Nationalism and the Politicization of History in the Former Yugoslavia

383 Pages·2021·4.52 MB·English

by  Gorana Ognjenovic, Jasna Jozelic

MODERNITY, MEMORY AND
IDENTITY IN SOUTH-EAST EUROPE
Nationalism and the
Politicization of History
in the Former Yugoslavia
Edited by
Gorana Ognjenovic
Jasna Jozelic
Modernity, Memory and Identity
in South-East Europe
Series Editor
Catharina Raudvere
Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark
This series explores the relationship between the modern history and pres-
ent of South-East Europe and the long imperial past of the region. This
approach aspires to offer a more nuanced understanding of the concepts
of modernity and change in this region, from the nineteenth century to
the present day. Titles focus on changes in identity, self-representation and
cultural expressions in light of the huge pressures triggered by the interac-
tion between external influences and local and regional practices. The
books cover three significant chronological units: the decline of empires
and their immediate aftermath, authoritarian governance during the twen-
tieth century, and recent uses of history in changing societies in South-
East Europe today.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15829
Gorana Ognjenovic • Jasna Jozelic
Editors
Nationalism and the
Politicization of
History in the Former
Yugoslavia
Editors
Gorana Ognjenovic Jasna Jozelic
University of Oslo Norwegian Centre for Human Rights
Oslo, Norway Oslo, Norway
ISSN 2523-7985 ISSN 2523-7993 (electronic)
Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe
ISBN 978-3-030-65831-1 ISBN 978-3-030-65832-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65832-8
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F
oreword
When it comes to the former Yugoslavia, history, indeed scholarly enquiry
in general, is politicized to an extent not often seen elsewhere. This is true
for both scholarship native to the region and that of outsiders who focus
on it. To survey the history of the politicization of former Yugoslavia stud-
ies in recent years is like visiting an adventure park, such is the colorful
variety. This is in part a reflection of just what an intellectual upset the
breakup of Yugoslavia represented. The country, under its Titoist one-
party communist regime, represented something of an inspiration for
many foreign scholars, who celebrated its resistance to Hitler, defiance of
Stalin, experiment in socialist self-management, and pioneering of the
Non-Aligned Movement. Anti-Communist scholars might not have
agreed, but they often shared with their Titoist-sympathizing counterparts
an emotional attachment to a Yugoslav union that appeared to have tran-
scended the national divisions of its constituent peoples to provide a model
for multinational coexistence within a single state. This state was at times
described (inaccurately) as comprising six republics, five nations, four lan-
guages, three religions, two alphabets, and one party (or one Tito). In
Yugoslavia itself, of course, only formally pro-Yugoslav scholarship was
permitted under the Communist regime.
A mere two and a half decades after the breakup, the often politicized
and celebratory pro-Yugoslav scholarship of the pre-1990s period appears
extremely dated. The collapse of the Yugoslav Communist regime was part
and parcel of the opening of two parallel struggles: between anti-
Communists and those loyal to the Communist legacy on the one hand,
and between the conflicting nationalists of the constituent Yugoslav
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viii FOREWORD
peoples on the other. The historical record was necessarily a front in these
political and territorial battles: politicians and intellectuals sought to rein-
terpret the past to legitimize or challenge regimes, or to defend or claim
territory. The rights and wrongs of the bloody struggles between Partisans,
Ustaša, Chetniks, and others during the World War II years were, in this
context, of much more than mere intellectual interest. Whether the
Partisans were Croatian or Serbian, anti-Croatian or anti-Serbian; whether
Bosnia and Herzegovina had historically been Serbian, Croatian, or distinct
in its own right; whether Kosovo had been artificially separated from Serbia
or forcibly subjugated to it—all these were historical questions with which
the politicians and intellectuals of the 1980s and 1990s had to actively engage.
Manipulating the past to serve present political needs requires a degree
of cynicism. The Communist/Socialist regime of Slobodan Milošević in
Serbia (1987–2000) thus formally continued to uphold the legacy of the
World War II Communist-led Partisans versus the anti-Communist
Chetniks, while actually pursuing a genocidal Great Serbian policy remi-
niscent of the latter. For its part, the anti-Communist Croatian nationalist
regime led by former Communist hardliner Franjo Tudm̵ an in Croatia
(1990–1999) spoke in terms of the “reconciliation” of wartime Partisans
and Ustaša while pursuing a policy of partitioning Bosnia and Herzegovina
in conjunction with Serbia, which would have been anathema to both
earlier groups. As they had since the 19th century, nationalists in the for-
mer Yugoslav lands cherry-picked and distorted historical facts dating
back to the Middle Ages to support contemporary territorial claims.
Nor was the foreign scholarly community immune. As it divided politi-
cally over the rights and wrongs of the contemporary former-Yugoslav
conflict, its members engaged in the same debates over the rights and
wrongs of World War II in Yugoslavia, and over the historical record
regarding Croatian and Bosnian statehood, Kosovo’s relationship to
Serbia, Serb nationhood outside Serbia, and other such topics. Whether
Kosovo was “historically part of Serbia” since the Middle Ages really did
appear relevant to the debate over whether NATO should intervene mili-
tarily against the Milošević regime in 1999. As the post-Yugoslav conflicts
continue to play themselves out, historical questions remain acutely rele-
vant to contemporary political concerns: over the legitimacy or otherwise
of Macedonia’s name; over the Slovenian-Croatian border; over Serb par-
ticipation in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s statehood since the 1940s; over
Kosovo’s status in the Yugoslav federation under Tito; and so on. In the
most extreme cases, hoary ultranationalist clichés are regurgitated by
FOREWORD ix
scholars whose political agenda leads them to deny the Srebrenica geno-
cide and other atrocities; no level of empirical evidence will suffice to con-
vince them of historical truth.
An equally problematic counter-tendency exists: of scholars outside the
region simply avoiding questions that are deemed too politically fraught.
For some, even a topic as central to the study of the region as that of how
and why Yugoslavia broke up is too dangerous to attempt to address. The
Scylla of nationalism and political bias among some scholars has driven
others into the Charybdis of blandly recycled theory-laden, diplomatically
safe platitudes—an intellectual reflection of the spirit of the 1995 Dayton
Accords. This, too, reflects the general politicization of history and schol-
arship; it is arguably even more destructive than the abuse of scholarship
by nationalists, who at least recognize that there is a debate worth having
and attempt to engage in it, as opposed to trying to avoid or dampen it.
The breakup of Yugoslavia is a recent historical phenomenon, and our
knowledge and understanding of it are still in their infancy. Much of the
early literature on the topic was written by journalists, who recycled many
clichés and inaccuracies, some of which were being cynically peddled by
nationalist propagandists and Western policy-makers with agendas.
Reaching a higher level of understanding, in which historical facts thrown
up by new research replace the clichés, will inevitably take decades of
work. Meanwhile, the breakup has forced us to reinterpret the Yugoslav
and pre-Yugoslav past of the lands and peoples of the region. In light of
recent events, not only the breakup but this prior history represents a new
field for research. New generations of scholars who undertake it will need
to explore bold new hypotheses inspired by these events, on the basis of
our limited existing knowledge and understanding. This process will rep-
resent the opposite of the manipulation of history for political purposes, as
areas of enquiry are opened up for intellectual reasons rather than shut off
for political reasons. Making good the deficit in our knowledge will require
overturning politically motivated clichés.
The politicization of history related to the former Yugoslavia therefore
remains a vitally important subject. The current volume assembles an
impressive team of academic experts to explore it from several important
angles, and all those interested the subject will undoubtedly find it a fasci-
nating read.
U niversity Sarajevo School of Science Marko Hoare
and Technology, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Praise for Nationalism and the Politicization
of History in the Former Yugoslavia
“The former Yugoslavia has become a battlefield for the ‘Memory Wars’, in spite
of the wealth of judicially established facts and available evidences gathered about
the atrocities in the region, and various initiatives aimed at dealing with the past
and efforts at transitional justice. Focusing on three periods of Yugoslav history –
the Second World War, socialist Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav wars of 1991–2001 –
the contributors show that despite these efforts to deal with the past, sustainable
peace and reconciliation across ethnic and religious groups remain a distant aim.”
—Marijana Toma, Center for Cultural Decontamination, Serbia
“After 1991, with the disappearance of the USSR and the end of the Cold War,
there was a historiographical phenomenon: on the one hand, the opening to schol-
ars of many archives, allowed, for the first time, an objective documentary recon-
struction of many events in twentieth century European history; on the other hand,
however, it was precisely the new intellectual freedom, that led to a ‘re-appropria-
tion’, often in an exacerbated nationalist key, of many of those events. It is within
this framework that this volume is placed. Scholars from all the former Yugoslav
republics and specialists in different disciplines, led by the two editors, Ognjenovic
and Jozelic, analyse the situation in the various countries that succeeded Yugoslavia.
Particular attention is devoted to the interconnection of historical narrative and the
interests and political objectives of the ruling classes, determined to prevent as long
as possible the prospect of true reconciliation between the various ethnic groups
that fought each other during the wars of the 1990s.”
—Elena Dundovich, University of Pisa, Italy
“This book convincingly re-examines historiographical legacies that still affect poli-
cies within the ex-Yugoslav republics. The contributors deconstruct myths and
memories, thus generating a new common language on the deeper layers of
Yugoslavia’s collapse.”
—Katrin Boeckh, IOS Regensburg, Germany
xi