Original scientific paper
Xavier Bougarel
; The National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris, France
Abstract
During the 1980’s, the memories of the Second World War were employed to
foster mutual fears and hostilities in Yugoslavia. Also, the Serb nationalists
labelled as genocide not only massacres committed by Croatian Ustasha
between 1941-1945, but also the situation in which Serbs found themselves
in Kosovo. This manipulation with the use of term genocide cannot be
understood without reference to the way it had been defined and used in
previous decades. This perspective helps us not only to identify the origins of
semantic inconsistencies, but also to understand legal and historiographical
logic at work in the Yugoslav case as well as the unfolding of historical processes
inherent to the Yugoslav milieu and to the European continent as a whole. The
article starts with the examination of Yugoslavia’s official legal definition of
genocide in the first decade after the war and proceeds with the concept’s usage
by Vladimir Dedijer and his Committee for the investigation of materials on the
genocide over the Serbs and other Yugoslavia’s nations. It then discusses the
way representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church employed the concept of
genocide as well as its broader usage by Serb nationalist circles in the late 1980’s.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
145950
URI
Publication date:
12.9.2011.
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