A deltiology of memory
Review of: Kinga Anna Gajda - The Geopolitics of Memory. A Journey to Bosnia. By: James Riding. Publisher: Ibidem Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany, 2019
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Review of: Kinga Anna Gajda - The Geopolitics of Memory. A Journey to Bosnia. By: James Riding. Publisher: Ibidem Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany, 2019
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Andrić’s fiction is closely identified with Bosnia and often taken for a faithful reflection of that country’s culture, social relations, and tragic history. Rather than reflecting Bosnian pluralism, however, his oeuvre undermines its very metaphysical underpinnings, in part because his works are so firmly rooted in the European experience of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the perspective of a dominant modernity, certain cultures and peoples came to be presented as un-European, Oriental, and essentially foreign. Bosnia, which had always been a religiously plural society, now became one where ideological models excluded its Muslim inhabitants. In line with longstanding European practice, Andrić drew an image of the Bosnian Muslim as Turk and the Turk as Bosnian Muslim, converting the real content of Bosnian society into a plastic material for the ideologues of homogenous societies to use in modelling external and internal enemies that were essentially identical. This process required as its precondition the destruction of that enemy through a process described as the social and cultural liberation of the Christian subject. Over time, this exclusion took on forms now termed genocide. In creating this image, Andrić deployed narrative techniques whose function may fairly be characterized as the aesthetic dissimulation of our ethical responsibilities towards the other and the different. Such elements from his oeuvre have been used in the nationalist ideologies anti-Muslimism serves as a building block. In this paper, certain aspects of the ideological reading and interpretation of Andrić’s oeuvre are presented.
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Could the Western foreign policy makers have done anything to prevent the violence accompanying the breakup of Yugoslavia? The answer to that question largely depends on their level of awareness of what was happening in the South Slavic federation in the run-up to war. This article analyzes a string of newly declassified documents of the British Foreign Office related to the February 1991 visit of a high-level British political delegation to Yugoslavia, together with interviews with some of the meetings’ protagonists. These declassified documents and interviews offer a unique snapshot in the development of the Yugoslav crisis and Britain’s policy in the region. They give us a clear picture of the goals and strategies of the principal Yugoslav players and show us what the West knew about the true nature of the Yugoslav crisis and when. The article’s conclusions are clear. Yugoslavia’s breakup and impending violence did not require great foresight. Their cause was known well in advance because it was preannounced—it was the plan of the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milošević to impose a centralized Yugoslavia upon the other republics or, if that failed, to use force to create a Greater Serbia on Yugoslavia’s ruins. Crucially, British policy at the time did nothing to dissuade Milošević from his plan and likely contributed to his confidence in using violence to pursue the creation of a new and enlarged Serbian state.
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This article discusses the issue of special genocidal intent and, within it, the relevance of judicially established truths to the wider historical context. It suggests that genocide researchers should not rely only on verdicts—which either deny or confirm genocide—as historical truth but, rather, use the judicial process and trial evidence as signposts to direct their research. The author uses the case study of Serbian genocide against Bosnian Muslims from 1992 to 1995 to illustrate the failings of judicially established truths in determining wider historical truth. Wartime documentation, interviews with witnesses, and court transcripts are analyzed to illustrate how this wider truth is sometimes lost when focus on the importance of supporting documents is overshadowed by a final verdict. The case of Srebrenica is outlined to illustrate how documents used in trials, as well as witness testimonies, can contribute on their own to the understanding of historical truths. In this case, a selection of trial narratives and documents is used to examine not only if there was “special intent” among Serbian political leadership to exterminate Bosnian Muslims as early as 1992, but also to determine if international community representatives were aware of that intent and ignored it consciously.
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Three different international courts have determined that genocide took place in Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1992-1995: the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Yet paradoxically, there has been virtually no punishment of this genocide, while the punishment of lesser war crimes of the Bosnian war has been very limited. The ICTY has convicted only one individual, a lowly deputy corps commander, of a genocide-related offence. The ICJ acquitted Serbia, the state that planned and launched the assault upon Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1992, of genocide and related offences, finding it guilty only of failure to prevent and punish genocide. Although Serb forces were responsible for the overwhelming majority of war crimes, the ICTY prosecution has disproportionately targeted non-Serbs in its indictments and, among Serbs, has disproportionately targeted Bosnian Serbs, with no official of Serbia or Yugoslavia yet convicted of war crimes in Bosnia. This article argues that the meagre results of the international judicial processes vis-à-vis the crimes of the Bosnian war must be sought in the structural failings, poor decision making, and political influences that affected the international courts. It argues that the international courts have failed either to deliver justice to the victims of the war crimes or to promote reconciliation among the peoples of the former Yugoslavia and suggests measures that could be taken to rectify the situation.
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The review of: Charles Ingrao and Thomas A. Emmert, eds., Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars’ Initiative. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
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The birth of documents has historically occurred when writing was born as a way of communication in society, as an objective requirement of social development and as a need for the functioning and solution of various human problems. The first documents are found early, sometime in the third millennium BC in the slave-owning states of the ancient East, then later in ancient Greece and Rome. While in the Albanian territories we find documents and archives in very early periods, since the ancient Illyrian cities, such as stone inscriptions, various chronicles or documents which protected the interests of slave owners and were kept mainly in libraries. Meanwhile, when it comes to archives and archival service in today's territory of Kosovo during the time of the Illyrians, namely the Dardan tribe, which was located in the territory of today's Kosovo and not only, we have no written evidence that speaks of archives and for staff who have manipulated written documents. We find such traces in various inscriptions, in stone inscriptions, in cemetery monuments, stelae, inscriptions dedicated to the gods, votes, on stones, etc. The first concrete efforts in terms of archives and archival service in Kosovo were made after the Second World War, the establishment of the new communist government within the former Socialist People's Federation of Yugoslavia, of which Kosovo was an administrative part, specifically in in 1951 when the Provincial State Archive was established.
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After a significant period of violent conflict in the Western Balkans, countries in the region, specifically Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia-Montenegro, and the United Nations (UN) protectorate of Kosovo, have embarked on a process of democratic reform. Part of the democratization effort involves reforming the police force. One important, yet not often studied, aspect of police reform is the appropriate use of force with firearms. This study explores the process of police reform in the Western Balkan region to assess the implementation of the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials. Ultimately, this study offers a view of law enforcement activities in an attempt to assess how well these countries are incorporating international standards on the use of force with firearms into their national police practices. In so doing, this research enriches our understanding of weapons issues within the context of security sector, and specifically police reform.
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The review of: 1) Outcast Europe: The Balkans, 1789-1989: From the Ottomans to Milošević by Tom Gallagher. London: Routledge, 2001. pp. xvi + 314. Maps, index, bibliography, notes. Hardcover. 2) The Balkans after the Cold War: From Tyranny to Tragedy by Tom Gallagher. London: Routledge, 2003. pp. 256. Index, bibliography, notes. Hardcover. 3) The Balkans in the New Millennium: In the Shadow of War and Peace by Tom Gallagher. London: Routledge, 2005. pp. xv + 232. Maps, index, bibliography, notes. Hardcover.
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The review of: 1) Unvanquished: A U.S.-U.N. Saga. By Boutros Boutros-Ghali. New York: Random House, 1999. 352 pp. 2) The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International lntervention. By Steven L. Burg and Paul S. Shoup. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1999. 499 pp. 3) Books an Bosnia. Edited by Quintin Hoare and Noel Malcolm. London: The Bosnian Institute, N.D., [1999]. 207 pp. 4) Europe from the Balkans ta the Urals: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. By Reneo Lukić and Allen Lynch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. 436 pp. 5) The Autobiography. By John Major. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. 774 pp. 6) The Breakup of Yugoslavia and the War in Bosnia. By Carole Rogel. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998. 182 pp. 7) The U.S. Media and Yugoslavia, 1991-1995. By James J. Sadkovich. Wesport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998. 272 pp. 8) Burn this Hause: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia. Edited by Jasminka Udovički and James Ridgeway. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997. 337 pp.
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On 20 March 1996, exactly 90 days after the Dayton Agreement took effect, Bosnia's interior minister planted his country's delicate white and blue lily flag atop a ruined tower overlooking Sarajevo. The event marked the transfer to Bosnian control of Grbavica, the last of six Sarajevo districts seized by the Serbs at the beginning of the war. From Grbavica, literally only a stone's throw across the narrow Mlijecka River from Sarajevo's center, Serb gunmen had turned the city's main streets into "snipers' alley," while from the hills above Grbavica, Serb artillerists had had a clear field of fire on the city spread helplessly below. Now, jubilant Sarajevans surged through Grbavica's shattered streets, some heading for apartments from which they had been expelled at the beginning of the war almost four years ago, and others simply reveling in their ability to walk freely through what had been until recently a zone of death. For Sarajevo, reclaiming Grbavica meant that the long nightmare of siege was finally and truly over. [...]
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The review of: 1) Tim Judah. The Serbs: History, Myth, and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997). 350 pp. 2) Chuck Sudetic. Blood and Vengeance: One Family's Stary of the War in Bosnia (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998). 393 pp.
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Wars everywhere have always played a major role in historical memory. "Even the oldest myths and traditions deal with fighting and killing," the German novelist Hans-Magnus Enzenberger said recently, recalling this simple but no less basic historical fact. While collective memory in premodern societies was largely based on wartime experiences, the advent of nationalism in the late eighteenth century increased the importance, the political role, and the cultural significance of war memories in societies everywhere, not only in the Balkans. War memorials, celebrations, cemeteries, and other symbolic, expressions of memory were not only "sites of mourning," but, more important, they became the means of fostering a collective national identity; education, textbooks, and public discourse all combined to remind people of the duty of sacrificing for one's own nation by recalling former wars. [...]
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The war in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina has lasted nearly three years and ranks as the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the Second World War. The fighting has threatened not only the stability of the Balkans but also has undermined NATO and the UN and exposed the failure of the European Union's attempts to fashion a coherent and common security and foreign policy. The war has also significantly, and often adversely, involved the interests of the United States, Britain, France, the Russian Federation, and a number of lslamic countries. Finally, while many were expecting the spread of peace and prosperity to follow the end of the cold war, the world has witnessed instead the resurrection of an evil in Europe, which many assumed had been exorcised by the defeat of Nazi Germany. The conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina has involved the deliberate and systematic use of genocide, with its familiar death squads, sealed cattle cars, and concentration camps, against one of Europe's last remaining populations of indigenous Muslims. [...]
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East Europeans have repeatedly looked to the West with expectations that proved to be unrealistic. In 1848, for example, the revolutionary government of the secessionist Republic of Hungary hoped to secure diplomatic recognition from the Western powers, beginning with England, but was immediately rebuffed by Whitehall. Fifteen years later, Polish insurgents in the so-called Congress Kingdom of the Russian Empire were buoyed up by hopes that the signatories of the Vienna treaty of 1815 would intervene on their behalf. Instead, France, Britain, and Austria registered some protests in March and April, backed off in embarrassment, and finally produced a six-point denarche in June 1863 which largely disappointed the Poles. After London and Vienna blocked a French effort to convene an international conference to discuss the Polish situation, the Powers essentially left Russia alone to deal with the Poles as it saw fit. [...]
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On June 13, 1992, with the help of the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, this journal sponsored a small conference on "The Demise of Yugoslavia." The editor's intention was not to provide any grand synthesis on the causes, course, and consequences of Yugoslavia's sanguinary end, which would in any case be premature, but rather to hear some preliminary views on these matters by a group by distinguished scholars and commentators. We were guided by the need to hear responsible voices of various provenances. Indeed, the intellectual rubbish wrought by the Yugoslav conflict, often from the cabinets of people with scholarly pretensions, simply defies comprehension and constitutes a separate chapter in the conflict's history. [...]
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The demise of Yugoslavia has occasioned much handwringing and no small amount of confusion among U.S. policymakers. Declarations of independence first by Slovenia and Croatia and then by Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia were disregarded, and the war itself was marginalized. Until May 1992 the concern for "stability" manifested itself chiefly in admonitions and the subsuming of the war under the category of "ethnic conflicts." The reluctance to identify Milosevic's aggression as the proximate cause, the omission of any assessment of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), and the balancing of Serb and Croat nationalism in an equation of hate followed from this posture. [...]
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This paper aims to place the Srebrenica massacre in its broader context, both in terms of its place in the Bosnian war, and theoretically. The Srebrenica massacre is the only war crime of the Bosnian war that has, in legal terms, been solidly confirmed to have constituted genocide. In the ICTY, 2001 convicted Radislav Krstic of complicity in genocide for his role in the Srebrenica massacre, thereby establishing the fact of the Srebrenica genocide. The ICJ, in its ruling of 2007 in Bosnia vs Serbia, explicitly stated that the Srebrenica massacre was an act of genocide. However, the ICJ in the same ruling stated that other massacres of the Bosnian war, in particular those of 1992 when Bosnian Serb military forces were formally under Belgrade’s command, were not genocide. The ICTY has so far failed to convict any suspect of genocide except in relation to the Srebrenica massacre. Consequently, the Srebrenica massacre has assumed the status of a crime apart in the Bosnian war.
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Kosta Nikolic, Yugoslavia, last days (1989–1992), book 1: All Serbs in one states, Belgrade, Službeni glasnik, 2018, 530 pages.
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Presented in this paper are ethnological materials on the collective memory amongst the residents of the Lovinac region towards conflict and division in the period of WWII and their consequences in the periods of the Social Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Croatia. Collected from the personal narratives of interviewees the structure emphasises the vision and interpretation of past events by the local population and especially their political opinions and thoughts which are very strongly linked to memory. The transfer of these memories is initially explained through analyses of family, local, ethnic/national and religious Catholic mnemonic communities with which our interviewees belong to or with which they identify and so take their dominant narration of the past. Besides this, also observed here are the memories and influences in shaping the political identity of the local community especially through mentioning memories of deceased members of the community. It also observes the way in which this collective memory is reflected in the contemporary political context of the Republic of Croatia from its establishment in the 1990s. The accent is particularly emphasised on changes in the official political narratives of the past, which from 1990 changed and which enabled the political mobilisation of voters within the examined community. Political mobilisation alone with reference to party affiliation in a new political context becomes a part of the political identity in a way that is tightly connected to earlier established, collective memories.
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