Collective Guilt Collective Responsibility and the Serbs

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SocietiesEast European Politics &

DOI: 10.1177/088832540831853316, 2008;2008; 22; 668 originally published online MayEast European Politics and Societies

Janine Natalya ClarkCollective Guilt, Collective Responsibility and the Serbs

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668

Collective Guilt, CollectiveResponsibility and the Serbs

Janine Natalya Clark

Can an entire nation be collectively guilty for crimes committed in itsname? Focusing on the case of Serbia, this article argues that collective guiltis a morally flawed and untenable concept that should be rejected. It pre-sents various moral and practical objections to both the generic notion ofcollective guilt and the more specific idea of Serbian collective guilt and

contends that the latter is a fundamental impediment to peace-buildingand reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia. On what basis might it beargued that the Serbs are collectively guilty? To claim that they are collec-tively guilty for having supported Milosevic both exaggerates levels of sup-port for the former Serbian leader and does a major injustice to thoseindividuals who bravely fought against the Milosevic regime. Drawing onthe work of Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers, the article concludes by sug-gesting that perhaps we can speak of Serbian collective responsibility.

Keywords: Serbs; Milosevic; collective guilt; collective responsibility; col-

lective denial; Second Serbia

Can an entire nation be collectively guilty for the crimes com-

mitted in its name? This is the key question with which this paper

is concerned. Discussions surrounding the notion of collective

guilt have most often centred upon the case of the German

people, the archetypal guilty nation. Wilkins, for example,

maintains that there are numerous examples of collective guilt,but to my mind the clearest and most indisputable example in

recent history is to be found in the persecution of the Jews in

Nazi Germany.1 The case of My Lai, when as many as 500

unarmed women, children and elderly Vietnamese were massa-

cred on 16 March 1968, has also been frequently discussed in the

context of debates about whether and to what extent we can cor-

rectly speak of collective guilt.2

More recently, as a result of the devastating wars in the formerYugoslavia during the 1990s, some commentators began to speak

East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 22, No. 3, pages 668692. ISSN 0888-3254 2008 by the American Council of Learned Societies. All rights reserved.

DOI: 10.1177/0888325408318533

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about the collective guilt of one particular nation involved in

those warsSerbia. For example, in an article published in The

New Republic during the NATO bombing of the Federal Republic

of Yugoslavia in 1999, Sullivan argued, Whatever else we doin Kosovo, we must face the fact that, to all intents and pur-

poses, many ordinary Serbs areto paraphrase Daniel Jonah

GoldhagenMilosevics willing executioners.3 Despite his claim

that the notion of collective guilt, conceptually and morally inde-

fensible, must be rejected,4 Goldhagen himself was insisting that

Serbia needed to be occupied on the grounds that any people

that commits such deeds in open defiance of international law

and the vehement condemnation of virtually the entire interna-tional community clearly consists of individuals with damaged fac-

ulties of moral judgement and has sunk into a moral abyss from

which it is unlikely, any time soon, to emerge unaided.5

For Goldhagen, just as the German peopleHitlers willing

executioners6bore collective guilt for the Holocaust, so too

the Serbian people were collectively guilty for the crimes of the

Milosevic regime and therefore in need of collective punishment.

Using Serbia as a case-study,7

this paper will seek to show thatthe concept of collective guilt is problematic and morally flawed. It

will begin by outlining some objections to the idea of Serbian col-

lective guilt and will argue that those NGOs in Serbia that embrace

this notion impede the very truth and reconciliation process that

they are trying to encourage and develop. The second section will

ask what it actually means to say that the Serbs are collectively

guilty. If the contention is that they are culpable for having sup-

ported Milosevic

, this is to do a fundamental injustice to those

individuals who courageously and tirelessly fought against the

regime throughout the nineties. These opponents of the regime,

who form the focus of this part of the paper, represent a second

face of Serbia which the West has tended, deliberately, to ignore.

The final section of the paper will suggest that while we cannot

speak of the Serbs collective guilt, perhaps we can speak of their

collective responsibility. Drawing upon the work of Hannah

Arendt and Karl Jaspers, it will argue that there is a case to be madefor Serb political and metaphysical responsibility.

East European Politics and Societies 669



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The Case against Collective Guilt

When Yugoslavia disintegrated and descended into blood-

shed, it was the Serbs who were widely seen as the aggressors.

To cite Handke, so many international magazines, from Time

to the Nouvel Observateur, in order to bring the war to their

customers, set up the Serbs, far and near, large and small, as the

evildoers and the Muslims in general as the good ones.8 If the

Serbs had the status of an aggressor nation during the nineties,

in the eyes of some their status has now become that of a guilty

nation. This ascription of collective guilt can be seen, inter alia,

in calls for the Serbian nation to apologize for its crimes. In

February 2000, for example, Joschka Fischer, the then German

Minister of Foreign Affairs, argued that one of the conditions for

dialogue was an apology of the Serbian side for what has hap-

pened to the Albanians.9

According to Drinka Gojkovic, the head of the War

Documentation Centre in Belgrade, The demand for an apology is

always addressed to the whole nation, all Serbs. The message it

contains is basically less of a condemnation and more of an offer of

relief. Apologize, shake your guilt off, show that youare moral.10

Such demands are based upon the assumption that all Serbs

are, and should feel, guilty.11 However, as Arendt argues, Morally

speaking, it is as wrong to feel guilty without having done any-

thing specific as it is to feel free of all guilt if one actually is guilty

of something.12 In her judgement, There is no such thing as

collective guilt or collective innocence; guilt and innocence

make sense only if applied to individuals,13 and using the

example of Serbia this paper seeks to defend Arendts viewpoint.

Whilst calls for Serbia to apologize have chiefly come from

outside the country, it is important to stress that the idea of col-

lective guilt is not anathema to everyone in Serbia. Within the

NGO sector in particular, there are various individuals who

embrace the notion of Serbian collective guilt. Sonja Biserko, for

example, the president of the Helsinki Committee for Human

Rights in Serbia, asks, If we collectively take pride in the success

of our basketball players, for which we have no individual credit,

are we entitled to reject the feeling of guilt for our ethnic crimes

670 Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility



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in which we have not individually participated?14 For Biserko,

the answer to this question is a resounding no. The very ques-

tion she poses, however, is based upon a flawed analogy. That is

to say that it is neither useful nor constructive to compare pridewith guilt, since only the former can be vicarious. To cite

Feinberg, even when it is reasonable to separate liability from

fault,15 it is only the liability that can be passed from one party to

another. In particular, there can be no such thing as vicarious

guilt.16 Thus, for example, . . . if all Americans are guilty of the

massacre at My Lai, it must be shown that they all in some way

contributed materially to the monstrous acts performed on that

day in March 1968.17

One of the reasons why Biserko and other leading human

rights activists, such as Natasa Kandic and Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco,

are so unpopular in Serbia is their insistence that as part of the

truth and reconciliation process, the Serbs must face up to and

acknowledge their nations collective guilt for the crimes of the

Milosevic era. Yet constant references to Serbian collective guilt,

far from advancing the truth and reconciliation process, actually

frustrate and hinder it. In short, by speaking of collective guilt,people like Biserko and Kandic are actually perpetuating the very

problem of denial that they are professedly fighting to eliminate.

There are people in Serbia who deny that certain crimes, like

Srebrenica, ever took place.18 Latinka Perovic, for example,

describes how, pacing about in a forsaken Serbia, whose soul

has been taken away by those who killed thousands of Muslims

in Srebrenica, I confront disbelief that such ferocious atrocities

should have happened and that Serbs committed them. Iencounter unwillingness, even desperate refusal, to accept the

truth that is brutally documented. . . .19

Evidence of this unwillingness or refusal to accept that certain

crimes were committed by the Serbian side during the nineties

can also be seen in the results of public opinion poll data. As one

illustration, according to research by the Strategic Marketing and

Media Research Institute in Belgrade in April 2005, 74 percent of

the 1,205 respondents said that the Serbs had carried out fewercrimes than the Croats, Albanians and Muslims during the wars in

the former Yugoslavia, of whom 24 percent also thought that




6/26

Serbs had perpetrated fewer crimes than the Slovenes.20 In the

same research, while 27 percent of respondents had heard that

paramilitary groups from Serbia killed civilians in Bijeljina during

the war in Bosnia, only 14 percent believed this had actually hap-pened; and 47 percent of respondents had heard that paramili-

taries and members of the Yugoslav Army killed civilians in

Vukovar in Croatia, but just 23 percent believed this to be true.21

For Serbian NGOs like the Helsinki Committee for Human

Rights in Serbia and the Humanitarian Law Centre, such data attest

to the Serbs collective denial. Biserko, for example, claims that

Milosevics extradition to The Hague on 28 June 2001, pokrenuo

odbrambeni mehanizam gotovo cele zajednicekolektivno pori-canje (triggered a defence mechanism of almost the entire com-

munitycollective denial).22 Such sweeping statements, it is

argued, are as unhelpful as they are erroneous. Whilst there are

those in Serbia who deny the existence of crimes, the key question

is not how to cure such individuals but rather why there are

people in Serbia who continue to seek refuge in denial.23 This is

obviously a complex question to which there are no simple

answers. However, one possible answer is that denial serves as animportant mechanism for asserting and affirming ones own inno-

cence. This mechanism, in turn, is fuelled by fear that to acknowl-

edge the perpetration of crimes is to thereby both incriminate

oneself and, more broadly the Serb nation, as being somehow guilty.

Thus the real problem, it is suggested, is not Serbian collective

denial but rather the notion of collective guilt itself.

To take one illustration, in July 1995 some 7,000 Muslim men

from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica were massacred. Thoseinvolved in or responsible for the crime were subsequently indicted

by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In

a landmark decision in April 2004, the Tribunal found the Bosnian

Serb general, Radislav Krstic, guilty of aiding and abetting the crime

of genocide in Srebrenica. It was the first time since the Nuremberg

trials that an international court had established a case of genocide

on European soil. At the same time, the Tribunal has explicitly and

repeatedly rejected any notion of collective guilt. At the start ofMilosevics trial on 12 February 2002, for example, the chief prose-

cutor Carla Del Ponte emphasized that the accused in this case, as




7/26

in all cases before the Tribunal, is charged as an individual. He is

prosecuted on the basis of his individual criminal responsibility. No

state or organization is on trial here today. The indictments do not

accuse an entire people of being collectively guilty of the crimes,even the crime of genocide. . . . Collective guilt forms no part of the

prosecution case.24

Hayden, however, maintains that . . . genocide must be a col-

lective act, a policy and practice formed in the name of one col-

lectivity and implemented against another. Thus even

prosecutions of individuals presuppose the collective guilt of

those whom the defendants claim to represent. Furthermore,

according to Hayden, this charge of collective guilt is irrefutable.While an individual defendant may be acquitted, the charge itself

indicates that the larger guilt is assumed.25 Hence, while the

case of Srebrenica may be used as an exemplar of how some

Serbs engage in denial,26 following Hayden it can be argued that

this denial is not a denial of the crime per se but rather of the col-

lective guilt implicit in that crime.27

By making some people more likely to deny the existence of

crimes than to openly discuss them, the concept of collective guiltis an impediment to peace-building in the former Yugoslavia.

Thus, in this sense the recent Judgement of the International

Court of Justice on 26 February 2007, in the case of Bosnia and

Hercegovina versus Serbia and Montenegro,28 is to be welcomed.

If the Court had found that the Serbian state committed or was

responsible for genocide in Srebrenica in 1995, this would

arguably have cemented the idea of Serbian collective guilt,

thereby creating further obstacles to reconciliation.The notion of collective guilt also hinders and obstructs a more

general process of human understanding. If we believe that an

entire nation is collectively guilty of heinous crimes, it follows that

we will regard that nation as being fundamentally different from

ourselves. If we proceed on this us/them basis, we thereby

close our minds to any possibility of comprehending why the

crimes were committed in the first place. This is extremely dan-

gerous because, to cite Todorov, It is understanding, not therefusal to understand, that makes it possible to prevent a repeti-

tion of the horror.29 We cannot empathize with a criminal




8/26

nation, and we do not want to. It is much easier, and more palat-

able, to emphasize that nations otherness than to see in it ele-

ments of ourselves. Yet if we focus only on it being not like us,

we thereby avoid asking ourselves a fundamental questionhowwould we have behaved in similar circumstances?

For example, we can argue that the German people were col-

lectively guilty for embracing National Socialism, but how do we

know that we ourselves would not have done so in the same cir-

cumstances? In other words, What business do we have con-

demning these people if . . . we too would have naturally absorbed

those beliefs had we been brought up in their society?30 Similarly,

we can hold the Serbian people collectively guilty for supportingMilosevic, for example, but can we be sure that we ourselves, in a

similar situation, would not have supported him?

It is also easy for us, as outsiders, to claim that more people in

Serbia should have stood up against the Milosevic regime, or that

more people in Germany should have opposed Hitler and the

Nazis. According to Lewis, however, it is important to bear in

mind that . . . there are severe limitations on the power of the

individual to modify social conditions, for normally he can onlydo so by concerted action, and concerted action, moreover,

which requires a consensus of opinion on highly complicated

social and economic questions.31

Thus, in the case of Germany, for example, the question we

need to ask is, What could have been expected of the average

German citizen in the swirling tide of the events which engulfed

him and others eventually in the deep vortex of war?32 The same

sort of question, it is argued here, should also be asked in rela-tion to Serbs living under Milosevic.

Collective guilt can be particularly objected to on moral

grounds. In short, crimes against a nation perceived as collec-

tively guilty are unlikely to provoke moral outrage. Like an eye

for an eye, the concept of collective guilt provides a basis upon

which crimes against such a nation can be treated as justified.

How else can we explain the lack of international reaction to

Operation Storm in August 1995the ethnic cleansing by U.S.-supported Croatian forces of some 200,000 Croatian Serbs from

the Krajina?33 The belief that these Serbs were simply getting




9/26

what they deserved was implicit in a comment made at the time

by Peter Galbraith, the then American ambassador to Croatia.

According to him, the expulsion of Serbs from the Krajina did not

amount to ethnic cleansing because ethnic cleansing is a prac-tice supported by Belgrade and carried out by Bosnian and

Croatian Serbs.34

It is undeniable that Serbian forces, both the regular army and

various paramilitary organizations, committed heinous crimes

during the Yugoslav wars. Yet terrible crimes were also commit-

ted againstthe Serbsin Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. In addi-

tion, the Serbian people suffered at the hands of NATO, whose

pilots bombed Serbia for three months in 1999, and at the handsof their own leader, Slobodan Milosevic. However, the notion

that Serbs are collectively guilty has meant that crimes against

them have tended to receive little attention, hence the problem

of the lack of international recognition of the crimes committed

against the Serbs.35 Unless and until such recognition occurs,

many Serbs are unlikely to want to discuss the suffering of

others, instead seeing themselves as the principal victims of the

nineties. Evidently, this will not help the truth and reconciliationprocess because the sense of victimization, to cite Buruma,

impedes understanding among people and cannot result in

mutual understanding.36

So far, this paper has argued and sought to demonstrate that

the concept of collective guilt is flawed, problematic and unhelp-

ful. If, however, the reader remains unconvinced and believes that

we can rightly speak of the Serbs collective guilt, this raises a

fundamental question: what does it actually mean to say that theSerbs are collectively guilty? Are we saying that they are guilty

for supporting Milosevic? Cohen, for example, maintains that as

a people, the Serbs cannot escape responsibility: they massively

backed Milosevics nationalist upheaval and they voted him into

office in the first free elections of December 1990.37 To say that

the Serbs are guilty because they voted for Milosevic, however,

simply raises further questions. In particular, how much support

did he actually have, and why did people champion him?Taking the first of these questions, there is no doubt that

Milosevicwas immensely popular when he first came to power in




10/26

1989. According to Ramet, for example, Milosevicwas genuinely

loved by many (though not all) Serbs as no other leader had been

since Chetnik leader Draza Mihailovic.38 Nevertheless, it is impor-

tant not to exaggerate levels of support for Milos

evic

. It is also nec-essary to emphasize that support for him and his political party,

the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), steadily decreased throughout

the nineties. This is evidenced not only by anti-regime protests,

like those of 1996-1997, but also by election results.

In the 1990 presidential elections, for example, Milosevicwon

65.34 percent of the votes cast. Although he was the clear victor

(his closest rival, Vuk Draskovic, won just 16.4 percent of the

vote), the percentage of votes for Milos

evic

represented only46.72 percent of the total electorate.39 In other words, he did not

have an absolute majority of support within the country. By the

time of the next presidential elections in 1992, Milosevics popu-

larity had already declined. In these elections, he won 53.24 per-

cent of votes cast, which represented just 37.12 percent of the

total electorate.40

The results of parliamentary elections show a similar decrease

in support for Milosevic

s party. In the first multi-party elections

in Serbia in December 1990, the SPS won 46.1 percent of votes

cast (32.9 percent of the whole electorate).41 In the second par-

liamentary elections held in December 1992, the party won 28.8

percent of the vote (20.1 percent of the total electorate), thereby

losing its parliamentary majority.42 This meant that the SPS was

therefore unable to rule on its own after the second elections,

but with its informal partner, the SRP [Serbian Radical Party], it

had an absolute majority in parliament.43

In the third multiparty elections in December 1993, the SPS

received 36.7 percent of the votes cast (22.5 percent of the total

electorate).44 Although it won these elections and obtained 22

more seats than in the previous elections, it remained three seats

short of an absolute majority. Moreover, objectively speaking, its

hold on power was threatened for the first time, naturally on

condition that the other parties (which had a total of 127 seats

against the SPSs 123) could agree amongst themselves.45

Fortunately for Milosevic and the SPS, however, the other parties

were not able to do so.




11/26

Further evidence of the SPSs declining popularity is the fact

that it needed to enter into coalitions with other parties. In the

1997 elections, it entered into a Left Coalition with the Yugoslav

United Left46

and New Democracy, and in March 1998 it formed acoalition government with the Yugoslav United Left and the

Serbian Radical Party. In short, the election results reveal that

Milosevics regime enjoyed the support of a significant element of

the Serbian population (about 40 per cent) only until 1992. From

1992 onward, this support rapidly deteriorated, amounting to

only 20 per cent of the electorate in 1997. On the other hand, the

systematic opposition to Milosevic kept growing, and in 1997 it

exceeded 40 per cent of the electorate.47

Turning now to the second question, what were those Serbs

who supported Milosevic actually giving their support to? Were

they, as Goldhagen claims, endorsing an eliminationist pro-

ject?48 Unfortunately, there are no detailed studies of why

people in Serbia supported Milosevic. However, analysis of his

speeches, a valuable yet often neglected primary source, can pro-

vide important insight. A recurrent and prominent theme of

Milosevic

s speeches was the economy and the need for eco-

nomic development. In his speech in Pancevo on 10 May 1990,

for example, he declared that Serbia was resolved upon a pro-

gramme of economic and social reforms,49 and in his speech at

the Sava Centre in Belgrade on 20 October 1994, he stressed that

Serbia must draw upon all her resources to bring about eco-

nomic stabilization and development and to raise both community

and individual standards.50

In view of this strong emphasis on economic issues, it can beargued that at least part of Milosevics appeal was very practical

and that what he instilled in people was the hope of a better life

and a bright and prosperous future, which is borne out by the

fact that his greatest supporters came from low-income social

groups such as pensioners, peasants, and housewives.51 This is

significant because it challenges claims that Milosevic appealed to,

and relied upon, ethnic hatred and chauvinism.52 Furthermore, if

we accept that there was a very practical element to Milosevic

s

popularity, it thus becomes far more difficult to argue that the

Serbs are guilty for having supported him, not least because




12/26

there were always some national minorities who themselves

voted for Milosevic on economic grounds.53

To contend that the Serbs are collectively guilty for backing

Milos

evic

, moreover, is to do a great injustice to those coura-geous individualswhom existing Western literature on Serbia

has tended to overlookwho actively opposed the regime. The

existence of this Second Serbia further undermines the popu-

lar idea that Milosevic enjoyed near-universal support.

The Voices of Second Serbia

According to Gordy, As a political idea, while the notion ofcollective guilt is often used as a part of rhetoric, it has several

obvious theoretical shortcomings. Probably not the least of these

is the inclination to define a false collectivity which ignores social

and political differences.54

To speak of Serbias collective guilt is essentially and erro-

neously to conceptualize Serbia as a homogeneous entity com-

prised of people sharing fundamentally the same views and

outlook. In fact, the reality is that Serbia is a highly complex anddivided society. At the simplest level, we can distinguish between

traditional Serbia, comprising those who supported Milosevic,

and so-called Second Serbia or Other Serbia,55 consisting of

those individuals who tirelessly opposed and fought against the

Milosevic regime.

The experiences of the latter, however, have tended to receive

little attention, which has simply reinforced the misconception

that the Serbian population wholeheartedly supported Milos

evic

.Using data from semi-structured interviews conducted in the

summer of 2006, this part of the paper is precisely about giving

expression to a different set of voices. The 14 interviewees,56 all

members of the Serbian political and cultural elite, were pur-

posely selected for interview on the basis of their very active

opposition to the Milosevic regime.

That Milosevic was very popular when he came to power in

1989 is heavily emphasized in Western literature on the regime.LeBor, for example, has referred to Milosevic as a living Serbian

saint,57 and according to Hartman, when Milosevic delivered his




13/26

now infamous speech at Gazimenstan in Kosovo on 28 June

1989, he was le nouveau Messie (the new Messiah).58Yet what

is often overlooked is the fact that from the very outset, there

were people in Serbia who were strongly against Milos

evic

people like Branka Prpa, the director of the Historical Archives in

Belgrade. She explained, I recognized immediately that Serbia

had crossed into Hell with Milosevic.59 The Belgrade journalist

Duska Anastasijevic similarly maintained that she was against

Milosevic from the beginning. In her words, I was opposed to

Milosevic from the start, from the moment he ousted Ivan

Stambolic during the Eighth Session.60 I was twenty at the time,

and when I saw just how autistic and power-hungry Milos

evic

was, it scared me. The day after the Eighth Session, I had an urge

to tell people that Serbia was facing a catastrophe and that

Milosevicwas very dangerous.61

Each of the interviewees opposed the Milosevic regime in

his/her own way, and they all faced serious risks in doing do. The

personal experiences of three particular interviewees can be

used to illustrate this. In the case of Filip David, a writer and pro-

fessor of Dramaturgy, the struggle against the regime was notpolitical but rather ethical and moral. This took the form of set-

ting up various organizations in which like-minded people who

were against Milosevic could gather and express their views.

David explained,

Together with three friends, all of them writers, I founded a newWriters Association in Sarajevo, composed of writers from all over

Yugoslavia. We tried to maintain the friendship that existed. In 1991in Belgrade, I helped to found the Belgrade Circle. The membersmet once a week to discuss and to criticize Milosevics politics. The

Belgrade Circle was the only place where people opposed toMilosevic could come to talk and to protest. I was also a member ofGroup 99,which was founded in Frankfurt. It was made up of writersand publishers from Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Kosovo andMontenegro. The idea was to oppose bad things. We went toMontenegro on one occasion to support Djukanovic [the then PrimeMinister of Montenegro], and we went to Sarajevo to support multi-

ethnicity. . . . I also founded the Writers Forum, which was againsthatred and nationalism. When you live in that kind of State where

you have killings and so on, you must say something.62




14/26

However, opposing the Milosevic regime could be very dan-

gerous, as highlighted by the assassination of the journalist

Slavko Curuvija, the partner of Branka Prpa. A few days after

C

uruvijas murder on 11 April 1999, an article appeared in theState-controlled newspaperPolitika claiming that Filip David

and two other vocal critics of the Milosevic regime were traitors

who had called for Belgrade to be bombed. Curuvija himself had

written an article advocating an aerial bombardment of the city,

and it was shortly after this that he was gunned down on his

doorstep. Despite receiving menacing phone-calls and being

threatened in the street, David nevertheless decided to remain in

Belgrade. In his words, Despite everything, I didnt want toleave. I felt I had to stay and to say what I thought. I needed to

fight, to oppose, and to try to explain. Some of Davids friends,

however, like Mirko Kovac and Bogdan Bogdanovic, left Serbia

and never came back.

For the cartoonist Predrag (Corax) Koraksic, his cartoons

also known as Coraxwere the vehicle through which to make

a stand against the Milosevic regime. These cartoons, according to

the Serbian psychologist Z

arko Trebjesanin, were an uncompro-

mising and subversive critique of a dictatorship. . . .63 Not surpris-

ingly, therefore, there was a price for Koraksic to pay. When

Milosevic came to power, Koraksicwas working for the indepen-

dent newspaper Vecernje Novosti (Evening News). However,

Milosevic decided to take control of the newspapers editorial

board, and that is when Koraksics problems really began. After he

refused to support the new editorial policy, the newspaper no

longer wanted to publish his cartoons, and a three-year court caseended with Koraksic being sacked from Vecernje Novosti in 1993.

Thereafter, he started working for the independent newspaper

Nasa Borba (Our Struggle). When that became too popular and

was consequently closed down by the regime, he joined the inde-

pendent newspaperDanas (Today). However, there were always

risks, and Koraksic regularly received threatening phone-calls

and letters.

After Milosevic

s fall from power in 2000, his wife Mira

Markovic gave an interview to the Slovene newspaperMladina

(Youth). When she was asked what she thought of Koraksic, she




15/26


replied, On je najgori crtanist na svetu! (He is the worst car-

toonist in the world!). Koraksic recalled, After that, I was really

scared!64With good reason too, since it did not bode well to be

criticized by Mira. Her weekly column in a popular Belgrade mag-azine, nicknamed The Horoscope, was a reliable forecast of

the political fortunes of Serbias elite.65

Koraksic also faced numerous obstacles. For example, an exhi-

bition of his work had been scheduled for 15 March 1995 at the

gallery Art Sebastian in Belgrade. However, the director of the

gallery decided that Koraksics cartoons could not be displayed,

owing to their negative portrayal of Milosevic, his wife, and SPS

officials.66

Thus, when visitors arrived at the gallery to viewKoraksics drawings, they were faced with virtually bare walls. All

the caricatures of Milosevic, his wife and members of his party

had been removed. Only drawings of opposition leaders

remained. It was no coincidence that the owner of the art gallery,

the firm Inex Interexport, had firmly-established business links

with the ruling authorities.67

From 1994 until 2000, Ljubica Markovicwas the editor-in-chief

of the news-agency BETA. After the 1996-97 anti-regime protestsin Serbia, the number of BETAs clients rose dramatically. Thus,

Markovics work was a way for her to express her opposition to

the Milosevic regime. Like other independent media, however,

BETA faced many problems. Markovic explained, Sometimes it

was very risky. There were times when you didnt know if you

would be able to come to work the next day and do your job.68

It was particularly dangerous during the late nineties as

Milosevic

, feeling his power slipping away from him, became

increasingly authoritarian. In 1999, for example, he introduced

an Information Law that inflicted extortionate fines on anyone

who dared to criticize his regime. BETA was fined in May 2000.

Markovic is the half-sister of Milosevics wife (although they

have not had any contact for 25 years), and according to her the

Serbian police tried to use that against her. For example,

On one occasion, a policeman came with a long list of names. He saidthat he was representing the Greek-Serbian Association ofFriendship, and he wanted to know if I approved of the people onthe list being given medals. I told him that it was nothing to do with



16/26


me. There were various names on the list, like King Juan Carlos andRatko Mladic. Number 46 on the list was Mirjana Markovic. Before heleft, the policeman said to me, Remember number 46. Ill be back.He never did come back, but it was very unsettling. On another occa-

sion, a policeman came to BETA. We didnt know how he got into thebuilding. He kept saying to one of my colleagues, Do you know thatshe [Ljubica Markovic] does not have a good relationship with herhalf-sister? Again, he said that he would come back, but he didnt. It

was very subtle pressure from the secret police, and it was veryunnerving.

Threats and intimidation were just two of the prices to be paid

for being actively against the Milosevic regime. Another was los-

ing ones job. In 1998, under Milosevic

s new University Law,

Radmilo Marojevic, a radical old-style communist turned Serbian

nationalist, was appointed Dean of the Philological Faculty in

Belgrade. He immediately turned his attention to Professor

Ranko Bugarski, who described himself as an outspoken critic

of the Milosevic regime.69 Marojevic regarded Bugarski as a bad

Serb and wanted to remove him. Over-ruling the two-year

extension that the previous Dean had granted to the sixty-five-

year-old professor, Marojevic

thus forced Bugarski to leave theFaculty (he has since returned).

By expressing and demonstrating their opposition to the

Milosevic regime, such individuals took considerable risks.

Despite this, they have seldom received the recognition and

credit they deserve, not least because it has been far more con-

venient to ignore than to acknowledge the existence of this

Second Serbia. Overlooking the reality of resistance to the

Milosevic regime, an example of what Hayden calls an uncom-fortable fact,70 aids the propagation of the myth that Milosevic

enjoyed extensive support. This, in turn, has provided a basis for

the argument that the Serbs are collectively guilty.

By placing the burden of collective guilt on the Serbs, we in

the West thereby absolve ourselves of any blame or responsibil-

ity for the events that befell the former Yugoslavia. The intervie-

wees, however, stressed that Western governments were far from

blameless. Some particularly emphasized how the SerbianOpposition was let down by the West. To cite Miljenko Dereta,

the executive director of the Civic Initiative, an NGO in Belgrade,



17/26

The West could have done more to help the Opposition, first of

all by recognizing us. They didnt talk to us. They only talked to

Milosevic. By ignoring us, the West was not accepting reality,

because we existed. A wrong picture of reality was consequentlycreatedthat everyone in Serbia was for Milosevic and that civil

society did not exist. It took the Opposition a long time to get

access to international organizations and to start a dialogue with

them. The process only really started in 1999-2000.71

According to Koraksic, therefore, the problem is that the West

does not know the right face of Serbia.72 However, perhaps the

real problem is that it does not want to. It is easier to blame Serbia

for everything that happened in the former Yugoslavia if one sub-scribes to certain stereotypes and ides reues, or received ideas,

that have developed about the country and its people.

Serbian Collective Responsibility

While there is no basis for arguing that the Serbs are collec-

tively guilty, perhaps there is a case to be made for Serbian col-

lective responsibility. While the two concepts may appear verysimilar, they should not be conflated, as Arendt has emphasized.

According to her, collective responsibility is always political. That

is to say that every government assumes responsibility for the

deeds and misdeeds of its predecessors and every nation for the

deeds and misdeeds of the past.73 In her view, moreover, the

only way in which to escape from this political and strictly col-

lective responsibility is to leave the community. Thus, refugees

and stateless people are the only totally non-responsiblepeople.74 For Arendt, however, the key point is that we can be

responsible without being guilty. Thus, she insists on a sharper

dividing line between political (collective) responsibility, on one

side, and moral and/or legal (personal) guilt, on the other. . . .75

Summarizing her position on collective responsibility, Arendt

concludes, . . . no moral, individual and personal standards of

conduct will ever be able to excuse us from collective responsi-

bility. This vicarious responsibility for things we have not done,this taking upon ourselves the consequences for things we are

entirely innocent of, is the price we pay for the fact that we live




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our lives not by ourselves but among our fellow men, and that

the faculty of action which, after all, is the political facultypar

excellence, can be actualized only in one of the many and mani-

fold forms of human community.76

This rationale for collective responsibility brings to mind what

Karl Jaspers calls metaphysical guilt. According to Jaspers, meta-

physical guilt is the feeling produced by the knowledge of crime

and can be understood as a universal sentiment which interferes

with a persons conception of the self as fully human. Just as,

according to Arendt, human solidarity justifies collective respon-

sibility, so too does it lie at the heart of Jaspers metaphysical guilt.

As the latter explains, There exists a solidarity among men ashuman beings that makes each co-responsible for every wrong

and every injustice in the world, especially for crimes committed

in his presence or with his knowledge. If I fail to do whatever I can

to prevent them, I too am guilty.77

Although Jaspers speaks of metaphysical guilt, guilt is a legal

concept that refers to a specific status defined by an act of a judi-

cial institution.78What Jaspers is discussing are states of feeling

and self-assessment. According to Gordy, therefore, it is moreappropriate to speak of metaphysical responsibility, and for

him this concept is highly persuasive. In his words, Following

Jaspers, at least one form of collective responsibility, his meta-

physical guilt, is common to every person. We do not have to

share his mysticism to understand feelings of responsibility as

functioning only partly on the level of the individual, and partly

in the context of identities and relationships. In this sense

responsibility has to do with our sense of who we are, our senseof one another, and peoples sense of us. Collective perceptions

and feelings are involved at all these levels.79

It is in this metaphysical sense, it is argued, that we can

speak of the collective responsibility of the Serbian people. The

point is that although no one is responsible for others in the

sense that he is answerable for the conduct of others, we are all

extensively responsible for our fellows in the sense that we have

duties towards them. . . .80

In short,all of us, to cite Lewis, haveduties to further the wellbeing of others, independently of any

advantage to ourselves.81




19/26

Furthermore, we can speak of the Serbs collective responsibil-

ity not only in a metaphysical sense. According to Jaspers, It

clearly makes sense to hold all citizens of a country liable for the

results of actions taken by their state,82

regardless of whether ornot they supported those actions. Hence, it can be argued that the

Serbs are collectively responsiblerather than guiltyin this

political sense. This responsibility is based on citizenship, and as

such it attaches not only to Serbs but also to national minorities in

Serbia. The important point, however, is that there can be collec-

tive responsibility without collective guilt. Indeed, as Jaspers

rightly emphasizes, A people as a whole can be neither guilty nor

innocent, neither in the criminal nor in the political (in which onlythe citizenry of a state is liable) nor in the moral sense.83

Certainly from a practical point of view, it is far more useful to

speak of collective responsibility than collective guilt. As

Arendt famously argued, Where all are guilty, nobody in the last

analysis can be judged.84 Indeed, every war crimes tribunal to

date has expressly rejected the idea of collective guilt.85 Gordy,

for his part, maintains that conceptions of collective guilt, while

often politically popular, do not assist the process of dealing withresponsibility,86 and establishing responsibility is an essential

part of any peace-building process. To cite Kovacevic, The

process of discovering the truth and establishing who is respon-

sible for committed crimes helps in the recovery of individuals

and the community from suffered traumas and systematical pres-

sures they were subjected to.87 In this respect, the potential

importance of metaphysical responsibility is that it appeals to

elemental human solidarity, and the moment people empathizewith the victimized, they turn against the killers.88

Of course it might be argued that the notion of metaphysical

responsibility, in particular, is excessively broad and even unhelp-

ful. However, it can be counter-argued that the concept reflects

the realities of the inter-dependent world in which we now live,

as well as the duties that arise from that inter-dependency. Rather

than diluting responsibility, the idea of metaphysical responsibil-

ity actually strengthens it, by reminding us of our obligations toeach other as human beings. Furthermore, it is a very specific

concept in the sense that it requires people, not as nations but




20/26

as individuals, to look within themselves and to examine their

own consciences. Finally, it should be noted that while the

essence of metaphysical responsibility is such that it would not

only encompass the Serbs, this is not to mitigate their responsi-bility. Rather, it is to recognize that many others, including the

international community, also bear part of the responsibility for

the tragic events that befell the former Yugoslavia.89 It is precisely

such recognition that could significantly help Serbia to deal with

its painful past.

Conclusion

Using the example of Serbia as a case-study, this paper has

argued and sought to demonstrate that the concept of collective

guilt is fundamentally flawed. It began by highlighting the very

serious practical and moral implications of branding an entire

people collectively guilty. By giving expression to the voices of

Second Serbia, it then specifically sought to challenge the idea

that the Serbs are collectively guilty for having supported

Milos

evic

. Finally, while rejecting the notion of collective guilt, itsuggested that we can legitimately talk about a nations collective

responsibility, in particular its metaphysical responsibility based

on human solidarity.

Intellectuals, philosophers and academics have long discussed

and debated whether we can speak of a nations collective guilt.

Many of these debates and discussions took place in the after-

math of the Second World War. If the crimes of Nazi Germany,

above all the Holocaust, were the chief catalyst for these debatesand discussions, it is suggested that a particular postCold War

development justifies renewed analysis of, and reflection about,

the concept of collective guilt. This aforementioned develop-

ment is the rise of the so-called criminal leader.

Woodward highlights a general pattern in the postCold War

period of U.S. officials identifying rogue or renegade states,

headed by new Hitlers, such as Saddam Hussein and Slobodan

Milos

evic

, who defied all forms of civilized behaviour and had to bepunished to protect those norms and to protect innocent people.90

The main way in which such leaders defy civilized behaviour is by




21/26

unleashing illegitimate wars, and it is such warmongering behav-

iour that essentially defines the criminal leader. Speaking in March

1999 at the start of the Kosovo War, for example, President Clinton

described Milos

evic

as . . . a dictator who has done nothing sincethe Cold War ended but start new wars and poor gasoline on the

flames of ethnic and religious division.91

Historically, war has been seen as something normal and legit-

imate. As Howard argues, War has been throughout history a

normal way of conducting disputes between political groups.92

However, this is no longer the case. In the words of Mueller,

Over the last century or two, war in the developed world has

come widely to be regarded as repulsive, immoral, and uncivi-lized.93 One explanation for this change in attitudes towards war

is the postCold War decline of the Realist paradigm and the sub-

sequent rise of Liberalism as an ideology. For realists, war is a

rational response by states to the security dilemma created by

the anarchical nature of the international system. In contrast,

Liberalism was and is, in large part, an expression of revulsion

against illegitimate violence: that of tyrants at home and of

aggressors abroad.94

Consequently, . . . liberalism has made animportant contribution to challenging the position of war as a

standard feature of international political life.95 If attitudes

towards war are changing, this necessarily affects how we per-

ceive those who start, or are seen to have initiated, armed con-

flict. To cite Duffield, The condemnation of all violent conflict by

liberal peace means that the leaders of violent conflicts are auto-

matically problematised. By their own actions, they risk placing

themselves beyond the limits of cooperation and partnership.This is regardless of whether they are guilty of war crimes, as

many are, or defending themselves from dispossession or

exploitation, which some may be.96

Such developments have important implications for the

notion of collective guilt, since an obvious corollary of the crim-

inal leader is the criminal nation. In short, as more leaders are

deemed to be criminal, it is possible that more nations will be

held to be collectively guilty. This potential for an increasedusage of the term collective guilt, and the enormous injustices

it would entail, necessitates new discussion and debate. The




22/26

contribution of this paper has been to argue, and hopefully

demonstrate, that collective guilt is a dangerous and unhelpful

concept that should be wholly rejected.

Notes

1. Burleigh Taylor Wilkins, Terrorism and Collective Responsibility (London: Routledge,1992), 20.

2. See, for example, Kurt Baier, Guilt and Responsibility, in Collective Responsibility: FiveDecades of Debate in Theoretical and Applied Ethics, ed. Larry May and Stacey Hoffman

(Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), 197-218.

3. Stacy Sullivan, Milosevics Willing Executioners, The New Republic 220:19(1999): 28.

4. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, A New Serbia, The New Republic 220:20(1999): 17.

5. Goldhagen, A New Serbia, 17.

6. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and theHolocaust(London: Abacus, 1997).

7. Serbia was selected as a case-study on the basis of the authors particular interest, and

extensive research, in that country.

8. Peter Handke,A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia (New York: Viking, 1997), 76.

9. Cited in Drinka Gojkovic, The Future in a Triangle: On Guilt, Truth and Change, inFacing

the FutureA Reader, an unpublished collection of documents, ed. Organization for

Security and Co-operation in Europe (2006), 52. Personal correspondence with Dr. Zorica

Mrsevic from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in Belgrade.

10. Gojkovic, The Future, 53.

11. On 13 November 2003 Svetozar Marovic, the then President of Serbia and Montenegro, apol-

ogized to the citizens of Bosnia-Hercegovina. However, he rejected any notion of collective

guilt. Rather, he insisted that . . . peoples have no right to and must not suffer guilt andanguish caused by individuals and that peoples must not be made to suffer guilt for evils

perpetrated by individuals; rather, the individuals themselves ought to be held accountable

for that. Cited in the Humanitarian Law Centre, Transitional Justice Report: Serbia,

Montenegro and Kosovo, 1999-2005 (Belgrade, Serbia: Humanitarian Law Centre, 2006), 40.12. Hannah Arendt,Responsibility and Judgement(New York: Schocken Books, 2003), 28.

13. Arendt,Responsibility and Judgement, 29.

14. Cited in Srboljub Bogdanovic, Polemics: Collectively Innocent, http://www.helsinki.org.

yu/confront_detail.php?lang=en&idgnrc=693 (accessed 31 August 2006).

15. For example, as in cases of so-called strict liability.

16. Joel Feinberg, Collective Responsibility, The Journal of Philosophy 65:21(1968): 676.

17. Peter A. French, The Responsibility of Monsters and Their Makers, in Individual and

Collective Responsibility, ed. Peter A. French (Rochester, VT: Schenkman Books, 1998), 5.18. It is important to emphasize that this problem of denial exists not only in Serbia but also

elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia. See, for example, Louis Aucoin and Eileen Babbitt,

Transitional Justice: Assessment Survey of Conditions in the Former Yugoslavia (Belgrade,

Serbia: United Nations Development Programme, 2006). However, since this paper is

focused on Serbia, it will deal only with the problem of Serbian denial.

19. Latinka Perovic, To Tell the Difference between the Murderers and the Victims, in Women

for Peace, ed. Staca Zajovic (Belgrade, Serbia: Women in Black, 2001), 107.

20. Strategic Marketing and Media Research Institute, Javno Mnenje u Srbiji: Stavovi Prema

Domacem Pravosudju za Ratne Zlocine i Haskom Tribunalu [Public Opinion in Serbia on

Domestic Trials for War Crimes and the Hague Tribunal] (April 2005), 15. Personal corre-

spondence with Dusan Pavlovic from the Jefferson Institute in Belgrade.

21. Strategic Marketing and Media Research Institute,Javno Mnenje, 10-11.22. Sonja Biserko, Kolektivno Poricanje [Collective Denial],Helsinska Povelja 93/94 (2006): 3.

23. According to Cohen, it makes little sense to speak of a people as being in denial because

denial is not a stable psychological condition. . . . Unless psychotically cut off from reality,




23/26


no one is a total denier or non-denier, still less in denial or out of denial permanently.

Rather, people give different accounts to themselves and others; elements of partial denial

and partial acknowledgement are always present; we oscillate rapidly between states.

Stanley Cohen,States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering(Cambridge, UK:

Polity Press, 2001), 54.

24. Carla Del Ponte, Prosecutions Opening Statement, http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/020212IT.htm (accessed 14 January 2005).

25. Robert M. Hayden, Schindlers Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population

Transfers,Slavic Review 55:4(1996): 742-43.

26. According to a survey by the International Republican Institute in Belgrade in late

September 2005, for example, 35 percent of the 2,237 respondents said that Srebrenica wasa war crime, 25 percent said that it was a war necessity, 10 percent said that it was a mas-

sacre, and 4 percent claimed that they did not know of it. International Republican

Institute,Serbia (September 2005). Personal correspondence with Aaron Presnall from the

Jefferson Institute in Belgrade.

27. Srebrenica can thus be seen as an example of what Cohen terms implicatory denial; this

occurs when there is no attempt to deny either the facts or their conventional interpreta-

tion. What are denied or minimized are the psychological, political or moral implicationsthat conventionally follow. Cohen,States of Denial, 8.

28. Rosalyn Higgins, Statement to the Press by H.E. Judge Rosalyn Higgins, President of the

International Court of Justice (2007), http://www.icj-cij.org/presscom/index.php?pr=1898&

p1=6&p2=1&search=%22icty%22&PHPSESSID=db49b03ad074d149813d9a7b93f329d7

(accessed 1 March 2007).

29. Cited in Hayden, Schindlers Fate, 730.

30. David Cooper, Collective Responsibility, Moral Luck, and Reconciliation, in War Crimes and

Collective Wrongdoing; A Reader, ed. Aleksandar Jokic (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 209.

31. H. D. Lewis, Collective Responsibility, in Collective Responsibility: Five Decades of Debate

in Theoretical and Applied Ethics, ed. Larry May and Stacey Hoffman (Lanham, MD:

Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), 28.

32. Lewis, Collective Responsibility, 29.33. Cedric Thornberry has pointed out that following Operation Storm, Croatia became the

most ethnically pure state in the whole of the former Yugoslavia. Cited in Robert Thomas,

Serbia underMilosevic: Politics in the 1990s (London: Hurst, 2003), 13.

34. Cited in Hayden, Schindlers Fate, 738.

35. Vesna Nikolic-Ristanovic, Social-Historical Context, Victimization, and Truth andReconciliation Process in Serbia So Far (2003), http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:

Up9i6NAWrLMJ:www.vds. org.yu/file/VesnaNikolic-Ristanovic.doc+vesna+nikolic+ris-

tanovic&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=2 (accessed 25 August 2006).

36. Cited in Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical

Injustices (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2000), xvii.

37. Roger Cohen, Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo (New York: Random House,

1998), 194.38. Sabrina P. Ramet,Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to

the Fall ofMilosevic, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2002), 36.

39. Dijana Vukomanovic, Documentary Appendix, in Challenges of Parliamentarism: The

Case of Serbia in the Early Nineties, ed. Vladimir Goati (Belgrade, Serbia: Institute of Social

Sciences, 1995), 274.

40. Vukomanovic, Documentary Appendix, 275.



43. Srecko Mihailovic, The Parliamentary Elections of 1990, 1992, and 1993, in Challenges of

Parliamentarism: The Case of Serbia in the Early Nineties, ed. Vladimir Goati (Belgrade,

Serbia: Institute of Social Sciences, 1995), 55.

44. Vukomanovic, Documentary Appendix, 272.45. Mihailovic, The Parliamentary Elections, 58.

46. Yugoslav United Left was the political party of Milosevics wife, Mira Markovic.



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47. Slododan Antonic, Zarobljena Zemlja: Srbija za vlade Slobodana Milosevica [A Closed

Nation: Serbia under Milosevic] (Belgrade, Serbia: Otkrovenje, 2002), 507.

48. Goldhagen, A New Serbia, 16.

49. Slobodan Milosevic, Od Gazimestana do Seveningena [From Gazimestan to

Scheveningen] (Belgrade, Serbia: Harprom, 2001), 22.

50. Milosevic, Od Gazimestana, 84.51. For example, according to research by the Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade in

November 1990, 68 percent of pensioners, 51 percent of farmers, and 48 percent of house-

wives supported the Socialist Party of Serbia. In contrast, only 2.5 percent of pensioners, 2

percent of farmers, and 4 percent of housewives voted for the Democratic Party, and just

2.5 percent of pensioners, 12 percent of farmers, and 11 percent of housewives voted forthe Serbian Renewal Movement. Srbobran Brankovic, Social Class and Political Affiliation,

in Challenges of Parliamentarianism: The Case of Serbia in the Early Nineties, ed.

Vladimir Goati (Belgrade, Serbia: Institute of Social Sciences, 1995), 87-88.

52. Ramet, for example, contends that Milosevic built his power on a foundation of hatred and

xenophobia. . . . Ramet, Balkan Babel, 308. She further claims that of all the ex-Yugoslav

republics, only Milosevics regime relied on the inculcation and nurturing of hatred in the

first place to develop support. Ramet,Balkan Babel, 351. For his part, Zimmermann refersto the ethnic hatred sown by Milosevic and his ilk. . . . Warren Zimmermann, Origins of a

Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and Its DestroyersAmericas Last Ambassador Tells What

Happened and Why (New York: Times Books, 1996), 41.

53. As part of the authors doctoral research, 18 semi-structured interviewees were conducted

with various national minorities in Serbia and Kosovo in the summer of 2004. According to

a male ethnic Hungarian interviewee in Novi Sad, Minorities supported Milosevic because

of the money and privileges they received. There was a part of society that got richer and

richer in that period. Author interview, Novi Sad, 7 September 2004. For his part, a male

Kosovar Albanian interviewee in Vucitrn similarly explained that there were always some

Albanians who were loyal to Milosevic. He paid them well and they enjoyed many privileges

and opportunities. . . . Author interview, Vucitrn, 24 August 2004.

54. Eric Gordy, Accounting for a Violent Past by Other than Legal Means,Southeast Europeanand Black Sea Studies, 3:1(2003): 3.

55. Bieber notes that the term Other Serbia has been used to describe a group of NGOs and

intellectual circles that sought to formulate a non-nationalist alternative to the regime and

courageously oppose the war. Florian Bieber, The Serbian Opposition and Civil Society:

Roots of the Delayed Transition in Serbia, International Journal of Politics, Culture and

Society, 17:1(2003): 83.

56. Duska Anastasijevic (a journalist for Vreme), Slobodanka Ast (a journalist for Vreme),

Professor Ranko Bugarski (a philologist), Professor Filip David (a writer and professor of

Dramaturgy), Miljenko Dereta (head of the Civic Initiative, an NGO), Professor Vojin

Dimitrijevic (a professor of International Law and the director of the Belgrade Centre for

Human Rights, an NGO), Drinka Gojkovic (head of the War Documentation Centre, an

NGO), Predrag Koraksic (a cartoonist), Ljubica Markovic (director of the news-agencyBETA), Jelica Minic (an economist), Milan Nikolic (a sociologist and the director of the

Centre for Policy Analysis), Branka Prpa (the director of the Historical Archives in

Belgrade), Heri Stajner (a media analyst at the Media Centre in Belgrade), and Professor

Srbijanka Turaljic (an electrical engineer and former vice-minister of higher education).

57. Adam LeBor,Milosevic: A Biography (London: Bloomsbury, 2002), 119.

58. Florence Hartman,Milosevic: La Diagonale du Fou Milosevic: The Diagonal of the Insane]

(Paris: Denol, 1999), 50.

59. Author interview with Branka Prpa, New Belgrade, 5 June 2006.

60. Ivan Stambolic had been Milosevics mentor and was instrumental in helping his protg to

climb up the career ladder. Milosevic, however, repaid Stambolic by engineering his removal

from power. After the Eighth Session in September 1987, Stambolicwas forced to step down

from the position of Serbian President, to be succeeded by Milosevic. Stambolicwas myste-riously kidnapped while out jogging in August 2000. His body was later discovered in 2003.

It is widely believed that Milosevic and his wife were behind Stambolics murder



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61. Author interview with Duska Anastasijevic, Belgrade, 3 July 2006.

62. Author interview with Filip David, Belgrade, 3 July 2006.

63. Zarko Trebjesanin, Slobo on Coraxs Couch, in On [He], ed. Predrag Koraksic (Belgrade:

Plato, 2001), 11.

64. Author interview with Predrag Koraksic, New Belgrade, 14 June 2006.

65. Laura Silber, Milosevic Family Values, The New Republic 221:9(1999), 26.66. Koraksics portrayal of Milosevic was anything but flattering. From 1999 onwards, for

example, he drew Milosevicwithout eyes in order to make the point that the latter lived in

his own reality and did not want to see what was really happening around him. As well as

the eyes that could not see, Milosevic is easily recognized in Koraksics drawings by his

bristling hair, high forehead, and pug nose turned up at the end. Fat cheeks, protrudingchin and tight lips make up the finishing touches to his familiar character. His face is frozen,

expressionless. He never laughs, except in a cartoon where his pose is typical of a smiling

dictator (a kind of smile that makes your blood run cold!) surrounded by children with sad

and dumfounded faces. Trebjesanin, Slobo on Coraxs Couch, 8. In one of Koraksics car-

toons, Milosevic is standing in a Marilyn Monroetype pose on a grating, his uplifted skirt

revealing legs with cloven hooves and a Devils tail. Predrag Koraksic, ed., On [He]

(Belgrade: Plato, 2001), 41.67. Nepodobni Corax [Unsuitable Corax], Vreme (20 March 1995), 13.

68. Author interview with Ljubica Markovic, Belgrade, 22 June 2006.

69. Author interview with Professor Ranko Bugarski, Belgrade, 20 June 2006.

70. Hayden, Schindlers Fate, 743.

71. Author interview with Miljenko Dereta, Belgrade, 4 July 2006.

72. Koraksic, Interview.



75. Arendt,Responsibility and Judgement, 150-51.

76. Arendt,Responsibility and Judgement, 157-58.

77. Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt(New York: Fordham University Press, 2000),

26.78. Gordy, Accounting for a Violent Past, 6.

79. Gordy, Accounting for a Violent Past, 6.

80. Lewis, Collective Responsibility, 32.

81. Lewis, Collective Responsibility, 32.

82. Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt, 33.83. Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt, 35.


85. For example, in his opening address for the UK on 4 December 1945, Hartley Shawcross,

the chief British prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials, emphasized that the entire law relat-

ing to war crimes . . . is based upon the principle of individual responsibility. Cited in

Michael R. Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 1945-46: A Documentary History

(Boston: Bedford Books, 1997), 87.86. Gordy, Accounting for a Violent Past, 4.

87. Zivorad Kovacevic, Vukovar, Forgive! in Serbia and the World: Between Arrogance and

Humbleness, ed. Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia (Belgrade, Serbia:

Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, 2004), 302.

88. Perovic, To Tell the Difference, 108.

89. Gowan rightly points out that the Wests role in the disintegration of Yugoslavia has largely

been overlooked in Western literature. Peter Gowan, National Rights and International

Powers in Yugoslavias Dismemberment,Labour Focus on Eastern Europe 62 (1999): 18.

90. Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), 7.

91. Cited in Philip E. Auerswald and David P. Auerswald, eds., The Kosovo Conflict: A

Diplomatic History through Documents (The Hague, the Netherlands: Kluwer LawInternational, 2000), 730.

92. Michael Howard, The Causes of War and Other Essays (London: Temple Smith, 1983), 7.



26/26

93. John Mueller,Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War(New York: Basic

Books, 1990), 9.

94. Stanley Hoffman, The Crisis of Liberal Internationalism,Foreign Policy 98 (1995): 160.

95. John Macmillan, On Liberal Peace: Democracy, War, and the International Order

(London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1998), 281.

96. Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development andSecurity (London: Zed Books, 2001), 129.
