Dealing with the Past

The uproar raised in the general public by the rare attempts, even in the critical media,to move the events at Košare from the mythical framework into the field of political discussion, indicates that the dominant narrative about this event corresponds to the needs of significant parts of society, as well as that it goes beyond the public’s views of the current regime. In this sense, one can speak of the constitution of a new political myth that relies on the already existing cultural framework and political discourses.

After the devastating wars on the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in recent decades, we have observed that the (re)construction of national historiographies is also driving societies further and further apart. Despite the gloomy picture drawn in this publication, coming to terms with the region’s traumatic history could be an essential contribution to European unification. With this publication, we hope to provide an impulse to that end.

For the past three decades, Western Balkan countries have been going through a dynamic period of consolidation of new states, economic transition and transformation of social values. This process of regional and internal consolidation is unfinished and the legacy of conflict is still powerful; yet the outlook of EU accession is the one positive project offering a perspective to societies and economies while settling the wounds of the past.

In 2020, a number of international conferences and talks marking the 25th anniversary of the Dayton Accords brought the country back into the international spotlight. On this occasion, the Heinrich Böll Foundation's office in Sarajevo captured numerous voices on how to deal with the dysfunctional system.

Recent developments in Southeastern Europe are diminishing the image of the European Union and its perspective of the region. The long history of the dispute over the history of the region of Macedonia, the identity of ethnic Macedonians and the question of the Macedonian minority in Bulgaria is threatening the EU integration of North Macedonia, but also the entire Western Balkan 6.

Rarely, if ever, has a genocide been as normalized as the genocide against the Bosniaks. It is a process which began simultaneously with the genocide itself—not only with the expansive cover-up campaign of its perpetrators, but with the rhetorical onslaught of minimization undertaken by the international community.

The problem of civic, legal and political emancipation of Jews in 19th century European societies is one of the critical processes in modern European history. What was the status of Jews in 19th-century Principality of Serbia, and how does it compare to other countries in the broader European perspective? This brochure attempts to provide a concise answer to this question, emphasizing the singular position and role that the citizens of a town in Serbia played in the process of Jewish emancipation at one point in history.

The richness of the multilayered historical reality, the authentic multicultural context of everyday life and the specific regional peculiarities of Albanian-Serbian relations in Kosovo have been unjustly simplified for decades by being reduced to episodes of intense interethnic violence. Even a casual conversation with people from both ethnic communities in Kamenica, Gnjilane, Šilovo and Ranilug reveals a more complex picture of mutual relations. From the perspective of ordinary people, the memory of coexistence and a common life together, mutual respect and tolerance in socialist Yugoslavia and in the aftermath of the 1999 war in Kosovo prevails over the notions about ethnic distrust and ethnically motivated violence.