“The past is often more uncertain than the future or the present”

TOMISLAV MARKOVIĆ - columnist, writer [Serbia]

GENERATION OF LIVED HISTORY

The war does not end with the cessation of the conflict. Survivors continue to carry it deep inside them. The way post-war society relates to war affects individuals and shapes transgenerational memory.

• How has the generation that lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region during the wars in the former Yugoslavia – and especially during the genocide in Srebrenica – experienced and shaped this history in the past 30 years: through personal memories, reflections, but also through narratives in the media, films, books, textbooks and rituals of remembrance?

"In different countries created on the territory of the SFRY, recent history has been shaped differently. In the Federation of BiH, a lot of work was done on the culture of memory, many books on war, memoirs, memories, documentary literature, literary works based on true events from writers that have survived them:Faruk Šehić, Ozren Kebo, Marko Vjeković, Nenad Veličković, Ferida Duraković and many others. Many excellent films have been made that provide an aesthetically valid testimony about the war, from "Perfect Circle" to "Quo vadis, Aida". There are countless texts and books that reflect on the experience of war, and they continue to be written.

In other countries, there are fewer such contents, but there are still some. At least as far as the genocide in Srebrenica is concerned, in most countries there is a consensus that genocide was committed in July 1995. In Montenegro, such a consensus existed until the changes five years ago, Serbian nationalists participating in the government now have a different, revisionist opinion. In Serbia, the situation is different, as in Republika Srpska. According to the official narrative formed by the ruling caste and the dominant part of the intellectual elite – there was no genocide, there was no aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, war crimes are also denied, the past is falsified. According to the new Law on Monuments, it is forbidden to even erect monuments to the victims of the Serbian army and police, because Serbia has always fought only liberation wars. The media scene is flooded with forgery, and denial, all of which have created a cemented picture of the past that has little to do with facts. It could be said that in Serbian public discourse, recent history is shaped by lies, nationalist ideology and criminal imagination. The main intellectual current formed the Serbian national identity on the denial of genocide and the denial of the criminal past, as well as on the refusal to face the past, instead of a new identity being formed precisely on the memory of the victims, on the awareness of one's own responsibility, on the knowledge that the nineties are a cut in our history, that after that nothing will ever be the same again. This process of confronting oneself and one's own misdeeds, which would result in the creation of a different identity, is blocked by all possible social, intellectual and political forces.

Of course, there is a whole range of historians, artists, writers, scientists, academics, journalists, NGOs, public figures who speak and write the truth about war, crimes and suffering, naming the culprits, calling things by their real names. Unfortunately, all of them, that is, all of us, are a margin in a society still ruled by the same ideology of nationalism that led to the war, and even the same actors who were part of a joint criminal enterprise in the 1990s are in power. Dragoljub Stanković wrote perhaps the best about the state of the Serbian soul after the war in the collection of poems 'Praise of Weakness':

No nothing will save us
nothing can wash away this blood of our
hearts will never again be
happy never again
because others will never be happy
because others have not had the opportunity
to be

happy sad enthralled,
so neither will we
who are left

after this shame
that touches heaven."

A GENERATION BORN IN HISTORY (THOSE BORN IN 1995)

Thirty years later, we are once again witnessing the shaping of history amidst political manipulations of narratives. That is why transgenerational memory is required to carry a culture of remembrance and responsibility to the truth – in the name of future generations who must learn how peace is built and preserved.

• How does a generation born in the year of the Srebrenica genocide today understand this history? And how did growing up in this heritage shape their sense of identity, memory, and responsibility?

"The generation that was born in Serbia in the year of the genocide in Srebrenica has a big problem to find out what happened at all, to come up with elementary facts about the past. The entire social, media, political, educational sphere has created a huge wall that prevents young people from getting to the truth. In order to learn about the past at all, young people must first oppose everything they learned in school, at university, in the media, what they heard in the house, among friends, on the street, in social life. Of course, today it is much easier than it used to be, everything is available on the Internet to today's generations, it is much easier for them than, say, young Germans in the 1960s, they do not live in a vacuum, but in a society based on crime, genocide and their denial, and on Greater Serbian ideology as a justification of evil, so any fact is prohibited and puts them in conflict with the society in which they live. Few are those who engage in personal research and who have the audacity to stand up against the overwhelming majority, public opinion, most are still completely uninterested in the culture of memory and responsibility towards the truth. There are exceptions, of course, especially among those around the Youth Initiative for Human Rights and similar organizations, but as soon as one of these young people goes public with the view that genocide was committed in Srebrenica, they are exposed to hate campaigns in tabloids.

The society has done everything to shape the identities of young people in a nationalistic spirit, based on the denial of crime and truth, to erase all memory of crimes and genocide, to destroy any sense of responsibility in both perpetrators and inspirators, let alone those who were born during or after the war."

TRANSGENERATIONAL MEMORY DYNAMICS (1995-2025)

Society in Bosnia and Herzegovina is still marked by war traumas. Prevailing ethno-national policies keep citizens in fear, under constant threat of a new war – for their own interests. Politics has instrumentalized trauma.

• How – and whether – generations from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the regions that lived through the wars in the former Yugoslavia, especially the events of 1995, and the generation born that same year have shaped mutual understanding of the past? To what extent are their views aligned today – and how do they differ?

"It is a broad question, so I would like to focus on the situation in Serbia, and it is not easy here either, because the generations are not monolithic, they are made up of persons of diverse ideological, political, social, cultural views and understandings. They could roughly be divided into two groups: the majority, which agrees with the ruling ideology, and the minority, which opposes it. In the first group, the older generation denies the reality they experienced, the nineties are for them at best the time when they suffered under the regime of Slobodan Milošević, and most often for them that time when the whole world conspired against the Serbs, imposed sanctions on us on the justice of God, and even bombed us in the end, not guilty of anything. The younger generations who follow this narrative cry over Mladić as a Serbian hero (although even those who guard his mural do not know exactly who he is), call for new wars because they have no idea what war actually looks like, and shout "Next year in Prizren", together with the popular hip-hop band Beogradski sindikat.

The older generation of those who rose up against nationalists, war and murderers is permanently marked by the experience of war, and tries to explain to themselves how and why this happened, why so much mass frenzy about enthusiasm for hatred, chauvinism and fratricide. It's a life-long task that never ends. Conscious younger generations feel this burden, which they inherited from the elderly, but even when they are aware of the violent, villainous past of their own country – most often they try to lift this burden off their shoulders in some easy and simple way (which does not exist). We see that those who have not seen with their own eyes how people become cannibals, how peaceful neighbors and relatives turn into fiery haters of other nations overnight – have a big problem somehow imagining it for themselves. And this is understandable, because we who survived that time have a problem explaining what, how and why it happened, and any honest conclusion leads to difficult anthropological pessimism. For the young, it seems to me, it is just another topic, another part of the great inherited burden, first of all, the current regime should be removed and the current problems solved, and then the past should be dealt with. Since they did not witness the political beginnings of Dačić, Vučić, Vulin, since they did not live at the time when today's literary classics wrote ode to Milošević or dramas about the Battle of Kosovo or called for revenge of Serbian victims from World War II, they do not have access to the whole picture. All this, of course, is written in numerous books dealing with the nineties, and it is available, through reading and talking with the elderly who deal with these topics, so young people can gain knowledge about the past. On the other hand, the fact that they can more easily cope with the legacy they have experienced, that they do not have personal trauma, could also make it easier for them to cope with that period and preserve their memories."

REGIONAL FUTURE: TRANSGENERATIONAL MEMORY, HERITAGE OR TRAUMA (2025-2055)

Thirty years after the war, ethnic identity still dominates the civic. In post-war society, the structure of ethnically divided space often makes civic initiatives impossible, as they are automatically attributed an ethnic sign.

• How could political, social, educational and cultural development in Bosnia and Herzegovina – and more broadly in the region – affect how transgenerational memory will be preserved, reinterpreted or denied in the next 30 years?

"First of all, political structures, as well as citizens in Republika Srpska, would have to recognize Bosnia and Herzegovina as their state, stop denying the elementary facts about the war and stop celebrating war criminals and mass murderers, so there would be hope for transgenerational memory. It is difficult to talk about the culture of memory, where monuments to murderers are erected, where victims are mocked, where there is a conspiracy of silence, and few voices of reason are exposed to violence and ostracism. In Serbia, there is also a similar problem, and we cannot talk about any progress, because thanks to the ruling regime and most social actors and institutions, development is going backwards, from evil to worse. Unless this direction changes, the dominant ideological and political narrative is overturned, the matter of transgenerational memory will continue to grow worse and worse from generation to generation. If democratic forces prevail, if there is a return to the European course, if the old regime is overthrown, at least some basic preconditions will be created for political, social, educational and cultural development, within which there would be a place for a culture of remembrance. And even then, this process will not take place easily, because people who are truly committed to working on a culture of remembrance – are a clear minority."

GLOBAL FUTURE: TRANSGENERATIONAL MEMORY, INDIFFERENCE OR REVISIONISM (1995-2025-2055)

In the modern world, geopolitics is rapidly conditioning historical narratives and transgenerational memory – openly trading influence in conflicts and party choices through daily-political revisionism.

• How could global political disruptions, conflicting international historical narratives, and changing norms on justice and human rights shape the ways in which knowledge of wartime events from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the region will be transmitted, challenged, or withheld across generations over the next 30 years?

"It's always the same story: the global situation inevitably affects our local opportunities. Anti-Enlightenment tendencies, populism, revisionism, authoritarianism are strengthening in the world – this all negatively affects our area, including the perspectives of maintaining and developing a culture of remembrance of war events. What is most important, both for transgenerational memory and for relationships globally-locally, is the persevering work of all those organizations and individuals dealing with the past, nurturing the culture of memory, working for reconciliation. Archives exist and are growing, testimonies are multiplying, there is more academic research, scientific studies, doctoral dissertations, museums are opening (the Museum of the 1990s in Belgrade will soon be opened, thanks to historian Dubravka Stojanović, which seemed impossible until yesterday), writers are dealing with the past, as well as artists, journalists, historians, the non-governmental sector... All this enormous work has resulted in the creation of a depository of memories that cannot be destroyed, which can only be withheld, denied, but remains as a lasting legacy for future generations. As unfavorable as the international conditions for fostering a culture of remembrance are, as much as the local nobles and their intellectual servants can wage a war against remembrance, they cannot undo all that has been done so far, nor can they prevent us from continuing to work in the same direction. Only if the whole world turns into a totalitarian order, into a negative utopia, could it destroy the culture of memory, but even then not completely, even in Stalinism many manuscripts have been preserved – in the memory of people who became living books. The struggle for memory does not stop, because - paradoxically as it may seem – the past is often more uncertain than the future or the present."



The opinions and insights expressed in this text reflect solely the views of the author. We publish these contributions to encourage reflection and open space for diverse perspectives on the topic of transgenerational memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the wider region.