The good, the bad, the past, the present, and the future: a study on how to legitimise a marginalised collective memory in Serbia

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The good, the bad, the past, the

present, and the future

A study on how to legitimise a marginalised collective memory in Serbia

Djoera Otter 10742476

Supervisor: Floris Vermeulen Second reader: Dimitris Bouris Word count: 22899

MSc Thesis, Conflict Resolution and Governance University of Amsterdam

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Acknowledgement

First and foremost, I would like to thank my respondents for our late night and early morning skype sessions. I greatly appreciate you dedicating some of your time to talk to me. I valued these brief glimpses into your life, as your stories were truly moving and admirable. I learned a lot from you, both on an academic and personal level.

I would also like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Floris Vermeulen for the constructive feedback, suggestions, telling me to not add more theory, the swift replies to my rambles of emails and in general assuring me that ‘everything is fine’. This really made writing this thesis much more enjoyable. I would also like to thank my second reader Dimitris Bouris for taking the time to read through what I have concocted over the last few months.

I would like to thank my parents for all the support and for telling me there is more to life than just this thesis. Additionally, a big thank you for Amaya for telling me that ‘being’ is not a main verb and the additional feedback, thank you for being a great support and telling me to take breaks. Also special thanks to Shanti, Loïs, Julie, Juli, Albert, Sofia, Tessel, Ilja, Ana, Tara, Sophie and Clint. Thank you for the walks, talks and distractions, they are all greatly appreciated.

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Introduction

“The memoirs of General Nebojša Pavković, as well as other commanders and fighters published in the Ratnik edition, contribute in many ways to the truth about the fight during the NATO aggression [the bombing of Serbia in 1999]. We don’t see any reason to be ashamed of our people’s struggle and those who led that fight,” Aleksandar Vulin, the [Serbian] Defence Ministry, said. (Aleksander Vulin in Stojanovic, 2019)

We have this strong cult of war criminals here in Serbia, that are represented as heroes, most people consider Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić our main heroes. Those two men are mentioned a lot, there is a lot of graffiti honouring them, and additionally political parties and merchandise represents them as heroes. You can buy t-shirts in Serbia that have a big Ratko Mladić picture saying that he is not a criminal, but that he is a hero. (Božena, personal communication, 2020).

The wars that ravaged the Western Balkans in the nineteen nineties have become notorious for the war crimes committed by mostly ethnic Serbian (para)militaries. Nonetheless, in October of last year former Yugoslav People’s Army commander Nebojša Pavković had his book published by the Serbian Defence Ministry, whilst still serving his prison sentence for war crimes committed during the war in Kosovo. According to the minister of defence and the general public, the book was a heroic tale of the fight against NATO (Stojanovic, 2019). Pavković’s is not the only convicted war criminal that has had his memoirs about the wars published, as many former politicians and combatants of both paramilitary and military groups have become prolific and praised writers in Serbia.

These memoirs are part of a much larger process at work in Serbia, in which the atrocities committed by the Serbian state are denied and general silence is bestowed upon the topic of the wars of the nineties (ibid.). This process is neither foreign nor novel in Serbia. Mladan Ostojić, in his 2007 study on why Serbia struggled to engage with transitional justice, already concluded that not confronting the past had “become pervasive in the public discourse in Serbia” (Ostojić 2007, p. 103). He identified a tendency to “ignore, deny, or avoid acknowledgement of atrocities committed in the name of the Serbian nation” (ibid.). This tendency has persisted up until today and has led to a dominant understanding of the recent past

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5 in Serbia, which is marked by silence and denial of war crimes committed by or with the support of the Serbian government (Kurze, 2016). However, not all people in Serbia agree with this recollection of the past.

Accordingly, within Serbia there are various civil society organisations (CSOs) and people who have a different understanding of this recent past. These people and (people working for these) CSOs acknowledge all the committed atrocities, subsequently want justice for all victims and therefore aim to break the silence and dominant narrative of denial (Kurze, 2016; David, 2015). The existence of this “alternative” recollection of the past causes such a disturbance in post-conflict Serbia that the situation has been described as: “the armed civil war [in Serbia] has been replaced by a civil war of memories”, in which the “alternative” memory narrative is continuously marginalised and attacked by the state and media (Kuljic 2009, p. 197 in Fridman, 2018, p. 424).

This “war of memories” will be the focus of my thesis. I will specifically analyse it from the perspective of those with the marginalised recollection of the past, to see how they legitimise the existence of their understanding of the past, i.e. their marginalised collective memory, in such a hostile environment. 1 I will research this process by answering the following question: How do these Serbians and Serbian CSOs legitimise their marginalised collective memory in the Serbian context?

To answer this question, I will first examine the concept of collective memory, which will be the content of Chapter 1. In this chapter I will answer the questions as to what collective memory is by delineating my own definition of collective memory, which emphasises the legitimising actions collective memory needs and produces. Additionally, in this chapter I will explain why collective memory causes conflict. I will discuss my methodology and case selection in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 will then, from the perspective of my respondents, outline the two conflicting collective memories and analyse why they are at odds with each other. First, this description of these two collective memories is necessary to understand the conflict. Additionally, it will also serves as the basis for my last analytical chapter, as we first need to understand how my respondents make sense of the past and present and how they relate to the dominant narrative, before we can move on to strategies employed by my respondents. Subsequently, the last chapter will describe these strategies produced by the collective memory of my respondents to legitimise that collective memory.With this analysis of the behaviours of the marginalised party in this “civil war of memories” (Kuljic 2009, p. 197 in Fridman, 2018,

1_{I named the recollection of the past of my respondents the “marginalised collective memory” throughout my}

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6 p. 424) I aim to give an insight into how collective memory operates in a post-conflict region, and to further develop the much used and theorised concept of collective memory.

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Chapter 1: Theoretical framework on collective memory

It was the publication of the English translation of Maurice Halbwachs’ book On Collective Memory in 1992 that cemented and proliferated memory studies in all disciplines of social science (Erll, 2008). Over time the field continuously grew in popularity, so much so, that now, almost three decades later, the field of memory studies covers scientific disciplines ranging from neuroscience to philosophy, political science, sociology and psychology (ibid.).

Due to the immense scope of literature the field has generated in recent years, some scholars argue that the concept collective memory has become overused, has too many definitions and therefore has lost all its analytical value (Erll, 2008; Olick et al 2011, p. 29). As a solution some authors either started using other concepts to describe social processes that were previously classified as collective memory, or they renamed collective memory cultural memory, social or communicative memory (Assman, 2008; Erl, 2008). Whilst I understand the concerns of these scholars, I do not think that renaming collective memory will solve the problem of its many definitions and ‘overuse’; instead it makes the debate all the more disperse and confusing, with people unknowingly simultaneously developing the same theorical insights about supposedly “different” concepts of memories (Argenti and Schramm, 2010). Consequently, I have decided to use the term collective memory, thereby orienting the debate towards uniting and sharpening the definition instead of discussing how to (re)name the concept. I will however use theories of people who have renamed collective memory, because their insights are valuable to the development of the concept.

Due to the scope of memory studies my literature review and theoretical framework will undoubtedly be incomplete, but in the following chapter I will give a general overview of the theories and debates surrounding the concept of collective memory in the field of social sciences. Since many built their theories on, or as a critique of, Halbwachs’ understanding of collective memory, the following sections will be structured around three theoretical notions, first introduced by Halbwachs, that still bear significance today (Sorabji 2006, p. 3). The three central features I am going to discuss are the difference between history and collective memory, the relationship between individual and collective recollections of the past, and the relationship between the present and past. Through these discussions I will delineate my own concept of collective memory, which centers around actions produced by collective memory. This chapter will conclude with how collective memory operates in conflict and how it is legitimised.

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8 Maurice Halbwachs’ collective memory

One of Halbwachs’ main contributions to this field was the popularisation of the notion that memory was not something inherently personal, as he argued that groups of people can share the same recollection of the past (Sorabji 2006, p. 3; Russell, 2006). To this end Halbwachs identified multiple groups, such as family, religious groups, and social class, as collectives that mitigate their memory to the individual (Halbwachs 1992, pp. 39-40, 74; Assmann, 2008). Halbwachs then identified that these groups share a collective recollection of the past that explains why a group is in a certain social, political, economic position in the present (Halbwachs 1992, p. 40). Therefore, he deems collective memory to be a narrative about the past that serves the present because it is reconstructed based on the present situation a group finds itself in (ibid.). This is also where Halbwachs describes what differentiates collective memory from history, by stating that collective memory is a “reconstruction of the past lived experience”, whilst he considers history to be knowledge about a distant past (Russell 2006, p. 797). He also underscored how collective memory is exclusionary and can even cause conflict since groups narrate their past differently (Olick 1999, p. 334).

Collective memory: the individual the collective

The first observation Halbwachs introduces in his theory on collective memory is that memory is not necessarily a phenomenon that belongs to the individual (Russell, 2006). This notion is most valued as it provides insights in the social dynamics of memory and can subsequently show how memory can be politicised and (mis)used to legitimise conflicts, policies and violence (Russel, 2006; Gödl, 2007). However, denying any sort of agency or absence of individual memory does not capture the complex dynamic between individual and collective memory (Russell 2006, p. 796). Halbwachs argues that everything an individual remembers is inherently tied up with the individual’s group memberships, stating “it is in society that people normally acquire their memories. It is also in society that they recall, recognize, and localize their memories” (Halbwachs 1992, p. 38). In other words, individuals might be the ones that remember, but it is a group membership that provides people with the guidelines and tools to reconstruct a particular narrative of the past (Olick 1999, p. 335). The latter statement also means that an individual does not have to live through a certain historical moment to incorporate it in their collective memory; it is the group that prescribes these memories in the individual’s memory (ibid.).

This notion of no individual memory has been critiqued, because it assumes a homogenous way of remembering through seemingly ‘natural’ groups without the individual

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9 exerting any agency whatsoever (Olick, 1999; de Saint-Laurent, 2018). Hence, a more individualistic theoretic approach was developed, which argued that individuals ‘collect’ memories from different social frameworks, leading to group formation between individuals that have collected similar memories and formed similar narratives about the past (Olick 1999, p. 338). This theoretic conception emphasised that people actively choose what they remember and what they do not and therefor actively choose memberships to groups that recollect the past in a similar fashion. This process would account for the heterogeneity of memory between individuals in groups and between groups (de Saint-Laurent 2018, p. 151). However, this conceptualisation has also been criticized for creating the possibility of an endless subdivision of memory, leaving the influences groups have on memory undertheorized and subsequently rendering the concept of collective memory useless (ibid.). Thus, some scholars tried to nuance these claims by stating that social groups do prescribe certain schemes in which people make sense of the past, but that people in turn have some level of agency to choose between these schemes, despite it not being simple to just select a collective memory (ibid., p. 149). Additionally, it has been stated that people will assume that their collective memory is ‘natural’, and therefore will take some persuasion to consider an alternative narrative (ibid., p. 152).

The general academic agreement that has been taken away from this discussion is that collective memory is a dynamic process, in which historic facts are ordered, forgotten, exaggerated, and (re)interpreted by individuals and groups as they construct a recollection of the past (Wertsch and Roedinger III 2008, p. 319). In line with this last argument, I understand collective memory as a dialectical process between individuals and the collective they consider themselves to be a part of; groups influence individuals’ recollections from the past, but this does not mean individuals have no say in what narrative about the past they want to adhere to (ibid.). Groups provide definitions and understandings of past events, but this continues to be a constant process of reconstruction of the past. This process consists of the interactions and negotiations between groups and individuals, either with a similar or different understanding of the past, as to what is remembered and what is forgotten (Wertsch and Roedinger III 2008, p. 319; Olick 1999, p. 346). The latter aspect can make this “a process that is often quite contentious” (Wertsch and Roedinger III 2008, p. 319), why this is, will be discussed in the section Collective memory: conflict and legitimisation.

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10 Collective memory: recollections of the past, history and power

Collective memory intersects with the branch of knowledge that is history, as both are used to analyse or describe past events, therefore Halbwachs delineated between the two, stating that history is the distant past, whilst collective memory is the more recent “lived” past of a group (Russell 2006, p. 797). 2 In line with Halbwachs’ theories many scholars started to make a distinction between history and collective memory. Consequently, history became commonly referred to as the objective, factual account of the past, whilst collective memory was the subjective, lived experience of a group (Assmann, 2008; Russell, 2006). This distinction has, however, been criticised for its normative view on what history is (Argenti and Schramm 2010, p. 2). In the view of Argenti and Schramm (2010), for example, history is not an objective entity; it is as much at the mercy of subjectivity as collective memory, it merely enjoys the assumption of objectivity. History, like collective memory, is a narrative about the past, in which historic facts are forgotten, ordered and explained in relation to each other (ibid., p. 2).

In line with this argument I argue that history is just the more broadly accepted, top down, institutionalised narrative about the past which enjoys greater levels of legitimacy – making it, what I call the dominant collective memory. In other words, this means that various collective memories exist simultaneously, but that some are considered to be more truthful and legitimate than others, which means there is a hierarchy of legitimacy between the different collective memories. This can cause conflict, which will be discussed in the section Collective memory: conflict and legitimisation.

Collective memory: past, present and future

Whether or not you differentiate between the concept of collective memory and history, what has been broadly subtracted by many scholars from this debate, is that collective memory is the active selection of past events based on the present moment. There is an undeniable relationship between past and present, as Halbwachs (1992, p. 42) already identified that what is remembered serves to explain and make sense of the present moment. However, this functionalist relationship between present and past has been critiqued in recent years (Szpunar and Szpunar, 2016). Narvaez (2006, p. 58) identified that Halbwachs might have “overemphasized the role that the present has over the past, [by] suggesting that we constantly

2_{The discussion as to how far back ‘lived’ experience dates back in time is beyond the scope of this thesis as this}

discussion centers the transmission of collective memory between generations, and whether memory is still lived if you have not experienced it (Assmann, 2008). We will adhere to Halbwachs understanding of lived, which means that one does now have to have experienced these events, but they just have to feel relevant and influential to ones present predicament (Olick 1999, p. 355).

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11 impose present imperatives upon the past”. Narvaez’s critique calls into question the linear usage of the past by the present, stating that the past has shaped the present moment as much as the other way around (ibid.).

Building on this dialectical nature of present and past some scholars, studying strategies of legitimisation of collective memory, have started linking collective memory to the future (Szpunar and Szpunar, 2016; Gutman, 2017). For example, Szpunar and Szpunar (2016, p. 377) tried to introduce “collective future thought, the act of imagining an event that has yet to transpire on behalf of, or by a group,” into the field of memory studies, by showing how the recollection of the past influences the future vision of a group and vice versa. Subsequently, Nagle (2020) integrated present, future and past further by stating that people use alternative pasts in the present to imagine possible different futures, stating there is a relationship between these tenses within collective memory. Gutman (2017) in his turn noted that in collective memory time is not always linear and progressive. He stated that time in collective memory is circular, as past, present and future simultaneously influences and interact with each other as people try to legitimise their understanding of the past. In other words, future and past collide and do not interact in a non-linear way (Gutman, 2017). These observations, regarding the intertwining and dialectal relationship between past, present and future has been made extensively in collective memory, however, none of the scholars have morphed this observation into a theoretical musing.

Therefore, I have turned to Gandolfi and Mortensen, who both discuss the perception of time in video games. Mortensen did capture what the previously mentioned scholars seemingly wanted to express as he stated that in most “situations, we are dealing with more than one ‘time’” (Mortensen 2013, p. 125 in Gandolfi 2016, p.724). Gandolfi (2016, p. 724) then called these experiences of time subjective temporalities, which he defined as moments in time in which different times simultaneously exist and interact. In linking Gutman (2017), Szpunar and Szpunar (2016) and Nagle (2020) to Gandolfi (2016) and Mortensen, I conclude that collective memory could be described as a subjective temporality in which present, past and future simultaneously exist, interact and influence each other, or at least it is when people are legitimising their collective memory. However, I do not dismiss the functionalist approach, as it still exists within this complex notion of time, and it does serve as an outstanding starting point to understand why collective memory can cause conflict.

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12 Collective memory: conflict and legitimisation

This section will build on the previous discussions in an attempt to understand why collective memory can cause conflict. For this purpose, we first turn to collective memory’s presumed function within a group and society. As stated in the previous section, Collective memory: past, present and future, Halbwachs already stated collective memory is a recollection of the past that serves the present moment as it helps to make sense of why things are the way they are in a present (Halbwachs 1991, p. 40). In other words, it equips people with a narrative that provides them with an understanding for their current predicament. Additionally, recollections of the past do not just try explain the present moment, but also aim legitimise the present (and future) state of affairs (Gödl, 2007; Nagle, 2020).

Within society multiple collective memories can operate at the same time (Argenti and Schramm, 2010). Therefore, there are different explanations as to why people find themselves in a certain predicament and subsequently have different convictions of whether the current state of affairs is legitimate (Gödl, 2007; Nagle, 2020). While there is often a dominant collective memory in society, which is adhered to by the majority of the population, many societies also have “alternative” collective memories of the past, that challenges the dominant collective memory and subsequently the current state of affairs (Fridman 2018, p. 424; Nagle 2020, p. 382). Due to the ensuing contention surrounding collective memory, people constantly need to legitimise their understanding of the past, therefore producing and needing legitimising actions. Therefore, collective memory is not merely a process of reconstructing the past; it simultaneously produces specific speech acts3 and behaviours in the present (de Saint-Laurent 2018, p. 157). Legitimacy is described as a perceived right to existence, within a social context (Lister 2003, p. 176). The acts to legitimise one’s standpoint can therefore be considered as a process in which actors and organisational entities “justify their right to exist and their actions within a particular normative context” (Gnes and Vermeulen 2019, p. 218). Therefore, the enactment of a collective memory can often be considered an attempt in legitimising said collective memory (Reyes 2011, p. 783). Thus, the active negotiation between groups, which is a process inherently tied up to collective memory, can turn into conflict due to its function.

Collective memory can also be used in contentious processes, as often within a conflict setting the recollection of the past is used to legitimise violent behaviour. This process can be seized by elites or groups as they try to achieve their own political goals (Gödl 2007, p. 45).

3_{I use speech acts to describe the verbal expressions of people that both communicate something and aim to effect}

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13 This manipulation of collective memory can manifest itself in many ways, but due to the scope of this thesis and the case I will discuss later, I will narrowly focus on one specific narrative: the victimhood narrative. This narrative portrays a group as being the victim of perceived potential danger or (looming) oppression, this narrative of victimhood then legitimises ‘defending’ one’s group against the ‘aggressive’ other, which allows for vicious fighting (ibid.).

Not only does collective memory play an important role in the build-up to a conflict; it plays an equally significant role in post-conflict regions, as the way a conflict is remembered has great impact on how and whether it is resolved (Bar-Tal et al 2009, p. 230). This is interlinked with the transitional justice paradigm, which dictates that post-conflict societies are only able to heal from post-conflict if they adequately deal with their violent past (Katriel 2016, p. 264). In line with this notion, all victims of a conflict need to be acknowledged in their suffering and subsequently have a right to justice, as this is considered a human right (Górska 2016, p. 7). In line with this, many scholars and practitioners have underscored the necessity of addressing the past in order to heal the traumas caused by the war (Eastmond and Selimovic 2012, pp. 502-504). This notion developed out of the psychological understanding that not talking about past traumas will only lead to a continuation of the suffrage of the individual and group (ibid., p. 503). In other words, it is deemed necessary to acknowledge the gross human-rights violations that occurred during the conflict and subsequently acknowledge these people as victims in the present time and try to ‘make right’ for the violence in the past (Katriel 2016, p. 264). The call for the acknowledgement of these gross human rights violations has been perceived by those who partake in it and the broader international society as the moral thing to do (ibid.).

This is where collective memory becomes a pivotal point of contestation in post-conflict regions, as confronting the past has proven to be very difficult, since previously warring sides will often “believe that they are the victim of that conflict” (Bar-Tal et al 2009, p. 229; Nagle 2020, p. 382). This is the result of a mix of genuine feelings of being victimised during a conflict and the possibility to claim a higher morally superior status, which grants a group political benefits and “sympathy and consideration and protect[ion] from criticism” (Bar-Tal et al. 2009. p. 237). In order to claim that morally superior status and to let those feelings of victimhood exist, all people in society must have a similar collective memory, because alternative narratives of the past conflict threaten to destroy all possible benefits of being a victim (ibid., p. 230). Moreover, confronting the past demands a nation to engage in “uncomfortable self-interrogation” (Gordy 2013, p. 15). Moral questions, such as who enabled the violence and to what extent citizens are accountable for what their governments did in the war, arise and have

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14 to be answered when talking about the past (ibid, p. 13). These questions might again lead to the necessity of changing one’s current behaviour accordingly to the answers to these question – demanding for example to acknowledge your own responsibility in the suffering of others, or changing your political aspiration as they are no longer legitimate (Gödl, 2007; Gordy, 2013). The way in which collective memory can cause conflict provides insides in the definition of the concept in terms of legitimacy, which will be discussed in the next section.

Collective memory: a definition and strategies

Collective memory is a concept used by many scholars in many disciplines – subsequently there are a lot of ways to conceptualise it. In the previous sections, I discussed a plurality of theories and debates surrounding this contentious term; based on those I will formulate my own understanding of collective memory, within the context of a post-conflict.

First, in essence, I perceive collective memory to be a narrative of a recollected past; it is a process in which historic facts are ordered, forgotten, exaggerated, and (re)interpreted by individuals and groups (Halbwachs, 1992; Wertsch and Roedinger III, 2008). However, collective memories exist in plurality and can be contentious, especially in (post-)conflict situations (Wertsch and Roedinger III 2008, p. 319). This contestation is often a result of the widespread presumed function of collective memory, as it is understood to serve as an explanation of the present state of a group but it can also be used politically to incite (violent) action in a group of people, whilst it simultaneously justifies the state of (political) affairs in the present moment. Therefore, “alternative” or marginalised collective memories can challenge the dominant collective memory, as they can call into question the legitimacy of the current situation (Gödl, 2007; Gordy 2013). Subsequently, due to its dynamic and contentious nature, individuals and groups continuously try to legitimise their collective memory through speech acts and behaviour, as the past in turn legitimises the present (de Saint-Laurent 2018, p. 157). Collective memory is not merely a way of recollecting the past, it produces action. I will look at these legitimising practices, these strategies, used to legitimise a marginalised collective memory in a post-conflict situation, in an attempt to understand the workings of collective memory and to see whether these strategies can help to further refine the definition of collective memory.

The first strategy people can use, within a post-conflict context, to legitimise their collective memory are the morals that find their root in human rights (Katriel 2016, p. 264). As the human rights discourse dictates the acknowledgement of gross human-rights violations that occurred during the conflict and subsequently acknowledge these people as victims in the

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15 present time and try to make right for the violence in the past (ibid.). Additionally, people can make moral claims based on “to norms of democratic participation and representation” (Gnes and Vermeulen 2019, p. 219).

As said before legitimacy is won in a normative context, which can differ and that difference has ramifications for the perceived legitimacy of an act (Puljek-Shank 2018, p. 871). Normative alludes to a context with rules that regulate what is of value, what is good and what is bad (Brants and Klep 2013, p. 49). Collective memory in post-conflict societies intertwines with morality, as many stress that acknowledging what has happened, and specifically acknowledging all victims, is the moral thing to do; the right way to do things (Brants and Klep 2013, p. 49; Gordy, 2013; Katriel, 2016). Thus, by portraying you are acting morally right you can legitimise your collective memory as you are trying to do what is right for everybody.

However, people and CSOs in a post-conflict situation might need to address a plethora of audiences, ranging from the local people, to the international community, to previously ‘enemies’, who all have formed different normative contexts, and therefore might deem other sources of legitimacy more valid (Puljek-Shank 2018, p. 871). This has proven to be a struggle, as the public in the country they can reject the human rights-based legitimacy, because they do not feel that the human rights, criminal courts are at work for them (ibid. 872). This then means that CSOs and people have to employ additional strategies to legitimise their standpoint (ibid., p. 872).

The second set of strategies that can be used is linking past, present and future. First, theories about collective memory mostly allude to a relationship between past and present, in which the present heavily influences the recollection of the past. Thus, by using the present predicament of people, by challenging their understanding of the present moment, one subsequently challenges or changes the recollection of the past, as the present moment is also changed (Halbwachs, 1992) However, this one-way street of a relationship might not be representative of the reality of the dialectical nature between past, present and future (Narvaez 2006, p. 58). Additionally, indexing certain historic events as a cause for the current suffering, can also challenge the dominant narrative about the past, as you create a plausible different understanding as to why people find themselves in their current predicament (ibid.). The usage of a perceived hypothetical future to legitimise one’s standpoint, goal or motivation is also considered a strategy, for it links the understanding of the past to possible future problems (Reyes 2011, p. 782). In other words, using present and future concerns aid to legitimise one’s own understanding of the past, as it explains as to why certain issue (will) exist.

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16 The way collective memory operates within a post conflict situation, how it can cause conflict and what legitimising strategies are used, will be further elaborated on in relation to the case of Serbia and the strategies people use and CSOs use to legitimise their collective memory. However, first I turn to my methodology to discuss how exactly this research was conducted and why specifically Serbia is helpful case in providing insights in these matters.

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Chapter 2: Methodology

Within this thesis, I conceive knowledge as being socially constructed and emerging from peoples’ social interactions and practices. Therefore, I conceptualize social reality as being generated and constructed between people, as they cocreate knowledge together in speech and action. I therefore believe that research endeavors present interpretations of social life by looking into the stories people tell and the things that they do (Yazan, 2015). In line with this understanding, I used the narrated (re)construction of collective memory as the point of departure to get an insight in the speech acts and behaviours needed to legitimise that collective memory in the post-conflict environment in Serbia, this in order to get a better understanding of what collective memory is. To research this I conducted ten interviews during the months of April and May of 2020 by interviewing people working for civil society organisations and individuals who are akin by sharing a marginalised collective memory and who are subsequently trying to convince other people of the truthfulness of said collective memory. As the Covid-19 pandemic prevented me from going to Serbia, as we were all ordered to stay home and borders were closed, I could not witness these acts and speech acts in person, and therefore base myself on the stories people have told me about these behaviors and acts. This chapter will provide some insights in the choices of my research design: the case selection, ethics, population, methods of data collection and analyses.

Research design and case selection

I chose a case study for my research design, as I believe, in line with Gerring (2006, p. 79), that case studies are both particular and generalisable. Often, case studies are deemed to be too particular to have any significance in generalisability or a broader understanding of a concept, and are solely seen as useful in providing an explanation or investigation into the workings of a particular case (Gerring 2006, p. 78; Flyvbjerg, 2006). In contrast, Gerring (2006, p. 77) argues that with case studies there is a possibility of generalisation, as particularity and generalisation are not mutually exclusive. Therefore, I chose a case study as my research design, as it “(by definition) attempts to tell us about something broader than the immediate subject of investigation” (ibid., p. 83). Thus, by looking at how collective memory operates within a specific context, I hope to focus the debate surrounding its definition, as the debate is so dispersed (Olick, 2008).

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18 I chose the particular case of a marginalised collective memory in Serbia, for a variety of reasons. First, even though much research has been done on collective memory in the Western Balkan, relatively little research has been done on collective memory in Serbia, as most of the literature focusses on the relationship between trauma and collective memory in the countries of the Western Balkan which witnessed extensive fighting on its territories. Therefore, Serbia presents itself as an interesting new addition to the debate, especially since the situation in Serbia has been described as “a civil war of memories” (Kuljic 2009, p. 197 in Fridman, 2018, p. 424; Selimovic, 2010). Additionally, in such a highly contentious situation the workings of collective memory become more consequential and exemplified as they take central stage (Fridman, 2018). Therefore, Serbia is an excellent case to study, as people are consciously engaging with the practices of legitimising their collective memory, as opposing collective memories lie at the core of this conflict.

Case selection: my respondents

I interviewed ten people in total, both individuals who were and who were not linked to or worked for civil society organisations (CSOs).4 The CSOs that took center stage in this research were the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia (HCHRS) and Youth Initiative Human Rights in Serbia (also referred to as Youth Initiative or YIHR), as I specifically interviewed people on the organisational strategies of these CSOs. These people spoke on behalf of themselves as people who are working for these organisations and gave their interpretation of what the organisation did. I chose these organisations for two reasons. First, they were often identified as the most dominantly present organisations in regards to the topic of dealing with the past. Second, due to the pandemic, I was limited in options as to how to approach people, these two organisations were the only ones who provided me with people to interview.

I based my understanding of the strategies of organisations on the stories of my respondents, as organisations are not autonomous entities, they are made up of people, and therefore all their actions are informed by (interactions between) individuals (Gerring 2006, pp. 79-80). Therefore, I consider the stories that my respondents told me about the strategies of their organisations the most valuable source of my data on these organisations. I deem their

4_{I chose to call these organisations civil society organisations, as my respondents referred to them as such. This}

in line with the definition of line with Gnes and Vermeulen (2019) which state that CSOs are part of the Third Sector “a domain of organised human action that extends past family, but remains distinct from the logics of the state and the market” (p. 221).

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19 explanations more relevant, because my respondents understood the logic behind the organisational strategies and actions, as these were concocted by them and their colleagues. I also concluded that deducting these strategies from their websites was not a viable option, as I felt I had to overinterpret the data presented to me on the websites, because they mostly focussed on previous projects without the explanations as to why these projects were done, and news updates. In contrast, during the interviews I could directly ask about methods and strategies and find out the underlying reasoning of these strategies from the people who set up and executed these strategies. Additionally, I chose to base my analyses of the organisational strategies solely on the stories of my respondents, as I could not witness these strategies in person, due to the pandemic.

The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia was founded in 1994 and has been trying to “expose Serbia’s prevalent ideology – nationalism – and inasmuch as possible, alleviate its fatal effects on the entire scope of human rights, the country’s economy, the rule of law, regional and global relations and international standing, but, above all, on younger generations and attitude towards modernity and demands of the modern time, vs. deep-rooted patriarchalism, gender bias, etc” (Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, n.d.). Youth Initiative for Human Rights was founded in 2003 and is “a regional network of non-governmental organisations with programmes in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.” I exclusively focussed on the Serbian branch. Youth Initiative has the following basic values “truth, justice, accountability, equality, freedom, democracy and peace” (Youth Initiative Human Rights in Serbia, n.d.). In line with this, their website states that they “are fighting for peace in the region, not only for the absence of war, but for the peace as a lasting process which means dealing with the past and which results in continuous co-operation between the states and people in the region” (Youth Initiative Human Rights in Serbia, n.d.). Subsequently these organisations had multiple programmes for the broader public, youth, journalist and students.5

5_{While youth was the initial focus of my research and I initially targeted organisations focussed on youth, it soon}

became clear that there are many more aspects and audiences relevant to the understanding of legitimising strategies of collective memory. Moreover, due to Covid-19 it was more difficult to reach out to respondents, leading me to widen my research population. Therefore, I let the notion of youth go for my analyses and focussed instead on how I could understand the variety of people who adhered to a marginalised collective memory. How youth operates within this nexus therefore might be interesting for future research, as this spans a whole other debate about transmission of memory across generations (Erl, 2008).

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20 Before continuing, this paragraph will shortly introduce my participants. 6 Magdalena was a director in the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia (HCHRS) and mostly spoke on behalf of that organisation. Zoran and Marko both worked for the Youth Initiative Human Rights in Serbia (YIHR) and also spoke predominantly on behalf of the organisation. Jagoda spoke about her own personal experience, but within the context of being a human rights trainer for an organisation that organised weeklong human rights seminars. Nemanja talked about his work for civil society organisations and his own personal strategies, Milos mainly talked about his own personal experience, as did Danica and Božena, who also both worked for civil society organisations that deal with these issues. Đorđije is a scholar and a historian and spoke about the history and context of the conflict, Dmitar, who was studying for his masters in Poland at the time that I spoke to him, also mostly talked about his own experiences and his own view on the matter.

Methods of data collection

In order to study the behavior and speech acts produced by collective memory, I needed data that was either an (in)direct speech act or a description of these behaviors. In other words, I needed to know how they recollected the past and how they went about legitimising that recollection. To inquire into these, I used semi-structured interviews (see Appendix 1). Semi-structured interviews typically interrogate how people “conduct their lives, process their thoughts and interact with their environments and their peers” (Nowak and Haynes 2018, p. 430). These interviews combined a number of prefabricated open questions with improvised follow up questions based on the stories of participants, allowing me to get to a detailed description of what the collective memory of these young people makes them do and say (ibid.).

I divided the questions into themes in correspondence with the data I wanted to discover. These themes did not necessitate a specific order, therefore allowing for a flexible way of interviewing my respondents as I could follow their lead. I did start out every interview with the same question, “how would you explain the conflict in the nineties to an outsider like me?” This was done to interrogate how my respondents made sense of the past. I then moved on to ask whether this was a broadly accepted narrative, and if not, why that was not the case, to get them to describe the situation in Serbia. Subsequently, depending on the flow of the conversation, I moved to different themes. I had questions surrounding the theme of methods,

6_{All my respondents were offered a pseudonym, however, Milos, Nemanja and Marko insisted on having their}

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21 which were all questions related to how people tried to convince others to consider their collective memory. I had the theme social to investigate how their surroundings responded to their stories, organization to ask about the role of organizations and how the organizations operated. Personal history to get a more in-depth understanding of people I was interviewing, and goal and audience and motivation to see who they tried to reach and what goal they wanted to reach.

Methods of analysis

Gerring (2006, p. 70) argues that data always requires interpretation, as hardly anything speaks for itself. However, some data does not require as much interpretation as other data might (ibid., p. 71). This distinction can be made in my analyses as well, as some data spoke very much for itself, as people directly explained what their understanding of the past war or directly named their strategies in legitimising their collective memory. However, some strategies I deduced from their stories as I saw themes re-emerge. More specifically, I used my respondents’ narration of the past, i.e. their collective memory, to deduct which strategies they used to position themselves in in this “civil war of memories” (Kuljic 2009, p. 197 in Fridman, 2018, p. 424).

My definition of collective memory emphasizes the (speech) acts of people and the way in which people frame the past. I approach these stories of past and present as scholars do in framing theory, as I consider the way specific past events are related to each other in relation to the presents, give a great insight into what exactly they problematize about the past and present in relation to each other and what solutions they offer (Helbling 2014, p. 23). As framing, similar to collective memory, is to be understood as the active process of selecting “some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation” (Entman 1993, p. 52 in Vliegenthart and Zoonen 2011, p. 105). Framing denotes an agentive process of highlighting certain events to make sense of something in the present, whilst simultaneously justifying why these events and problems are important (Helbling 2014, p. 22-23; Benford and Snow 2000, p. 614-615). In these processes actors identify problematic conditions or situations they regard in need of change, but also identify the cause of and solution to these problems (Benford and Snow 2000, p. 615). Subsequently, based on the identification of the cause and solution to said problems, people try to persuade others to see the same problems and causes whilst simultaneously using these

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22 problems and cause as way to persuade others (ibid., p. 620). Therefore, I used the explanations my respondents gave about the past and present in Serbia as these provided great insights as to how they legitimise their own collective memory, as the way they narrate the problems they identified is telling of the strategies that they use to legitimise their own collective memory.

Based on the previously mentioned theories and my own memory of re-emerging themes in the interviews, I created a coding scheme. You can find this in Appendix 2. I thematically coded my data into “overarching” codes, which I then subdivided in smaller subcodes. Thus, for example, I had the overarching code “strategies” which was then divided in “facts”, “personal experience” et cetera. This was done to map out and organize all data in a coherent story, in order to form the argument for chapter 4 and 5.

Limitations, positionality, and ethics

The composition of my research populations could be considered a limitation to my research. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I struggled to contact people, as all I could really do was rely on people replying to an e-mail. I interviewed a mixture of people working for different CSOs and individuals who were akin in sharing the same collective memory, therefore making my research population somewhat disperse and difficult to categorize. However, this mixture can also be considered a strength. Many respondents identified that legitimising this marginalised collective memory took the effort of individuals, scholars, activist, and CSOs. In this respect my research population is a representative brushstroke of the people who share this marginalised collective memory.

Second, I need to address another problem in relation to the categorization of my research population. Research similar to mine has often researched these topics and CSOs in Serbia with theories surrounding memory activism, which has been defined as “the commemoration of a contested past in order to influence public debate, primarily towards greater equality, plurality, and reconciliation.” (Gutman 2017, p. 55). As aptly as this describes the process in which my respondents engage, I have chosen not to use the term memory activists, for not all my respondents identified as such. 7

In terms of methods, I was somewhat limited as Covid-19 prevented me from travelling to Serbia and meeting and talking to people in person and witnessing any activities and

7_{There is an inherent connection between collective memory and identities, or the way people describe their own}

person, however this was not the focus of my research, so therefore I will not interrogate this avenue any further (Erl, 2008). This could be a suggestion of further research.

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23 behaviours of them ‘live in action’, obstructing me from doing (participant) observation.8_The

consequence was that I had to conduct interviews over skype, which can be described as an odd experience. There is no natural grounding moment, in the form of a coffee or some small talk, before you start an interview, which is so vital in putting both interviewer and interviewee at ease. I consciously made an effort to build in these moments, which succeeded to lesser and greater extend, and this success did influence the tone of the interview in my opinion. Secondly, interviewing people over skype comes with additional challenges, such as bad internet connections and not being able to see the others’ body language. Third, interjecting, which is an artform in face-to-face interactions, was even trickier over skype, as people sometimes missed my (non-)verbal cues, or I rudely interrupt someone, because due the lagging of the video someone seemed done with answering the question, but was not.

In terms of ethics, this also brought another challenge: how to record these conversations? I chose to record the audio on my phone, as I thought having a video recording of the interview did not guarantee the privacy of my respondents, in case of my laptop got stolen or hacked. Additionally, I tried to not do any harm to my respondents by stating they could always tell me if I said something insensitive. Subsequently, I sent everyone a transcript of their interview and later a list of quotes I wished to use, so they could approve them and make sure they were okay with what they said a few months ago. The transcript provided some contextualization in this ordeal, in case my respondents wanted to check whether I did not take their quotes out of context.

Lastly, I have to comment on my own positionality, as I think this has somewhat coloured my analyses. I have researched the wars in the Western-Balkan before. Therefore, the collective memory of my respondents is very similar to my understanding of those wars, even more so I often found moved by their stories. As you read this thesis you might be critical of (the effectiveness of) the strategies my respondents used, however, that is not the aim of my thesis. I centered the story of this thesis how my respondents make sense of the world around them, how in turn that influences their behaviours and subsequently what these behaviours tell us about the concept of collective memory, which I will discuss in the following chapters.

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Chapter 3: Remembering different victims

“You were, wait, what?” I stammered as I thought I did not hear Marko properly due to the bad internet connection. We had been discussing how he and his colleagues at the Youth Initiative of Human Rights had been protesting the publishing of memoire of convicted war criminal Veselin Šljivančanin “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was beaten up by people from the progressive party in Serbia in 2017. It happened in a small place in Vojvodina in the North of Serbia. There was a party there, to celebrate the publishing of the book”.

“I used to get a lot of threats from [people] who didn’t agree with me,” Božena said, almost casually, “they were saying that they would kill me and beat me up. It happened both during the pride parade in Belgrade and during the Mirdita, dobar dan! festival, which is a festival to celebrate Kosovar art in Serbia. Whenever those two things happen a lot of activists will get death threats for being activist at a time”.

The above citations are two excerpts from discussions I had with Marko and Božena. Both told me their stories almost bemused, as both had experienced these violent reactions to their beliefs and acts of protests a few years ago. Their stories were shocking in their intensity, yet no anomaly, since all my respondents had encountered some sort of negative reaction to the expression of their perception of the past. Zoran partook in the same protest as Marko, Danica spoke about the “constructive fights” she had with friends, family, and strangers, Milos often received (death) threats when he publishes one of his articles, Nemanja had been called an auto-chauvinist as a response to his articles and all of them, or the organisations they were affiliated with, had either been called a traitor to their own nation or even foreign mercenaries.

In this chapter I will answer the question as to why the collective memory of my respondents caused conflict. This chapter serves both as a contextualisation and explanation of the conflict of memory as it provides an insight into how my respondents make sense of the political situation surrounding the memory of the wars in the nineties and its aftermath in Serbia, as this understanding is required to grasp the strategies they subsequently use to legitimise their collective memory.

I will do this by both describing the dominant and alternative narrative about the past, i.e. the respective collective memories. The recollection of these narratives is extrapolated from

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25 the accounts my respondents gave of both, with some additions of literature to make it into a coherent story. These narrations of the past by my respondents were not always uniform in their emphasis of historic events. However, collective memory is a process marked by continuous negotiations between an individual’s own understanding of the past and that of the group. Therefore, the existence of slight variations within individual accounts of the past are not severely problematic, as my respondents shared an overarching similar narrative with their group (de Saint-Laurent, 2018). This in concord with the observation of Wertsch and Roedinger III (2008, p. 319), as groups share a certain schemata about the past, which are then used by the individual to recollected that past, causing a slight variation in narratives about the past. My

respondent Milos commented on these differences between individual narratives: “We have a lot of work to, we don’t have enough people to do that work, so I am really proud of every single one of my colleagues, whether I know them or not, we probably disagree on many things, but it is very important that this pool of people continues to grow. [..] But, you know, having just people talk to each other, that is a start”. In this statement Milos underscores the importance of having a dialogue and disagreements, but that is collective memory in its essence; it is a process of dialogue to create a shared narrative and understanding of the past and this is chapter can be considered an addition to that conversation (Wertsch and Roedinger III 2008, p. 319).

This approach in narrating history and the present situation might lead to a “biased” report on both the past and current situation in Serbia. However, I did not set out to research what truly happened in the nineties and afterwards, I want to know how collective memory causes conflict and how my respondents make sense of the whole conflict.9 Therefore by the end of this section you will not be fully informed on what happened, but neither are most people in Serbia nowadays

The dominant collective memory: “Sam protiv svih” [alone against everybody]

When most people in Serbia narrate their memories about the nineties and the years after, they do so, as Đorđije said, through “victim narratives. [These narratives] are very important in our recent collective memory actually”, as Serbians predominantly remember all the losses that they suffered at the hands of others in the twentieth century. These losses do not exclusively concern the lives lost during the wars in the nineties, but they date back to the Second World War, as Đorđije, Božena and Zoran explained. Dmitar and Božena both further elaborated that

9_{Even though much of what my respondents have said is in concord with both the literature and ICTY reports,}

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26 during the Second World War ethnic Serbians were targeted by the Ustaša, a Croatian fascist organization which terrorised the region by murdering all other ethnicities and by, most notably, establishing the Jasenovac concentration camp (among many others) in which many ethnic Serbians met their demise.

This sentiment of victimhood has reappeared in Serbia numerous times and was also prominent in the nineties. According to Đorđije, these feelings of victimhood were what legitimised attacking other republics and ethnicities in the nineties, because people believed, that “it was preventative. If we did not kill them, they would kill us, because [people believed] it was that kind of war”. In line with this Magdalena explained that many ethnic Serbs lived in the republics that were declaring their independence, and this legitimised the fighting on those territories as people believed “that the Serbian population in the other republics were endangered and that they therefore should be defended”. Thus, the wars of the nineties were battles in which Serbia defended itself and its people. To illustrate the manifestation of the victimhood narrative Đorđije told me the following anecdote: “you know, the leading party in Serbia during the nineties was called the Socialist Party of Serbia, SPS abbreviated, which is also in Serbian the abbreviation of the phrase sam protiv svih meaning ‘alone against everybody’”.

A decade of wars ensued in which battles were fought in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. During this period Serbia suffered innumerable economic losses, since the UN put Serbia under economic sanctions that destabilized the country’s economy. This led to mass unemployment, rising prices, and “shortages of food, fuel and medicine” and this resulted in many having to leave the country to find a livelihood elsewhere (Spasenić 2015, p. 318). The last war Serbia was actively involved in was the one in Kosovo, which started in 1998 and ended with the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia. The bombings were initiated by NATO, who deemed the attempts of Milošević’s army and government to keep the “heart of Serbia” part of Serbia to be a violation of human rights. Dmitar identified that the bombing at the time, was not necessarily experienced as an act of illegitimate aggression by all Serbians, as many understood that the wars Milošević kept having in their name had to stop.

After the wars Nemanja said there was a lot of hope for a better future in Serbia, because “they put down a dictator and most of the people were into progress”. In concord with Nemanja’s statement, Magdalena, who was working for the government in the years right after the wars, even said: “Yes, in the beginning it was very interesting, we did a lot of good things, from the inside, releasing Albanian prisoners, resolving the crisis in South Serbia, but then after almost two years I stopped, I wasn’t so enthusiastic, because everything changed”. This

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27 sentiment of hope did not last, because the Serbians started to feel, as Zoran said, that most of the international community was against them. Đorđije said this sentiment grew when the ICTY started prosecuting mostly ethnic Serbians. Subsequently a “huge part of the population is hostile towards the Hague tribunal and they consider it an anti-Serb institution [..] Because [they think that] the very essence of that tribunal is that it was established to punish Serbs and Serbian national cause”. Subsequently, Zoran explained that the “NATO and European Union [started to be] seen as the enemy after the work of the ICTY. [The ICTY] is also seen as an act of, not aggression, but an act of defeating Serbia during a peaceful time, you know. This is how they see it. You have the political, army and police leadership before the international court, that is something that is seen not as an act of friendship, on the contrary”.

This attitude did not decrease when the European Union demanded Serbia to acknowledge the suffrage they caused in the wars, as part of the European integration plan (Milošević and Touquet 2018, p. 390). Subsequently people felt that the “European Union wants [them] to accept the guilt, that [they] do not carry,” Đorđije said, which has only led to feelings of victimhood, resentment and apathy towards the wars of the nineties and discussing Serbia’s role in the suffrage that was caused. As a result of these feelings, the narrative about Serbia’s role in the wars is mostly denied, downplayed or not acknowledged, because Serbians do not feel that their story is acknowledged. This process does not merely play out on the streets, but is also played out systematically in education and media and on the level of state politics. The following statement, delivered quite passionately by Jagoda, gives an example of this systematic non-acknowledgement of the suffrage caused by Serbian paramilitaries:

Serbs are learning, the siege of Sarajevo happened. That is the sentence from the history book from the fourth-grade gymnasium at high school, “the siege of Sarajevo happened”. IT LASTED THREE YEARS! It did not just happen [like the textbook implied]. People died there, they didn't have water or electricity, they were constantly under attack – it was bad. (Jagoda, personal communication, 2020)

This blasé description of the siege of Sarajevo in high school history books is not uncommon. Danica, twenty-five years old, recalled being taught nothing about the nineties in high school. “It exists, a couple of pages in the end of every schoolbook,” she said, “but you know, as the end of the schoolyear is approaching, somehow, we would always skip that part.” Only at the end of Danica’s high school career did she realise she had learned nothing about the nineties. All of my respondents noted on the post-war generation’s oblivion to what had happened in the

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28 nineties, whilst this generation somehow simultaneously carried sentiments towards other ethnic groups (and the broader international community) which all found their origins in the wars waged in the nineties. They also mentioned that older generations mostly were quiet on the matter.

The landscape surrounding the memories of the past few decades is a complex mixture of denial and non-acknowledgement of the aggressive role of Serbia, a situation prompted by feelings of victimhood and a genuine unawareness of what happened due to the fact that there is no education on the matter. This all has led to general obliviousness, bias, unwillingness to face the past, and feelings of underlying anger towards the outside world. However, this anger does not limit itself only toward ethnic others, the NATO or the European Union, this anger is also unleashed towards my respondents. The following sections will provide a clearer answer as to why this is.

A different collective memory: What about all the other victims?

What we are left with now is that nobody wants to talk about the war, maybe a few NGOs in the region do, the government is trying to make people forget, but at the same time collect political points and profit of a war that happened 30 years ago, by reminding us who the “true” heroes and victims are, so I mean.... Really, it’s a paradox, because at the same time we don’t talk about the war, but yet politicians collect political points of the war. (Božena, personal communication 2020)

So, this part is definitely lacking, the process of facing the past, is almost entirely left to organisations of civil society. (Đorđije, personal communication, 2020)

All my respondents started their recollection of the past in the decade prior to the one that would go down in history as one of the bloodiest and violent ones in the region. “So, there was a big country [Yugoslavia.],” Nemanja explained, “and there were a lot of nationalists currents in the republics of Yugoslavia, and unfortunately they won in the late eighties”. This decade was described by Magdalena as a period in which cultural elites in Serbia were preparing citizens for war by proliferating war-inciting propaganda throughout the country. Đorđije stated that the narrative of victimhood, mentioned in the previous section, was mobilised and propagated in the eighties to legitimise a call for nationalism and ultimately violence. However, this narrative

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29 of victimhood was identified by Magdalena, Zoran and Đorđije as a façade of another ideology, cultivated by the cultural and political elite, known as the nationalist ideology of “Greater Serbia”. Đorđije described this ideology to be aiming for the establishment of “a state that would encompass all Serbs in the area living together in one single state”. As this ideology gained magnitude, the world drastically changed in 1989, Zoran noted, “the world was changing; the Soviet Union fell apart and it was clear that Yugoslavia as a state cannot survive these changes. Nationalisms and nation-state building [in all former Yugoslavian republics] were on the rise”. And in this climate, Zoran said that “the regime in Belgrade, which was the most powerful one, used all countries resources, especially army resources in order to create something called Greater Serbia”. Understanding and explaining the war in this particular way demands a fundamentally different perception on Serbia’s role in the conflict – Serbia did not defend itself in this war, it was the aggressor.

In 1991 the first wars broke out, Danica explained, since both Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence. “In Slovenia they didn’t have that much of a war, it only lasted for 10 days,” Danica said, “and then in Croatia it was a bit more complicated. Because there was a lot, you know, I think around thirty percent of Serbs were living in Croatia [..Therefore in] Croatia it was really, really complicated, because if the other ethnicities had a right to ask for their independence, then you know, everyone could, because Serbs were a big minority in Croatia, so they had rights to make the same claims as everyone else did and that is what made the situation very complicated”. These claims for self-determination led to a very ferocious civil war in Croatia.

Then in 1993 the war in Bosnia broke out and, as Danica said, “when it escalated Bosnia, you know, [people called it] little Yugoslavia. [..] It was a disaster. That is why they had the biggest numbers of casualties in Bosnia … over 100 000 people … I mean it is a disaster”. All my respondents mentioned the Srebrenica genocide, which happened on the 11th of July1995 in which approximately eight thousand men and boys were killed by Bosnian-Serbian paramilitaries. During all these wars little fighting happened on Serbian territory, however, Đorđije and Božena did mention that there was fighting or at least some repression of the Muslim population in the region of Sandzak.

The war in Kosovo was the beginning of the end for Serbia’s war campaign in the region. Magdalena described that in Kosovo, which many Serbians still consider Serbian territory, Serbian elites had been “abusing power, violating human rights by arresting people, murdering people, discriminating people, of Albanians of course, which ended with the war crimes in 98 and 99”. NATO intervened and bombed Serbia to stop Milošević’ and his

The good, the bad, the past, the present, and the future: a study on how to legitimise a marginalised collective memory in Serbia