Gijs ten Berge Teacher: dr. Runia Rijksuniversiteit Groningen S1753193
Master thesis 2014/2015
The 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of
Science and Arts: infecting collective memory with
Introduction
On 25 June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia as sovereign national states. As such, four decades of unity of the South Slavic nations came to an end. The Yugoslav wars followed from the rapid dissolution of Yugoslavia at the end of the 1980s. However, the seed of this conflict was already sowed during the foregoing century.1
After the World War I (WW I), on 18 October 1918 ‘the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs’ was founded. In this state, most power was acquired by the Serbs: it was ruled by the 2 Serbian royal house and most of the prime ministers taking office in the subsequent years were Serbs. In 1929 the state was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and by that the ‘First 3 Yugoslavia’ came into existence. Ethnic tension between the three foremost ethnic groups, the Serbs, the Croats and the Slovenes, was dammed, but the outcome of the First World War made this an unstable construction. Internationally, Serbia was perceived as the liberator of the other two nations from imperial rule by the AustroHungarians and that is how the Serbs thought of themselves too. The extensive sacrifices that were made for regaining sovereignty made Serbia ‘the darling of the allied forces’. This legitimated Serbia, in the eyes of the 4 Serbs, to be the primary republic in the new state. However, according to the Croats and the Slovenes, it was a state based on equality with cooperation between the different nations in the construction of the state. These contradicting perspectives on the interwar Yugoslavia
1 D. Gödl, “Challenging the Past: Serbian and Croatian AggressorVictim Narratives,” International Journal of
Sociology 37, no. 1 (2007): 4748.
2 J. Gow, The Serbian Project and its Adversaries: a Strategy of War Crime (London: C. Hurst, 2003), 34. 3 M.A. Hoare, “Slobodan Milosevic’s Place in Serbian History,” European History Quarterly 36, no. 3
(2006):448.
4 T. Emmert, “A Crisis of Identity: Serbia at the End of the Century,” in Yugoslavia and its Historians:
understanding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, ed. N. Naimark and H. Case (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2003), 166.
were the root of tension between the three nations that would influence Yugoslav politics for decades to come.5
In 1941 the Nazi’s occupied Yugoslavia. Also, during the years of occupation (19411945) a civilian war was fought within the country. The main actors in this respect were the Croatian Ustasa, led by Ante Pavelic, the Serbian Chetniks, led by Draza Mihailovic and the Partisans led by Josip Brosz Tito. During this war, the Ustase committed genocide 6 against the Croatian Serbs, living in the Independent State of Croatia that was established as a collaborating state with the Nazi’s. Furthermore, the Chetniks massacred Bosnians Muslims. After the Nazi’s were expelled from Yugoslav territory by the Partisans, Tito founded the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia in 1945 which was renamed in 1974 the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). In the following parts of this paper, the latter 7 will be used for referring to the entire period of Titoïst rule.
The SFRY consisted of six republics, being Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia and two provinces, which were Kosovo and Vojvodina. It was based on the idea of ‘brotherhood and unity’ between those nations. Tito saw the integration 8 of the South Slavic nations in one state as ‘innately good’ and all nations were to be perceived equally. Singling out one of them for atrocities in the War, or for other historical 9 accusations, was left impossible, by which WW II memories were repressed.10
On 4 May, 1980 Tito died. As Yugoslav leader, he had been standing above all nations; as long as he was alive, disputes between the nations were settled by the federal government and resistance was fiercely quelled. After Tito’s death, however, problems piled up quickly. Although the political and economic problems of the SFRY were evident and considered structural, the pace with which the country dissolved was unimaginable at the moment of Tito’s death. 11
5 Gödl, “Challenging the Past,” 4748. 6 Gow, The Serbian Project, 35. 7 Idem, 32.
8 T.S. Pappas, “Shared Culture, Individual Strategy and Collective Action: Explaining Slobodan Milosevic’s
Charismatic Rise to Power,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 5, no. 2 (2005): 198.
9 I. Banac, “Historiography of the Countries of Eastern Europe: Yugoslavia,” American Historical Review 97,
no. 4 (1992): 1085.
10 Gödl, “Challenging the Past,” 48.
11 T. Judah, Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 57.
An important chain in the breakup of Yugoslavia was the publication of the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) on 24 September 1986.
The Yugoslav nation was shocked by this draft document, published in the Serbian
12
newspaper Vecernje Novosti after being leaked to its editorial office. After the unfinished
content was leaked to the press, the work on the Memorandum was put to an end. 13 Only parts
of the document were published and further publication was prohibited by the Serbian leadership, which was strongly opposed to its content resulting in firm condemnation. 14 This condemnation went on well into 1987. It was only with Slobodan Milosevic’s establishment as the leader of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), in September 1987, that the ‘political witch hunt’ on the SANU and its Memorandum died down. 15 Eventually, only in
1989 the Serbian newspaper Duga for the first time entirely published the Memorandum in Serbia. It was not a coincidence that this occurred at a moment that Slobodan Milosevic had16 a firm hold on power. In the end, the Memorandum grew already before its publication to be one of the most cited texts in former Yugoslavia.17
According to the authors, the content of the Memorandum was never intended for the Serbian public; it was drawn up ‘to warn the authorities about the dimensions of the crisis, in a manner that would implicitly rather than explicitly suggest possible solutions’. The text 18 contained 74 pages and 23 intellectuals of the SANU were involved in its production. The 19 most important authors were historian Vasilje Krestic, economist Kosta Mihailovic,
12 T. Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (New Haven: Yale University Press,
philosopher Mihailo Markovic and Antonije Isakovic, the vicepresident of the Academy and vicechairman of the committee 20
The draft Memorandum of the SANU was divided into two parts. The first part addressed the political, economic and constitutional problems in the SFRY in a rather democratic, scientific way. However, it was the second part that gave rise to widespread resentment by questioning the legitimacy of the SFRY relations between the different states and provinces. 21 The second part is, in contrast to the first, permeated with historical narratives and appellations to collective memory. Furthermore, it was the second part that gave rise to the xenophobic language that would characterize Serbian public discourse in the late 1980s. That is why in this paper only a short analysis of the first part is considered 22 sufficed. In the subsequent chapters, when speaking of the Memorandum the second part of the Memorandum is meant, unless stated otherwise,
The second part of the Memorandum dealt with the asserted historically developed grievances of the Serbs, which were presented as the cause of a scheme by the other Yugoslav nations. This appealed greatly to the Serbian people, who by consisting of 36 percent of the Yugoslav population were the largest nation in the SFRY. Over 40 percent of these Serbs lived outside the borders of the Republic of Serbia. Among them, there was a 23 sense of discrimination against the Serbian nation on the federal level, aiming at breaking it up. The Memorandum publicly formulated this sense and with its inflammatory language frightened the other nations in the SFRY.24
The importance of the Memorandum in the breakup of Yugoslavia is widely considered to have been extensive. The Serbian historian Olivera Milosavljevic, for instance, perceives the publication of the draft Memorandum to have ‘opened up the national question in Yugoslavia in a totally new way’. During the period of Tito’s rule, the national question 25
20 A. Budding, “Systemic Crisis and National Mobilization: The Case of the “Memorandum of the Serbian
Academy,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 22, no. 1 (1998): 54.
21 M. Zivkovic, Serbian Dreambook: National Imaginary in the Time of Milosevic (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2011), 8990.
22 Morus, “The SANU Memorandum,” 147. 23 Budding, “Systemic Crisis,” 4951.
24 C. Morus, “The SANU Memorandum: Intellectual Authority and the Constitution of an Exclusive Serbian
“People””, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 4, no. 2 (2007): 160.
25 O. Milosavljevic, “Yugoslavia as a Mistake,” in The Road to War in Serbia: Trauma and Catharsis, ed. N.
was downplayed by the notion of innate brotherhood and unity between the nations. After Tito’s death, this SFRY fundament increasingly eroded, bringing the national question to the fore. The Memorandum marked the beginning of the politicization of this national question, by which its publication, in the words of the American writer Tim Judah, was ‘a key moment in the destruction of Yugoslavia’. The Georgian historian Christina Morus describes the 26 Memorandum as having laid the foundation for the Serbian nationalism that would emerge in the subsequent years. Morus argues that Serbian identity was reconstituted in the subsequent years, based on the narratives of the Memorandum. 27 According to Morus, the SANU intellectuals deliberately awakened the national debate in Serbia in an inflammatory sense to establish a new Serbian identity that made the Serbs prepared to take up arms to fight for what was, allegedly, theirs. From this perspective, the reconstitution is by some scholars claimed to be based on an alliance between Milosevic and the SANU. In this respect, the Serbian historian Agneza BozicRoberson argues that the Memorandum was a national program on which Milosevic based his political actions.28
In a response to the firm critique that was adopted against the Memorandum, SANU published the book ‘Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts: Answers to Criticisms’ in 1995. The writers, the academicians Kosta Mihailovic, Vasilje Krestic and Miroslav Pantic, denied all accusations posed against the Memorandum. According to them, the document was produced in response to the economic, political and social crises that spread across the country. According to SANU, the Memorandum should not be considered 29 a nationalist document, because this would imply that it calls for a privileged position of the Serbian nation. Nationalist policy proposals are not included and no passage, as long as it is interpreted rightly, can be ascribed a nationalist character. All that is asked for is an equal treatment of Serbia and the Serbs within the Yugoslav framework, neither for a dominant position, nor for secession from Yugoslavia. Nationalism, so SANU claims, is inherently connected to violence and there is no violent passage to be found in the Memorandum. 30
Mihailovic, Krestic and Pantic, Memorandum, 15.
26 Judah, Kosovo, 63.
27 Morus, “The SANU Memorandum,” 146.
28 A.B. Roberson, “The Role of Rhetoric in the Politicization of Ethnicity: Milosevic and the Yugoslav
Ethnopolitical Conflict,” Treatises and Documents 52, no. 3 (2007): 273.
29 Mihailovic, Krestic and Pantic, Memorandum, 912. 30 Idem, 8182.
Moreover, the Memorandum was written to warn the Serbian political leadership of the flaws in Yugoslav society. However, the draft document was stolen and, against the will of SANU, revealed to the public. Since the Memorandum was not written for public encounters, the aforementioned accusations could impossibly be right. Moreover, so these academicians stated, the allegations against the Memorandum were ‘inspired by the course of events and the antiSerbian propaganda’s need to keep the official and unofficial organs of Serbia under a constant barrage of accusations’. 31 As a consequence, allegations of the
Memorandum being a national program that was deliberately produced to rearrange Serbian identity, were firmly denied.
In this paper, an attempt is made to sort out the role the Memorandum played in Serbian society leading up to the Yugoslav war of the 1990s. To this end, the context in which the Memorandum appeared will be explored by briefly looking at Yugoslav history of the 20th century. Also, the content of the document, particularly of the second part, will be analyzed to get a clear view on what was in the SANU text and how this relates to Serbian and Yugoslav history. Furthermore, the reception of the SANU Memorandum in Yugoslav society will be researched to clarify why its influence is considered so extensive and whether this consideration is right. As such, the paper aims at clarifying the influence of the Memorandum on the Serbian nation by looking at its context, content and reception: how did the 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts influence the development of Serbian collective memory?
To answer this question, the following paragraph will deal with the theoretical notions that are used in the upcoming chapters. This paragraph explains the theoretical conceptions on which the paper is based, offering characteristics of 19th century national history, to which the Memorandum will be compared, and elaborating on a theory of collective memory studies formulated by Aleida Assmann. At the end of this paragraph, the way these notions will be applied in the successive chapters will be presented.
Since the author of this paper does not read, speak or write the Serbian language, English translations are used. Secondary literature published in English and Dutch on Serbian history, the Memorandum and the rise of Milosevic, as well as primary sources such as the
31 Idem, 80.
Memorandum itself, the 1995 SANU response to the critique, transcripts of examinations at the International Criminal Tribunal of Yugoslavia (ICTY) dealing with the Memorandum 32,
an interview with academicians Vasilje Krestic and Mihailo Markovic and three speeches of Milosevic are explored. As such, the perceptions of three of the four most important writers of the Memorandum on the history of the case will be taken into account. By placing the manifestation of Serbian nationalism in its historical context, analyzing this manifestation (through the Memorandum), and exploring how the Memorandum was received, this paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the rise of Serbian nationalism and as such to the rise of nationalism in general.
With regard to the content of the Memorandum, the translation of Trepca, the Kosovo Information Agency, is used. The passages of the SANU text used in this paper are referred 33 to by firstly mentioning the number of the chapter of the Memorandum and subsequently the number of the paragraph (x:x). The Memorandum is divided into 10 chapters, of which the first part contains the chapters 1 to 5, while the second part contains chapter 6 to 10.
The nationalization of history
The importance of history in the formation of identity is determinative; history is a constitutive force of identity. The identity of a social group, here regarded as the selfimage 35 of the group, is operative in the present and essential for establishing goals in the future. However, it is formed by referring to the past. The answer to the question of identity is always formulated on the basis of the history of the concerned group. This history is a more 36 or less fluid story depending on the context of identification.
Around 1750, the national principle ceased over other principles of identity, such as religion, and took a dominant position in society. In retrospect, the 200 years between 1750 and 1945 mark the establishment and expansion of the national principle, the nation and nationalism.37 In the closing decades of the 18th century the historical profession was established, after which it was adopted by the emerging states. This occurred in favor of establishing national identity by constructing, through historical narratives, a shared past between the members of the nation. By their successful claim of maximized objectivity, the national historians offered scientific justification to the nationstate. Therefore, the historical profession was an important agent in the legitimization of the state, enabling the latter to establish and expand its power. 38
It was the state that picked the historians and histories that suited it best, enabling it to strengthen its power base. The state was considered a natural phenomenon, invented by 39 God, and could therefore not be questioned. It was the utmost objective entity, standing above all parties, giving it the highest authority. The nationstate was held to transcend 40 religious and political positions and, therefore, objectivity was accomplished by studying
35 Gödl, “Challenging the Past,” 44.
36 H. Lübbe, Geschichtsbegriff und Geschichtsinteresse: Analytik und Pragmatik der Historie (Basel, Stuttgart:
Schwabe, 1977), 147168.
37 P. Lawrence, “Nationalism and Historical Writing,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism,
ed. J. Breuilly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 717. (714730)
38 Lawrence, “Nationalism and Historical Writing,” 714718.
39 S. Berger, M. Donovan and K. Passmore, Writing National Histories: Western Europe Since 1800 (London,
New York: Routledge, 2002) 8.
40 Idem, 7.
history within the national framework. National historians asserted to present the history of 41 the historically rooted nation in accordance with the criteria of the modern historical discipline, ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen’. This implied that there was a historical reality, 42 coming forth from the past through source material, that could be presented through applying the methods of the historical profession. Although historians claimed to maximize objectivity, the alliance between historians and the state instilled in national histories a mythical touch. Foundation myths were aligned to other national myths and placed in a 43 continuum to explain them in the light of the present and national narratives were applied to the traditions of the national group to which the national history aspired. 44
The national historians constituted an image of history as characterized by irreversible progress, through which the human mind was brought to perfection with the aid of scientific methods, resulting in the establishment of the sovereign nationstate. This Hegelian model 45 of progress was characterized by a positivist conception of history. History inevitably progressed from its origin to its telos; the national history was depicted as naturally changing and developing from the foundation myth to the establishment of the nationstate in modern times. The nation was held to progress in accordance with its predestined metahistorical46 mission and as such walking its predestined path in history. The rise of nationalism gave rise to essential notions of national identity, ascribing eternal and naturally inherent characteristics to the nation, often characterized by the moral nature of the nation as a constant force among many foreign variable ones. 47
As writers of statesponsored national histories, national historians were closely related to the nationbuilding that took root across the European continent. These national histories, of course, varied in scope and character and some differed greatly from others. Still, several general characteristics can be applied to the national history writing of the modern
41 C. Lorenz, “Unstuck in Time. Or the sudden presence of the past,” in Performing the Past: Memory, History,
and Identity in modern Europe, ed. K, Tilmans, F. van Vree en J. Winter (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), 73.
42 The famous phrase of the ‘father’ of the historical profession Leopold van Ranke. 43 Berger, Donovan and Passmore, Writing National Histories, 5.
44 G. Cubitt, History and Memory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 40. 45 Idem, 42.
46S. Stuurman, De Uitvinding van de Mensheid: Korte Wereldgeschiedenis van het Denken over de Gelijkheid
en Cultuurverschil (Amsterdam: Bakker, 2009), 19.
47 Berger, Donovan and Passmore, Writing National Histories, 9.
period. On a structural level, they reflected many similarities caused, not in the last place, by the ‘force of identification’, emanating from the narratives contained in the national history. 48
In this respect, the Dutch historian Chris Lorenz has distinguished eight characteristics of these national histories, beginning with a claimed unique national identity. 49 Second, this unique identity was claimed by excluding other nations, often neighboring ones, and groups within the nation. Third, wars and battles were the dominant narratives within the national history. Furthermore, the identity of the nation’s members came forward from a common origin, after which a history of glory and victory, characterized by suffering and giving rise to national pride, was shared. Fifth, the nation was presented as always having been there since its origin, a line of continuity between its origin and the present was constructed reflecting the aforementioned Hegelian temporal pattern. Sixth, the nation was depicted as a person or family. Seventh, unity was represented as the natural mode of national being; the nation existed as a harmonious unity and could only exist as such. Eighth, the nation was held to strive for a cause of justice, claiming to be in service of God.
From the beginning of the 20th century, intellectual currents, such as the Annales school, emerged that subverted the notion of the nation as the natural force of historical identity. Critique on the role of national historians increased. Still, as well in the run up to WW I as in the run up to WW II, the national principle played an important role in preparing the several nations to take to the battlefield. However, by 1945 the notions of progress and 50 moral greatness of nations were no longer scientifically tenable. The horrors of both wars inclined historians to acknowledge the dangers of nationalism and abandon the essentialist notion of nations as naturally given entities and history as characterized by progress. The 51 1970s witnessed the linguistic turn, a postmodern shift in scientific outlook, stressing the constructivist character of reality and, as such, of historical knowledge. Essentialist notions 52 of the nation came to be accompanied by the idea that nations are no natural phenomena, but social and political constructions of the human mind. 53 As Eric Hobsbawm has put it:
‘[n]ations, we now know (...) are not (...) as old as history. The modern sense of the word is no older than the eighteenth century.’ 54
For almost 200 years, the nationstate had been the point of view from which history was written. Now, the nation was dismantled and with it the historical profession fell into an existential crisis. Was the 19th century historian esteemed highly, after 1945 he appeared as ‘the carrier of a disease’. Historical consciousness, instilled upon the people by historians, 55 was appointed part of the blame for the cruel atrocities of the 20th century.
With the rise of the notion of the nation as a social and political construct, the problem of the ontological status of the past gained new relevance. In this respect, the US philosopher of history Hayden White advocates to abandon the expectation ‘that statements about a given epoch or complex of events in the past "correspond" to some preexistent body of "raw facts."’ 56 The historian should not claim to give an account of the past ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen’, he should reconcile with the fact that the historical account is a mere representation of the past instead of the presentation of a historical reality. Historical discourses attempt to ‘ explicate the relation between parts and wholes or between the phases and the completed structure of a process’. However, because there are no specific theories 57 formulated with regard to these relations (it is impossible to empirically test them by the lack of a historical reality), tropes are used to ‘figure’ the relations in a narrative. White claims that it is by this ‘figurative language’ that the historian ‘fashions’ his data into a narrative. 58 The task of the historian, therefore, is to release society from ‘the burden of history’: by studying the past, he must offer perspectives on the present that help to solve the problems of the time in which he lives. 59
Frank Ankersmit, a Dutch philosopher of history, adds to White’s figurative language the notion of a ‘narrative substance’. Ankersmit defines it as the foremost narrative entity in
54 E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), 4.
55 H. White, “The Burden of History,” History and Theory 5, no. 2 (1966): 123. 56 Idem, 131.
57 H. White, Historicism, “History and the Figurative Imagination,” History and Theory 14, no. 4 (1975): 55. 58 Idem, 64.
59 White, “The Burden of History,” 125.
historical treatises. Indeed, the narrative substance has a tropological character and is most 60 effective when casted in metaphor. Metaphor, states Ankersmit, is a linguistic figure that does in itself not correspond with reality and, as such, represents historical reality by proposing a perspective. The narrative substance, therefore, has a metaphorical character and has the61 form of a short statement that is made in the narrative. It figures the metaperspective, the overarching story, of the narrative. In doing so, the function of the narrative substance is twofold: it represents the element that is described and it refers to the core characteristic of the proposed representation of the past. Importantly, the narrative substance does not refer 62 to the past, but rather to the ordering passages of the narrative: it constitutes a representation of the past, not a presentation of historical reality.
Collective memory and the mnemohistorical perception of the past
‘[U]ne nation est plus encore qu’une territoire, une langue, une religion ou un regime, une nation, c’est une mémoire.’ 63
One of the developments that has downplayed the nation as the primary object of the historical profession, is the rise of memory studies since the 1980s. The key point of 64 memory studies is that it stresses the several and contradictory ways in which the past is experienced and represented by different social groups, in contrast to the asserted objectivity and singularity of the historical profession. 65 In a call for integrating the perspective of memory studies into history, the German memory scholar Jan Assmann has proposed the conduction of ‘mnemohistory’. From a mnemohistorical point of view, the factual reality of 66 the past is not so much important, rather is the way the past has been perceived and has given
60 F. Ankersmit, Narrative Logic: A Semantic Analysis of the Historian’s Language (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1983), 218.
61 Idem, 220. 62 Ibidem.
63 P. Ory, Une Nation Pour Mémoire (Paris: Presses de la Foundation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1992),
8.
64 Lorenz, “Unstuck in Time,” 81. 65 Lorenz, “Unstuck in Time,” 83.
66 J. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Massachussets: Harvard
University Press, 1997), 9.
rise to collective identity and action the object of study. In the following chapters, an attempt is made to adopt this proposal.
While history was long considered the memory of society, by which both terms were intertwined, the rise of memory studies marked the ‘disintegration of history [and] memory’.
This disintegration, named as such by the French historian Pierre Nora, accounts for the
67
idea that memory and history are radically different entities. As long as the nation was the central object of historical research, history and memory formed an alliance; after the postmodernist deconstruction of the nation, both entities grew apart. No longer was history perceived as presenting the past ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen’, it was increasingly perceived as a mere representation of the past. 68
The idea of distinguishing between history and memory originated with the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, who introduced the term ‘collective memory’. Although 69 Halbwachs already made the distinction in the 1920s, it would be the cradle for the development of memory studies no earlier than the 1980s and 1990s. 70 Halbwachs distinguished history and memory for two main reasons. Firstly, memory is a process of 71 ongoing thinking and, as such, in its collective variant it perceives the past in strong connection with the continuity of experiences of the concerned group. In doing so, the present identity is coming forth from past experiences. Contrarily, the bond between past experiences and present identities is somewhat loosened by history, because it perceives the past as being radically different from the present. While memory perceives the transition from past to present as a fluent occasion, history presents this process as characterized by radical breaks and discontinuities. Through history, identity comes forth not from past experiences, but from representations of past events that may or may not have been experienced.
The second reason for Halbwachs’ distinction was that, while the concept of memory leaves room for the notion of a past which is perceived, experienced and depicted differently by different social groups and individuals, history does not. Historians assert to present a past
67 P. Nora, “Between Memory and History: Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26, no. 1 (1989): 18. 68 Lorenz, “Unstuck in Time,” 82, 88.
69 M. Halbwachs, La Mémoire Collective. Ouvrage Posthume Publié (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France,
1950), 130142.
70 M. Tamm, “Beyond History and Memory: New Perspectives in Memory Studies,” History Compass 11, no. 6
(2013): 461.
71 Halbwachs, La Mémoire Collective, 130142.
that is true and comprehensive. As such, historical works tend to be constructed with claims of maximized objectivity, authenticity and accuracy, suggesting a singularly true representation of the past. Memory and memory studies, however, account for the notion of 72 diverse perceptions of the past as being equally true, because there exist as many memories as people. Because of the existence of memories, which exist in as well individual as collective forms, conceptions of the past are mutable, competing and multiple. 73 Nevertheless, some memories appear into prevailing ones, often imposed upon a social group by hegemonic forces, being, for example, the state or the Church. These forces are putting an effort in stabilizing and unifying memories. Indeed, they attempt to turn a prevailing memory into 74 history.
The cited quote of the French historian Pascal Ory, at the beginning of the paragraph, accounts for the notion of the nation in memory studies. Where the nation was initially defined in terms of, for example, a religion or political regime with which the subjects identified on the basis of historical ‘reality’, Ory defines it as a memory, a mere representation of history with which the national group identifies. 75 It is the story that the nation tells itself of itself that is the defining factor of national identity, rather than some sort of essential characteristic naturally belonging to its subjects.
Since Halbwachs’ coining of collective memory, the term is widely debated over and interpreted in several ways. In this paper, the definition of Aleida Assmann, a German scholar specialized in memory studies, will be adopted. Assmann has developed an influential model for the conduction of memory studies. According to Assmann, it is in collective 76 memory that an agreement is formed on the norms and values of a group and on the memories that are selected for constructing the story which is accepted as being its history. 77 As such, memory is the framework for collective memory, and determines the limitations for
72 Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 89.
identity. In Nora’s words, ‘it is memory that dictates, while history writes’. 78 According to
Assmann, collective memory needs to be divided into social memory, political memory and cultural memory .79
Social memory refers to the way a group of people experiences and communicates contemporary history. This group, and therefore social memory, exists on many levels, which can be, for example, the family, a subculture or the nation. The heterogeneity of social memory is further strengthened by its division into generational memories. As a consequence of having, more or less, the same age, a group of people has experienced the same historical events, creating common values, beliefs and attitudes. Since they experienced the historical events themselves, they have actual memories of them. This implies for these people to have a certain knowledge of the events that can never be fully explained to other generations that did not witness them. That is why, every 30 years or so, social memory undergoes a change. 80 When a new generation takes office, values, beliefs and attitudes central to the passing generation, move from centre to periphery, slowly fading away with the dying out of the passing generation. Social memory differs from political and cultural memory because the
former is embodied, while the latter are not. Social memories remain in the concerned group independently from the overarching culture or political system, because the members of the group ‘have’ them themselves. Therefore, social memory comes into being ‘bottomup’, while the other two are issued upon a group ‘topdown’. 81
Political memory is constructed and adopted by the political leadership to be used for political action. In this case, political institutions attempt to construct a unified memory (history) to constitute an identity for political purposes. Think, in this respect, of the adoption of histories and historians by 19th century states that suited their goal, the formation of a nationstate, best. The construction of political memory by a hegemonic force is an attempt to ‘write’ history, as the national historians did. When an ideologically different leadership enters office, political memory is changed by the new ideology this regime brings along:
political values change since other memories will be selected as favoring the nation in accordance with the ideology of the new regime. 82 This is effectively carried out by formulating ‘constitutive narratives’ about the past that promise a better future. Moreover, it is the actor that controls the interpretation of history that has the ability to formulate historical narratives, defining the identity of the group. These narratives, then, can be drawn up in a way that serves the political goals of the leadership.83
Cultural memory exceeds political memory, because it exists independently from political power and is the most constant form of collective memory. Cultures are sophisticated strategies aiming against the disappearance of elements of the past that are held to be worthwhile or necessary to remember. These strategies are making perishable memories into permanent ones by drawing them up in folksongs, customs of tradition and history and are essential for a group to survive as such. Cultural memory is the consequence of these strategies.84 It is a fruitful element for political regimes to extend political power. By politicizing these memories, collective action can be invoked.85
With regard to cultural memory, a distinction needs to be made between active and archival cultural memory. Active cultural memory consists of the cultural symbol, narratives, monuments etc., the lieux de mémoires, that are identified with the nation. In archival cultural memory, all historical elements that are not remembered rest. However, in the national sense, they are not forgotten either by being stored in archives. 86
The several selected and/or prevailing social, political and cultural memories are paved in a continuum in collective memory, determining identity. Collective memory, however, is fluent and not at any time fixed. It is constantly subject to change by conflicting social, political and cultural memories. in this respect, Assmann distinguishes between six variables that provoke collective memory change in periods of political change. 87
The first is time: through time, memories fall prey to oblivion. When social memory has faded by the dying out of a generation, all that is left are representations of the past in the form of political and, more particularly, cultural memory. The formerly relative past (in which many perspectives on an event existed), increasingly turns into an absolute past. However, representations of the past remain in cultural memory, by which the past remains receptive for politicization.
Trauma is too an agent of collective memory change. After a traumatic event, social memories of this event exist in collective memory. However, it takes some time, usually about two or three generations, before a society is able to come to terms with its violent past and representations move to the stage. When this occurs, they tend to have considerable influence on collective memory, being very receptive for politicization.
As aforementioned, the sequence of political regimes causes the sequence of differing value systems. When ideologies erode, new memories are selected for the representation of history. By, for example, changing street names, political memory is reconstructed in a way that suits best the newly emerged political regime.
Furthermore, social frames are subject to change, be it at a slower pace than the change of political value systems. Social customs, mentalities and personal preferences are rather enduring, but still change over time with the dying out of social memories.
Generational change is the agent of social memory change. When a new generation is moving to the public centre, it expels the old to the margins of society bringing in new values, perspectives and voices. New generations select other stories as representing their history. The social memories of the passing generation slowly fades away, moving surviving representations or elements to cultural memory.
Finally, media events are of great importance in the establishment as well as the change of collective memory. The way events are memorized are to an important extent determined by the way they are represented in the media. As such, media events are specifically important for homogenizing collective memory because of the great scope of people they reach.
In the following chapters, it is attempted to apply the elaborated theoretical notions on the context, content and reception of the Memorandum. As such, this paper aims at giving a
mnemohistorical account of the Serbian nation, of the way the perception of the past was influenced by the Memorandum and, thereby, how the Memorandum influenced collective memory.
The first chapter starts with formulating the cultural, social and political memory of the Serbian nation in the SFRY. Thereby, it is attempted to reveal the perceptions of the past with which the Serbian nation identified. The chapter goes on by laying out the way in which this changed after Tito died and concludes with denoting the development of the train of thought that was reflected in the Memorandum. The first chapter is centered around representing the mnemohistorical context in which the Memorandum appeared.
Chapter two deals with the content of the Memorandum, starting with an overview of the main narratives that are put forward in the document. It is explored which perceptions of the past are selected and how these divide over social, political and cultural memory. Then, the Memorandum is compared to the 19th century national history writing by an attempt to apply Lorenz’s idealtypes on the document. Finally, the content of the Memorandum will be analyzed to find out to what extent it calls for violence. The chapter is centered around exploring what perception of the past was ‘proposed’ by the content of the Memorandum.
Chapter one
The disintegration of Serbian collective memory and
collective memory change in the SFRY
Serbian collective memory in the SFRY Cultural memoryThe Kosovo battle represented the origin of the Serbian nation by which Serbian cultural memory, and as such Serbian identity, came to be inherently interwoven with Kosovo’s physical territory and the mythology surrounding it. 88 This representation was based on a
battle between the Serbian Prince Lazar and the Ottomans, that took place in Kosovo on 28 June 1389. Despite the clear superiority of his opponent, Prince Lazar heroically took to battle after which the Serbian army was crushed by the Ottomans. Nevertheless, the event was mythologized in the subsequent centuries and adopted as the founding myth of the Serbian nation by Serbia’s 19th century national historians. Prince Lazar was represented as a martyr and the Kosovo battle came to represent Serbian national identity as characterized by heroism, sacrifice and victimization, implying that the Serbs were by nature preoccupied with
88 Emmert, “A Crisis of Identity,” 168175.
liberation from foreign oppression. 89 Across history, this foreign oppression was predominantly perpetrated upon the Serbs by Muslims, giving rise to an historically rooted antagonism between Serbs and Muslims.90
The Serbian nation builders of the 19th century suggested that the Serbian nation was born with the Kosovo battle and that Serbian national identity was preserved ever since. The 91 Kosovo myth was connected to contemporary historical events, such as the liberation wars that were fought by Serbs from 1804 onwards. The Serbs, so the national historians asserted, had fought these wars to free themselves and their fellow Slavic people from foreign oppression. Out of the movements that fought these wars, a civic and democratic movement arose in Serbia at the end of the 19th century, which in 1878 established Serbia as a state. To these Serbs, moral greatness was ascribed for the fact that, during the liberation wars, they did not only take care of themselves but of the other Slavic nations too.
However, the Serbian nation that emerged was not the consequence of a history and culture that had been shared for centuries by the Serbian people. Rather, the nationstate of Serbia was the consequence of ideological and political considerations coming forth in the course of the 19th century. Although the Serbian nation builders argued that the Kosovo 92 myth had bound together the Serbian nation for, at that point, 500 years, this nation was in fact a 19th century construct. The Kosovo myth was reinvigorated from the 17th century onwards not by Serbian nationalists, but by the Orthodox Church. It was only when Serbian nationalism occurred as a dominant political ideology in the closing decades of the 19th century, that an alliance between the state and the Church occurred and that the Kosovo myth was tied to the nation. Serbian collective memory was shaped by centralizing the Kosovo myth, after which this myth was tied together with other vernacular myths and customs. 93 These narratives accounted for the eternal and natural Serbian characteristics of heroism,
89 A. Pavkovic, “From Yugoslavism to Serbism: the National Idea 19861996,” Nations and Nationalism 4, no.
4: 516.
90 J.K. Cox, The History of Serbia (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002), 138.
91 B. Pantelic, “Memories of a Time Forgotten: the Myth of the Perennial Nation,” Nations and Nationalism 17,
no. 2 (2011): 444447.
92 Idem, 462. 93 Idem, 461.
sacrifice and victimization by which Serbian history was fashioned in a continuous line from the Kosovo myth to the present.
In spite of the assertions of the national historians, it was only with the resistance against Ottoman domination in the 19th century that Serbian national consciousness arose. Starting with a revolt in 1804, a sense of Serbian national identity emerged. This was strengthened in the first decades of the 19th century and took off more widely after the establishment of an autonomous Serbian principality in 1830. However, the revolts as well as the principality, were elitedriven phenomena and national consciousness did not take root among the masses. 94
An important step in the process of spreading Serbian national consciousness was the drawing up of epic poems by the Serbian linguist Vuk Karadzic in the first half of the 19th century. In doing so, stories of heroic deeds that existed for centuries were tight to the Serbian nation and made available for the literate middle class. Still, it was only after the 95 international recognition of Serbia as a nationstate in 1878, the Kingdom of Serbia, that national culture was spread to the masses. Via schools and the Orthodox Church, which started to present itself as the guardian of Serbian national identity down through the centuries, Serbian myths and folklore were spread. After 1878, however, a large amount of 96 Serbianspeaking Orthodox Christians remained outside the borders of Serbia, giving rise to the idea that all Serbs should be able to live in one state. 97
The Serbian nation perceived its distant past through selecting cultural memories of heroic Serbian deeds, Serbian victimization and Serbian sacrifices. These memories were vouched by the narratives of the liberation wars, presenting the Serbs as the liberator of the other Slavic nations from foreign, predominantly Muslim, oppression. CPY censorship, however, prohibited the public advocating of this historical perspective and only allowed heroism, victimization and sacrifice to be applied to the Yugoslav people as a whole.
Political memory
In 1948, following the victory of the CPY, the framework of Titoïst historiography was laid out at the fifth Congress of the CPY. After defeating the Nazi’s, the CPY held the opinion 99 that this legitimized its exclusive right for the interpretation of history. This interpretation was carried out by Tito’s officials rather than professional historians. Historiography was constructed to serve the political objectives of the CPY. It was not driven by exploring historical archives, but by the goal of forcing the CPY’s official interpretation of history upon the Yugoslav peoples. This official interpretation of history was constituted by pragmatic considerations with regard to contemporary politics and historical circumstances. 100
The CPY constructed a political memory of the interwar period as characterized by disproportionate dominance on the part of the Serbs. Political dominance had caused Serbian economic hegemony, downplaying the role of the other nations as inferior. The First Yugoslavia was deemed a fascist dictatorship ruled by the bourgeoisie. 101 A terrible accusation from a Marxist point of view for which the Serbs were held accountable.
Nationalism, as manifest in the First Yugoslavia, was considered the greatest threat to Yugoslav brotherhood and unity in the SFRY. In order to prevent nationalism to emerge from the national centers, firm repression was adopted in the cultural sphere. National accounts of history were prevented from entering public discourse by the strict censorship of the federal center.102 Historiography aimed at fostering the unity of the several Yugoslav nations by
presenting history as a teleological process moving towards a unified Yugoslavia. Yugoslav social diversity was historicized to present Yugoslavia as the inevitable result of the progress of history. 103 Political memory was constructed on the basis of innate unity between the nations, with lurking Serbian dominance and nationalism as its greatest threat. The result of this threat was a federal policy of which one of the pillars was the phrase ‘weak Serbia, strong Yugoslavia’.104
Given the innately good construction of brotherhood and unity between the Yugoslav nations, atrocities between them in WW II were banned from public discourse. Memories of these brutal atrocities were excluded from the official interpretation of the past and overruled by a static communist memory of the heroic victory of the partisans over the Axis forces. 105 This official history became the ‘founding myth’ of the SFRY. 106 The founding myth held that
the partisans consisted equally of all Yugoslav nations, who together heroically expelled the Italian, German, Hungarian and Bulgarian occupiers and the Yugoslav collaborators. In spite of the now widely agreed notion that most WW II casualties in Yugoslavia were the consequence of civilian warfare, the high number of deaths was almost solely attributed to the crimes of the foreign occupiers. 107 The ‘domestic blame’ was, also, rather equally distributed among the anticommunist forces within Yugoslavia, with the Chetniks and the Ustase represented as the prime offenders. Between both, however, no real difference was accounted for. As such, the Ustase genocide perpetrated upon the Croat Serbs was glossed over. 108
Already at the end of the 1940s, it was the University of Belgrade from which resistance against the imposition of CPY historiography rose. The university was reluctant to refrain from professional standards with regard to the performance of historiography, being impossible to combine with the CPY interpretation of history. To avoid the construction of histories conflicting with CPY historiography, the Belgrade historians were summoned to
103 T. Jacoby, “Nietzsche, Historiography and Yugoslav Nationalism,” Politics 24, no. 1 (2004): 70. 104 Cox, The History of Serbia, 137138.
105 Morus, “The SANU Memorandum,” 156. 106 Gödl, “Challenging the Past,” 4849.
107 D. Djokic, “The Second World War II: Discourses of Reconciliation in Serbia and Croatia in the Late 1980s
and Early 1990s,” Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 4, no. 2 (2002): 132. (127140)
108 Djokic, “The Second World War II,” 132.
focus on other topics than the CPY officials did. Contemporary history was dealt with by official historiography, so that Serbian histories of civilian warfare in WW II could not be politicized. The Belgrade historians dealt with older topics. 109 These older topics were hardly dealt with by CPY historiography, since the communist regime acted as if history had begun with their grab to power. 110 As such, Serbian cultural memory was well preserved by Serbian historiography.
Social memory
The CPY managed to repress representations of history and memory that conflicted with its political memory. By the CPY imposition of political memory, Serbian cultural and social memory could not be adopted for other political goals than that of the CPY. However, the CPY could not erase archival cultural memory and embodied social memories:
‘(...) Tito didn’t want to know about the Serbian victims in WWII – and they were the majority of the victims. Tito did not allow much to be written about the death of all these people. Forget everything, he said. That was impossible. (..) Think about my colleague Milorad Ekmecic: in his family there were forty victims. That’s not so easy to forget.’111
Social memory was historically dealt with exclusively by CPY historiography. Therefore, when the policy of ‘weak Serbia, strong Yugoslavia’ was increasingly carried out, Serbian representations regarding this policy were not allowed into public discourse. Was CPY policy in the first two decades of the SFRY characterized by centralization, from the 1960s onwards the tendency changed towards decentralization. 112 Decentralization eventually culminated in the constitution of 1974. With this constitution, the decentralization of the different states was formally implemented. The federal government loosened its grip on the
109 Dimic, “Historiography on the Cold War,” 288. 110 DragovicSoso, Saviours of the Nation, 153.
111 Quote of Krestic in: J.M. Eriksen and F. Stjernfelt, “The Memorandum: Roots of Serbian Nationalism. An
Interview with Mihajlo Markovic and Vasilije Krestic,” Eurozine, July 8, 2005, accessed June 17, 2015, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/20050708eriksenen.html.
112 Banac, “Historiography of the Countries of Eastern Europe,” 1086.
governments of the republics and provinces by granting them more political liberty. The Serbs were opposed to this because it meant that the two autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina, were granted internal selfdetermination. 113 Formally, these provinces were still part of Serbia, but in practice Serbian influence in the ‘ancestral land’ of Kosovo was gone. 114 The Albanian Kosovars dominated the nonAlbanians in Kosovo, causing a wave of migration from Kosovar Serbs. The demographic decline, combined with Serbian suppression by the Albanian majority, caused and revived deeply rooted grievances among the Serbs about the social, economic and political circumstances in the birthplace of their nation.115
In Serbian social memory, the harmful consequences of the decentralization policy stayed alive, in spite of CPY repression. More particularly, the glossed over memories of the Ustase genocide in WW II remained alive. The successful glossing over of the latter was not only due to the effective CPY repression, but also to Serbian trauma. As is usually the case with trauma, it took some time before the Serbs would be able to come to terms with their WW II trauma. Nevertheless, these social memories remained alive in the people.
Serbian cultural memory of heroism, victimhood, sacrifice and liberation from foreign oppression remained alive through archival memory, as well as the historiographical dealings with distant history. Social memory remained alive in the minds of the Serbian people. As such, Serbian cultural and social memory conflicted with the imposed political memory of brotherhood and unity among the Yugoslav nations, with its stress on interwar Serbian hegemony. Serbian collective memory in the SFRY was characterized by disintegration.
Collective memory after the death of Tito
The ‘Kosovo question’ became a dominant political issue across Yugoslavia, after a large protest of Kosovar Albanians broke out in March 1981. It started as a student protest for improvement of food distribution, but rapidly evolved into a political protest of grand scale, mounting to a social crisis. The protest dragged on for months and the Kosovar Albanians
113 Pappas, “Shared Culture,” 199. 114 Judah, Kosovo, 57.
115 N. Vladisavljevic, “Grassroots Groups, Milosevic or Dissident Intellectuals? A Controversy over the Origins
and Dynamics of the Mobilization of Kosovo Serbs in the 1980s,” Nationalities Papers 32, no. 4 (December 2004): 46.
wanted full equality for Kosovo within Yugoslavia in relation to the other republics. The Kosovar Albanians rebelled against Kosovo’s provincial status. 116
Both Albanians and Serbs made a historical claim to Kosovo. For the Serbs it was the birthplace of their nation, for the Albanians it was the place where their first political movement was formed. 117 The constitution of 1974 had caused a situation in which both the Kosovar Serbs and the Kosovar Albanians were dissatisfied with the political, social and economic circumstances in the province. Whereas the majority of Albanians was Muslim, the Kosovo question, emerging on the political scene from 1981 onwards, reinvoked SerbianMuslim antagonism:
‘Since the first Serbian uprising in 1804, all wars have been between the Serbs and the Muslims. (...) The conflict therefore went back a long way. (...) Gentlemen, here [in Kosovo] the hatred of the last two hundred years has been renewed. The first and the second Serbian uprising, the first and the second world wars – that's not so easy to swallow! I'd be overjoyed if that was the case, I'm from Vojvodina. But it's in our folksongs, they're all about this hatred. It's hard to forget.’ 118
With the uprising of 1981, representations of liberation wars emerged that had been preserved in cultural memory. The social crisis of 1981 occurred at a moment that Tito’s death had caused a political power vacuum, creating a political crisis. With the death of Tito, CPY control over historiography deteriorated. The unity of Yugoslav historiography had depended on the unity of the regime. It was the strong hand of Tito that made sure historians did not step out of line and obeyed the Yugoslav censorship by recognizing the unity of the national communities. 119 On top of the political and social crises came an economic crisis,
which had spread across the country from 1979 onwards. 120 The crises, combined with the
