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Acknowledgements
An earlier draft of this article was presented at the Conference of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, “Globalization, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans and its Regional Context,” held in Belgrade, 28–30 September 2006.
Notes
1. Koren, “Yugoslavia,” 193.
2. Ibid., 194.
3. The WWII presentation of the communist historical paradigm was instrumental in its attempt to underline only one aspect of the Partisan struggle, namely anti-fascism. Contrary to this paradigm, it can be argued that the Partisans, like other military and political groupings in the WWII Yugoslav arena, had a multiple agenda during WWII. For example, it can be argued that the Četnik movement had as its principal goal maintenance of the status quo, and thus its primary interest was to fight communism and to safeguard the monarchy and arguably to assure the preponderant role of Serbia in the post-war order if they were victorious. Ustaša's ideological and political alliance with the Nazis can hardly be contested; simultaneously, however, their goal was achieving and maintaining Croatia's independence, and enlarging the living space of the Croatian nation. The means used to achieve this goal are condemned both in historical and political circles almost unanimously. The Partisans were fighting the occupying forces but started their military operations only after the German attack on the Soviet Union and the invalidation of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Bearing this in mind, it is sometimes argued that the military strategy of the communists during the war was instrumental in their political goals. Probably the weakest point in the post-WWII historical paradigm in Yugoslavia is the treatment of the war crimes committed by the Partisans as well as the political liquidations organized by the Communist Party in the aftermath of the war and the subsequent concealing of facts relating to these events. Crimes committed by the Ustaša or Četnik during the war cannot justify illegal retaliatory actions committed by the Partisans against the perpetrators of those crimes, however horrific their initial crimes were. Simultaneously, Partisan crimes cannot be used to somehow nullify the historical mention of the wrongdoings committed by Ustašas or Četniks. If we add to the wartime crimes committed by the Partisan forces, liquidation of political opponents, civilians and class-related crimes committed by the Partisan forces in the aftermath of the war, the legitimacy of this particular version of WWII history is lessened. Despite the positive aspects of the Partisan struggle, the crimes committed by the Partisans did not present a healthy foundation on which to build the common Yugoslav home, and left a negative legacy that future generations in Yugoslavia were eventually to pay for.
4. The Chetniks (Četniks (plural), Četnik (singular) were members of a Serbian nationalist and royalist guerrilla organization named after a nineteenth-century Serbian movement opposing Ottoman rule. In WWII, the Yugoslav Royal Army in the Fatherland, also referred to as the Četniks (derived from the Serbian word četa, meaning “military company”), were loyal to the Yugoslav royal government in exile. The Ustaše (often spelled Ustashe in English; singular Ustaša or Ustaše (plural), meaning literally “to stand up”, “raise”) was a Croatian nationalist organization ruling the Independent State of Croatia established by the Axis Powers in 1941 until 1945. The corresponding role of the two movements during WWII will be referred to later in the paper.
5. For a comprehensive account of history teaching on WWII in Macedonia and Slovenia, see Potočnik and Razpotnik, “The Second World War and Socialistic [sic] Yugoslavia in Slovenian Textbooks,” 227–31; Jordanovski, “The Common Yugoslav History and the Republic of Macedonia,” 254–60.
6. Following the aforementioned rationale, Bosnia and Herzegovina could have been included in the analysis. Nevertheless, for several reasons, the article does not include this methodological choice. Namely, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as far as the Serbian and Croatian constituent peoples are concerned, the situation is similar to Croatia and Serbia. More precisely, in the Republic of Srpska there is almost a complete rehabilitation of the Četnik movement, while the parts of Bosnia with a Croatian majority, one can argue, have experienced a similar, but much slower, transformation as in Croatia. Arguably, the spirit of the Tuđman years is present to a stronger degree within the Croatian entity in Bosnia than in Croatia. As for the Bosniak entity, the majority of the population fully espouses the communist historical paradigm, with the exception of the political elite close to the intellectual and political legacy of the late president, Alija Izetbegović (a political prisoner during the Tito era) and the core of his Party of Democratic Action born out of the Islamist opposition to the communist regime. To give an example of various attempts to question the communist version of history, the publication of the Bosnian edition of the famous French Le Livre noir du communisme (Courtois et al., Le Livre noir du communisme, crimes, terreur, répression; Courtois et al., Crna Knjiga Komunizma) was branded by many Bosniak observers as a “staged political process to the Bosnian Socialdemocrats” (see Esad Hecimović, “Francuzi branili Tita od Latića,” BiH Dani, April 1999, <http://www.bhdani.com/arhiva/100/sadrzaj.shtml> (accessed 27 March 2008)). Both Bosnian Croatians and Bosniaks see the rehabilitation of the Četniks in the Republic of Srpska and Serbia as completely unacceptable. This is both because of their view of the historical role of this movement and because of the last war in Bosnia where many Serbian paramilitary troops aspired to continue the tradition of the WWII Četniks. Četnik crimes against the Muslim population during WWII, together with memories of the recent wars, largely contributed to the formation of this feeling.
7. See Kuzio, “National Identity and History Writing in Ukraine,” 407–26; idem, “Nation Building, History Writing and Competition over the Legacy of Kyiv Rus in Ukraine,” 29–58; idem, “History, Memory and Nation Building in the Post-Soviet Colonial Space,” 241–64; Popson, “The Ukrainian History Textbook,” 325–50.
8. Kuzio, “National Identity and History Writing in Ukraine,” 408.
9. In February 2007, just to offer an illustrative example, there were serious diplomatic disputes between Zagreb and Rome over the interpretation of the expulsion and murder of Italians from the territory of Croatia after WWII. For further information on this topic, see “Foibe, l'ira della Croazia contro Napolitano—D'Alema: ‘“E” presidente dell'Italia antifascista,’” La Repubblica, Feburary 2007, <http://www.repubblica.it/2007/02/sezioni/cronaca/foibe-memoria/croazia-napolitano/croazia-napolitano.html> (accessed 27 March 2008); I. M., “Mesić neugodno iznenađen Napolitanovim izjavama,” Index.hr, February 2007, <http://www.index.hr/clanak.aspx?id=339488> (accessed 27 March 2008); I. K., “Talijanski premijer Prodi zaprepašten Mesićevom izjavom,” Index.hr, Feburary 2007, <http://www.index.hr/clanak.aspx?id=339550> (accessed 27 March 2008).
10. On the occasion of an HDZ political gathering in February 1990 in Zagreb, late Croatian President Franjo Tuđman stated: “… NDH was not just a quisling nation and a fascist crime but an expression of a heightened will for an independent state of the Croatian people and the realization of the international community, in this case the government of Hitler's Germany, of that will for Croatia to get geographic borders.”
11. In Croatia it is the Ministry for Science, Education and Sports that gives its approval for the placement of history textbooks in the primary and secondary school curricula. Each April a catalogue is published of obligatory textbooks approved for the following year, with a pricelist. The title of a recent catalogue is: Catalogue of Textbooks Approved for Primary Schools, Secondary General and Vocational Schools in School Year 2006/07 [Katalog odobrenih udzbenika za osnovnu skolu, gimnazije i srednje strukovne skole u skolskoj godini 2006/07]. The Ministry for Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia publishes this catalogue on the basis of article 15 of the Law on Textbooks for Primary and Secondary Schools (36/06). Textbooks come either alone or accompanied by a workbook, exercise book or other instruction tools, irrespective of the medium. They are always accompanied by a methodical teacher's manual. The teacher, with the consent of the students' parents and the entire teaching staff, may decide to supplement a compulsory textbook with optional textbooks and other instruction tools. Optional textbooks cannot substitute obligatory textbooks and handbooks. Approval of new textbooks is conducted according to the elements and instruments for evaluation of textbook and handbook correspondence with the textbook standards, and educational programmes and goals. The School Textbooks Board and expert committees for each individual subject or area are in charge of textbooks. Modalities of sanctions are specified in the law on textbooks for primary and secondary schools (pp. 91–97 of the catalogue). Article 18 of the aforementioned law specifies that the financial sanction for a school using non-approved textbooks can be from HRK10,000 to 20,000. For the violation from the first line of paragraph of the same article, the responsible person (teacher) in the school will also be financially penalized with a fine of HRK1,000–5,000.
12. Koren, “Minorities in Croatian History and Geography Textbooks,” 183.
13. Koren, Povijest 8. Snježana Koren's textbook devotes (as argued in Najbar-Agičić, “The Yugoslav History in Croatian Textbooks,” 242–43) “[r]elatively most space to the Ustaša crimes … (including one large and three small direct-quote texts).”
14. Perić, Povijest za VIII. razred osnovne škole, 69–70.
15. For example, the textbook devotes much space to the NDH's society and culture. It mentions that the Croatian film “Straža na Drini” won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1942.
16. Leček et al., Povijest 4. Udžbenik za četvrti razred opće gimnazije, 108.
17. For the definition of “latent curriculum,” see the following works: Popson, “The Ukrainian History Textbook,” 327; Choppin, “The Emmanuelle Textbook Project,” 345–56; Gilbert, “Text Analysis and Ideology Critique of Curricular Content,” 61–73.
18. Leček et al., Povijest 4. Udžbenik za četvrti razred opće gimnazije, 167.
19. Matković, Povijest 8; Đurić, Povijest 8; Brkljančić et al., Povijest 8; Perić, Povijest 8; Vujčić, Povijest 4.
20. Koren, Povijest 8.
21. This is not the only case of violent communist reprisals against collaborators of the occupier and their enemies during the war (which often included execution of civilians who accompanied the fleeing armies) but, together with the Kočevski Rog executions of Slovenian Domobrani, Četniks and Ustaša in the territory of Slovenia, it represents the most commonly quoted case. “The Bleiburg massacre” is named after the village of Bleiburg in Austria on the Austrian–Slovenian border, near where the massacre began. It involved mass murder of soldiers, and reportedly civilians, who were fleeing from the defeated NDH. A significant number of Croatians reached the Allied-controlled territory in Austria but, after some hesitation, were handed over to Tito's communist troops who then liquidated most of them. The atrocities were intended to be a reprisal for the real or alleged members or collaborators of the fascist regime, by the special units of the communist Yugoslav partisan army.
22. See Dusper, U vrtlogu Bleiburga; Grčić, Otvoreni dossier; Jurčević, Bleiburg; Marević, Od Bleiburga do naših dana; Nikolić, Tragedija se dogodila u svibnju; Perić, 1945–1995; Prcela and Živić, Hrvatski holokaust; Tolstoj, Ministar i pokolji.
23. See Davor Konjikusic, “Mesic Video Revives Row over Croatia's Turbulent Past,” Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, 14 December 2006, <http://www.birn.eu.com/en/1/140/3052/?tpid=7> (accessed 27 March 2008).
24. “Ekskluzivno—stari govor Stipe Mesića: Pobijedili smo 10. travnja!,” Index.Hr, December 2006, <http://www.index.hr/clanak.aspx?id=334481> (accessed 27 March 2008); <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLaIDT8FZHw&feature=related>.
25. Vesna Perić-Zimonjić, “Journalists Suspended over Some Old Quotes,” Inter Press Service News Agency, December 2006, <http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35817> (accessed 27 March 2008).
26. Ibid.
27. Ivica Đikić, “Evo izravno se ispričavam,” Feral Tribune, December 2006, <http://feral.mediaturtle.com/look/weekly1/article_sngl.tpl?IdLanguage=7&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=14947&NrIssue=1108&NrSection=15&ST1=text&ST_T1=interview&ST_AS1=1&ST_max=1> (accessed 27 March 2008).
28. See Perić, Povijest 8.
29. Stipe Mesić, “Genocid, holokaust, ratni zlocin,” Govor Predsjednika SR (sic) Hrvatske, Stipe Mesica, na komemoraciji u Jasenovcu, April 2006, <http://www.helsinki.org.yu/doc/pubs/charter/srp/mar-apr2006.pdf> (accessed 27 March 2008).
30. See <http://www.novatv.hr> (accessed 27 March 2008).
31. In Serbia, manuals and other education materials are approved on the basis of the law regulating the foundations of the educational system (Zakona o izmenama i dopunama Zakona o osnovama sistema obrazovanja i vaspitanja, “Službeni glasnik RS,” br. 58/04 i 62/04)—which is the general law regulating this field (article 94) and on the basis of the special Law on Manuals and Other Educational Materials (Zakon o udžbenicima i drugim nastavnim sredstvima, “Službeni glasnik RS,” broj 29/93). The procedure is as follows: a publishing house submits the manual and other material to the Ministry for Education and Sports. The ministry forwards the material to the Institute for Improvement of Education. The Institute (an expert or commission) writes an Expert Opinion about the manual under consideration, the Opinion is signed by the Director of the Institute and sent back to the ministry. The ministry forwards the Opinion to the National Education Council (a body elected by the Parliament of the Republic of Serbia) that can confirm or reject the Opinion. It is down to the Minister for Education and Sports to give a final Decision on the manual or other educational material under consideration. Members of the national minorities learn from manuals that are identical to the Serbian ones but translated into their respective languages. History manuals have additional material that deals with the history of the particular national minority, concentrating, however, on the history of the kin state of the minority rather than on the history of the particular minority community in Serbia.
32. V. A., “Udžbenici istorije davno priznali zasluge četničkog pokreta: Bez favorizovanja ravnogoraca,” Danas, 23 December 2004, <http://www.danas.co.yu/20041223/hronika1.html> (accessed 27 March 2008).
33. Nikolić, Istorija.
34. Slobodan Kostić et al., “60 godina od pobjede nad fašizmom,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 6 May 2005, <http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/articletext/2005/05/06/3be72a46-1747-4a72-ad74-db45e4fdba86.html> (accessed 27 March 2008).
35. Nikolić, Istorija, 140–42, 165, 168–69.
36. Ibid., 169.
37. Ibid., 163.
38. Ibid., 154.
39. Ibid., 149, 165.
40. See Samardžić, General Draža Mihailović i opšta istorija četničkog pokreta, Šušterič, Od Ljubljane do Ravne Gore; Radovanović, Dragoljub Draža Mihajlović u ogledalu istorijskih dokumenata; Nikolić, Nemački ratni plakat u Srbiji 1941–1944; Živković, Srbi u ratnom dnevniku Vermahta; Škoro, Genocide over the Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia; Karchmar, Draža Mihailović and the Rise of the Cetnik Movement; Trew, Britain, Mihailovic and the Chetniks; Tomasevich, The Chetniks; Milazzo, The Chetnik Movement and the Yugoslav Resistance.
41. See “The Eagle of Yugoslavia,” Time, 25 May 1942, <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,766569,00.html> (accessed 27 March 2008).
42. “Četnicima isto što i partizanima,” B 92, 21 December 2004, <http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2004&mm=12&dd=21&nav_id=158391> (accessed 27 March 2008).
43. “Partizani i četnici na ravnoj nozi?,” B 92, 10 December 2004, <http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2004&mm=12&dd=10&nav_id=157660> (accessed 27 March 2008).
44. Aleksandar Ćirić, “Skupštinsko pisanje istorije: Četnici—Partizani 12:5,” Vreme no. 729 (2004): 17–26.
45. “Četnici ‘personae non gratae,’” B 92, 17 May 2005, <http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2005&mm=05&dd=17&nav_id=168603> (accessed 27 March 2008).
46. “Press Release 94/05,” Republic of Croatia—Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, 9 May 2005, <http://www.mvpei.hr/MVP.asp?pcpid=1486&mjesec=5&Godina=2005> (accessed 27 March 2008).
47. Slobodan Kostić et al., “60 godina od pobjede nad fašizmom,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 6 May 2005, <http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/articletext/2005/05/06/3be72a46-1747-4a72-ad74-db45e4fdba86.html> (accessed 27 March 2008).
48. Let us take, for example, the debate between historians (Historikerstreit Debatte, in German) that took place in the Federal Republic of Germany in the period 1985–1986. In 1985, as part of his visit to Germany, US President Ronald Reagan visited the German military cemetery of Bitburg which, along with Wehrmacht, has several SS soldiers' graves. During the official ceremony at the cemetery, the American president implied that the suffering of these soldiers and the victims of the Holocaust could possibly be regarded as equivalent. Later, he moderated his statements under pressure from US public opinion. The symbolic recognition of the attempt of the conservative German government at the time to “normalize” the 1930s and 1940s as part of German history was facilitated by the conditions created by the US geopolitical struggle against the Soviet Union at the time, i.e. after German agreement to allow the US to install the Pershing nuclear missile system on their territory. This event, more than any other, sparked the aforementioned debate. For more on this debate, see Habermas, Ecrit politiques; idem, The New Conservativism; Sturmer, “Kein Eigentum der Deutschen”; Hillgruber, Zweierlei Untergang; Klaus Hildebrand, “Era of Tyrants,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zaitung, 31 July 1986; Joachim Fest, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zaitung, 29 August 1986; Michael Sturmer, “Suche nach der verloren Erinnerung,” Das Parlament, 17–24 May 1986.
49. Habermas, The New Conservativism, 235.
50. For an illustrative source for the analysis of history teaching in the twentieth century, see Stradling, Teaching 20th-Century European History. For new history-teaching methods with special emphasis on multi-perspectivity, see idem, Multiperspectivity in History Teaching.
51. “Presidency Conclusions 11638/03,” Council of the European Union, 1 October 2003, <http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/ec/76279.pdf> (accessed 27 March 2008); “The Thessaloniki Agenda for the Western Balkans,” General Affairs & External Relations Council (GAERC), 16 June 2003, <http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/enlargement_process/accession_process/how_does_a_country_join_the_eu/sap/thessaloniki_agenda_en.htm> (accessed 27 March 2008).
52. Resolution No. 1, adopted at the 19th Session of the Standing Conference of European Ministers of Education, on the theme of trends and common issues in education in Europe (Kristiansand, Norway, 1997) and the conclusions and resolutions of the 20th Session of the Standing Conference of European Ministers of Education on the “Learning and Teaching about the History of Europe in the Twentieth Century” project (Cracow, Poland, 2000), as well as the declaration adopted at the Informal Conference of Ministers of Education from South East Europe (Strasbourg, 1999), in which it was recommended that practical activities be undertaken in the thematic areas in which the CoE had long-standing and recognized expertise, including history teaching. The resolutions adopted at the 5th Conference of European Ministers of Cultural Heritage (Portorož, Slovenia, 2001) in which the ministers reaffirmed that history teaching should be founded on an understanding and explanation of heritage, and should highlight the cross-border nature of heritage, built upon this trend. Moreover, the results of the “Learning and Teaching about the History of Europe in the Twentieth Century” project and all the teaching materials presented at the project's final conference entitled “The Twentieth Century: An Interplay of Views,” held symbolically at the House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany (Haus der Geschichte in Bonn, Germany, 2001), present a precursor to concrete regional projects in the field of the reform of the history-teaching curricula—such as, just to offer the most illustrative example, the Joint History Books Proposal of the Centre for Democracy and Reconciliation in South Eastern Europe.
53. “Recommendation Rec(2001)15 on history teaching in twenty-first-century Europe,” Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, 31October 2001, <https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=234237&BackColorInternet=9999CC&BackColorIntranet=FFBB55&BackColorLogged=FFAC75> (accessed 27 March 2008).
54. Berktay and Murgescu, Teaching Modern Southeast European History. For an overview of the evolution of the project that led to the publishing of these books, see Carras, “Preface,” in Kolouri, Clio in the Balkans, 11–14.
55. Nenad Šebek, “Slobodan Milosevic and the Heroic Quest for the ‘Truth,’” The European Voice, no. 12 (2006).
56. See Jovana Gligorijević and J. Lazić, “Istorijom do pomirenja,” Vreme, no. 606, 29 June 2006; Lidija Valtner, “Razoružavanje istorije,” Danas, 21–22 January 2006; Kosta Nikolić and S. Rajić, “Balkanska povest sa oksfordskim akcentom,” Prosvetni pregled, 15 December 2006.
57. See, for example, Mαρι´νας Bη´χoυ, “Mια εναλλακτικη´ ανα´γνωση της ιστoρι´ας,” ANTI, no. 860, 13 January 2006; Michael Martens, “Auch die Wahrheit der anderen/Neue Schulbucher auf dem Balkan uben den kritischen Blick auf die eigene Geschichte,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25 December 2006.
58. See Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, 4, 9.