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The Myths of Serbian Nationalism are national myths of Serbs. There are three central myths of Serbian nationalism: of heroic Serbian army during the World War I, of martyrdom of Serbs during the World War II and Kosovo Myth. The other myth include myth of ethnic purity, Zoran Đinđić myth and many other.

Background

The Myths of Serbian nationalism were created to strengthen Serb national spirit.^[1] Starting from the early 17th century, the Austrian controlled Srem became the major center for the development of the Serbian national mythology. Anti-Turkish sentiment of Serbs in Austria resulted with anti-Turkish national myths of Serbs. Serbs from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia Proper and Macedonia had the opposite position because their feelings were anti-Austrian. If they would have created Serbian national history instead of Austrian influenced Serbs the Serbian national identity would have been much different.^[2]

Holm Sundhausen believed that there is specific Balkan mentality characterized by a particular propensity for myths.^[3] Sundhausen emphasized that those myths included the myth of golden pre-Ottoman period, myth of Turkish yoke, of ethnic purity, of national rebirth, the Kosovo myth, the hayduk myth and victimization myth.^[4] This view was criticized by Maria Todorova who pointed to similar Western myths and underlined that this myths were inflamed to be operational only at certain periods, such as period of Yugoslav wars.^[5] Renata Salecl pointed to the incorrect hypothesis that myths of Serbian nationalism are constructs imposed by the government, emphasizing that people adopt myths because they are articulate some of their utopian desires.^[6] The Myths of Serb nation had been built on the basis of Serb virtue, sense of justice and victimization.^[7]

Central myths

According to Bogdan Denitch there are three central myths of Serbian nationalism^[8] :

Myth of heroic role of army of the Kingdom of Serbia during the First World War
Myth of martyrdom of Serbs during the Second World War
Kosovo myth

David Bruce Macdonald emphasized that myths of Serbian nationalism were used to re-awaken the people and could be described as Smith's Golden Age of nationalism which includes myths of origin, descent and heroic age.^[9] Serbian myths glorify Serbian Byzantine tradition and Orthodox Christianity, while in contrast, Croatian myths mirror glorification of the Croatian Western tradition and Catholicism.^[10]

Kosovo Myth

The Kosovo Myth is a belief held by a large group of people that the Battle of Kosovo symbolizes the martyrdom of the Serbian nation in defense of the Serbian honor and Christendom against the Turks. This belief is sometimes propagated to evoke the sense of pride and national grievance among Serbs.^[11] The Kosovo Myth is the central myth of Serbian nationalism.^[12] It presents the Kosovo Battle of 1389 as "a titanic contest between Christian Europe and the Islamic East" in which Tsar Lazar renounced "the earthly kingdom for a heavenly one".^[13] The real Battle of Kosovo was not so decisive as presented by this myth because the final downfall of medieval Serbia happened 70 years after it, in 1459 when Ottomans captured Smederevo.^[14]

The Kosovo myth pictures Serbia as Antemurale Christianitatis, similarly to constructions of the other nations in the Balkans.^[14] According to this myth, the Serbs sacrificed themselves to allow civilized Europe to flourish.^[15]

The Kosovo Myth existed in the Serbian oral tradition for centuries, until it was recorded by early collectors like Vuk Karadžić and evoked by Slobodan Milošević at the end of 1980's.^[11] Since its establishment at the end of the 14th century the Kosovo Myth and its poetic, literary, religious, and philosophical exposition was intertwined with political and ideological agendas.^[16] Shortly after the Battle of Kosovo this battle was mythologized which over the time resulted with creation of the Kosovo Myth.^[17]

The scale of interpretations of the Kosovo Myth is undeniably one of the richest. On one side it can be interpreted as "democratic, anti-feudal, with a love for justice and social equality" while on the another as "an instrument of fascist policy of violence and expansion".^[18]

In the illogical interpretations of late 20th century Serbian nationalists, the choice for heavenly Serbia also entitled Serbs to the earthly kingdom which Lazar actually renounced. According to this interpretations Serbs were heavenly nation "authorized by God to sweep away all that stood at its path".^[13] According to some prejudices based on this myth, during Bosnian war of 1990's, Muslims from Bosnia were held responsible for the Serbian defeat in Kosovo Battle although people from Bosnia were Christians at that time and participated on the Serbian side in this battle.^[19] The centrality of the Kosovo Myth was one of the main causes for merging ethnic and religious identity of Serbs.^[20]

Noel Malcolm believes that Kosovo Myth is constructed by modern Serb nationalism.^[21]

Myth of Serbian military valor

The myth of Serbian military valor presents Serbian army as defending the interests of non-Serbs of the region.^[18]

In the school texbooks during 1990s, ratio of war topic and peace topic is 4:1 while 84% of the text dedicated to military valor with patriotic message being strongest messages in textbooks in Serbia.^[22] There are some elements of the kitsch in Serbian myths which can be recognized in myth of invincibility of Serbs, in some cases having syndrome of "moral victory" which allows to proclaim lost battles as moral victories.^[23]

Myth of martyrdom of Serbs during the Second World War

The Myth of martyrdom of Serbs during the Second World War was more important than the myth of Kosovo during Yugoslav wars in 1990's.^[24] David Bruce MacDonald underlined that myth of sacrifice had an important role in re-evaluating the history of Serbs and Croats, in the case of Serbs particularly regarding the many sacrifices of Serbs for the creation of Yugoslavia in the period of Kingdom of Yugoslavia and World War II.^[25] He also points that this martyrdom was often seen as a weakness of the Serbs, not their virtue.^[26]

Other myths

Myth of ethnic purity

Besides myth of "golden" pre-Ottoman times, Myth of Kosovo, Myth of the Turkish Yoke, the Hajduk Myth and Victimization Myth the Myth of ethnic purity is one of the most important myths in the Balkans.^[27] Serbian myth allows possibility that modern-day Romanians, Albanians, Croats, Slovenians, Muslims and Bulgarians descended from Serbs, while most radical versions of the myth present Serbs as the oldest nation on the world and Serbian language as primordial language of the mankind.^[28]

Myth of Serbs as chosen people

At the end of 19th century Serbs were the only nation with nation-state of all other nations who in 1918 entered Yugoslavia.^[29] At that time appeared several historians who promoted the hypothesis of Serbs as the oldest nation in the world, chosen to be the messiah of other Serbs and people on the Balkans who lived either in Austria-Hungary or Ottoman Empire.^[30] At the beginning of 1990's a small group of historians in Serbia published works based on this group of 19th-century authors and continued to promote hypothesis about Serbs as the oldest nation in the world.^[31] This hypothesis was also promoted by one painter - Milić od Mačve, who publicly emphasized various prophecies about Serbs as chosen people, including the prophecy about the cataclysm of the world which will destroy all people on Earth except a handful of people under the plum three, which was a symbol of Serbia.^[32] Robert George Dalrymple Laffan published in 1989 work titled The Serbs: The Guardians of the Gate in which he used a story of David and Goliath to create mythological story about Serbs as chosen people.^[33] Laffan depicted Serbia as a small country positioned on the strategically important territory targeted by many powerful enemies while Serbs were depicted as chosen people who defended civilized Europe from barbarianism originating in Istanbul and Berlin.^[34]

Zoran Đinđić myth

After death of Zoran Đinđić he was mythologized into symbol of "good Serbia" while his death was interpreted as sacrifice for well being of the Serb nation.^[13]

Myth of Great Serbia

The establishment of the Myth of Great Serbia can be linked to Serbian Empire, an ephemeral polity in the history of the Balkans which was the result of favorable circumstances and actions of skillful political and military leader, the Emperor Stefan Dušan.^[35] Based on this historical roots this myth survived in national ideology of Serbs to support 19th century national awakening, the foreign policy of Serbia and its hegemony within federative Yugoslavia.^[36]

With appropriate political stimulation, the myth of Great Serbia started to replace the ideas of ie Yugoslavianism replacing them with ideas of Serbocentrism.^[37]

Apologists of secession of Croatia and Slovenia presented SFR Yugoslavia as the legatee of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia portrayed as inflexibly dominated by nationalistic Serb political elite.^[38]

Criticism

Slobodan Naumović, professor of ethnology and anthropology, emphasizes that a number of scholarly texts about myths of Serbian nationalism applied strategy of orientalisation or more precisely Balkanisation.^[39] Texts about myths of Serbian ethnic nationalism usually depict them of as "barbarian" and "primitive" with background in the "madness of ethnic purity".^[40] Naumović depicted such strategy as inappropriate for social science.^[41]

The Memorandum of Serbian Academy of Science and Arts and Slobodan Milošević were blamed for fabrication of myths to inspire nationalism of Serbs and direct their efforts toward creation of the Greater-Serbia.^[42]

Gertjan Dijink pointed to analysis that brutal Yugoslav wars were partly a result of failure of the Yugoslav narrative which gave a sense of identity and dignity to its population. Dijink emphasize that it is a great tragedy that wars unleashed because of perished Yugoslav myths had to be stopped by destroying Serbian myths which remained.^[43]

References

^ (Balorda 2009, p. 124)
^ George W. White (2000). Nationalism and Territory: Constructing Group Identity in Southeastern Europe. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 215. ISBN 978-0-8476-9809-7. The overwhelming influence of Serbs from the Vojvodina and Srem in the literary fields and the arts, coupled with their anti-Turkish sentiments, resulted in a Serbian national myth that was anti-Turkish.
^ (Todorova 2004, p. 7)
^ (Todorova 2004, p. 7)
^ (Todorova 2004, p. 7)
^ (Salecl 2002, p. 136)
^ Danopoulos, Constantine Panos; Vajpeyi, Dhirendra K.; Bar-Or, Amir (2004), Civil-military Relations, Nation Building, and National Identity: Comparative Perspectives, Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 156, ISBN 978-0-275-97923-2, Throughout history the Serbian myths had been built around the Serbs' righteousness, sense of justice, and victimization by others.
^ Bogdan Denis Denitch (1994). Ethnic nationalism: the tragic death of Yugoslavia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. p. 113. ISBN 9780816624591. Retrieved 8 September 2011. There are three central nationalist myths in Serbia: that of the heroic role of the Serbian army in the First World War, that of the martyrdom of the Serbs in Second World War, especially in Croatia, and that of Kosovo
^ (Macdonald 2002, p. 73)
^ (Kolstø 2005, p. 135):"Serbian myths celebrate Serbian belonging to the Byzantine tradition and Orthodox Christianity . Croatian myths mirror the pride of the Croatian belonging to the West and long historic ties with Roman - papal Christianity ."
^ ^a ^b Stuart J. Kaufman (2001). Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War. Cornell University Press. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-8014-8736-1. Cite error: The named reference "Kaufman2001" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
^ Karl Kaser; Elisabeth Katschnig-Fasch (2005). Gender and Nation in South Eastern Europe. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 95. ISBN 978-3-8258-8802-2. The myth of Kosovo is the central national myth of Serbia.
^ ^a ^b ^c Sabrina P. Ramet (8 December 2005). Thinking about Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. Cambridge University Press. p. 149. ISBN 978-0-521-61690-4. a titanic contest between Christian Europe and the Islamic East Cite error: The named reference "Ramet2005" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
^ ^a ^b Biljana Vankovska; Haken Wiberg (24 October 2003). Between Past and Future: Civil-Military Relations in Post-Communist Balkan States. I.B.Tauris. p. 227. ISBN 978-1-86064-624-9. Cite error: The named reference "VankovskaWiberg2003" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
^ Danopoulos, Constantine Panos; Vajpeyi, Dhirendra K.; Bar-Or, Amir (2004), Civil-military Relations, Nation Building, and National Identity: Comparative Perspectives, Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 154, ISBN 978-0-275-97923-2
^ Marko Živković (2011). Serbian Dreambook: National Imaginary in the Time of Milošević. Indiana University Press. p. 189. ISBN 978-0-253-22306-7. From its very inception the myth of Kosovo and its poetic, literary, religious, and philosophical exegesis was intertwined with political agendas and ideologies....
^ Milica Cimeša (28 November 2012). Marija Wakounig (ed.). From Collective Memories to Intercultural Exchanges. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 78. ISBN 978-3-643-90287-0. ... the great amount of mythologization that followed shortly after it.
^ ^a ^b Anamaria Dutceac Segesten (2009). Myth, Identity and Conflict: A Comparative Analysis of Romanian and Serbian Textbooks. p. 163. ISBN 978-1-109-19838-6. Cite error: The named reference "Segesten2009" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
^ Džemal Sokolović (2006). Nation vs. people: Bosnia is just a case. Cambridge Scholars Press. p. 223. ISBN 978-1-84718-022-3. If the prejudices that sprung from the myth of Kosovo about the accountability of Muslim Bosniaks for the Serbian defeat...
^ (Schwandner-Sievers & Fischer 2002, p. 60): "Unlike, for instance, Serbian nationalism, where ethnic and religious identities have merged (especially through the centrality of the Kosovo myth),..."
^ Modern Greek Studies Yearbook. University of Minnesota. 2005. p. 422. ...as Noel Malcolm's book on Kosovo has shown, the powerful "Myth of Kosovo" was constructed by modern Serbian nationalism.
^ (Segesten 2011, p. 195)
^ (Božilović 2006, p. 88)
^ Dan Stone (22 February 2013). The Holocaust, Fascism and Memory: Essays in the History of Ideas. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 148. ISBN 978-1-137-02952-2. More important even than the myth of Kosovo, which represents Serbian 'deep memory', was the memory of what had happened in the World War II
^ (Macdonald 2002, p. 259)
^ (Macdonald 2002, p. 259)
^ (Ruegg & Boscoboinik 2010, p. 179): "Apart from the myth of the 'golden' pre-Ottoman times, the 'Kosovo myth', the myth of the 'Turkish yoke', the 'Haidouk myth' and the myth of the 'purity of the nation', it is ..."
^ (Hodge & Grbin 2000, p. 272)
^ (Gavrilović, Despotović & Perica 2009, p. 14)
^ (Gavrilović, Despotović & Perica 2009, p. 14)
^ (Gavrilović, Despotović & Perica 2009, p. 16)
^ (Gavrilović, Despotović & Perica 2009, p. 20)
^ (Gavrilović, Despotović & Perica 2009, p. 22)
^ (Gavrilović, Despotović & Perica 2009, p. 23)
^ (Madgearu & Gordon 2008, p. 82)
^ (Madgearu & Gordon 2008, p. 82):"Even so , or maybe because of this , the myth of Great Serbia survived in Serbian national ideology as a support for the nineteenth - century revival , the foreign policy of Serbia , and Serbian hegemony within the Yugoslavian federation ."
^ (Robotycki 2003, p. 87):"This is how the myth of Great Serbia was born, which, given appropriate political stimulation, began to supplant the ideas of, say, Yugoslavianism, in the national consciousness, replacing it with Serbocentrism."
^ (Turnock 1999, p. 248):"Apologists of secession from the Socialist Federal Republic , in Croatia ..."
^ (Naumović 2002, p. 26)
^ (Naumović 2002, p. 26)
^ (Naumović 2002, p. 26)
^ Danopoulos, Constantine Panos; Vajpeyi, Dhirendra K.; Bar-Or, Amir (2004), Civil-military Relations, Nation Building, and National Identity: Comparative Perspectives, Greenwood Publishing Group, pp. 156, 157, ISBN 978-0-275-97923-2
^ (Dijink 2002, p. 118)

Sources

Segesten, Anamaria Dutceac (16 September 2011). Myth, Identity, and Conflict: A Comparative Analysis of Romanian and Serbian Textbooks. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-7391-4865-5.
Naumović, Slobodan (2002). Ethnologia Balkanica. LIT Verlag Münster. GGKEY:ES2RY3RRUDS.
Schwandner-Sievers, Stephanie; Fischer, Bernd Jürgen (2002). Albanian Identities: Myth and History. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-34189-2.
Todorova, Marii͡a Nikolaeva (2004). Balkan Identities: Nation and Memory. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. ISBN 978-1-85065-715-6.
Ruegg, François; Boscoboinik, Andrea (2010). De Palerme À Penang. LIT Verlag Münster. ISBN 978-3-643-80062-6.
Hodge, Carole; Grbin, Mladen (2000). Europa i nacionalizam: nacionalni identitet naspram nacionalnoj netrpeljivosti : međunarodni simpozij, Korčula, 21.-28.9. 1998. Durieux. ISBN 978-953-188-113-5.
Božilović, Nikola (2006). Kič kultura. Zograf. ISBN 978-86-7578-133-2.
Balorda, Jasna (2009). Preživjeti genocid: analiza postratnih etničkih identiteta Bošnjaka. Maunagić. ISBN 978-9958-681-14-1.
Salecl, Renata (31 January 2002). The Spoils of Freedom: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Ideology after the Fall of Socialism. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-90611-6.
Macdonald, David Bruce (2002). Balkan Holocausts?: Serbian and Croatian Victim Centered Propaganda and the War in Yugoslavia. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-6467-8.
Kolstø, Pål (2005), Myths and Boundaries in South-eastern Europe, Hurst & Company, ISBN 978-1-85065-767-5
Dijink, Gertjan (November 2002), National Identity and Geopolitical Visions: Maps of Pride and Pain, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-134-77130-1
Robotycki, Czesław (2003), Cultural Identity and Ethnicity in Central Europe: Proceedings of the International Conference on Ethnic and National Minorities in Central and Eastern Europe, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, May 11-16, 2000, Wydawn. Uniwersitetu Jagiellońskiego, ISBN 978-83-233-1774-6
Carter, Francis W.; Turnock, David (1999), "The Myth of Great Serbia", The States of Eastern Europe, Ashgate, ISBN 978-1-85521-512-2
Madgearu, Alexandru; Gordon, Martin (2008), The Wars of the Balkan Peninsula: Their Medieval Origins, Scarecrow Press, ISBN 978-0-8108-5846-6
Gavrilović, Darko; Despotović, Ljubiša; Perica, Vjekoslav; Srđan Šljukić (2009), Mitovi nacionalizma i demokratija, Centar za isoriju, demokratiju i pomirenje, ISBN 978-86-86601-07-0