Anglo-American Views of Gavrilo Princip

Author(s): Slobodan G. Marković / Language(s): English Issue: 46/2015

The paper deals with Western (Anglo-American) views on the Sarajevo assassination/attentat and Gavrilo Princip. Articles on the assassination and Prin¬cip in two leading quality dailies (The Times and The New York Times) have par¬ticularly been analysed as well as the views of leading historians and journalists who covered the subject including: R. G. D. Laffan, R. W. Seton-Watson, Win¬ston Churchill, Sidney Fay, Bernadotte Schmitt, Rebecca West, A. J. P. Taylor, Vladimir Dedijer, Christopher Clark and Tim Butcher. In the West, the original general condemnation of the assassination and its main culprits was challenged when Rebecca West published her famous travelogue on Yugoslavia in 1941. An¬other Brit, the remarkable historian A. J. P. Taylor, had a much more positive view on the Sarajevo conspirators and blamed Germany and Austria-Hungary for the outbreak of the Great War. A turning point in Anglo-American perceptions was the publication of Vladimir Dedijer’s monumental book The Road to Sarajevo (1966), which humanised the main conspirators, a process initiated by R. West. Dedijer’s book was translated from English into all major Western languages and had an immediate impact on the understanding of the Sarajevo assassination. The rise of national antagonisms in Bosnia gradually alienated Princip from Bosnian Muslims and Croats, a process that began in the 1980s and was completed during the wars of the Yugoslav succession. Although all available sources clearly show that Princip, an ethnic Serb, gradually developed a broader Serbo-Croat and Yu¬goslav identity, he was ethnified and seen exclusively as a Serb by Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks and Western journalists in the 1990s. In the past century imagining Princip in Serbia and the West involved a whole spectrum of views. In interwar Anglo-American perceptions he was a fanatic and lunatic. He became human¬ised by Rebecca West (1941), A. J. P. Taylor showed understanding for his act (1956), he was fully explained by Dedijer (1966), challenged and then exonerated by Cristopher Clark (2012–13), and cordially embraced by Tim Butcher (2014).

On a One-sided Interpretation of the Yugoslav Past

Author(s): Miloš Mišić / Language(s): English Issue: 46/2015

Ilarion Ruvarac et la critique de l’historiographie serbe

Author(s): Ramiz Abdyli / Language(s): French Issue: 01/2015

Jovan Ilarion Ruvarac est né en 1832 à Sremska Mitrovica (en Voivodine, appartenant a l’epoque a l’Empire d’Autriche). Fils de Vasilije, un ecclésiastique orthodoxe, et de sa femme Julijana, son prenom profane etait Jovan et il venait d’une famille honnete, modeste et dévouée à la lecture. Cela a eu une grande influence sur l’attachement du jeune Ilarion au livre et au savoir, tout comme ses deux frères aînés. Cette famille est bien connue pour sa contribution apportee a l’historiographie et a la litterature serbe du XIXe siècle, notamment par son frère cadet, Dimitrije, qui était également un historien.

THE DESTRUCTION AND TRANSFER OF ORTHODOX CHURCH PROPERTY IN POLAND, 1919-1939

Author(s): Antoni Mironowicz / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2014

The most difficult period that the Polish Autocephalous Church of the 2nd Polish Republic experienced was in 1938 when, by the decision of administrative authorities, over 127 sacral buildings in Khelm region and Podlachia were pulled down. The third transfer stage took place from 1937 to 1939 and, for the most part, took the form of demolishing Orthodox churches. (It should be noted that the demolition of Orthodox churches happened throughout the whole period of the existence of the Second Polish Republic.) The churches which were destroyed were those which were the symbols of the Russian Tsar’s reign. Over thirty Orthodox churches were destroyed, including the cathedral in Saski Square in Warsaw, the Sts. Cyril and Methodius cathedral in Khelm and the Resurrection cathedral in Bialystok. The demolition of these Orthodox churches – regarded as symbols of Russian rule – was spontaneous and often irrational. Nevertheless, it never happened on a massive scale. Only in 1938 did a programme of destroying Orthodox churches emerge as a distinct element of the Polonisation effort. This programme was initiated by the government itself. The official reason was that those churches were not needed, dilapidated, or had been built as a result of Russifi ation in the past. However, it appears that the reason was to weaken the Belarusian and Ukrainian national minority movement through closing parishes and active Orthodox churches. The “pacification: of parishes in 1937 started in the Lublin region. First, a kind of social movement for the “propagation of Polish values and traditions” was created by the polish local authority. Then the army and police persecuted the Orthodox Church and people in order to convert them to Roman Catholicism. The demolition of Orthodox churches was conducted from the second half of May until the first half of July 1938. The actions were taken up by the local administration and co-ordination committees with help from the army and police in a hostile, anti-Orthodox atmosphere. To this end, the government used youth, army sappers, worker brigades, and even prisoners. Administrative and material measures were used to pressure the Orthodox who were blackmailed and threatened while their churches, which often served thousands of faithful, were destroyed. In most cases, the Orthodox community made no attempt to actively resist the demolitions. They prayed and protested, but were unable to oppose such an officially organised action. The transfer and destruction of Orthodox Church property naturally weakened the position of the Orthodox Church for the campaign limited its priestly activities, in turn creating the very conditions for transfer, the main goal of the state’s policy. Many Orthodox faithful started attending Roman Catholic churches when they had no church or parish of their own. Nonetheless, the threat to the property of the Orthodox Church brought the faithful, clergy, and church hierarchy closer together. Anti-government and anti-Polish attitudes began to grow in the Orthodox community. The result may be seen in the Khelm, Podlachia, and Volhynia regions during the Second World War.

REVIZIONIZAM KAO PLATFORMA EKSTREMIZMA

Author(s): Milivoj Bešlin / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 181/2014

Original falsifikata

Author(s): Slobodanka Ast / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 181/2014

U STEGAMA TRAVESTIJE

Author(s): Slavica Vučković / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 181/2014

ČAS REVIZIJE ISTORIJE

Author(s): Slobodanka Ast / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 182/2015

Историја, сећање и право: још један осврт на проблем судске рехабилитације у Србији

Author(s): Jelena Đureinović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 3/2016

This paper discusses the legislation in Serbia which regulates rehabilitation of those killed, sentenced, or deprived of any rights for political or ideological reasons in Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the Second World War and its implementation in the court from the perspective of historiography and memory studies. The Serbian National Assembly adopted two Rehabilitation Acts in 2006 and 2011 with the aim to rehabilitate those sentenced, killed, or deprived of any rights because of political and ideological reasons after 1941. Although the mechanism of legal rehabilitation normally accommodates the victims of unfair trials by revising court processes, these laws, particularly the 2006 Rehabilitation Act, broadened the grounds for rehabilitation. The law includes those imprisoned or killed, as well as deprived of property or any rights, with and also without a court or administrative decision. Most importantly, because of the vague formulation of the 2006 Act, the rehabilitation practice in Serbia encompasses the persons sentenced for collaboration or war crimes as long as it can be argumented that there were ideological or political reasons involved, regardless if there were also other reasons for persecution. This led to in Europe unprecedented rehabilitation processes which has been happening in the courts in Serbia since 2006, which question and usually annul the postwar court decisions, rewriting the history of the Second World War and Yugoslavia. This paper examines how history and historical records are approached in the courtroom in the rehabilitation cases and the role of historians as expert witnesses. The aim of the paper is to examine the framing of the narrative in the courtroom and the selectivity in the approach to archival documents and testimonies which arises from the formulation of the Rehabilitation Acts themselves. Moreover, the paper is concerned with the mechanism of rehabilitation from the perspective of its potential for the study of collective memory and argues that it represents a very valuable source for examining otherwise understudied reception in memory studies.

Domenico Losurdo, Historijski revizionizam. Problemi i mitovi

Author(s): Todor Kuljić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1/2018

Review of: Domenico Losurdo, Historijski revizionizam. Problemi i mitovi, Zagreb: Prosvjeta, 2017. s talijanskoga preveli Luka Bogdanić i Jasna Tkalec

РЕВИЗИОНИСТИЧКА ИДЕОЛОШКА МАТРИЦА. СПОЉНИ ИЛИ УНУТРАШЊИ НЕПРИЈАТЕЉ АНТРОПОЛОШКОГ ПРОМИШЉАЊА СТВАРНОСТИ?

Author(s): Aleksandra Pavićević / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2009

Autonomy of science and arts is the ideal of every civilized society. How distant is a society from such an ideal depends on a number of parameters, among which the most important could be the cultural enlightenment and consciousness of main actors in these two areas. Unfortunately, Serbia cannot pride itself with high level of democratization of creative processes. Formally, they are presently more independent from the state ideology, but at the same time, they are basically and vitally bounded by it. One must bear in mind that the term autonomy does not entirely fulfill itself with financial, or even ideological independence of free and creative thinking from official institutions. That term primarily refers to possibilities and space that science and arts open up for creation of universal values, i. e. values that transcend the present moment and, as such, strive to contribute to world cultural and nonmaterial heritage. (Non)scientific politics of science in Serbia heavily determines the fact that scientific papers are almost exclusively becoming commentaries of current political and social occurrences. Evaluation of results of scientific work by simply summing up the number of published papers and points they carry, leaves no time for substantial analysis and thoughtful insights into scientific problems of today. Even though the scientific dwellers (in this case ethnologists/anthropologists) agreed to participate in these (non)scientific Olympics, creators of this Olympic discipline are publically stating that humanities have "failed" in the last project period. Issues being raised in this paper are: what is the real ethnologic/anthropologic production in this period, and are the consequences of the current policy of the Ministry of Science already visible in the contents of this production.

Povijest, povijesni revizionizam i politike povijesti

Author(s): Mirjana Kasapović / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 3/2019

U članku se razmatra razlika između povijesne znanosti i politikā povijesti kao poddiscipline političke znanosti koja se bavi načinima i oblicima suočavanja suvremenih država i društava s traumatičnim i „mračnim” događajima i razdobljima nacionalnih povijesti. Jedan je način suočavanja s njima povijesni revizionizam kao ideološki i politički motivirano nastojanje da se reinterpretiraju postojeća znanstvena tumačenja te, posljedično, ublaži ili izbriše „zla prošlost”. No povijesni revizionizam označuje i legitimnu metodu reinterpretacije povijesti koja se temelji na novim spoznajama stečenim znanstvenim istraživanjima. Razliku između tih dvaju značenja povijesnoga revizionizma autorica prikazuje na primjerima Njemačke i Izraela. U hrvatskoj historiografiji, povijesnoj i političkoj publicistici nakon 1990. prevladavali su pokušaji ideološki i politički motivirane revizije povijesti Nezavisne Države Hrvatske.

Róza Luxemburgová – kritika revizionizmu, imperializmu, militarizmu

Author(s): Dominika Dinušová / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 2/2019

The paper focuses on the historical-philosophical reflection on the work of Rosa Luxemburg, one of the most prominent figures in the history of social and political thought in the early 20th century. It highlights Luxemburg’s theoretical and practical contribution to shaping history and outlines the specific context of political events that Rosa Luxemburg explained in her work and that inspired her to act. In terms of theoretical analysis, the paper deals with Luxemburg’s perspective on the critique of revisionism, imperialism and militarism, which form the basic aspects of her theoretical work.

Dekonstrukcija povijesti

Author(s): Senija Milišić / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 1/2016

This paper based on a few examples deals with that how the Serbian historians retouched the past. All these examples are rconnected in a certain way. Encouraged by the same author and in the service of the evil insinuations of Milorad Ekmečić primarily to Bosniaks people, and then to the general public.

HISTORIOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF REVISIONISM

Author(s): Srđan Milošević / Language(s): English Issue: 153/2019

In the cult dystopic novel Brave New World, the same as in Orwell’s 1984 and many other lite¬rary writings of similar genre, historical contexts are subject to arbitrary modifications, which actually testifies of a true awareness about the significance of the past as the source of legiti¬mization, but also as rational explanation of the present. It is advisable that, in the modern era, such an explanation, even if wrong, is or sounds rational; this is why the past has to be modified, that’s why things insubstantial have to be emphasized as substantive, and the sum and substance marginalized. Least advisable is to openly make things up since interventions as such are easily disclosed as deceptions.

REVISIONISM AS A FOUNDATION OF NATIONALISTIC IDEOLOGY

Author(s): Milivoj Bešlin / Language(s): English Issue: 153/2019

Anti-fascism is not and cannot be a predomi¬nant value in the societies of nationalistic ide¬ology as their main pillar of legitimacy. In Ser¬bia, for as long as a quarter of a century, ever since destruction of second Yugoslavia that was based on consensual anti-fascism, anti-fascist legacy has been marginalized and banalized. More than twenty generations have been raised in the society in which anti-fascist values have not been predominant but replaced by the ideas characteristic of nationalism, xenophobia, neo-fascism and rehabilitation of WWII quislings, the ideas that had inspired violence, war, crimes, plunder, and annihilated social solidarity and human empathy.

THE ERA OF DECADENCE

Author(s): Aleksandar Sekulović / Language(s): English Issue: 153/2019

The tectonic wave of historiographic revisionism that along with rehabilitation of the Chetnik movement and its leader Draža Mihailović hit Serbia like a natural disaster is only a segment – though an important one – of the global revanchist crusade of the philosophy of state egoism against the idea of internationalism. The said crusade has been going on for several decades; and, as things stand now, it managed to place the once powerful idea of internationalism on the margin of social consciousness. The idea of internationalism reached its summit when its main protagonist, the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, was at the peak of its strength, in 1960-80. Main issues of intellectual engagement of the time were the threat of a nuclear war, hunger and poverty in underdeveloped countries, debt slavery, emergence of a new international economic order, struggle against colonialism, climate changes and ruthless destruction of natural environment.

Како је и зашто пала „декларисана одбрана историје“ Дубравке Стојановић и Хусније Камберовића?

Author(s): Dragiša Vasić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2021

An article by Dragiša D. Vasić on drastic examples of the politicization and mythmaking of the Bosniak historical narrative, and polemical essays by Dubravka Stojanović and Husnija Kamberović were published in the journal Tokovi istorije in 2/2020 and 3/2020 issues. This paper analyzes the polemics in light of the declaration called “Defend History”, published in 2020 by a group of historians from the post-Yugoslav area, including Dubravka Stojanović and Husnija Kamberović. The paper demonstrates the pamphleteerist character of the declaration and numerous abuses of history, as well as its ideological and political background.

НУЖНО ЛИ УБИВАТЬ ДРАКОНА, ИЛИ ИСТОРИЧЕСКИЙ РЕВИЗИОНИЗМ КАК МЕТОДОЛОГИЧЕСКАЯ ПРОБЛЕМА ПОСТКОЛОНИАЛЬНЫХ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ НА ПРИМЕРЕ ИРЛАНДИИ

Author(s): Alexander Mihailovich Bialiauski / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2023

In the historiography of post-colonial studies, Ireland may be of particular interest, since this country was one of the first British colonies to achieve independence. Accordingly, certain trends in its development, including historiography and methodology of historical source studies, emerged almost half a century earlier than in other former British colonies, which makes it possible to make cautious predictions about the occurrence of certain problems of post-colonial historiography in general and some possible ways to solve them.

Historians Resisting Tyranny: A Preliminary Evaluation

Author(s): Antoon De Baets / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

Since time immemorial, dictators have censored the writing of history and persecuted its practitioners. This policy of history censorship has had many effects, some of which were unintended, such as the development of strategies to counter the distortion of history. This essay therefore opens with a summary overview of the intended and unintended effects of the censorship of the science of history. Against this backdrop, the essay then focuses on one unintended effect of this censorship: resistance to the distortion of history. A tableau is given of the repertoires of available types of resistance under dictatorships and, for comparative purposes, in democracies. The essay uses these repertoires to analyze the resistance of the historians under dictatorships from four perspectives: actors (historians and others); conduct (acts and omissions), motives (ethical, moral, professional, and political), and impact (short-term and long-term). The essay is intended as a tribute, both to historians who once resisted tyrannical power and to historians who retell their stories as an inspiration for present and future battles.