РАСКРСНИЦЕ САВРЕМЕНЕ СРПСКЕ ИСТОРИОГРАФИЈЕ
THE CHALLENGES OF CONTEMPORARY SERB HISTORIOGRAPHY

Summary/Abstract: The first part of the text presents a complex picture of the current situation in contemporary Serb historiography. The author points to the specific character of the period of Slobodan Milosevic’s rule and of its effect, combined with the disintegration of socialist Yugoslavia, on Serb historiography. The latter’s place in the public eye is determined, and an assessment made of the major problems hampering its work. The author shows how the pressure of direct Party control has been replaced by other problems, such as the need to confront amateur publications, the role of historiography in the national reawakening from the illusions of the past, financial difficulties, and insufficient professional progress. A certain lack of interest among the readers is pointed out, which comes after decades of hardships and a period of active interest of contents thought to reflect current politics. In the second part of the work the author casts a critical glance on a specific sociological trend in contemporary Serb historiography, especially when it makes actual events less clear. The results of new research should find their place in history textbooks and in them the past should not be reduced to something ugly and irrelevant from which nothing can be learnt. A historian must use his acquired knowledge of the past to build a critical perception that will establish a new identity for this science. The author underlines the view that the science dealing with the study of the past must never again be perceived as a means of totalitarian propaganda in the service of a specific ideological pattern.

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