Science used to start from the fact that a nation is a community that has a common territory, language, religion and history. When this definition began to be reconsidered, it was pointed out that almost no nation lives in a rounded and clearly limited territory. Examples were given that showed that members of the same nation can speak different languages, such as the Swiss, as well as that the same language can be spoken by different nations, such as English, German, Spanish... About the fact that members of the same nation often belong different religions do not even need to speak. Then, from the end of the eighties, new theories appeared, which defined the nation as an imagined community, in which the imaginary is much stronger and more important than any reality. Thanks to this, history also ceased to be valid as an integrating factor of the nation. New schools of historiography started from a new premise: it is not history that binds a nation, but common memory.
What is shared memory? If we know that history is a discipline that analyzes historical sources using scientific methods, how do we arrive at a common memory? How does it come about, who formulates it? Theorists agree that memory is the reconstruction of the past in the function of the present. The present determines what we will remember from the past, it is the one that makes the choice of events that should be remembered, it interprets them, it offers lessons that should be remembered. The present conducts the past like an orchestra, as he vividly described it Italo Zvevo. This is why memory is always a political process. There is no memory outside the social framework.
What is the difference between history and memory? Are these only two phases of the relationship to the past? Is there first a memory of an event, and then it grows into history? Or vice versa? No, none of that. History and memory are opposites, he wrote Pierre Nora, one of the initiators of the study of the culture and politics of memory. Memory is woven from emotions and passion, it is affective, it sacralizes memories. Historical science is secular, scientific, critical and rational. Memory constantly repeats the past in the present, while history keeps it at a distance and fixes it in the time in which it happened. Memory is absolute, history is relative. History is like chemistry, memory is like alchemy; history is astronomy, memory is astrology, says another great French historian Jacques Le Goff. History looks for similarities and continuities, memory looks for peculiarities and discontinuities. Memory does not see changes and phases in the past, for history they are the key ones, he says Jan Asman. This German Egyptologist also says that for memory everything is unique and incomparable, while for history everything is universal and subject to comparison. For history, the past is over, for memory it does not pass, it is part of the present, he wrote Filip Zutar. Memory separated from history, it became a value in itself. The only connection between history and memory is that history as a science studies memory as a separate entity.
Where are the history textbooks? I think that this book also proved the initial hypothesis that history textbooks are not a product of historiography, but that they are one of the carriers of memory. They are "resistant to the influence of historiography", as he elegantly put it Stefano Petrungaro. If it were not so, it would not be possible to explain otherwise all the "forgotten" or "written" data analyzed in this book, just as it would not be possible to change the interpretations of the past as much as happened during the last hundred years in Serbian school books. This is why it may not be enough to say that history textbooks are mere carriers of memory. They are, as he says Snow White Root, "the primary instrument of transmission of officially sanctioned memory".
This is why textbooks are dangerous. Students will certainly not learn everything that is written in them. Even fewer will remember. But, along with other bearers of memory policy, textbooks participate in the formation of the social framework of memory from which the memory of each individual emerges. I would dare to say that textbooks are perhaps the most important link in the creation of this framework, because they are a direct product of the state. It is a state-approved memory policy, and the state, as it says Jelena Đureinović, has no competition when it comes to producing memories. The struggle for monopoly over memory is a struggle for power, and in that struggle the state is the undisputed winner.
The state is the key creator of the politics of history, which, as they say, Magdalena Najbar Agicic, is on the same level as health policy, agriculture policy, mining policy... That is why the analysis of the politics of history is at the same time an analysis of state policy, or more precisely, the state itself. The politics of history tells us whether the state is authoritarian, because it excludes and forbids the plurality of memories, or whether it is democratic, because it encourages it. Is its identity politics closed, exclusive and nationalist or not. If we can really see all this from the politics of the history of a country, has this book helped us to look at the long history of Serbia from the Balkan wars to the present day? If so, what does that history look like? Reflections on this will be presented here on three levels - changes in facts, changes in the construction of identity and changes in the philosophy of history.
Changes in the level of facts and their interpretations in Serbian history textbooks published from 1913 to 2021 confirm the thesis that they are completely dependent on the current political needs of the present. That is why it was possible that some of them did not mention the fact that the "eternal enemy" Turkey fought on the same side as Serbia in the Second Balkan War. Thus, in the first textbooks published under socialism, the entire Second Balkan War was skipped over, so that we would not hold a grudge against then-friendly, socialist Bulgaria. Due to the influence of current political interests, it was possible that in the textbooks published during the existence of Yugoslavia, one can find thousand-year-long processes that supposedly inevitably led to its creation, so that, after the dissolution of the common state, all this could be canceled and it could be said that the Yugoslav the idea never existed in Serbia. And the facts about the Second World War underwent a complete change. Thus, after 2000, textbooks could say that the partisans were the ones who collaborated with the occupier and committed crimes, while the Chetniks were portrayed as anti-fascists. And the facts about the Chetnik collaboration with the Germans and the crimes were "forgotten". What can we say about how it has been portrayed in the last hundred years Gavrilo Principal, who went from a Yugoslav patriot in interwar textbooks to a progressive youth in the socialist period, to be a Serbian hero today.
Such dramatic manipulations of historical facts would not be possible if textbooks were part of historiography. All these examples prove that they are part of a very changing collective memory, a direct result of the state's history policy. But they are more than that. In many ways they are closer to literary fiction than to historical science. Because how to explain that after the breakup of Yugoslavia, the First World War was portrayed as a Serbian defeat, if not by influence Dobrica Cosic? The same with the Second World War. It was also depicted in textbooks as a Serbian defeat, among other things, under the influence of literary works that introduced revisionist narratives to the public and linked Serbia to the Chetniks. How can one not notice that the facts presented in textbooks often look as if they were taken from Books about Milutin Danko Popović, and not from existing historiographical literature?
But, in some cases, the information that can be found in textbooks is not even from literature. Stefano Petrungaro noticed that recent Croatian textbooks are too much influenced by public discourse. Translated into a more direct language, we could say that Serbian textbooks are closer to today's tabloid journalism, tavern or Slavic conversations about the past. We see this from the description of many events analyzed in this book, especially the most recent ones. Although there are many scholarly books about the wars of the 90s and although we have more historical sources available about them than about World War II, these events are presented as they are presented by the front pages of the pro-government tabloid press. And that's not only because only those facts that correspond to "our side" are cited, but also because the language used in the lessons is quite similar to that of newsstands. For example, in most of the latest school books it says that it is Zoran Djindjic killed by the criminal Zemun clan, although it was proven and ruled in court that the assassination was carried out by members of the Special Anti-Terrorist Units.
On the second level is the question of identity formulas that are transmitted through the teaching of history. Since, along with geography and mother tongue, history is considered an identity subject in the documents of the Ministry of Education, it is particularly important to analyze this level of abuse of the past. And that's not only because school books influence new generations and form them, but because they simultaneously reflect the politics and ideology of the time in which the textbooks were created. The second part of this book is dedicated to identity issues. The picture that emerges from this analysis is extremely worrying.
It has been repeated several times in this book that defeats are more important for the nation than victories. They are the ones around whom the community is homogenized, around whom "rows are formed". An analysis of the way in which victories and defeats were presented in Serbian textbooks during the last century showed that with the emergence of nationalism, there was a dramatic turn in the politics of history. From the victorious narrative, which proudly adorned all generations of school books published from the time of the Balkan Wars to the nineties of the 20th century, we moved to the losing narrative. Due to the nationalist need to create a psychological basis for revanchism, history textbooks, from the nineties of the 20th century, began to portray Serbian history as a series of defeats and missed opportunities. Such a presentation of the past is a consequence of the change in attitude towards Yugoslavia, which, in the dominant narrative, turned from a century-old dream into a nightmare and a dungeon of the people. If Yugoslavia turned from the biggest Serbian victory into the biggest defeat, then the whole of modern history got that losing streak.
What is even more worrying is that the defeat in the textbooks is portrayed as a traumatic defeat. The trauma is constantly renewed, it paralyzes society and does not allow it to get out of that state. Trauma is subversive and vengeful, well Alaida Asman concludes that the transformation of trauma into honor, instead of dignity, blocks the development possibility of society. A captive society is insensitive to the suffering of others, it is narcissistic, sees only itself, loses connection with reality. Such a society distorts the past, the present and the future, most often in the context of conspiracy theories, which haunt it, so it is unable to see a way out of a deep crisis.
The same result is obtained by analyzing the images of heroes and victims in Serbian history textbooks. Heroes, like victories, are necessary for raising national pride and self-confidence, but sacrifices are far more useful for national mobilization. They awaken pity and empathy, thanks to them it is easier to raise strong emotions. This book showed that in the course of the last 110 years, Serbian textbooks contained everything - constant talk about victims and heroes, changes in the place of the supreme victim, and dramatic changes in the place of the main criminals. But here, the transition from a heroic to a self-victimizing image of the past, which is the result of prevailing nationalist ideology, increasing confinement and self-isolation, is particularly worrying. That paranoid and self-pitying way of reading one's own history is extremely dangerous, because identification with the victims develops a sense of vulnerability, encourages the nation to be constantly ready for defense, but also for attack. Being a victim frees from all ethical norms, the victim cannot be guilty. And everything is forgiven in advance.
The third important indicator of identity politics is the ways in which "others" are presented. The chapter of this book devoted to "friends" and "enemies" showed another extremely worrying picture. From Yugoslavia, a country that was proud of its ties with neighboring nations and the whole world, that was a promoter of peaceful coexistence and a leader of the Third World, we have reached Serbia, which today, judging by school books, sees itself as a country surrounded by enemies. That xenophobic and paranoid image, which gradually emerged during the last century, experienced a sharp deterioration after the victory of the nationalist ideology and with the arrival Slobodan Milosevic to power. From then until today, the nations that made up Yugoslavia have also been portrayed as "enemies". Then all the western nations. Then the Russians, that is, the Soviets, who switched to the side of the "enemy" because of the strong anti-communism in the last generations of Serbian textbooks, in which even the liberation of Serbia in the Second World War was shown as an occupation. Montenegrins also disappeared from the list of "friends" in one of the latest textbooks. And in the textbooks published after 2021, they joined the nations that are doing evil to the Serbs.
This image of the past confirms the thesis Ernest Renan that the nation is united by a misunderstanding of the past and hatred of neighbors. But, in Serbian history textbooks published after the nineties, this hatred spread to other nations as well, which proves once again that the textbooks are closer to the public discourse about the past than to scientific results, because such a paranoid picture of the past is not found in any scientific study. It is a consequence of the xenophobic nationalist closure from the time of Milošević until today, the misunderstanding of the outside world and the anxious cocooning of Serbian society, which, as she said, Latina Perović "dropped out of history".
Finally, what kind of philosophy of history can we see by analyzing the ways in which the past is presented in school books? In addition to all the manipulation of facts, concealment, selection or deliberate factual errors, a parascientific interpretation of history is also visible in the textbooks. It is, first of all, about the ways in which the supposed movement of history is presented. That movement is shown in a teleological way. In some cases, it is argued that history repeats itself, as a circular movement, the eternal return of the same. This view of history is deterministic, according to it the future is predetermined, "history will return".
It is similar with another teleological approach, according to which history has a goal. Even in such a view, it is shown as a determined, given path, only that its movement is not cyclical but linear. This goal is ideologically defined, and therefore changes. During the time of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, textbooks portrayed as if the 1200-year-long history had one clear goal - the creation of Yugoslavia. All that time, all the obstacles and all the events seemed to be there only to further strengthen this goal. In socialist Yugoslavia, this goal was a communist order, the creation of a classless society and the demise of the state. After the breakup of Yugoslavia and the collapse of socialism, only one goal remained - the national state. History will bypass or jump over all obstacles, overcome failures and wrong decisions and lead to the state in which our nation will live.
The third type of authoritarian approach to history in school books is its presentation as a natural phenomenon. This is how wars are most often talked about. They are depicted as summer storms, which start locally but then flare up and spread on their own. It is said that they "break out", "overflow", "ignite" or "flame" or engulf some territories, as if it were a fire. It is not explained to the students that war is a complicated and expensive matter, that someone prepares and plans it, organizes and finances it, initiates it, supplies it... And in this narrative, history looks like an inevitability, just like phenomena in nature.
All three ways of describing history are deterministic, fatalistic and undemocratic. Deterministic and fatalistic because history is depicted as a force that has a set course, a course that exists independently of people, governed by laws similar to a mystical higher power. It gives the impression that history governs people, and not them. That is why such interpretations of history are profoundly undemocratic. They start from the fact that individuals and societies do not influence historical events, and therefore have no responsibility for them. As "doers of history" they are not accountable. In such a belief system, citizens lose their desire to participate in political life, which is the basis of defeatism and the well-known statement that "we can't change anything anyway". How Karl Popper shows, such a view is the best basis for a closed society, one that gives rise to authoritarian orders, because a "leader" inevitably appears to carry out the order of "history" and lead the people happily to the "goal".
History is none of these things. She has no goal, she's not going anywhere, so she can't come back either. It is a dynamic flow influenced by a series of long-term processes interwoven with rapid political events in which groups, social elites and individuals make decisions. This book also shows how manipulative the thesis about history as an identity subject is. This thesis invalidates history as a science and reduces it to a kind of civil religion, which must not be questioned. Because "we are what we are because of history". Only - because of what history? Because the diametrically opposed interpretations of the past presented in this book unequivocally prove the pointlessness of such a claim. Or has our identity also changed diametrically with each turn in the interpretation of history? This also confirms that a nation is not made up of a common history, but rather a common memory, which is said here to be fully an expression of current political needs. This further means that the construction of identity is only an expression of these same daily needs, i.e. that there is no solid, stable, permanent and grounded national identity.
The complexity and multiplicity of history is not easy to convey in the limited space of teaching programs, but it would be enough to start with showing the opinion of different parties about an event or phenomenon. To show that at every moment there were different solutions, as well as different individuals and groups who proposed them. It would be seen that history is always a field of choice, which would reject the image of history as a destiny that people cannot influence. Thus, the narrative about the past would be freed. It would no longer be a dogma, but an open field of dialogue and opposing arguments based on scientifically proven facts.
The meaning of knowing history is to observe all the possibilities offered and to think about the reasons why one prevailed. In this way, the valuable apparatus of critical thinking about the past is transmitted, which can help to understand the present. However, in contrast, students are taught historical determinism, which excludes free and critical thinking, and enshrines a system of thought in which the root cause can be changed as needed, while the essence remains intact. The essence remains a deep authoritarian understanding of the world that is older than any other system. Undemocratic systems are reproduced from it. That is why the image of Serbia that is obtained by analyzing history textbooks as the most impressive representatives of the politics of the history of a country is worrisome. In this picture, Serbia looks self-isolated, xenophobic, anxious and traumatized. The task of history as a science is, as Jacques Le Goff wrote, to liberate society, not to imprison it. History has betrayed itself in Serbia.
(From the author's book "The past is coming. Changes in the interpretation of the past in Serbian history textbooks 1913-2021", Biblioteka XX vek, 2023, Peščanik)
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