Mass Violence in the former Yugoslavia: From Perpetration to Prosecution
Instructor: Vladimir Petrovic
Short Description: This course examines the violent demise of Yugoslavia in comparative perspective, with an emphasis on its atrocious character. The course is grounded in historical investigation of mass violence, but also draws from nationalism studies, international relations, transitional justice and forensic practices. It is hence organized in two segments – wartime and postwar, revolving around three central topics: (1) WARS which accompanied the collapse of the country, their causes and character; (2) CRIMES committed in the course of the warfare, their scope and function and (3) TRIALS and other efforts to prosecute those responsible and societal response to those attempts.
Method: Interactive lectures, as well as participation of the students in hands-on workshops and study visits should generate active engagement. As wars in the former Yugoslavia belong to some of the best-documented conflicts in recent history, we will engage with a wide range of sources, from testimonies to official documents, from judicial evidence to audio-visual material. Visual documentation will be given special emphasis, in light of its its importance for the forensic documentation of events, as well as the plurality of their interpretations. The general aim of the course is to challenge simplistic readings of the end of Yugoslavia. Revisiting the most catastrophic decade for its people and the ways they reconcile with its legacy today will generate insights into contemporary war crimes in the post-Soviet space, which follow similar playbook.
Relevance & Learning Outcomes:
Through gaining knowledge on the collapse of Yugoslavia, students will gain insights of relevance far beyond this region. We engage with the issues of state making and breaking, politics of national identity, war, ideologies and ethnic conflict as well as postwar reconstruction, offering valuable lessons to those with specific interests in this geographical area, as well as to students who have interest in these phenomena, which continue to shape the 21st century. Students will be enabled to critically engage with primary sources, literature and visuals; in particular they will learn to combine findings from the fields of humanities, social sciences and law. They are expected to demonstrate the ability to digest the literature, critically scrutinize the visuals and extract discussion points, as well as to present their findings in class discussions, presentations, workshops and their final paper, actively contributing to the process of dealing with the past.
Grading:
The final grade is composed of
• Attendance and informed participation in class discussions: 20 %
• In-class presentation: 20%
• Team work: 20 %
• Final paper (2000-3000 words): 40 %
General literature
• Catherine Baker, The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Basingstoke: Palgrave 2015
• Siniša Malešević,.. Nationalisms and Wars in the Balkans. In: Grounded Nationalisms: A Sociological Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, 160–187.
• Calic, Marie-Janine. “Ethnic Cleansing and War Crimes, 1991–1995” Comparative Southeast European Studies, vol. 55, no. 1, 2007, 70-106
• Martina Fischer Struggling with the Legacy of War – Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, , in Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Lessons from the Balkans, Routledge 2016, 3-23.
• How to Destroy a State, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbH13sBHvDI&t=1111s
Course overview
Week 1: Introducing the topic, outlining the course, discussing the readings and main concepts
Workshop 1: Working with primary sources, utilizing on the ICTY database
Week 2: Wartime in the former Yugoslavia: Background, sources, protagonists
Workshop 2: Analyzing wartime propaganda and hate speech
Week 3: Wartime in the former Yugoslavia: War crimes and the concept of ‘ethnic cleansing’
Workshop 3: Mapping of student’s findings on the Yugoslav spiral of violence portal
Week 4: Wartime in the former Yugoslavia: Methods, actors and effects of mass violence
Workshop 4: Analyzing the demographic changes in the former Yugoslav space
Week 5: Postwar in the former Yugoslavia: International and national war crimes prosecutions
Workshop 5: Visit to the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals
Week 6: Postwar in the former Yugoslavia: Extrajudicial initiatives of reckoning with crimes
Workshop 6: Working with visual sources of mass violence
Week 7: Postwar in the former Yugoslavia: Lessons and Legacies
Workshop 7: Group presentations: Strategies of confronting the legacy of violence
Week 8: Concluding session: After Yugoslavia
Week 1: Introduction: What was Yugoslavia and where did it go?
Class 1: Parachuted into the crime scene
• Glenn E.Curtis (ed.) Yugoslavia; a country study, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1992., 42-58, 172-183, 221-4
• Uğur Ümit Üngör, “Studying Mass Violence: Pitfalls, Problems, and Promises,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 7, 1 (April 2012): 68–80
Workshop 1: Working with the primary sources
• CIA National Intelligence Estimate NIE 15/90, October 1990: Yugoslavia transformed
• UN Special Rapporteur, Situation of Human Rights in the Territory of the former Yugoslavia https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/176946
• OSA Arhivum, HU OSA 304 Records of the International Human Rights Law Institute Relating to the Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia
• ICTY Court records http://icr.icty.org/
• Iva Vukušić. The Archives of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. History 98 2013/4, 623-635.
Further readings: ; Wachtel, A. & Bennet, C., “The Dissolution of Yugoslavia,” in C. Ingrao & T. A. Emmert (Eds.) Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars’ Initiative Washington DC: USIP & Purdue University Press, 2012, 12-47.; John Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, New York : Columbia University Press 2000; John Lampe, Yugoslavia as History: Twice there was a country, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000; Andrew Wachtel, Making a Nation Breaking a Nation, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1998. Sabrina Ramet, Balkan Babel. The Disintegration Of Yugoslavia From The Death Of Tito To The Fall Of Milosevic, Westview Press, 1996.
Visuals: The Death of Yugoslavia, BBC 1996: Part 1 Enter Nationalism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCRy4lb20sc
PART I: WARTIME IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA: WARS AND CRIMES
Week 2: Background, Sources, Protagonists
• Dejan Jovic, The Disintegration of Yugoslavia: A Critical Review of Explanatory Approaches, European Journal of Social Theory February 2001/4: 101-120,
• Vladimir Petrović, Becoming Inevitable: Yugoslav Descent to War Reviseted, in Predrag J. Marković, Bojan B. Dimitrijević, Repeating History 1941-1991? Belgrade: Institute for Contemporary History 2022, 103-127.
Workshop 2: Analyzing wartime propaganda and hate speech
• Predrag Dojčinović, Introduction to Propaganda, War Crimes Trials and International Law: From Speakers’ Corner to War Crimes (Routledge 2012)
• Wartime Propaganda Examples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GDhRZKfHL4
Furtther readings: R.Craig Nation, War in the Balkans 1991-2000, Strategic Studies Institute, 2003, 106-149; Warren Zimmerman, Origins of a Catastrophe – Yugoslavia and its Destroyers, New York, Times Book, 1996 Mark Thompson, Forging War: The Media in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,(Luton: University of Luton Press 1999); Kemal Kurspahić, Prime Time Crime. Balkan Media in War and Peace, (Washington D.C.: US Institute of Peace Press, 2003); Rade Veljanovski, Turning the Electronic Media Around, in Nebojša Popov, The Road to War in Serbia, Trauma and Catharsis, Budapest: Central University Press, 2000, 565/586.
Visuals: Open Society Archives, Room Without a View: Inside the Processing of Yugoslav Television Broadcasts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk7f4mGl6e8 War Crimes BBC Death of Yugoslavia: The Road to War 2, Documentary as a Source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4FyNwX_whw
Week 3: War crimes and the concept of ‘ethnic cleansing’
• Vesna Pešić, The War for Ethnic States, in Nebojša Popov (ed.), The Road to War in Serbia, Trauma and Catharsis, Budapest: Central University Press, 2000, 9-49
• Ozren Žunac, Mile Bjelajac, War in Croatia, C.Ingrao & T. A. Emmert (Eds.) Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars’ Initiative Washington DC: USIP & Purdue University Press, 2012, 230-271
Workshop 3: Mapping of student’s findings on the Yugoslav spiral of violence portal
• Yugoslav Spiral of Violence 1991 https://devedesete.vip/en/?pismo=lat
• Judith Armatta, Historical Revelations from the Milošević Trial, Southeastern Europe 36 (2012) 10–38
Further reading: R.Craig Nation, War in the Balkans 1991-2000, Strategic Studies Institute, 2003, 150-222 Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military History of the Yugoslav Conflict, 1900–1995. Volume 2. Washington: Central Intelligence Agency, 2003; V. P. Gagnon, Jr. The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. James Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997 Josip Glaurdic, The Hour of Europe: Western Powers and the Breakup of Yugoslavia, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2011.
Visuals: BBC Death of Yugoslavia: Wars of Independence 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwxWV0VVvRE
Week 4: Wartime in the former Yugoslavia: Methods, actors and effects of mass violence
• Iva Vukušič, Serbian Paramilitaries and the Breakup of Yugoslavia mState Connections and Patterns of Violence, Routledge 2022, 132-169.
• Josip Glaurdic, “Inside the Serbian War Machine: The Milosevic Telephone Intercepts, 1991-1992.” East European Politics & Societies 23.1 (2009):86-104.
Workshop 4: Analyzing the role of violence in demographic changes in Bosnia
• Ewa Tabeau, “Conflict in Numbers: Casualties of the 1990s Wars in the former Yugoslavia, 1991-1999” https://www.helsinki.org.rs/projects_cin.html
• Richard Butler, Srebrenica Military Narrative https://www.documentcloud.org/ documents/ 2425131 – srebrenica-military-narrative-butler.html
• Srebrenica; Genocide in Eight Acts http://srebrenica.sense-agency.com/en/
Further reading: : Slavenka Drakulic, They would never hurt a fly, War Criminals on Trial in the Hague, New York, Viking 2004; James Gow, The Serbian Project and its Adversaries. A Strategy of War Crimes (London :Hurst&co, 2003); Human Rights Watch, War Crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 1992, https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/y/yugoslav/yugo.928/yugo928full.pdf Anthony Loyd, My War has Gone By, I miss it so, London: Penguin 2001. Vojin Dimitrijević, Conflict and Compromise. The International Community and the Yugoslav Crisis, in Nebojša Popov (ed.), The Road to War in Serbia, Trauma and Catharsis, Budapest: Central University Press, 2000, 633-660. De val van Srebrenica: luchtsteun en voorkennis in nieuw perspectief, Amsterdam: Boom 2016.
Visuals: BBC Gates of Hell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwdZKW1SaMs
Sarajevo crazy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUVJU3uWOuo
PART II: POSTWAR IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA: CRIMES AND TRIALS
Week 5: Postwar in the former Yugoslavia: International and national prosecutions
• John Allcock, The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, C. Ingrao & T. A. Emmert (Eds.) Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars’ Initiative (pp. 12-47). Washington DC: USIP & Purdue University Press. 346-389.
• Vladimir Petrović, Prosecuting War Crimes Committed in the former Yugoslavia in National and International Context, CAS Working Papers Series 2011/4, 3-35
Workshop 5: Visit to the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals
• Milanović, Marko. 2016. «The Impact of the ICTY on the Former Yugoslavia: An Anticipatory Postmortem». American Journal of International Law 110 (2): 233–259
• Justice at Work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRRML4Ia8_I
Further reading: Michael P. Scharf. Balkan Justice: The Story Behind the First International War Crimes Trial Since Nuremberg Carolina Academic Press, 1997, Rachel Kerr. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: An Exercise in Law, Politics, and Diplomacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.; Jelena Subotić, Hijacked Justice. Dealing with the Past in the Balkans, Cornell University Press 2009. Mladen Ostojić, Between Justice and Stability, The Politics of War Crimes Prosecution in Post-Milošveić Serbia, Routledge 2016
Visuals: ICTY, Voice of the Victims http://www.icty.org/en/in-focus/voice-of-the-victims Šešelj in the Hague https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXNECxVF9X0
Week 6: Postwar in the former Yugoslavia: Extrajudicial initiatives of reckoning with crimes
• Vladimir Petrović, Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc, The Impact of the ICTY on Democratisation in the Yugoslav Successor States in Sabrina Ramet et al. (ed.), Building Democracy in Yugoslav Successor States, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 135-162
• RECOM Reconciliation Network https://www.recom.link/
• Nießer, Jacqueline. (2017). Which Commemorative Models Help? A Case Study from Post-Yugoslavia. In Mischa Gabowitsch (ed.) Replicating Atonement: Foreign Models in the Commemoration of Atrocities, Springer 2017, 131-161.
Workshop 6: Working with visual sources of mass violence
• David Rief, That These Photographs Exist LA Times, January 2001, http://articles.latimes.com/2001/jan/21/books/bk-14875
• Vladimir Petrović. Power(lessness) of Atrocity Images: Bijeljina Photos between Perpetration and Prosecution of War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia, International Journal for Transitional Justice 2015/2, 367-385.
• David Campbell, Photography, Atrocity and memory https://www.david-campbell.org/photography/atrocity-and-memory/ https://www.david-campbell.org/wp-content/documents/Atrocity_memory_photography_1.pdf
Further reading: Nenad Dimitrijevic, Duty to Respond: Mass Crime, Denial, and Collective Responsibility, Budapest: Central European Press, 2011; Christian Delage, Caught on Camera: Film in the Courtroom from the Nuremberg Trials to the Trials of the Khmer Rouge, Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Lessons from the Balkans, edited By Martina Fischer, Olivera Simic, Routledge 2016
Visuals: REKOM initiative https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td4ceXkql1M
Quo Vadis, Aida https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avajmWC_pV8
Week 7: Postwar in the former Yugoslavia: Lessons and Legacies
• Nenad Dimitrijevic Serbia After the Criminal Past: What Went Wrong and What Should be Done, International Journal for Transitional Justice, 2, i1 (2008): 5-22
• Vladimir Petrović, Arrested Development Collision of Initiatives to Face the Atrocious Past in Serbia
• Public Opinion poll: Attitudes towards war crimes issues, ICTY
and the national judiciary http://www.osce.org/serbia/90422
Workshop 7: Group presentations: Strategies of confronting the legacy of violence
• Petrovic, Vladimir “A Crack in the Wall of Denial. The Scorpions Video in and out of the Courtroom”, in Žarkov, Dubravka and Marlies Glasius, Narratives of Justice, Former Yugoslava and Beyond, Springer 2014, 89-110.
• Scorpions: A home movie http://www.hlc-rdc.org/?p=14360&lang=de
Further reading: Diana Orentlicher, Shrinking the Space for Denial, The Impact of the ICTY in Serbia, Open Society Institute, New York 2008; Sabrina Ramet, Disputes about the Dissolution of Yugoslavia and its Wake, in , Florian Bieber et al., Debating the End of Yugoslavia, London: Ashgate, 2014, 39-54
Visuals: Belgrade Healer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ8CnasrC-c&t=3s
Al Jazeera, Rewriting Yugoslav history: Serbian war criminals-turned authors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-bUxkmjBQY&t=94s
Week 8: Concluding session: After Yugoslavia
• Lana Pasic, Democracy, 25 years after Yugoslavia https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/lana-pasic/democracy-25-years-after-yugoslavia
• Bruno Tetrais, Loic Tregoures, From Sarajevo to Mariupol: what the Yugoslav Wars can teach us about Ukraine’s fate https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/analysis/sarajevo-mariupol-what-yugoslav-wars-can-teach-us-about-ukraines-fate
• Katarina Ristić, We Didn’t Start the Fire: Military Interventions from Kosovo to Kiev, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/36390
Further reading: Sabrina Ramet, Thinking about Yugoslavia, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 2005; Perica, Vjekoslav; Velikonja, Mitja, eds. (2011). Political Myths in the Former Yugoslavia and Successor States: A Shared Narrative. Dodrecht : Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation 2011; Nebojša Vladisavljević, Does Scholarly Literature on the Breakup of Yugoslavia Travel Well? In Florian Bieber et al, Debating the End of Yugoslavia, Ashgate, 2014, 67-80; Radmila Gorup, After Yugoslavia, Stanford University Press 2013.
Visuals: What Lessons From the Yugoslav Wars Can We Use for Ukraine Today? https://events.ceu.edu/2022-03-08/what-lessons-yugoslav-wars-can-we-use-ukraine-today
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