Exploring the concepts of collaboration, resistance, and postwar retribution and focusing on the Chetnik movement, this book analyses the politics of memory.<\/p>\n
Since the overthrow of Slobodan Milo\u0161evi\u0107 in 2000, memory politics in Serbia has undergone drastic changes in the way in which the Second World War and its aftermath is understood and interpreted. The glorification and romanticisation of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, more commonly referred to as the Chetnik movement, has become the central theme of Serbia\u2019s memory politics during this period. The book traces their construction as a national antifascist movement equal to the communist-led Partisans and as victims of communism, showing the parallel justification and denial of their wartime activities of collaboration and mass atrocities. The multifaceted approach of this book combines a diachronic perspective that illuminates the continuities and ruptures of narratives, actors and practices, with in-depth analysis of contemporary Serbia, rooted in ethnographic fieldwork and exploring multiple levels of memory work and their interactions.<\/p>\n
It will appeal to students and academics working on contemporary history of the region, memory studies, sociology, public history, transitional justice, human rights and Southeast and East European Studies.<\/p>\n
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Reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n “Firmly situated in the discipline of history, but drawing upon a wide variety of theories, methodologies, and case studies from memory studies, transitional justice, and other interdisciplinary fields, Jelena \u00d0ureinovic\u2019s timely book is an excellent and ground-breaking study into the problematic issue of memory politics in contemporary Serbia and its ramifications for other Yugoslav successor states. \u00d0ureinovic\u2019s cutting edge research will be eye-opening for scholars working not only on the Balkans but for those outside the region, revealing how post-conflict and post-communist societies like Serbia are susceptible to manipulation by politicized mnemonic actors.” \u2013 Vjeran Pavlakovic, University of Rijeka, Croatia<\/em><\/p>\n “In this well-researched and very convincing book, Jelena \u00d0ureinovic demonstrates the processes of systematic politics of right-wing revisionism in Serbian history politics, adding new insights to our understanding of strategies, agency and power within history and memory politics. \u00d0ureinovic\u2019s thought-provoking work draws our attention to the dangers of forgetting, deliberately ignoring and downplaying crimes of the past, and to the dynamics of reinterpreting history to fit political demands and needs in the present. We should remember that such revisionism inevitably contributes to changing society\u2019s understanding of the present and thereby also to shaping fears and expectations of the future, and \u00d0ureinovic\u2019s excellent research is an important reminder about how this works.” \u2013Tea Sindb\u00e6k Andersen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark<\/em><\/p>\n “This outstanding book is the first comprehensive look at the remarkable transformation of political memory of World War II in contemporary Serbia. \u00d0ureinovic convincingly demonstrates that in its commitment to anticommunism, Serbia has embarked on a full scale revision of its WWII memory. This study is a timely warning of the seriously political consequences of playing politics with the past.” \u2013 Jelena Subotic, Georgia State University, USA<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n Collaboration, resistance and retribution in Yugoslavia<\/em><\/p>\n Memory politics in post-Milo\u0161evi\u0107 Serbia: between anti-communism and ethnicisation<\/em><\/p>\n The context of the book: postsocialism <\/em><\/p>\n Memory and law: Serbia\u2019s pseudo-transitional justice<\/em><\/p>\n Approach <\/em><\/p>\n Outline<\/em><\/p>\n History of memory<\/em><\/p>\n Politicality of memory<\/em><\/p>\n State agency<\/em><\/p>\n Pluralities, struggles and layers<\/em><\/p>\n Post-Yugoslav Serbia as a case study<\/em><\/p>\n Yugoslav war memory<\/em><\/p>\n Main mnemonic agency<\/em><\/p>\n Reception of memory politics beyond compliance and rejection<\/em><\/p>\n Remembering the collaboration<\/em><\/p>\n When history outpoured<\/em><\/p>\n Changes and continuities<\/em><\/p>\n The anti-communist opposition<\/em><\/p>\n Between the Chetnik revival and commemorations of the postwar retribution<\/em><\/p>\n Ravna Gora gatherings<\/em><\/p>\n The war and its aftermath in the hegemonic narratives<\/em><\/p>\n Purging Yugoslavia from the public<\/em><\/p>\n National reconciliation: ending the civil war within the Serbian nation<\/em><\/p>\n Imaginations of the Chetniks<\/em><\/p>\n The Chetniks as victims of communism<\/em><\/p>\n The Mihailovi\u0107 Commission<\/em><\/p>\n The State Commission for Secret Graves<\/em><\/p>\n The quest for the grave of Dragoljub Mihailovi\u0107<\/em><\/p>\n Informalities and failures of official fact-finding endeavours<\/em><\/p>\n Symbolic nature of state efforts<\/em><\/p>\n Non-state actors<\/em><\/p>\n Commemorative practices from below<\/em><\/p>\n The symbolic power<\/em><\/p>\n Equalising the Chetniks and the Partisans<\/em><\/p>\n Rehabilitation legislation<\/em><\/p>\n Telling histories in the courtroom<\/em><\/p>\n Judicial abolishment of the uprising<\/em><\/p>\n Rehabilitation from below<\/em><\/p>\n Agency behind the court case<\/em><\/p>\n The Second World War in the courtroom<\/em><\/p>\n Historians as expert witnesses<\/em><\/p>\n Interventions against the process<\/em><\/p>\n Discussing the 1946 trial<\/em><\/p>\n Plaintiffs\u2019 claims summarised: the court decision<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n Jelena \u00d0ureinovic<\/strong> holds a PhD in Modern and Contemporary History from Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany, where she teaches in the Department of History. Her research deals with the history and politics of memory of the Second World War in Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav space with the focus on the process of reinterpretation of the Chetnik movement in Serbia. She was a visiting research fellow at the Moore Institute in Galway, the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz and the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies in the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She has published on Europeanisation and memory politics, memory laws, discourses of victimhood under communism and relations between memory cultures in Croatia and Serbia.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
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