1990-1999 na prostorima bivše Jugoslavije i pokretanje javne rasprave o ovoj temi”, signed by 19 members 379 Slobodan Ilić 380 Published in a daily paper, “Spomenik nije za borce?!”, Kurir, ND. Print. 381 Željko Vasiljević, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 382 He refers to Milica Rakić, a child that was killed while sitting on the potty during the NATO bombardments. 383 He refers to the TV workers that were killed during the NATO bombardment when their bosses had previous knowledge that the building was going to be attacked so they left the premises and left their the employees. 384 Sava Paunović "Association of the Families of Soldiers who Died in the Line of Duty During the 1990- 1999 Wars of the Republic of Serbia" interview conducted on 18 May 2011. 234 their lives in those wars. “It is extremely taboo – the number of the killed is being hidden!”385 And in spite of the veterans’ depreciation, being perceived as a burden not only to the state but more importantly also to the wider society, they have to back down: “It is due to this international pressure, apparent in media and NGO. You cannot fight it. (…) The only way is to reach a compromise, to suck it up!” 386 Or “We demonstrated our willingness to make enormous compromises by collaborating with the Committee and accepting all victims".387 The silencing and neutralizing of the mnemonic battles surrounding the Monument affair was enabled through the use of the mechanism of fragmentation and decontextualization of memory contents. The precise apparatus of this mechanism, as employed by the ruling elite was shown in detail in the example of the veteran population’s mnemonic battles. The rational for choosing precisely the war veterans lies in the fact that the participants of the wars such as veterans, refugees or witnesses of atrocities, as mnemonic groups represent an inevitable factor in the post-war reconstruction period and the “healing” of the nation cannot be done without addressing their sufferings in the past war. Consequently, gaining control over the veteran population was a crucial step in achieving control over political spaces where any public reckoning with the past might be possible. This mechanism shows the ways in which the ruling political elites were engaged in deliberately and strategically fragmenting the war veteran population. This was intended primarily to mitigate their political power, weaken their struggle for their rights, and to reduce the financial burden which war veterans might impose on the state budgets but was also directed towards maintaining supremacy over the memory agenda. After the veterans had been extensively fragmented, the state found successful ways to filter and de-contextualize the war veterans’ memories in bridging both the domestic and the international aspirations. The ruling political elite, through mediation between civil society and state institutions filtered and de-contextualized the war veterans’ memory contents in two main ways: through the adoption and implementation of the European Standards laid out in the Law on Associations, and through changes in the process of

385 Mile Milošević “Serbian War Veterans” interview conducted on 26 April 2011. 386 Željko Vasiljević “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 387 Dragomir Vasić “The Union of the War Veterans and Invalids”, interview conducted on 10 May 2011. 235 granting financial support to war veteran associations. These actions were taken due to the conclusions made by the ruling elite that filtering and decontextualizing certain adverse memory contents may better Serbia’s chances of being accepted to the European Union. This is in spite of the fact that neither the Europeanization nor the Transitional Justice mechanisms directly proscribe what should be remembered or forgotten. However, in the intertextuality of the processes it is clearly suggested that praising Serbs as heroes of the wars in the 1990s is not an option.388 For example, the post-Milošević history text books were significantly softened and made more conciliatory when discussing the international role in the conflicts of the 1990s (Stojanović 2011). Stojanović shows that the history books written after the overthrow of Milošević regime were guarded from the use of hate speech and free from the conspiracy theories, previously used to point a finger at the international community for intentional destruction of Serbian people. Also, the language was considerably cleaned up and some of the more outrageous hate speech and rhetoric eliminated (Subotić 2013). This policy of getting closer to the EU after the year 2000 is present in both political and cultural spheres, and it especially impacts the process of forging collective memory. Veterans speak out loud about the reasons why they have been neglected by the state: “There is that constant tendency among the political elite to ingratiate themselves with the EU, to show themselves as Serbian peacemakers, and logically we are the stain in that story, so the easiest way is just to crush us.”389 The first step of seizing control over the veteran population and of mitigating their potential political and social power was done very effectively through their persistent fragmentation: “The state triggered our fragmentation”.390 This was carefully achieved via policies of ascribing different privileges to different veteran groups. All governments, regardless of their political tendencies, supported this policy, which consequently led to endless quarrels, disputes and allegations between different veteran groups.

388Zoran Alimpić, the former Belgrade Mayor Deputy openly expressed his concern asking how it would look like if Serbia was to glorify the wars of the 1990s. 389 Željko Vasiljević “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 390 Željko Vasiljević “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 236

However, after having fragmented them, the ruling political elite have also found an efficient way, through implementation of filtering and decontextualization of memory contents, to reshape veterans’ memories. Understanding the EU as a “big brother”391, but still unwilling to conduct a genuine debate on Serbia’s contested past, the filtering and decontextualization of the memory contents proved to be a satisfactory solution for the ruling political elites in the attempt to reduce the tensions both at the international and the domestic levels. Levy and Sznaider (2010) rightly pointed out that decontextualization of the concrete memories in particular suits the needs of the ruling political elites as it enables the closure of political spaces. The institutionalization of the de-contextualized and filtered memories, which requires a shift from concrete memories to abstract remembrance of barbarous acts, always occurs at the expense of the barbarity of these acts (Levy and Sznaider 2010: 14). What is at stake is the transformation of lived and witness-embodied memory into institutionally shaped and sustained memory. This transition corresponds with the inevitable shift from the concrete to abstract. Jović (2004: 98) pointed out that in periods of national consolidation, “the bond between ‘real power’ and power to dominate over symbols, memories and amnesia remains strong”. This underlines the difference between the individual need to remember and the need of the dominant ideology to institutionalize memory by exploiting “the usable past” (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). The idea is to reinforce certain categories but to avoid going into any specifics. In other words, wars are bad but liberation wars are a necessity. Thus the real victims are those who fought those wars: not some concrete wars, but wars in general, not some concrete soldiers but soldiers as a category. This particular logic was assigned to the ways in which the war veteran organizations were to be granted financial support. On the one hand, the category of a fighter was reinforced: various war veteran organizations representing different wars across historical lines, such as the Balkan wars, World War One, World War Two, and the wars of the 1990s, were granted financial aid. On the other hand, it seems rather clear that only organizations that contextualized their war experience as traumatic, and were highlighting their victimhood, were selected as grant recipients. In this approach the state

391 On discourses developed in Serbia on the EU see more in Petrović Tanja (2012) YUROPA – Jugoslovensko nasleđe i politike budućnosti u postjugoslovenskim društivma. Edicija Reč: Beograd. 237 was able to reinforce the category of a fighter as the ultimate sacrifice and to claim back the loyalty of the citizens to their state. Taking out any specifics from the category of “war”, so that all wars Serbia fought were righteous, liberating and equated with each other, further hushes up any undesirable discussions on the wars of the 1990s for the purposes of transmitting a message to the EU of stability and progress. Processes of filtering and decontextualization by which memories of concrete (particular) atrocities are transformed into abstract (universal) violations and suffering of humanity have proved to be crucial in satisfying the contradicting demands at the international and the national levels. These are processes through which, instead of accepting responsibility for its misdeeds, the ruling political elite tries to find the lowest common denominator between demands at the international level and those at the domestic level. As a result, the ruling elite continued the previous pattern of promoting Serbian victimhood. It has been inevitable that given national contexts would be balanced between particular (concrete) and universal (de-contextualized) memories precisely in order to find the fine line between overtly conflicting demands. Consequently, the filtering and decontextualization of the wars of the 1990s, both promotes the state agenda based on victimhood and weakens the possibility of a successful promotion of other veterans organizations’ memory agendas. It is a successful strategy for closing political spaces for other actors where any open and frank discussions of the role of Serbia and its responsibility for the wars of the 1990s could take place. It also explains why, to put it in the words of a veteran “we had to swallow it and accept the victims” 392 to be a part of the monument.

Social narratives of suffering The life of a monument always spreads through both spatial and temporal dimensions. Its physical form places it in concrete geographical coordinates and its commemorative practices reenacted on a concrete date, make “memory sites the central loci for ongoing struggles over identity” (Olick and Robbins 1998: 126), in a geography of identity (Osborne 1998). Thus, monuments as "territorialized memories" (Roberman

392 Željko Vasiljević “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 238

2007: 1055) are tightly connected to national calendars. National calendars serve as cognitive maps, organizing structures of national identification that primarily stress the importance of temporal continuity as a means of articulating desired collective identities (Zerubavel 2004). The institutionalization of commemorative holidays establishes a rhythmic form (Munn 1992) of the annual cycle of remembrance, designed to ensure mnemonic socialization through recalling certain “sacred” moments (Zerubavel 2003). In other words, national calendars represent the ultimate device the ruling elites use to enforce a particular vision of where we are heading as a nation (David 2012). When in January 2012 the Belgrade Municipality published a press release saying that the “Monument to the victims of the wars and defenders of the fatherland from 1990- 1999” will be officially opened on 24 March, the day when the NATO bombardment on Serbia and Montenegro started, I had already finished interviewing parties involved in the monument affair and I was not able to get their responses to this revelation. However, without knowing not only when but if the monument would be erected, many of the interviewees supplied an answer on when the commemorations around the monument should take place. For example, the president of the “War Army Invalids” said that, since they have adopted Saint Demetrios as their organization protector, they will probably perform the commemorations on 8 November, St. Demetrios day.393 His Vice president, however, said that currently the commemorative event is taking place on 8 March, the International Women’s Day, so “they will probably link the commemorations at the memorial site with the already existing 8 March. This again depends, he said, on whether they receive money for the ceremony and for the small gifts for wives and mothers on time, or whether the money will arrive late as in the previous years. In that case, they will probably perform the commemoration only in April or around that time.”394 The president of “Fighters of the War of the 1990s” said this subject needs some more thinking, but probably the beginning of the wars in Slovenia is the best suited day.395 The president of “Serbian War Veterans” suggested for commemorations to take place in May on Saint George’s Day.396 Only the president of the "NGO Families of the Killed and

393 Željko Vasiljević, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April, 2011. 394 Zoran Marković, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 27 April 2011. 395 Ratko Zorić,“Fighters of the War of the 1990s”, interview conducted on 6 May 2011. 396 Mile Milošević, “Serbian War Veterans” interview conducted on 26 April 2011. 239

Distressed" wished 24 March to be the official commemorative date for the commemorations at the Monument. This was, however, understandable, and it served his memory agenda since his son was killed during the NATO bombardment.397 The inability to agree on one commemorative day clearly shows that the current national calendar does not offer any commemorative date through which the veterans are honored and appreciated for their participation in the wars in the 1990s. For that very reason, most of them turned to the Church calendar. So the question is what visions of nationhood are promoted in the newly tailored national calendar and how it serves the state’s attempts to, on the one hand, create a certain “sellable” image for international display and on the other, to shape a certain national identity matching the local demands. The second mechanism used by the ruling political elite deals with the ways in which the social narratives of suffering have been endorsed and embraced in order to further promote the characterization of Serbs as victims. Moreover, spreading the narrative and commemorative networks of victimhood was a way of tacitly claiming the righteousness of the wars in the 1990s wherein the Serbs were betrayed, sacrificed, expatriated and destroyed. For the sake of promoting this type of memory agenda, it was necessary to construct wide sets of societal infrastructures to successfully enroot the vision of a victimized nation. For example, the analysis of the history textbooks after the year 2000 shows that “the Serbian people continue to be represented as victims, and Yugoslavia as a country destroyed by selfish separatists in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia who did not respect the interests of the Serbian nation” (Subotić 2013:313). In addition, there exists an attempt to ascribe equal responsibility to all parties in the conflict saying that: "the consequences of these conflicts were disastrous for all residents, regardless of ethnicity or religion. Pogroms against civilians, Serbs, Croats, and Muslims left behind a mass grave across former Yugoslav spaces” (Stojanović 2011:347). The newly tailored national calendar reflects similar aspirations, serving the same purpose of spreading the narrative of Serbian suffering. Since national calendars are not an instrument for representing a historic reality, but rather are a device for setting forth certain agendas, they perfectly reflect upon the ruling elites’ perceptions of the current

397 Bane Pejčinović, "NGO Families of the Killed and Distressed", interview conducted on 19 May 2011. 240 needs of the nation. By meticulous assessment of the evolving national calendar during the last decade, I showed that the Serbian political elite have managed Serbia’s contested past by covering up and cultural reframing rather than by public acknowledgement of the wars in the 1990s. The newly emerging national calendar came to life after a process of debate lasting several years, in which an eight-member committee, together with various professionals, “negotiated” over Serbian history and past events. The rationale of those prolonged negotiations over Serbia’s past was to find a suitable formula “to adapt it to local needs, and align it with international standards and with similar programs by governments in many European countries”.398 What is more, members of the Serbian elite involved in the creation of new national and state symbols openly “admit” that meeting European expectations has been their main concern, while politicians justify political actions as conducive for Serbia’s accession to the EU, largely characterized by conditionality (Hammond 2006). The master narrative is purposefully centered on the 19th century and is designed to legitimize the current Serbian state as one based on democratic values and born from a prolonged and arduous struggle for freedom,. The 19th century commemorates the foundation of Serbia’s legal system and institutions. The reason for placing the master commemorative narrative in the 19th century is well explained by the member of the Committee for National Holidays 399 who said it would be possible to justify such a choice to Europe, since Serbia did not chose a date that exclusively refers to national military history, but also to statehood and constitutional history (Kovač 2003). Additionally, after the “democratic change” in 2000, Milošević effectively made it impossible to use socialist symbols in Serbian identity politics. This may be one reason why the socialist Yugoslav legacy in Serbia is strongly marginalized. Avoiding confrontation and seeking the acceptance to the European (mnemonic) Community, the leading idea of the Committee was to choose a national holiday that will be acceptable for the united Europe (Kovač 2003).

398 The advisor in the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy. 399 Radoš Ljušić 241

The whole calendar illustrates the government’s best efforts at overcoming the gap between the international and the domestic demands. I have shown that in order to deal with this complex problem, there was extensive usage of impression management techniques in the creation of the current Serbian calendar, as a state-sponsored practice. IM is best defined as the attempt to control images that are projected in real or imagined social interactions (Schlenker 1980). IM techniques actually enabled different readings of the calendar at the domestic and international levels, primarily as they facilitate the construction of multiple meanings. On the one hand, the calendar intends to present Serbia as a democratic and progressive state, but on the other hand, it legitimizes a wide range of emotions at the local level. In other words, the new Serbian calendar is made both to meet European expectations and further Serbian interests of joining the EU, but also to allow wider audiences in Serbia to express feelings of animosity, injustice and frustration as a means of settling historical accounts. My claim for the dual role of state-sponsored memory projects in general and national calendars in particular, is that they are used by ruling elites to simultaneously build national identity and loyalty to the state, and to promote national interests in international arenas. This goes hand in hand with the argument that nation-states are required to constitute themselves as timeless entities with a particular history and a particular culture. Subotić and Zarakol (2012: 4) showed that in the case of Serbia, Croatia and Holland “the emphasis on particularity is also a threat to a state’s legitimacy because nation-states also have to be modern, which means that they need to aspire to universal goals of rationality, objectivity, progress and development”. They rightly pointed out that the concern over the international reception of domestic practices indicates that states are much more aware of global social standards than the literature usually allows for. It is precisely because nations are not ‘natural’, but that they first need to be “imagined into experience” (Subotić and Zarakol 2012: 3), that narratives matter. If at one time their importance was measured against their impact in national arenas, modern states today devote considerable resources to producing narratives that promote their interests in international arenas. This means that the ruling political elite is constantly aware that while memory projects sponsored by the state, once were solely

242 arenas for forging desirable national identities, today they are simultaneously also monitored by international actors. The newly tailored national calendar shows that at the international level, the Serbian case appears as an exemplary case study on how contemporary states deal with the requirements of a global Human Rights regime (David 2014). In many ways, Serbia is behaving like a job applicant who is trying to “look good and lies to do it” (Weiss and Feldman 2006). This attitude is supported by conformity to European standards, as well as by a self-presentation intensely developed through the exemplification of Serbia’s good and moral deeds: sacrifice for the sake of others as in World War One or in the Kadinjača battle in World War Two, where partisans sacrificed their own lives to enable the rescue of enormous numbers of people. This also includes the struggle against fascism and anti-Semitism, as promoted in the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide in World War Two and Day of Europe, even a culture of negotiation, such as in the case of Kont Miloš who negotiated Serbian independency in the nineteenth century. By contrast, on the local level, the promoted memory of Serbian victimhood is presented and preserved in seven of the twenty one commemorative days. This not only suggests that Serbia perpetuates already well embodied patterns of victimhood, but that such patterning makes room for the expression of grievances, unresolved historical accounts and comprehensive feelings of injustice. The State Program deliberately chooses to revive and symbolically rebuild nineteenth century Serbia by placing and enforcing the new Serbian commemorative master narrative in the nineteenth century, and thereby, completely ignoring the wars of the 1990s. Apart from March 24, the date which commemorates the beginning of the NATO bombardment of Serbia and further promotes Serbian victimhood, one may notice quite effortlessly that the wars of the 1990s and Serbian participation therein are completely non-existent. Indeed, according to the new Serbian calendar, these wars and atrocities apparently never happened, and if they did, Serbia had nothing to do with them. More importantly, such tailoring blurs Serbia’s responsibility for the wars in the 1990s. The victimization narrative was found to be the most suitable when trying to bridge the gap between the demands at international and domestic levels. Not only was it already well enrooted in Serbian history, but it was also a compromise solution for both

243 the domestic and the international community. Focusing precisely on the Serbian victimhood motif in the country’s national past, where Serbs are to be perceived, both internally and externally as victims, served (and still serves) the attempts of the ruling elite to close political spaces for initiating a frank debate on the wars of the 1990s. Though some efforts have been made by the human rights NGO sector, first and foremost by the ‘Women in Black’, to protest the national calendar and to establish a counter- narrative such as a commemorative day for the Srebrenica massacre, those attempts have had very limited success (Friedman 2015). This is mostly the result of the fact that the wider society is indifferent and ambiguous, or at least does not perceive the national calendar to be worth fighting for.400 Thus, it seems that promoting social narratives of suffering helps the governmental efforts to close political spaces for other political actors and consequently, to escape taking any responsibility for the wars of the 1990s. It also makes more understandable the fact that other parties in the Monument Affair, apart from the Belgrade Municipality, were persistently denied the access to the political space. Both the veterans and the Monument Group tried, from different ideological points of view, to resist the social narratives of suffering enforced by the state, however, with almost no success at all.

Holocaust discourse as a screen memory Why did the Belgrade Municipality in its press release for the opening of “the Monument to the victims of the wars and defenders of the fatherland from 1990-1999” link it directly to the future Holocaust memorial stating that: “the Monument, just like a future memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, should be set to remind us of all the innocent who lost their lives because they were of a different religion and nation”?401 How come the Jewish choir402 receives money designed “for organizations that help improving war veterans’ societal position and promote the tradition of the liberation wars in Serbia”?403 Even the Deputy Major struggled when explaining it: “Well, that is all part

400 Unfortunately, apart from one serious survey made by Strategic Marketing Agency in 2010, the research on how wider society in Serbia “reacts” to the newly tailored national calendar is virtually none existent. 401 “Podsećanje na žrtve devedesetih”, 30 January 2012 www.b92.net/info 402 Hor Braca Baruh 403Republika Srbija (2011) Ministarstvi Rada i Socijalne politike Poziv za podnošenje predloga programa/projekata, Sužbeni glasnik, www.minrzs.gov.rs 244 of that. They (the choir) go from school to school, sing those (Jewish) songs and then explain a bit about the Holocaust”.404 The honest reaction to this sudden sense of the Holocaust being “behind every corner”405 is best illustrated in the rage war veterans feel on this matter. The president of the “War Army Invalids” blatantly said: “They (the Jewish choir) get money that is supposed to go to the veteran organizations! I don’t understand! Did we kill them (the Jews)? No, really, you tell me… What does it have to do with us?”406 If the veterans were not prevented from raising their voices publically, maybe someone would hear their deprecation, the feeling they are being betrayed over and over again. But the state has already fragmented them, filtered and de-contextualized their memories and taken away all of the dignity from their lives. It deprived them of being heroes and subsumed them into a wider and ambiguous category of victims. Not the victims, under spotlights where everybody sympathizes and cries with them, just victims; blurred, estranged, alienated victims. Not like the Holocaust victims. Is this sudden appearance of the Holocaust memory in some former Communist countries the consequences of a long silence on these events as Rousso (2007) suggested? Or is it this phenomenon just a part of a globalization of the Holocaust memory as argued by Levy and Sznaider? Is Serbia an exemplary case of a cosmopolitanized memory, a memory that refers to practices that shift attention away from the territorialized nation- state and the ethnically bound frameworks that are commonly associated with the notion of collective memory (Levy and Sznaider 2005)? Levy and Sznaider suggested that in the globalized modern world characterized by displacement and de-territorialization, the “cosmopolitan memory” of the Holocaust provides the foundation for a global politics of human rights, based on commonly remembered barbarism. Moreover, Rothberg (2009: 16) argued that cosmopolitization made the Holocaust memory multidirectional, multi- layered and it often produced new solidarities that come out of specificities, overlaps and echoes of different historical experiences (Rothberg 2009: 16). Indeed, the Holocaust memory transcended borders of the territorial memories of the Holocaust, spreading across continents and far away from the physical territories where it actually happened: in

404 Zoran Alimpić, deputy Mayor, interview conducted on 4 May 2011. 405 My expression 406 Zeljko Vasiljevic“War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April, 2011. 245

North (Levy and Sznaider 2006) and South America (Rothberg 2009), Australia (Levi 2007) and even Africa (Gilbert 2010). Moreover, the close connections between the Holocaust and the human rights regime became rather obvious in the recent reinforcement of the laws designed to punish the denial and trivialization of the Holocaust and other genocides, like the proposal signed on 19 April, 2007 by the EU Justice Ministers: “The proposal criminalizes all intentional behavior aimed at inciting violence or hatred and at denying or trivializing the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes as defined by the Tribunal of Nuremberg. Such crimes must be committed on the grounds of race, color, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin”.407 The Holocaust in recent decades has become a pivotal reference point for universal values of human rights, tolerance, and minority protection, and a paradigm through which other genocides are understood (Assmann 2007). I suggest here, that the Holocaust memory discourse in Serbia has been currently promoted by the state in its effort to conceal any political space where an encounter between the state and the civil society can occur and redirect public debate regarding the wars of the 1990s. Thus, it is not that the Holocaust has not become a single universally shared memory, as Levy and Sznaider envisaged, rather as Assmann (2007) suggested - it has become the paradigm or template through which other genocides and historical traumas are very often perceived, presented or shuttered. The Holocaust has thereby not replaced other traumatic memories around the globe but has provided a language for their articulation or a wider context that enables reframing of the past (Byford 2007). In Serbia, I argue, the Holocaust memory is brought up to the fore as a platform for articulating national interests and thus is activated as a screen-memory which does not simply compete with other pasts but provides a greater level of comfort than confrontation with more local problems could allow (Rothberg 2009). The Holocaust is activated as a screen-memory, a bracketing mechanism that draws attention to the complexities of social memory, as it simultaneously produces and interrogates knowledge about the past as a way to both conceptualize and trouble contemporary notions of social memory (Freeman, Niensan and Melamed 2013). It is a zero sum game where instead of

407 “EU Ministers Agree on Rules against Hate Crimes, Racism”, 20 April 2007 www.washingtonpost.com

246 dealing with their roles and responsibilities, Serbian governments are engaged in reframing and obfuscating the contested elements of their national past (David 2013). But why did the Holocaust suddenly become so appealing to the ruling political elite in Serbia? This is precisely where the social and political forces and the blending of the triple nature of Serbia’s contested past come to the fore. It is the politics of the regional integration, the Europeanization and the power-relations between the states that caused the adoption of the Holocaust memory discourse in Serbia. In particular it has to do with Serbia’s relation to the neighboring Croatia and their mutual competition to enter the EU. Serbia’s successful framing of the Jasenovac concentration camp run by the Croatian collaborative government during World War Two as the Serbian place of victimhood, discredited Croatia’s government by portraying it as fascist. The “hijacking” of Jasenovac, by the Serbian Orthodox Church and the ruling political elite in Serbia was achieved through framing the “breach of the Ustasha concentration camp in Jasenovac”408 as the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide in World War Two. Thus, every year on 22 April, the very same day the Croatians commemorate it, Serbian official delegations and the Church representatives enact commemorations that are meant to frame Jasenovac as the Serbian place of suffering and to “demonstrate the suffering of the Serbian people via Jews” (Byford 2007: 56). However, the concentration camp of Jasenovac was perceived in Croatia as an important symbol for displaying the presence of the anti-fascist struggle as a foundation of the European values (Banjeglav 2012). To deal with the rivalry with Serbs over the Jasenovac concentration camp as a symbol of appreciation of human and minority rights, the Croatian government invested vast sums of money in upgrading the Jasenovac museum complex, competing with the most advanced museums in the world. This strategic move was made purposefully to balance the currently commemorated pro-fascist past and to reshape their image as a democratic country. In Serbia, Holocaust memory discourse is promoted not only to better Serbia’s image on the international stage but also to equate the Serbian victims with the Jewish

408“Državni program obeležavanja godošnjica istorijskih događaja i oslobodilačkih ratova Srbija”, broj 401- 00-00024/2009-11/2, datum 11. Mart. 2009. Beograd. 247 victims. While in Croatia Holocaust memory was subsumed to the upgrading of the Jasenovac museum409, in Serbia from 2006, the ruling political elite did actually start promoting Holocaust education. The real power behind the adoption and promotion of Holocaust memory in Serbia lay in the fact that Serbs were perceived both internally and externally as those who helped saving the Jews during World War Two and as their “brothers in suffering” (MacDonald 2005). This widely held common perception was especially prevalent during the Milošević regime and was further endorsed by the Serbian Orthodox Church claiming that “anti-Semitism is not our national tradition”. 410 The policy that “Serbs never hated Jews” was particularly meant to promote Serbian alleged tolerance and move attention away from the strengthening of anti-Semitism and nationalism in Serbia (Byford 2006). Thus, the necessary societal framework for bringing the Holocaust to the forefront and framing it as a context for the promotion of victimhood of the Serbs were already in place when the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) took Holocaust education and commemorations under its patronage. The SOC has proved to be a major actor in promoting both commemoration of the Holocaust and education on the Holocaust, especially from 2003 when the Jasenovac Committee of the Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church was founded. However, the primary goal of the Jasenovac Committee was to establish the claim that Jasenovac is the new Serbian Kosovo, as the ultimate place of Serbian suffering. Analyzing commemorations of the Holocaust by the Jasenovac Committee, Byford (2007: 54) showed that “the fact is that the victimization of Jews is recalled and commemorated almost exclusively in the context of and in relation to the theme of Serbian suffering and martyrdom, which continues to dominate nationalist discourses.” Thus, whereas the difficulty of embracing Holocaust memory in Croatia is embedded in the fact that the Holocaust is an unpleasant reminder of Croatia’s fascist past, in Serbia the Holocaust is associated with Serbia’s moral victory and sacrifice. Thus, when understanding how those complex histories mix and merge together in the current national politics, one can understand why the ruling political elite in Serbia,

409 With virtually no one who researches the Holocaust in Croatia as discussed at the international workshop: The Holocaust in Yugoslavia: History, Memory and Culture”, Yad Vashem Museum, Jerusalem, 2013. 410 “Dan borbe protiv fašizma.” 11 November 2008 www.naslovi.net 248 together with the Serbian Orthodox Church embraces the Holocaust. It is a win-win situation both in the context of the EU demands and in comparison to the struggle in Croatia to detach itself from its fascist past. Moreover, the creation of Holocaust discourse serves the ruling political elite as a means to cover up any open debate on Serbia’s contested past. I argued that Holocaust memory discourse in Serbia is being currently promoted by the state in its efforts to shrink any political space where an encounter between the state and the civil society could occur and to redirect public debate on the wars of the 1990s. Thus, in Serbia, Holocaust memory is brought up to the fore as a platform for articulating national interests, and not as reference point for opening a debate on Serbia’s contested past but, to the contrary, as a cover up for the compromising past. In Serbia, both those real and symbolic power relationships and the supremacy of the core of Europe over memory content inside the European Union, actually push Holocaust discourse to the forefront as it successfully bridges the tension between international and the domestic interests. The ruling political elites in Serbia perceived that from the international perspective the Holocaust, is a suitable device for getting into a European club (Rousso 2007) and for claiming membership in the same moral community. This is evident in all commemorative speeches where the officials remind us that “it is important to remember the horror of the Holocaust repeatedly and to reject as untrue claims that negate its character and scope since this is what all democratic countries do”. 411 Thus, only after realizing that promoting Holocaust memory might work in their favor, both at the domestic and international level, did the Holocaust become an important issue for the ruling elites.412 Mixing and merging different, and at times even contradicting, agendas promoted at the local and international level, the Holocaust came in handy for the Serbian political elite as a device for simultaneously satisfying both domestic and international demands. This instrumentalization of Holocaust memory, however, comes with a price. Levy and Sznaider recognized three ways to frame the Holocaust: as the culmination of a

411 The president of the Serbian Parliament, Nebojša Stefanović in “Sećanje na žrtve Holokausta”, 27 January 2013. www.rts.rs 412 For example, only after the UN established the International Holocaust Day, the ruling political elite in Serbia started sponsoring projects on Holocaust. 249 history of anti-Semitism that only happened to Jews; as the history of racism that can happen to anyone who is different or as a crime against humanity that is considered a crime against the human condition (Levy and Sznaider 2004: 144). Huyssen (2004: 24) rightly pointed out that the totalizing dimension of Holocaust discourse “loses its quality as an index of a specific historical event and begins to function as a methaphor for other traumatic histories.” The Holocaust memory discourse in Serbia is utilized and tailored in such a way that, while in theory it is supposed to preach human and minority rights, in practice, it not only actually promotes nationalism and Serbian victimhood but it also disguises the (absence of) discourse on the role of Serbia in the wars of the 1990s.

From a compromising past to compromised memories When the official state authorities’ vision of the monument does not match the desire of ordinary people to commemorate pain, grief and suffering, a conflict arose (Misztal 2003). The clash of different visions of the past shows that “the shaping of a past worthy of public monuments is contested and involves a struggle for supremacy between advocates of various political ideas and sentiments” (Bodnar 1992: 9). As territoriality loses its role as a resource for political action it reappears as a sort of elegiac enclave, transmuted from the site of policy contentation to a landscape of memory (Maier 2000: 828). It was exactly those clashes which resulted in the “Monument to the victims of the wars and defenders of the fatherland from 1990-1999” ending up representing not what is being collectively remembered about the wars of the 1990s but what cannot be officially remembered. Ratko Mladić, for example, cannot be officially remembered; his picture has to be kept in privacy.413 Also, it cannot be mentioned that “this is the only war that the number of the Serbian victims is not the highest, a fact which should be celebrated” and it is “forbidden to talk about this as the state wants to ingratiate Slovenia and Croatia”.414 Finally, it seems that the Monument ended up being just “a reproduction of the state ideology”415 that aims to cover up and suppress the troubled past.

413His picture is displayed on the wall of the Serbian War Veterans organization. However, this organization has never received state support. 414Željko Vasiljević, “War Army Invalids”, interview conducted on 28 April 2011. 415 Nebojša Milikić “Monument Group”, interview conducted on 10 May 2011. 250

*** To conclude, there seems to be a cultural phenomenon in which post conflict nation-states, or, more correctly, their ruling elites, are engaged in constructing and editing national images and identities suitable not only for local purposes but also for international display in ways more calculated than ever. States strategically not only choose how to deal with the contested elements of their national past (Rivera 2008, Roberman 2007, Winter 2006) but, they apparently also manage their difficult past with clear aims in their mind: to portray the nation in a more positive light in international arenas. Currently many people not only recognize memory as a resource that groups in their society attempt to exploit, but they also believe in the feasibility of this enterprise (Lebow 2008) and its great potential for manipulating political goals.416 I suggest that while memory projects sponsored by the state, such as commemorative practices, national calendars, history textbooks, museums and monuments, once were solely arenas for forging desirable national identities, today they are simultaneously also used to promote national interests in the international arena. The need for finding a suitable memory content presentation that addresses both international and domestic demands indubitably has an impact on the ways in which collective memory is being forged at the local level. Dudden (2005), Lind (2008) and Blustein (2012), just to mention few, showed that post-conflict states in particular face enormous pressures both from domestic and international audiences to satisfy their often contradictory demands. They struggle to find ways to simultaneously deal with the transitional justice mechanisms and the human rights regime that they are compelled to accept by the international community, together with local demands to be acknowledged

416 The perfect example of this is what is called “memory activism” where various civil groups promote human rights` memory agendas through activism. See more in Friedman Orli "Alternative calendars and memory work in Serbia: anti-war activism after Milošević." Memory Studies (forthcoming); Leshem Noam (2010) “Memory activism: reclaiming spatial histories in Israel.” In Burke, L., Faulkner, S. and Aulich, J. (eds.) The Politics of Cultural Memory. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars 159-182. The state promotion of national agendas via manipulations of selected pasts is seen in the phenomenon called “nation branding”. Anholt Simon (2003) Brand New Justice: The Upside of Global Branding. Butterworth Heinemann; Volčić Zala, and Andrejević Mark (2011) “Nation Branding in Era of Commercial Nationalism.” International Journal of Communication 5:598-618; Ham van Peter (2001) “The rise of the brand State- the postmodern politics of image and reputation.” Foreign Affairs 80(5) 1-8; Dzenovska Dace (2005) “Remaking the nation of Latvia: Anthropological perspectives on nation branding." Place Branding 1:173–186. 251 as the righteous party in the conflict. Rivera’s (2008) outstanding research on tourist sites showed that post-conflict states tend to reframe national memory for the purposes of repairing their damaged images, as part of a strategic promotion of their interests at the international level. Subotić (2013) just recently opened the question of how the understanding and interpretations of a contested past in history textbooks impacts upon contemporary political choices in the international arena. However, the role of the ruling elite in the states where the transition is taking place, not only from a state of war to peace building, but also from totalitarian regimes to democracy, is even more complex. They have to manage different layers of their national past, which often exclude one another. Ruling elites have to adjust their collective memories to fit both the domestic and international demands. For example, Radonjić (2011) showed that in order to facilitate its integration into the European (memory) community, Croatia had to confront its past more critically than its neighboring states because of both its role in World War II and the revisionist Tuđman era. Bosnia, on the other hand, is still far behind in reaching the European dream, since being multi ethnical, there is no mutual understanding as to what should be remembered and commemorated (Koračić 2012). In Macedonia, there is still bigotry present between Macedonians and Albanians as they promote separate memory cultures, however, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia was the first in the Balkans to actually inaugurate the Holocaust Museum in 2011 to promote, amongst other things, the Restitution Law required by the Europeanization process.417 These choices in memory content selection are not random and it seems that they have a particular logic. Caught in between the opposing international and domestic demands and defined by the power-relations with the EU, all the ruling political elites in the post-Yugoslav spaces, without exception, provided limited or no access to other actors to political spaces where any open debate on the recent wars could take place. Thus, the role of the state as the main memory promoter, in the process of Europeanization did not disappear but was altered. Some researchers, such as Hirst and Thompson 1996, Smith 2001 and Hobsbawm 1993 argued that the role of nation-states in a wider context of globalization and transition, stayed unchanged and that they still have

417 “Macedonia opens a Balkan Holocaust Museum”, 16 March 2011 www.foward.com 252 a central function in the propagation of power. Others claimed that the post transitional nation-states no longer function as independent actors and that their power is substantially limited due to the establishment of international institutions and the rise of transnational organizations (Guibernau 2001: 256). Kaldor (2004) asserted that this has shattered the hegemony of the nation-state. I suggest that the particular power relation configuration inevitably alters the “traditional” role of the nation-state but it does not necessarily mean that it also weakens it. The imbalance in power between Serbia and the EU, expressed throughout the processes of Europeanization, the rise of Transitional Justice mechanisms and the Human Rights regime, forces the post-conflict government to become artful and canny when mediating between external and internal factors. While there is an extensive literature418 that deals with the ways states manage transitions to democracy, including the evasion of laws, claimant attitudes toward the state, opportunism, nepotism, favoritism and clientelism, camouflage and double moral standards (Sztompka 2004), the alteration in the role of the state in the process of forging a collective memory is rarely ever addressed. This functional alteration, from being the source of power to becoming a mediator and often a gate keeper explains why memory is extensively perceived as a supplementary source of power. In addition to more traditional sources of power, such as social cohesion, political stability, economical wealth, military capabilities, memory and the representations of the past became increasingly valuable supplies for achieving real and symbolic goals. Thus, in transitional, and more importantly, weak states with troubled pasts, it seems unlikely that the ruling political elites will open political spaces for public negotiation over their contested pasts, mostly as such processes lead to uncertainty, instability and social chaos. Instead, the ruling elites will create, find or adopt mechanisms to promote memory contents that are simultaneously suitable for both international and domestic display, even if it this comes at the at expense of whole social segments, such as, for example, the war veterans in Serbia.

418 On this issue see more in: Todosiljević Bojan (2008) “The Structure of Political Attitudes in Hungary and Serbia.” East European Politics and Societies 22: 879 – 900; Subotić Jelena (2010) “Explaining Difficult States: The Problems of Europeanization in Serbia.” East European Politics and Societies 24: 595-616; Tanja A. Börzel and Thomas Risse (2000) “When Europe Hits Home: Europeanization and Domestic Change.” European Integration online Papers 4(15):1-20; Anastaskis Othon (2005) “The Europeanization of the Balkans.” The Brown Journal of World Affairs 12(1): 77-88.

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In this sense, victimhood seems to be the best suited position to choose as it deconstructs the category of justice and responsibility. In Human Rights discourse, victims and perpetrators are usually referred to as two completely separate and homogenous sets of people, while in reality “not all victims are the same, nor are all perpetrators the same, and some victims are also perpetrators” (Borer 2003). Levy and Sznaider rightly pointed out that the competing conceptions of the victimhood are thrust into a dynamic that oscillates between the universal Human Rights stance and specific privileges. On the one hand, the universal Human Rights stance rejects the hierarchy of victims, while on the other “it is precisely the absence of the hierarchy that de- contextualizes and de-historicizes the actual deeds of past injustice” (Levy and Sznaider 2010: 131). Brouke (2004) showed that to universalize suffering it is necessary to remove its specifics relating to an individual or national history and to situate violence in the realm of moral edification. Thus, it seems beneficial for nations with compromising pasts to choose precisely the motif of victimization as it promotes sympathy instead of responsibility. It has a “politically neutering effect” (Bell 2006: 9) where national criminal pasts remain just a plain consequence of the previous sufferings of the nation. In Serbia, the category of victim was found to be a suitable one: for the international community it aims at expressing the full appreciation and understanding that wars are terrible things which produce only victims on all sides. For the domestic community, reframing war veterans as victims was a compromise of settling the internal differences between those who perceived the war veterans as criminals and those who recognized them as national heroes. Thus it looks like the question is not why nations with contested pasts chose to promote their own victimization, rather, how do they produce societal webs and networks of suffering to enforce and embed the victimization into life of a nation. It is inevitable, however, that forcing a compromise between the demands of both sides also means leaving all parties partially or completely unsatisfied. Even the best- suited strategy of victimhood promotion has had only relative success; this raises questions as to whether it can be enforced in the long term. This kind of forced compromise over memory has brought about some unpredicted outcomes whose impacts have yet to be seen. On the one hand, at the international level, it was pointed out that as

254 long as Serbia’s elite plays the role of the victim, Serbia will not be able to work constructively on its future and the future of the region (Helsinki Report 2011). On the other hand, numerous monuments, unknown and invisible to the wider audience are scattered all around Serbia; abundant alternative commemorative practices are carried out both by various war veteran organizations and by human rights organizations; there are frequent racist and anti-Semitic acts enforced and legitimized through the narratives of the Serbian ultimate sacrifice and victimhood; these are just a few of the fairly long list of activities created by the ruling elite’s decision not to become engaged in the open debate on the Serbia’s contested past. Such politics inevitably leads to the abandonment of memories trapped in mnemonic groups, deprived of the ability to voice their stories in public and waiting for the apposite social setting to arrive. But in a country where the past constantly changes, this schizophrenic map of colliding narratives might be just as good as it gets. Or is this the ultimate face of what democracy is?

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חתימה

תקציר

המחקר שלהלן עוסק בעבר שנוי במחלוקת, במשא ומתן עליו ובדרכים בהן הוא מתורגם/מתועל לזיכרון הקיבוצי. האופן שבו זיכרון קיבוצי מתביית בתודעה כאשר ישנה מחלוקת הנוגעת לעבר בעייתי, כבר אינו עניין פנימי בלבד, כיוון שהשפעותיהם של גורמים חיצוניים על הזיכרון המקומי נוכחים בצורה משמעותית. מדינות לאחר מלחמה, או ליתר דיוק, האליטות השולטות בהן, מתמודדות עם לחצים עצומים הן מצד הציבור המקומי והן מצד הקהילה הבינלאומית, שניהם דורשים סיפוק לצרכיהם, המנוגדים לרוב. הן נאבקות למצוא דרכים להתמודד עם שני כוחות מנוגדים: מצד אחד הקהילה הבינלאומית המנסה לכפות מנגנוני צדק מעברי )Transitional Justice( ואימוץ נורמות של זכויות האדם, ומצד שני הדרישות של הציבור המקומי לזכות בהכרה כצד הצודק במלחמה. במחקר אטען כי מטרת האליטות השולטות היא להטמיע תדמית ניתנת לשיווק לתצוגה בינלאומית מחד גיסא, ולעצב זהות לאומית מסויימת ההולמת את הדרישות המקומיות מאידך גיסא. מצב זה יוצר מתחים רבים בין הדרישות הגלובליות והמקומיות, מתחים אשר משפיעים על תהליך עיצובם של זכרונות קיבוציים מסויימים. במחקר אני מעלה טענה כי תהליך הבניית הזיכרון הקיבוצי בסרביה לאחר מלחמות שנות ה- 09', והאופן בו הליך האירופאזציה, הנחיל, הפנים, מנע, שינה או חתר תחת קטגוריות הזיכרון, מהווה מקרה בוחן מצויין לאופן שבו אומה לאחר מלחמה מתווכת את העבר השנוי במחלוקת שלה כאשר היא נקלעת לתהום שבין הדרישות המקומיות לאלו של הקהילה הבינלאומית. מצבה של סרביה, שנתפסה כצד התוקפן במלחמות שנות ה09-, והיעדר מאזן כוחות בין סרביה לאיחוד האירופי הגביל את האפשרויות העומדות בפניה, ובסופו של דבר הוביל לאג'נדה של קידום זיכרון קיבוצי המושפע ישירות מהלחץ הבינלאומי. הפער העצום בין הדרישות המקומיות לזכות בהכרה כצד צודק בעימות לבין הדרישות הבינלאומיות להתמודד עם העבר הבעייתי - משמש כזכוכית מגדלת ומסייע לנו לנתח את הדרכים בהן אליטות פוליטיות מנסות לגשר על הפער. באמצעות מקרה הבוחן של המחקר, הנסיון שנמשך כעשור להקים אנדרטה לזכר הנופלים/הרוגים/מגנים/קורבנות1 של המלחמות בשנות ה09-, הראיתי כי הדרישות להתמודד עם העבר, בשילוב עם דרישות ומצבים פוליטיים, חברתיים וכלכליים אחרים, מציבים לחץ אדיר על האליטה השלטת, ומשחקים תפקיד מרכזי בהליך הבניית הזיכרון. אף שהמכרזים הפתוחים להקמת אנדרטה לקורבנות מלחמות שנות ה09- היו הזדמנות לתווך בין אג'נדות זיכרון שונות, קידמה האליטה הפוליטית, כשחקנית הדומיננטית, את הקורבנות הסרבית, במאמציה לגשר על פערים בין הדרישות המקומיות לבינלאומיות.

ניתן להבין פערים אלו כאשר בוחנים את הליך הדמוקרטיזציה שהחל לאחר הפלת משטר מילושביץ בשנת 0999, כאשר הקהילה הבינלאומית התנתה את יציבותה הפיננסית של סרביה ומועמדותה לאיחוד האירופי במנגנוני צדק מעברי חדשים ומתמשכים. התמודדתה של סרביה עם

חלק מהמחלוקות בנוגע לאנדרטה נעוצות בחוסר האפשרות להסכים על מי מונצח באנדרטה1 עברה מושפעת לא רק מהיותה מדינה שעברה שלוש טלטלות מרכזיות בדמות השתתפות במלחמה, התפרקות שילטונית מהפדרציה היגוסלבית והתנערות מאידיאולוגיה סוציליסטית - אלא גם באמצעות מאזן הכוחות הבלתי-שיוויוני מול האיחוד האירופי. תהליך האירופיזציה במקביל למשטר זכויות האדם, הביא בסופו של דבר לשינויים במבחר התכנים ברי השימוש של הזיכרון. יחסי הכוחות הקיימים עיצבו גם את ההגיון לפיו אותו הליך של שכחה וזיכרון חברתיים מתקיים בסרביה כיום. אך הליך ההבניה של הזיכרון הקיבוצי בסרביה לא יכול להיות מוסבר אך ורק בהקשר של אירופיזציה, הליכי קונסולידציה של שיח זכויות האדם וקוסמופוליטיזציה של זיכרון קיבוצי – כפי שאינו יכול להיות מוסבר באמצעות ההקשר הלאומי הנתון בלבד. כפי שמודגם בניתוח מדוקדק של פרשת האנדרטה )0990-0900(, הייתה זו ההחלטה האסטרטגית של האליטות הפוליטיות לשמר בידיהן את השליטה לאורך כל הדרך על המרחבים הפוליטיים בהם ניתן לעצב את העבר הכואב והשנוי במחלוקת באופן פתוח וכן. חישובים פוליטיים, מיתון כלכלי, חוסר יציבות חברתית, והליך אירופיזציה שנכפה מלמעלה עמדו בשורש ההחלטה האסטרטגית של האליטה הפוליטית להשקיע משאבים בשימור השליטה על מרחבים פוליטיים - מרחבים סמליים בהם מייצגים ומקדמים שחקנים פוליטיים את האינטרס שלהם )Grinberg 0909(, כפתרון הטוב ביותר להתמודדות עם הדרישות ברמה הבינלאומית והמקומית. עד היום, רואות האליטות הפוליטיות השליטות בפתיחת תיבת הפנדורה של העבר השנוי במחלוקת של סרביה עיסוק מסוכן. יש שחששו ממעורבותם האישית במלחמות שנות ה09-'. יש שראו בהן מקור אפשרי לחוסר יציבות פוליטית וכלכלית. אחרים חששו לעמדתם הפוליטית האישית. סיבות אלו, בד בבד עם הדרישות המנוגדות ברמה הבינלאומית והמקומית, מספקות את ההסבר מדוע מעולם לא יזמה או תמכה המדינה בשיח הנוגע לתפקידה של סרביה ואחריותה למלחמות שנות ה-'09. אף שהאליטות הפוליטיות בסרביה נאלצו ליישם מודלים מסויימים של צדק מעברי בינלאומי ביחס לתפקידה של סרביה במלחמות שנות ה09-', המדינה מעולם לא עודדה, יזמה או קידמה כל סוג של דיון ציבורי בבעיות היסודיות של המלחמות השנויות במחלוקת. יש לציין כי גם לאחר הפלת המשטר בשנת 0999, לא לקחו ממשלות סרביה אחריות מלאה על חלקה של סרביה במלחמות שנות ה09-'. ניתוח פרשת האנדרטה חושף כי על מנת להתמודד עם הדרישות הסותרות, יצרה ואימצה האליטה הפוליטית השלטת מנגנונים שאיפשרו את סגירתם של מרחבים פוליטיים בפני שחקנים פוליטיים אחרים. מנגנונים אלה התאימו לצורך לתמרן אסטרטגית בין הדרישות הבינלאומיות והמקומיות. שלושת המנגנונים: דה-קונטקסטואליזציה של תוכן הזיכרון; יצירת נראטיבים חברתיים של סבל; וקידום זיכרון השואה כזיכרון ממסך - הם אסטרטגיות של סגירת מרחבים פוליטיים ובכך מניעת דיון, ייצוג, משא ומתן או פשרה ציבוריים. אלו הן אסטרטגיות השתקה שנועדו לצמצם את המתח בין הדרישות הסותרות ברמה הבינלאומית והמקומית. 'השתקה' פירושה סגירת מרחב פוליטי ושליטה בשיח הציבורי. למרות העובדה שלנציגי הממשל לא היה חזון ברור או ייחודי, האנדרטה נתפשה בכל רגע נתון ככלי פוליטי שנועד להרגיע את הדרישות הן מבית והן מחוץ. בצורה זו, האליטות השולטות "חטפו" או "כבשו" )Grinberg 0909( את המרחבים הפוליטיים. ההשתקה והנטרול של מאבקי זיכרון שסבבו את פרשת האנדרטה התאפשרו הודות לשימוש במנגנון הפרגמנטציה והדה-קונטקסטואליזציה של תכני הזיכרון. הכלי המדוייק של מנגנון זה, כפי שנוצל על ידי האליטה השלטת, מוצג בפירוט בדוגמת מאבקי הזיכרון של אוכלוסיית יוצאי הצבא. הרציונל מאחורי בחירת אוכלוסיית יוצאי הצבא טמון בעובדה שאלו שחוו את המלחמות – בין אם חיילים, פליטים או עדי ראייה לזוועות המלחמה, מייצגים, בהיותם קבוצות זיכרון, גורם בלתי נמנע ברקונסטרוקציה בתקופה שלאחר המלחמה, ולא ניתן להשלים את תהליך ההחלמה של אומה מבלי להתייחס לסבלה במלחמה שהסתיימה. פועל יוצא מכך שהשליטה באוכלוסיית יוצאי הצבא הייתה צעד חיוני בהשגת שליטה במרחבים פוליטיים בהם עשוי להתקיים דיון ציבורי לגבי העבר השנוי במחלוקת. מנגנון זה חושף את הדרכים בהן האליטות הפוליטיות השולטות פעלו באופן מכוון ואסטרטגי לפיצול אוכלוסיית יוצאי המלחמות. מהלכים אלה נועדו בעיקר להחליש את כוחן הפוליטי של קבוצות יוצאי המלחמות, לפגוע במאבקן על זכויות ולצמצם את הנטל הפיננסי שהן עלולות להטיל על הממשל. מהלכים אלו נועדו אף לשמר את השליטה באג'נדת הזיכרון. הצעד הראשון לנטילת השליטה על אוכלוסיית יוצאי המלחמות ולהפחתת הכוח הפוליטי והחברתי הפוטנציאליים שלה, נעשה בצורה יעילה ביותר באמצעות פילוגה המתמשך. יעד זה הושג בתחכום באמצעות מדיניות להקצאת הטבות שונות לקבוצות שונות בתוך קבוצת יוצאי הצבא. כל הממשלות, ללא תלות בנטייתן הפוליטית, תמכו במדיניות זו, שהובילה לריבים, מחלוקות והאשמות אינסופיים בין קבוצות יוצאי הצבא השונות. לאחר שיוצאי הצבא פולגו באופן משמעותי, מצאה המדינה דרכים טובות לסנן ולבצע דה- קונטקסטואליזציה של זכרונות יוצאי המלחמות, בגשרה על השאיפות המקומיות והבינלאומיות. האליטה הפוליטית השלטת, באמצעות תיווך המרחבים הפוליטיים ומוסדות המדינה, סיננה את תוכן הזיכרון של יוצאי המלחמות וערכה לו דה-קונטקסטואליזציה באמצעות שתי דרכים עיקריות: האחת, אימוץ ויישום של הסטנדרטים האירופאים לתוך חוק האגודות החדש, השנייה, באמצעות שינויים בהליך הענקת הסיוע הכספי לאגודות יוצאי הצבא. פעולות אלה ננקטו כתוצאה ממסקנת האליטה השלטת כי סינון ודה-קונטקסטואליזציה של תכני זיכרון מסויימים עשויים לשפר את סיכוייה של סרביה להתקבל לאיחוד האירופי. זאת, למרות העובדה כי לא מנגנוני האירופיזציה ולא מנגנוני הצדק המעברי מכתיבים באופן ישיר מה צריך לזכור או לשכוח. הזכרונות שעברו דה- קונטקסטואליזציה וסינון דורשים מעבר מזכרונות קונקרטיים לזיכרון מופשט. הרעיון הוא לחזק קטגוריות מסויימות, אך להימנע מפרטים. במלים אחרות, מלחמות הן רעות, אך מלחמות שחרור הן חיוניות. כך, הקורבנות האמיתיים הם אלה שלחמו במלחמות. לא מלחמות קונקרטיות, אלא מלחמות באופן כללי. לא חיילים מסויימים, כי אם חיילים כקטגוריה. היגיון זה עמד מאחורי האופן בו אמורים היו ארגוני הלוחמים לקבל סיוע כספי. מצד אחד, חוזקה קטגוריית הלוחמים אשר קיבלו סיוע כספי: מגוון ארגוני יוצאי מלחמות המייצגים משתתפי מלחמות שונות בהיסטוריה – מלחמות הבלקן, מלחמת העולם הראשונה, מלחמת העולם השנייה ומלחמות שנות ה09-' –. מצד שני, רק ארגונים שהגדירו את חוויית המלחמה שלהם כטראומטית והדגישו את קורבנותם נבחרו כמקבלי מענקים. באמצעות גישה זו, הצליחה המדינה לחזק את קטגוריית הלוחמים כמקריבים הגדולים, ולהחזיר לעצמה את נאמנות האזרחים למדינה. העלמת הפרטים המזהים מקטגוריית המלחמה גרמו להצגתן של כל המלחמות בהן היתה מעורבת סרביה כמלחמות צדק ושחרור והזהות זו לזו, ובכך משתיקה כל דיון לא רצוי במלחמות שנות ה09-', כדי לשדר לאיחוד האירופי מסר של יציבות וקידמה. תהליכי סינון ודה-קונטקסטואליזציה שהופכים את מעשי זוועה קונקרטיים, לסבל מופשט ואוניברסלי של האנושות, מתבררים כתהליך חיוני לעמידה בדרישות סותרות ברמה הבינלאומית והלאומית. במקום לקחת אחריות על המעשים הקשים, המדינה מנסה למצוא את המכנה המשותף הנמוך ביותר בין הדרישות ברמה הבינלאומית לבין אלו ברמה המקומית. כתוצאה מכך, המשיכה המדינה בדפוס הקודם של קורבנות סרבית. קטגוריית הקורבן נמצאה כהולמת: עבור הקהילה הבינלאומית היא נועדה להביע הערכה והבנה כי מלחמות הן דבר נוראי והן מייצרות אך ורק קורבנות עבור כל הצדדים. עבור הקהילה המקומית, הצגת יוצאי המלחמות כקורבנות היוותה שיטה ליישוב המחלוקות הפנימיות בין מי שראו ביוצאי המלחמות פושעים, לבין מי שהכירו בהם כגיבורים לאומיים. בלתי נמנע הוא כי ההקשרים הלאומיים הנתונים יאוזנו בין זכרונות מסויימים )קונקרטיים( לאוניברסליים )שעברו דה-קונטקסטואליזציה(, בדיוק כדי למצוא את הקו הדק בין דרישות מנוגדות. הסינון והדה-קונטקסטואליזציה של מלחמות שנות ה09-' מקדמים את האג'נדה של המדינה המבוססת על קורבנות, ומחלישים את האפשרות לקידום אג'נדות זיכרון של ארגוני יוצאי צבא אחרים. זוהי אסטרטגיה מוצלחת לסגירת מרחבים פוליטיים בפני שחקנים אחרים בהם ניתן לקיים דיונים פתוחים וכנים בנוגע לתפקידה של סרביה ואחריותה למלחמות שנות ה09-'. היא גם מסבירה כיצד האנדרטה שהוקמה בסופו של דבר מנציחה יחדיו את "קורבנות ומגיני המולדת". המנגנון השני שבחנתי עוסק בדרכים בהן הנראטיבים החברתיים של הסבל נתמכים ומאומצים כדי לקדם את הגדרת הסרבים כקורבנות. הפצת הנראטיב ורשתות הזיכרון של הקורבנות הייתה דרך לטעון במרומז לצדקת מלחמות שנות ה09-', בהן הסרבים נבגדו, הקריבו, הוגלו והושמדו. לשם קידום אג'נדת זיכרון כזו, היה צורך בהבניית מערכים רחבים של תשתיות חברתיות כדי להשריש בהצלחה את החזון של אומה קורבנית. כיוון שלוחות שנה לאומיים אינם כלי לייצוג מציאות היסטורית, אלא לקביעת אג'נדות, בחרתי לנתח את לוח השנה הסרבי החדש כדי לבחון את השערתי כי האליטות השולטות קידמו את מותג הקורבנות הסרבית. אם השערתי נכונה, היא בודאי תותיר סימן על מחזור ההנצחה של זיכרון ושיכחה. באמצעות ניתוח קפדני של לוח השנה הלאומי המשתנה בעשור האחרון, הראיתי כי האליטה הפוליטית בסרביה ניהלה את העבר השנוי במחלוקת באמצעות כיסוי והגדרה מחדש של העבר, ולא תוך כדי דיון ציבורי על שהתרחש. לוח השנה הלאומי החדש נולד בעקבות תהליך שארך מספר שנות דיונים, בו ועדה בת 8 חברים, יחד עם מגוון מומחים, "נשאה ונתנה" בנוגע להיסטוריה הסרבית ולמאורעות העבר. ההיגיון שעמד מאחורי משא ומתן ממושך זה אודות עברה של סרביה היה מציאת נוסחא הולמת להתאמתו לצרכים מקומיים ולסטנדרטים בינלאומיים, כמו גם לתכניות דומות של ממשלות במדינות אירופאיות רבות. לוח השנה כולו מדגים את מאמצי הממשל הבלתי נלאים לגשר על הפער בין הדרישות הבינלאומיות והמקומיות. הראיתי כי לשם התמודדות עם בעיה מורכבת זו, היה שימוש נרחב בשיטות ניהול רשמים )impression management, IM( ביצירת לוח השנה הסרבי. שיטות אלו הפכו לנוהג בחסות ממשלתית. ההגדרה הטובה ביותר ל-IM היא הניסיון לשלוט בדימויים המוקרנים באינטראקציות חברתיות אמיתיות או מדומיינות )Schlenker 1980(. שיטות IM איפשרו למעשה קריאות שונות של לוח השנה ברמות המקומיות והבינלאומיות, בעיקר כיוון שהן מאפשרות הבנייה של משמעויות מרובות. מצד אחד נועד לוח השנה להציג את סרביה כמדינה דמוקרטית ומתקדמת, אך מצד שני, הוא מעניק לגיטימציה למגוון רגשות ברמה המקומית. במלים אחרות, לוח השנה הסרבי החדש נועד אמנם לעמוד בציפיות האירופיות ולקדם את האינטרס הסרבי להצטרף לאיחוד האירופי, אך במקביל נועד גם להתיר לקהל רחב יותר בסרביה להביע רגשות עוינות, אי-צדק ותסכול, כאמצעי ליישוב חשבונות היסטוריים. ברמה הבינלאומית, המקרה הסרבי משמש מקרה בוחן מצויין לאופן שבו מדינות מתמודדות כיום עם דרישות משטר זכויות האדם הגלובלי. במובנים רבים מתנהגת סרביה כמועמדת לעבודה המנסה "להיראות טוב, ומוכנה לשקר לשם כך" )Weiss and Feldman 2006(. גישה זו נתמכת על ידי התאמה לסטנדרטים אירופיים, כמו גם על ידי ייצוג עצמי שפותח באמצעות הדגגמה של מעשיה הטובים והמוסריים של סרביה. אלה כוללים את המאבק בפאשיזם, תרבות של משא ומתן ומאבק מתמשך באנטישמיות. באופן מנוגד, ברמה המקומית, הקורבנות סרבית קודמה הוצגה ושומרה ב7- מבין 00 ימי ההנצחה. נתון זה לא רק מרמז כי סרביה ממשיכה בדפוסי קורבנות קיימים, אלא גם כי דפוס זה מפנה מקום לביטויים של מרמור, חשבונות היסטוריים לא סגורים ותחושות עמוקות של אי-צדק. לוח השנה בוחר במכוון להחיות ולבנות מחדש באופן סמלי את סרביה של המאה ה00- באמצעות מיקום ואכיפה של נראטיב העל של ההנצחה במאה ה00-, ולפיכך מתעלם לחלוטין ממלחמות שנות ה- 09'. מלבד 02 למרץ, התאריך המציין את תחילת הפצצות נאט"ו בסרביה ומקדם את הקורבנות הסרבית, ניתן להבחין כי מלחמות שנות ה09-' ומעורבותה של סרביה בהן אינן מופיעות כלל בלוח השנה. אכן, לפי לוח השנה הסרבי, מלחמות אלו והזוועות הכרוכות בהן מעולם לא התרחשו, ואם התרחשו, לא הייתה לסרביה יד בהן. חשוב מכך, הצגה כזו מטשטשת את האחריות הסרבית למלחמות שנות ה09-'. נראה אם כך, שקידום הנראטיבים החברתיים של הסבל מסייע למאמצי הממשל לסגור מרחבים פוליטיים בפני שחקנים פוליטיים אחרים, וכתוצאה, להתחמק מאחריות למלחמות שנות ה- 09'. הוא גם מקל על הבנת העובדה שממעורבים אחרים בפרשת האנדרטה, מלבד הרשות המקומית של בלגרד, נמנעה גישה למרחב הפוליטי. כך ניתן לראות שבמהלך פרשת האנדרטה, ניסו קבוצות זיכרון שונות, מנקודות השקפה אידיאולוגיות שונות, להתנגד לנראטיבים החברתיים של הסבל שנאכפו על ידי המדינה, אך הצלחתן הייתה מוגבלת. המנגנון השלישי שפותח על ידי האליטה הפוליטית השלטת מתייחס ליצירת שיח השואה, שנועד להסתיר דיון פתוח על עברה השנוי במחלוקת של סרביה. אני מציעה אפשרות כי שיח זכרון השואה בסרביה קודם על ידי המדינה במאמציה להסתיר כל מרחב פוליטי בו מפגש בין המדינה לחברה האזרחית יכול להתקיים, ולנתב מחדש את השיח הציבורי אל מלחמות שנות ה09-'. בסרביה מקודם זכרון השואה כפלטפורמה לביטוי אינטרסים לאומיים, ולפיכך מופעל כזכרון מסך )-screen memory(. הרעיון של זיכרון מסך נתפש כמנגנון תיחום המושך תשומת לב למורכבויות של זיכרון חברתי, כיוון שהוא מייצר וחוקר במקביל את הידע אודות העבר כדרך להמשיג ולהטיל ספק בתפישה הקיימת של זיכרון חברתי. השואה לא הייתה לזיכרון משותף אוניברסלי יחיד, כפי שטוענים לוי ושניידר, אלא, כפי שאסמן )0997( רמז, היא הייתה לפרדיגמה, או לתבנית, באמצעותה נתפשים, מוצגים או מנותצים מקרים אחרים של רצח עם או טראומה היסטורית. השואה לפיכך לא החליפה זכרונות טראומטיים אחרים בעולם, אלא סיפקה שפה לביטויים והקשר רחב יותר המאפשר הצגה מחודשת של העבר )Byford 0997(. הראיתי כי זהו למעשה משחק סכום אפס בו במקום להתמודד עם תפקידן ואחריותן, עוסקות ממשלות סרביה בהצגה מחודשת ובהסתרת הרכיבים השנויים במחלוקת של עברן הלאומי. בעוד מדינות אחרות ממזרח אירופה שכבר הצטרפו לאיחוד האירופי מנסות להרחיב את אג'נדת הזיכרון שלהן, בתזוזה הצידה מזכרון השואה, מדינות לאום שעדיין מחכות להצטרף לאיחוד האירופי עשויות לקדם את שיח השואה כסמן לגבולות המוסריים שלהן. אשר לסרביה, שיח זכרון השואה זוכה להבלטה לא רק כדי לשפר את תדמיתה של סרביה על הבמה הבינלאומית, אלא גם כדי להשוות את הקורבנות הסרביים לקורבנות היהודיים. מערך הכוחות האמיתי והסימבולי, ועליונות מדינות הליבה של אירופה על פני תוכן זיכרון מרחבי האיחוד האירופי, גורמים לדחיפת שיח השואה לקדמת הבמה, כיוון שהוא מגשר בהצלחה על המתח בין הדרישות הבינלאומיות והמקומיות. הכוח האמיתי של אימוץ וקידום זכרון השואה בסרביה נעוץ בעבודה שהסרבים נתפשו מבית ומחוץ כמי שסייעו בהצלת היהודים במלחמת העולם השנייה, וכ"אחיהם לסבל" )MacDonald 0992(. האליטות הפוליטיות השליטות בסרביה הבינו כי השואה, מנקודת מבט בינלאומית, היא כלי מתאים לצבירת הטבות מסויימות ולטענה לחברות באותה קהילה מוסרית. רק לאחר שהבינו כי קידום זיכרון השואה עשוי לשחק לטובתן ברמה המקומית וברמה הבינלאומית, הפכה השואה לנושא חשוב לאליטות השולטות. עירוב ומיזוג אג'נדות שונות ולעתים אף סותרות וקידומן ברמה המקומית והבינלאומית הייתה כלי יעיל בידי האליטות הפוליטיות השולטות בסרביה, לסיפוק הדרישות המקומיות והבינלאומיות. במלים אחרות, כאשר מסתכלים מחוץ לאיחוד האירופי, אימוץ השואה נתפש כצעד הכרחי המתאים לתפוצה בינלאומית המוסיפה נקודות ומשפרת את סיכוייה של סרביה להתקבל לאיחוד האירופי. במבט פנימה תופס קידום השואה כמה ציפורים במכה אחת: הוא מקדם הן את הקורבנות הסרבית בהיסטוריה, הודות להשוואת הקורבנות הסרביים עם קורבנות השואה, והוא משמש דוגמה לסטנדרטים הגבוהים של הערכת זכויות אדם במדינה. הוא גם מבנה באופן מכוון שיח המשתיק כל דיון פתוח וכן אודות אחריותה של סרביה במלחמות שנות ה09-'. אך שיח זכרון השואה מותאם ותפור באופן שכזה שאף שהוא נועד לקדם זכויות אדם ומיעוטים, הוא מקדם למעשה לאומיות וקורבנות סרבית, ואף מסתיר את השיח אודות תפקידה של סרביה במלחמות שנות ה09-'. אינסטרומנטליזציה שכזו של זכרון השואה מסייעת לנו להבין כיצד לוח השנה הסרבי כולל 3 ימי הנצחה המוקדשים באופן כלשהו לשואה2, וגם מדוע לדוגמא דווקא המקהלה היהודית מקבלת כסף שנועד לארגוני יוצאי הצבא. האינסטרמנטליזציה אף מסבירה מדוע הרשות המקומית של בלגרד, בהודעה לתקשורת על השקת "האנדרטה לקורבנות המלחמות ולמגני המולדת בשנים 0009- 0000" קושרת אותה ישירות לאנדרטת השואה העתידית, השוואה עדינה בין הקורבנות הסרביים לקורבנות השואה. אף שאסטרטגיות אלה הגדירו כיצד נראה תהליך הבניית הזיכרון הקיבוצי, העבר המשולש השנוי במחלוקת של סרביה3 קבע את שאלת התוכן – מה אמור להיזכר/להישכח. סרביה, בדומה לקבוצות אתנו-פוליטיות אחרות ביוגוסלביה לשעבר, שבויה בתפקיד הקורבן )Franović 2008(. אני מציעה כי הסיבה לכך היא שנראטיב הקורבנות נמצא כמתאים ביותר לגישור על הפער בין דרישות בינלאומיות למקומיות. אך בחירה זו אינה רק תוצאה של דפוסים תרבותיים והיסטוריים מושרשים, כפי שנטען לרוב עד עתה, אלא האפשרות הטובה ביותר לפתרון הולם עבור הקהילות הבינלאומיות והמקומיות כאחד. תפקיד הקורבן מאפשר למדינות לבחור עבר מסויים השולל את הפרשנויות האחרות של העבר כשגויות. לדוגמא, העצמת ההקרבה של סרביה למען אירופה במלחמת העולם הראשונה, ואחוות העם הסרבי והיהודים במלחמת העולם השנייה, מאפשרת לטאטא מתחת לשטיח שאלות של אחריות סרבית לאירועים אחרים בתולדות המדינה. בהתחשב במאורעות מלחמות שנות ה09-', ברור כי זהו מיקום רב עוצמה בו התפקיד היחיד הוא של אומה מקופחת וקורבנית. הקורבן, מצד אחד לא יכול להיות אחראי למלחמות, אך מצד שני מסייע בגיבוש זהות לאומית. מסגור זיכרון מסויים זה מסביר מדוע בלוח השנה החדש ובשיח השואה המתפתח, העצמת הפריזמה המתמקדת בקורבנות הסרבית בעבר הלאומי נמצאה כהולמת לתצוגה בינלאומית ומקומית. אימץ הקורבנות הסרבית, במסגרתה הסרבים נתפשים כקורבנות הן בתוך המדינה והן מחוצה לה, שימשה )ועדיין משמשת( את מאמצי האליטה השלטת לסגור מרחבים פוליטיים ולמנוע דיון כן במלחמות שנות ה- .'09 נראה אם כן כי בחירות תוכן הזיכרון הללו לא היו אקראיות. נהפוך הוא – לכולן היגיון מאוד מסויים. האליטה הפוליטית השלטת בסרביה, לכודה בין הדרישות הבינלאומיות והמקומיות המנוגדות, הגבילה בפני שחקנים אחרים את הגישה למרחבים פוליטיים בהם שיח פתוח על המלחמות האחרונות עשוי היה להתפתח. למרות זאת, תפקיד המדינה כמקדמת הזיכרון העיקרית בתהליך האירופיזציה לא נעלם, כי אם שונה. חוסר האיזון בין סרביה לאיחוד האירופי, שבא לידי ביטוי בהליכי האירופיזציה, עליית מנגנוני הצדק המעברי ומשטר זכויות האדם, אילץ את הממשלות שלאחר המלחמות להיות פקחיות וערמומיות בגשרן בין גורמים חיצוניים לפנימיים. אף שיש ספרות נרחבת העוסקת באופנים בהן מדינות מנהלות את המעברים לדמוקרטיה – כמו התחמקות מחוקים, גישות תובעניות למדינה, אופורטוניזם, נפוטיזם, אפליה וקליינטליזם, הסוואה וסטנדרטים כפולים )Sztompka 2004( - כמעט ואין התייחסות לשינוי בתפקיד המדינה בהליך גיבוש הזיכרון הקיבוצי.

2 יום הזיכרון לקורבנות רצח העם במלחמת העולם השנייה )22 באפריל(, יום ההנצחה הבינלאומי לקורבנות השואה )22 בינואר( ויום המאבק הבינלאומי בפאשיזם ואנטישמיות )9 בספטמבר(. 3 כמדינה שלאחר מלחמת העולם השנייה, כמדינה פוסט-קומוניסטית וכמדינה פוסט-יוגוסלבית השינוי הפונקציונלי, מהיות המדינה מקור הכוח למגשרת ולעתים שומרת סף, מסביר מדוע זיכרון נתפש יותר ויותר כמקור כוח משלים. נוסף על מקורות כוח מסורתיים יותר, כמו לכידות חברתית, יציבות פוליטית, עושר כלכלי או יכולות צבאיות, הזיכרון וייצוגי העבר הפכו למקור כוח רב ערך לשם השגת יעדים ממשיים וסמליים. כפועל יוצא יוצרות, מוצאות או מאמצות האליטות השולטות, מנגנונים לקידום תוכן זיכרון שמתאים לתצוגה בינלאומית ומקומית כאחד, גם אם הדבר בא על חשבון מגזרים חברתיים שלמים, כמו למשל יוצאי המלחמות בסרביה. במובן זה, נראה שקורבנות היא המצב הטוב ביותר לנקוט בו, כיוון שהוא מפרק את קטגוריית הצדק והאחריות. בשיח זכויות האדם, קורבנות ופושעים נחשבים לשתי קטגוריות נפרדות והומוגניות לחלוטין, כאשר במציאות, לא כל הקורבנות זהים, לא כל הפושעים זהים, וישנם קורבנות שהינם גם פושעים )Borer 2003(. התפישות המתחרות של קורבנות נבלעות בדינמיקה הנעה בין עמדות זכויות האדם האוניברסליות לבין זכויות מסויימות. מצד אחד, גישת זכויות האדם האוניברסלית דוחה את ההיררכיה של הקורבנות, אך מצד שני, "היעדר ההיררכיה עצמו הוא שאחראי לדה- קונטקסטואליזציה ולדה-היסטוריזציה של המעשים האמיתיים באי-צדק מן העבר" ) Levy and Sznaider 2010: 131(. נראה אם כך שלמדינות עם עבר שנוי במחלוקת יש יתרון בבחירה במוטיב הקורבנות, המקדם הזדהות במקום אחריות. בסופו של דבר, נראה שהשאלה אינה מדוע מדינות עם עבר שנוי במחלוקת בוחרות לקדם את קורבנותן, אלא כיצד הן מייצרות רשתות חברתיות של סבל כדי לאכוף ולהשריש את הקורבנות בחיי האומה. *** כל האליטות הפוליטיות השולטות במדינות יוגוסלביה לשעבר, ללא יוצא מן הכלל, בהיותן לכודות בין דרישות בינלאומיות ומקומיות מנוגדות, ובתוך מערך הכוחות של האיחוד האירופי, הגבילו את הגישה לקבוצות זיכרון אחרות שהיו עשויות לאפשר דיון פתוח אודות מלחמות שנות ה- 09'. אך בעוד בקרואטיה, בוסניה, מקדוניה וקוסובו קידמו האליטות הפוליטיות מערך נראטיבים על מלחמות שנות ה09-', בסרביה האסטרטגיה הרשמית היא לערפל את העבר כדי לשלוט בו ולנהלו, במקום לבחור צד. זו הייתה ההחלטה האסטרטגית של האליטה הפוליטית השלטת: למצוא דרכים לסגירת מרחבים פוליטיים בהם ניתן היה לעצב בפתיחות ובכנות את העבר הכואב והשנוי במחלוקת בפני שחקנים אחרים. ג'יימס יאנג )0003( טען כי הצלחת כל אנדרטה נמדדת ביכולתה להתפרש במגוון דרכים. אך ריבוי פרשנויות עלול גם לאפשר ניצול לרעה, במקרים בהם צורות מופשטות וייצוגי העבר משמשים לערפול, הסתרת זהות אישית, דה-קונטקסטואליזציה ונטילת משמעות, עד כי האנדרטה מאבדת רלוונטיות עבור כולם. מדיניות זו, טשטוש העבר כדי לשלוט בזיכרון הציבורי כיום, מוטבעת באנדרטה, הופכת אותה לשקופה, ודנה אותה להיות מכשול נצחי, מקור מחלוקת במקום פיוס.

מילות מפתח: סרביה, מלחמות שנות ה09-, אירופאיזציה, זיכרון קיבוצי, מרחב פוליטי, אנדרטה, יוצאי המלחמות, שואה, לוח השנה

זיכרונות של אף אחד , אנדרטה של אף אחד : : תהליך הבניית הזיכרון הקולקטיבי בסרביה שלאחר מלחמות שנות ה- 90 90

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