“The falsification of history is finally getting adequate technology”

OLIVER FRLJIĆ - director [Croatia]

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?

"As someone who has been living outside Bosnia and Herzegovina for a long time, it is difficult for me to assess how an entire generation remembers Srebrenica. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also in neighbouring countries that have committed or tried to commit aggression against that country, there is a battlefield of remembrance. On the one hand, an attempt is being made to build a culture that stands against systemic oblivion and erasure. On the other hand, there is the planned oblivion and negation, which have become a kind of political platform in certain parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I remember visiting Prijedor, which is a glaring example of how the combination of predatory international capital and local nationalism on steroids leaves little room to remember the war crimes committed in that area against the Bosniak population."

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?

"Unfortunately, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian society has frozen the war conflict and it is heating it up if necessary. There was no real peace - also unfortunately - in these areas. War logic continued to shape post-war reality. Peace, to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, became a continuation of war by other means. From this distance, Srebrenica can also be read as an example of a crime without punishment, a space that constitutes part of the memory of BiH citizens, but in no way becomes a common memory that would enable the prevention of similar events in the future."

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?

"Remembrance policies are created in the public space. What and how a particular society remembers and which value system is represented by that same society. I will mention Prijedor again, where a memorial with the names of Republika Srpska fighters in the very center of the city performs two functions. It symbolically erases the identity of those who were systematically tortured and killed in this city precisely as part of the systemic policy of the Republika Srpska. These names also serve to forget the genesis of the war in BiH and relativize the position of those who implemented their policy of ethnic cleansing in an imbalance of power. I believe that there is nothing to be found about this in the history textbooks in the Republika Srpska."

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?

"Bosnia and Herzegovina, unfortunately, is not a civil society. National identity, both institutionally and through various social practices, takes precedence over the civic one. In this sense, everyone is pulling to their side, and the political platforms that "run" Bosnia and Herzegovina have been parasitizing for years on the worst sentiments that were produced in the war. Hate is, unfortunately, a high-octane political fuel. The national key that tried to unlock the post-Dayton future of Bosnia and Herzegovina locked the possibility of transforming this society into a civic one. In this context, transgenerational memory is shaped by perverting not the interpretation, but the facts themselves. In such a situation, Thompson becomes the ultimate arbiter of what happened (“If you don't know what happened”), and the fact that such a constructed memory has little to do with the facts will only make things worse, to ironically paraphrase Hegel, worse for the facts."

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?

"I think the concepts of politics and the related politics of remembrance are over. Steve Bannon said that Donald Trump's voters do not want facts, but media that will confirm what they already believe. And that, unfortunately, is not just a problem for Trump voters, but something that is inherent in today's algorithmic policy. In this context, I have little hope that there will be some kind of consensus on global and local memory policies. A good example is the nominal philo-semitism of German society, which is instrumentalized to deal with political dissidents and legitimize Islamophobia. If you listen to the current Prime Minister of Croatia or the entire Croatian establishment, no one dares to say what Vesna Pusic said in the Croatian Parliament a long time ago, which was that Croatia, itself attacked, was trying to commit aggression on a part of the territory of BiH. But back to your question. I think that the development of artificial intelligence and post-truth politics will refine and completely pervert the current concept of history and culture of memory. Donald Trump, after the history of apartheid in South Africa, gives white people victim status and offers relocations to the US. This is just one example of a complete reversal of historical facts, but also of individual experiences. What Orwell wrote in "1984", about falsifying history as a continuous process, finally gets adequate technology."



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.