Nationalism and mythology
this message that Milosevic was able to oust his political rivals and become President of Serbia, in time for the 600 th anniversary of the historic battle in 1989. Seeing the anniversary as another chance to affirm the importance of Serbian national identity, Milosevic held a mass rally at Gazimestan, the site of the battle, where he declared that ‘ The Kosovo heroism does not allow us to forget that, at one time, we were brave and dignified and one of the few who went into battle undefeated. ’ 4 For Milosevic, the myth of Kosovo allowed him to endear himself to the Serbian people, and mark himself out as someone determined to defend what he saw as the enduring legacy of his nation. Importantly, Milosevic was not the only one within Serbia that sought to utilize the nation’s history in this way; the Serbian Orthodox church was equally important in cementing the Battle of Kosovo in modern popular consciousness. Prior to the celebrations at Gazimestan, the church organized a public tour of the remains of Prince Lazar, the hero of Kosovo, which saw his bones travel from monastery to monastery across Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia. With each site attracting large numbers of Serbian pilgrims fromacross Yugoslavia, the tour was clearly another assertion of Serbian national identity, and one not just restricted to Serbia itself. 5 Alongside the overt return of the Kosovo myth to the public sphere, there was an increasing attempt within Serbia to link historic suffering, whether at the hands of Croatians, Ottomans, or Albanians, to the alleged suffering of the Serbian people in the present. In 1986, shortly before Milosevic would turn to Kosovo to launch his own political career, the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences published a widely-read memorandum on the status of Serbs within Yugoslavia, suggesting that ‘ With the exception of the Independent State of Croatia from 1941-45, Serbs in Croatia have never been as persecuted in the past as they are now. ’ 6 Drawing a link between the oppression Serbians in Croatia faced at the hands of the Nazi puppet regime installed in Croatia during the Second World War, responsible for running concentration camps that killed over 200,000 people, and that of the modern Croatian state, was clearly a direct tactic designed to increase Serbian concerns for their own safety. 7 By raising the threat of another genocide, similar to the one that remained a vivid memory within Serbian consciousness, the Academy was encouraging Serbians to view themselves as victims of fascism once again, and to view a possible return to armed conflict as a necessary form of self-defence. This desire, to form a Serbian nationalism that was as much anti-Croatian as it was pro-Serbian was further advanced through the actions of the Orthodox church, which continued to encourage both implicitly and explicitly a revival of strong Serbian identity. In the years leading up to the war, a petition was drawn up by the church that attracted over 60,000 signatures by 1986, protesting against supposed persecution of Serbians living in Kosovo. The petition called their treatment the re-emergence of a ‘ fascist genocide ’ , and in doing so drew together perhaps the two most important events in Serbian history. 8 It invoked the most sacred place within the Serbian nation, and placed it in jeopardy, a jeopardy linked to a moment of severe national trauma, the genocide at the hands of the Croatian Ustasha during World War Two. That memory of Ustasha persecution was enhanced by a year-long commemoration arranged by the Orthodox Church in 1990, to mark the 50 th anniversary of the beginning of fascist rule in 1940. 9 As part of this commemoration, victims of the atrocities had their
4 Macmillan, M. (2010): 88. 5 Judah, T. (2009): 39. 6 Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences. (1986) SANU Memorandum.
7 Glenny, M. (1996): 81. 8 Macdonald, D. (2002) . 9 Perica, V. (2002): 157.
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