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Interview

How Serbia Changed its Mind about World War II History

Serbian soldiers with WWII flags at a military parade in October 2019 to commemorate Liberation of Belgrade Day. Photo: EPA-EFE/SRDJAN SUKI.

How Serbia Changed its Mind about World War II History

February 6, 202007:54
February 6, 202007:54
After Yugoslav leader Tito died and the state began to collapse, Serbia developed a new understanding of World War II history with nationalist Chetniks reassessed as Serb heroes and communists as oppressors, says a new book by historian Jelena Djureinovic.

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“The overall economic and legitimacy crisis after Tito’s death in the 1980s created a favourable atmosphere for criticising the Partisan myth and creating positive images about their [the Partisans’] enemies [the Chetniks],” Djureinovic, who has a PhD in history from Justus Liebig University in Giessen and works with the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre, told BIRN in an interview.

In this environment, Djureinovic argued, Serbs were increasingly depicted as victims – “not only of communism, but also as a nation which did not profit from life in socialist Yugoslavia”.

At the same time, authors started publishing books depicting the Chetniks as anti-fascists while justifying their collaboration with the occupying Nazi forces during WWII as an attempt to protect the Serbian people from their occupiers.

Chetniks and Partisans briefly fought alongside each other at the outset of WWII in Yugoslavia, but split within months. The Chetniks then started collaborating with Nazi Germany, arguing they were only doing so to protect the Serbian people.

The Chetnik movement, led by General Dragoljub ‘Draza’ Mihailovic, committed large-scale crimes and other atrocities during the war. Mihailovic was prosecuted for high treason and collaboration with Nazi Germany by a Yugoslav court after the war ended, and sentenced to death.

The glorification of the Chetniks and the denial of their wartime crimes is also connected to the dissolution of Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 1990s, Djureinovic said.

Some political parties embraced the Chetnik ideology, like the Serbian Renewal Movement and later the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, led by Vojislav Seselj.

Seselj described himself as a Chetnik ‘duke’ and argued that the tradition of the movement continued in the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. In 1993, he also proclaimed party official Tomislav Nikolic, who would later become Serbia’s president, a Chetnik duke. Seselj was convicted of wartime crimes by the Hague Tribunal in 2018.

New rulers depict themselves as liberators


Jelena Djureinovic. Photo courtesy of Jelena Djureinovic.

While the end of 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s saw a sort of rebirth in support for the Chetnik movement in Serbia, the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, which was in power at the time, was mainly ambiguous about it.

The authorities under Milosevic continued to represent themselves as the carriers of the Partisans’ legacy, never distancing themselves from the People’s Liberation War myth, Djureinovic says.

Even though parties that opposed Milosevic commemorated forces like the Chetniks who were defeated in WWII, the regime did not act to stop this, understanding that it was important to boost nationalism in Serbia, she argues.

But with the overthrow of Milosevic in 2000, the situation changed dramatically as the Democratic Opposition of Serbia alliance came to power.

“United in anti-communist consensus and interpreting the Milosevic era as the continuation of the communist regime, the political elites [that came to power in 2000] could frame themselves as liberators of Serbia from communism,” Djureinovic writes in her book.

But while the ruling Democratic Opposition of Serbia alliance under President Vojislav Kostunica distanced itself from Milosevic’s alleged communism, it never distanced itself from the nationalistic part of his rule, which was much more pernicious, she argues.

Another important feature of post-Milosevic Serbia was the revived Liberation of Belgrade Day commemoration, marking the anniversary of the downfall of the WWII Nazi occupation of Serbian territory at the hands of Partisan forces and the Soviet Red Army in 1944.

Djureinovic argued that the commemoration illuminates “the contradictory, inconsistent and often confusing nature of memory politics on the Second World War and state socialism”.

She said that since 2009, when the first Liberation of Belgrade Day commemoration took place in the post-Milosevic era, it has not been marked as a victory of the People’s Liberation Army over fascism, or as a victory by a Yugoslav or a communist army, but instead the focus has been exclusively on Serbs and Russians as the protagonists of the liberation.

Focusing on the “eternal friendship between Serbs and Russians” is the only way that the defeat of the Nazis can be framed to fit into the contemporary anti- communist narrative, she explained.

But while small groups like the Ravna Gora Movement and parties like the Serbian Renewal Movement and the Serbian Radical Party continue to revere the Chetniks, suggestions that Chetniks should be included in the Liberation of Belgrade Day events have so far come to nothing. After all, Djureinovic pointed out, they were defeated in WWII.

Instead, what is portrayed at the parades commemorating the liberation of Belgrade is an interpretation of the Partisans “without communism, multi-ethnicity and Tito, said Djureinovic. They are simply portrayed as “a Serbian army that won a victory over fascism”.

‘No genuine concern for victims of communism’


Supporters of the nationalist Serbian Radical Party hold pictures of WWll Chetnik leader Draza Mihailovic and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic at a rally in Belgrade in December 2002. Photo: EPA/SRDJAN SUKI.

The 2000s in Serbia brought another change that fostered a distorted image about the Chetnik movement, Djureinovic argues.

From 2004 on, several laws were introduced aimed at restoring justice for those who were persecuted or had their property expropriated during the communist period after WWII.

They were formally aimed at people who were innocent victims of repression and violence during the post-WWII period. But they also paved the way for the rehabilitation of Chetnik leader Dragoljub ‘Draza’ Mihailovic, who was executed for treason in 1946, and a couple of other Chetniks.

Among them was Spasoje ‘Zeka’ Drenjanin, who was responsible for a massacre in the Belgrade suburb of Vranic in December 1943, when 67 people were killed, mostly women and children. “How come he is a victim now?” asked Djureinovic.

The new Serbian legislation also established various investigative or fact-finding commissions tasked with mapping WWII graves or listing victims.

While some of these commissions might look a lot like mechanisms of transitional justice, Djureinovic argues they were not, claiming that their only aim was the rehabilitation of WWII’s defeated forces, primarily the Chetniks.

“I call it a faux or pseudo transitional justice focused on communism, while neglecting the 1990s wars as the more urgent past that should be dealt with,” Djureinovic said.

Simultaneously, the state promoted a narrative about ‘national reconciliation’ between supporters of Chetniks and Partisans. A law adopted in 2004 categorised both movements equivalently as anti-fascist.

Djureinovic argued that victims of communism are being used for political point-scoring.

“The existence of some mechanisms that resemble transitional justice and human rights discourses that political elites promote should not be mistaken for actual concern for victims of communism and their descendants. In the dominant memory politics, they only represent rhetorical and political symbols and instruments of historical revisionism,” she said.

Djureinovic suggested that the Chetniks have become a perfect WWII reference point for contemporary Serbia as they were anti-communists and Serbian nationalists.

“If the Serbian nation state is looking for a WWII movement to look up to, a movement led by the Communist Party cannot serve this purpose. It can, but only if its communist and Yugoslav dimensions are taken from it and all that is left are the Partisans as the Serbian army,” she said.

As for the Chetniks’ crimes, they are denied for a simple reason, she suggested – people who praise the Chetniks deny that any crimes were committed by Serbian forces in any historical period.

Ivana Nikolic


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