collective guilt and the serbs

668

Collective Guilt, CollectiveResponsibility and the SerbsJanine Natalya Clark

Can an entire nation be collectively guilty for crimes committed in itsname? Focusing on the case of Serbia, this article argues that collective guiltis a morally flawed and untenable concept that should be rejected. It pre-sents various moral and practical objections to both the generic notion ofcollective guilt and the more specific idea of Serbian collective guilt andcontends that the latter is a fundamental impediment to peace-buildingand reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia. On what basis might it beargued that the Serbs are collectively guilty? To claim that they are collec-tively guilty for having supported Milosevic both exaggerates levels of sup-port for the former Serbian leader and does a major injustice to thoseindividuals who bravely fought against the Milosevic regime. Drawing onthe work of Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers, the article concludes by sug-gesting that perhaps we can speak of Serbian collective responsibility.

KKeeyywwoorrddss:: Serbs; Milosevic; collective guilt; collective responsibility; col-lective denial; Second Serbia

Can an entire nation be collectively guilty for the crimes com-mitted in its name? This is the key question with which this paperis concerned. Discussions surrounding the notion of collectiveguilt have most often centred upon the case of the Germanpeople, the archetypal guilty nation. Wilkins, for example,maintains that there are numerous examples of collective guilt,but to my mind the clearest and most indisputable example inrecent history is to be found in the persecution of the Jews inNazi Germany.1 The case of My Lai, when as many as 500unarmed women, children and elderly Vietnamese were massa-cred on 16 March 1968, has also been frequently discussed in thecontext of debates about whether and to what extent we can cor-rectly speak of collective guilt.2

More recently, as a result of the devastating wars in the formerYugoslavia during the 1990s, some commentators began to speak

East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 22, No. 3, pages 668692. ISSN 0888-3254 2008 by the American Council of Learned Societies. All rights reserved.

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about the collective guilt of one particular nation involved inthose warsSerbia. For example, in an article published in TheNew Republic during the NATO bombing of the Federal Republicof Yugoslavia in 1999, Sullivan argued, Whatever else we doin Kosovo, we must face the fact that, to all intents and pur-poses, many ordinary Serbs areto paraphrase Daniel JonahGoldhagenMilosevics willing executioners.3 Despite his claimthat the notion of collective guilt, conceptually and morally inde-fensible, must be rejected,4 Goldhagen himself was insisting thatSerbia needed to be occupied on the grounds that any peoplethat commits such deeds in open defiance of international lawand the vehement condemnation of virtually the entire interna-tional community clearly consists of individuals with damaged fac-ulties of moral judgement and has sunk into a moral abyss fromwhich it is unlikely, any time soon, to emerge unaided.5

For Goldhagen, just as the German peopleHitlers willingexecutioners6bore collective guilt for the Holocaust, so toothe Serbian people were collectively guilty for the crimes of theMilosevic regime and therefore in need of collective punishment.

Using Serbia as a case-study,7 this paper will seek to show thatthe concept of collective guilt is problematic and morally flawed. Itwill begin by outlining some objections to the idea of Serbian col-lective guilt and will argue that those NGOs in Serbia that embracethis notion impede the very truth and reconciliation process thatthey are trying to encourage and develop. The second section willask what it actually means to say that the Serbs are collectivelyguilty. If the contention is that they are culpable for having sup-ported Milosevic, this is to do a fundamental injustice to thoseindividuals who courageously and tirelessly fought against theregime throughout the nineties. These opponents of the regime,who form the focus of this part of the paper, represent a secondface of Serbia which the West has tended, deliberately, to ignore.The final section of the paper will suggest that while we cannotspeak of the Serbs collective guilt, perhaps we can speak of theircollective responsibility. Drawing upon the work of HannahArendt and Karl Jaspers, it will argue that there is a case to be madefor Serb political and metaphysical responsibility.

East European Politics and Societies 669


The Case against Collective Guilt

When Yugoslavia disintegrated and descended into blood-shed, it was the Serbs who were widely seen as the aggressors.To cite Handke, so many international magazines, from Timeto the Nouvel Observateur, in order to bring the war to theircustomers, set up the Serbs, far and near, large and small, as theevildoers and the Muslims in general as the good ones.8 If theSerbs had the status of an aggressor nation during the nineties,in the eyes of some their status has now become that of a guiltynation. This ascription of collective guilt can be seen, inter alia,in calls for the Serbian nation to apologize for its crimes. InFebruary 2000, for example, Joschka Fischer, the then GermanMinister of Foreign Affairs, argued that one of the conditions fordialogue was an apology of the Serbian side for what has hap-pened to the Albanians.9

According to Drinka Gojkovic, the head of the WarDocumentation Centre in Belgrade, The demand for an apology isalways addressed to the whole nation, all Serbs. The message itcontains is basically less of a condemnation and more of an offer ofrelief. Apologize, shake your guilt off, show that you are moral.10

Such demands are based upon the assumption that all Serbsare, and should feel, guilty.11 However, as Arendt argues, Morallyspeaking, it is as wrong to feel guilty without having done any-thing specific as it is to feel free of all guilt if one actually is guiltyof something.12 In her judgement, There is no such thing ascollective guilt or collective innocence; guilt and innocencemake sense only if applied to individuals,13 and using theexample of Serbia this paper seeks to defend Arendts viewpoint.

Whilst calls for Serbia to apologize have chiefly come fromoutside the country, it is important to stress that the idea of col-lective guilt is not anathema to everyone in Serbia. Within theNGO sector in particular, there are various individuals whoembrace the notion of Serbian collective guilt. Sonja Biserko, forexample, the president of the Helsinki Committee for HumanRights in Serbia, asks, If we collectively take pride in the successof our basketball players, for which we have no individual credit,are we entitled to reject the feeling of guilt for our ethnic crimes

670 Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility


in which we have not individually participated?14 For Biserko,the answer to this question is a resounding no. The very ques-tion she poses, however, is based upon a flawed analogy. That isto say that it is neither useful nor constructive to compare pridewith guilt, since only the former can be vicarious. To citeFeinberg, even when it is reasonable to separate liability fromfault,15 it is only the liability that can be passed from one party toanother. In particular, there can be no such thing as vicariousguilt.16 Thus, for example, . . . if all Americans are guilty of themassacre at My Lai, it must be shown that they all in some waycontributed materially to the monstrous acts performed on thatday in March 1968.17

One of the reasons why Biserko and other leading humanrights activists, such as Natasa Kandic and Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco,are so unpopular in Serbia is their insistence that as part of thetruth and reconciliation process, the Serbs must face up to andacknowledge their nations collective guilt for the crimes of theMilosevic era. Yet constant references to Serbian collective guilt,far from advancing the truth and reconciliation process, actuallyfrustrate and hinder it. In short, by speaking of collective guilt,people like Biserko and Kandic are actually perpetuating the veryproblem of denial that they are professedly fighting to eliminate.

There are people in Serbia who deny that certain crimes, likeSrebrenica, ever took place.18 Latinka Perovic, for example,describes how, pacing about in a forsaken Serbia, whose soulhas been taken away by those who killed thousands of Muslimsin Srebrenica, I confront disbelief that such ferocious atrocitiesshould have happened and that Serbs committed them. Iencounter unwillingness, even desperate refusal, to accept thetruth that is brutally documented. . . .19

Evidence of this unwillingness or refusal to accept that certaincrimes were committed by the Serbian side during the ninetiescan also be seen in the results of public opinion poll data. As oneillustration, according to research by the Strategic Marketing andMedia Research Institute in Belgrade in April 2005, 74 percent ofthe 1,205 respondents said that the Serbs had carried out fewercrimes than the Croats, Albanians and Muslims during the wars inthe former Yugoslavia, of whom 24 percent also thought that



Serbs had perpetrated fewer crimes than the Slovenes.20 In thesame research, while 27 percent of respondents had heard thatparamilitary groups from Serbia killed civilians in Bijeljina duringthe war in Bosnia, only 14 percent believed this had actually hap-pened; and 47 percent of respondents had heard that paramili-taries and members of the Yugoslav Army killed civilians inVukovar in Croatia, but just 23 percent believed this to be true.21

For Serbian NGOs like the Helsinki Committee for HumanRights in Serbia and the Humanitarian Law Centre, such data attestto the Serbs collective denial. Biserko, for example, claims thatMilosevics extradition to The Hague on 28 June 2001, pokrenuoodbrambeni mehanizam gotovo cele zajednicekolektivno pori-canje (triggered a defence mechanism of almost the entire com-munitycollective denial).22 Such sweeping statements, it isargued, are as unhelpful as they are erroneous. Whilst there arethose in Serbia who deny the existence of crimes, the key questionis not how to cure such individuals but rather why there arepeople in Serbia who continue to seek refuge in denial.23 This isobviously a complex question to which there are no simpleanswers. However, one possible answer is that denial serves as animportant mechanism for asserting and affirming ones own inno-cence. This mechanism, in turn, is fuelled by fear that to acknowl-edge the perpetration of crimes is to thereby both incriminateoneself and, more broadly the Serb nation, as being somehow guilty.Thus the real problem, it is suggested, is not Serbian collectivedenial but rather the notion of collective guilt itself.

To take one illustration, in July 1995 some 7,000 Muslim menfrom the Bosnian town of Srebrenica were massacred. Thoseinvolved in or responsible for the crime were subsequently indictedby the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Ina landmark decision in April 2004, the Tribunal found the BosnianSerb general, Radislav Krstic, guilty of aiding and abetting the crimeof genocide in Srebrenica. It was the first time since the Nurembergtrials that an international court had established a case of genocideon European soil. At the same time, the Tribunal has explicitly andrepeatedly rejected any notion of collective guilt. At the start ofMilosevics trial on 12 February 2002, for example, the chief prose-cutor Carla Del Ponte emphasized that the accused in this case, as



in all cases before the Tribunal, is charged as an individual. He isprosecuted on the basis of his individual criminal responsibility. Nostate or organization is on trial here today. The indictments do notaccuse an entire people of being collectively guilty of the crimes,even the crime of genocide. . . . Collective guilt forms no part of theprosecution case.24

Hayden, however, maintains that . . . genocide must be a col-lective act, a policy and practice formed in the name of one col-lectivity and implemented against another. Thus evenprosecutions of individuals presuppose the collective guilt ofthose whom the defendants claim to represent. Furthermore,according to Hayden, this charge of collective guilt is irrefutable.While an individual defendant may be acquitted, the charge itselfindicates that the larger guilt is assumed.25 Hence, while thecase of Srebrenica may be used as an exemplar of how someSerbs engage in denial,26 following Hayden it can be argued thatthis denial is not a denial of the crime per se but rather of the col-lective guilt implicit in that crime.27

By making some people more likely to deny the existence ofcrimes than to openly discuss them, the concept of collective guiltis an impediment to peace-building in the former Yugoslavia.Thus, in this sense the recent Judgement of the InternationalCourt of Justice on 26 February 2007, in the case of Bosnia andHercegovina versus Serbia and Montenegro,28 is to be welcomed.If the Court had found that the Serbian state committed or wasresponsible for genocide in Srebrenica in 1995, this wouldarguably have cemented the idea of Serbian collective guilt,thereby creating further obstacles to reconciliation.

The notion of collective guilt also hinders and obstructs a moregeneral process of human understanding. If we believe that anentire nation is collectively guilty of heinous crimes, it follows thatwe will regard that nation as being fundamentally different fromourselves. If we proceed on this us/them basis, we therebyclose our minds to any possibility of comprehending why thecrimes were committed in the first place. This is extremely dan-gerous because, to cite Todorov, It is understanding, not therefusal to understand, that makes it possible to prevent a repeti-tion of the horror.29 We cannot empathize with a criminal



nation, and we do not want to. It is much easier, and more palat-able, to emphasize that nations otherness than to see in it ele-ments of ourselves. Yet if we focus only on it being not like us,we thereby avoid asking ourselves a fundamental questionhowwould we have behaved in similar circumstances?

For example, we can argue that the German people were col-lectively guilty for embracing National Socialism, but how do weknow that we ourselves would not have done so in the same cir-cumstances? In other words, What business do we have con-demning these people if . . . we too would have naturally absorbedthose beliefs had we been brought up in their society?30 Similarly,we can hold the Serbian people collectively guilty for supportingMilosevic, for example, but can we be sure that we ourselves, in asimilar situation, would not have supported him?

It is also easy for us, as outsiders, to claim that more people inSerbia should have stood up against the Milosevic regime, or thatmore people in Germany should have opposed Hitler and theNazis. According to Lewis, however, it is important to bear inmind that . . . there are severe limitations on the power of theindividual to modify social conditions, for normally he can onlydo so by concerted action, and concerted action, moreover,which requires a consensus of opinion on highly complicatedsocial and economic questions.31

Thus, in the case of Germany, for example, the question weneed to ask is, What could have been expected of the averageGerman citizen in the swirling tide of the events which engulfedhim and others eventually in the deep vortex of war?32 The samesort of question, it is argued here, should also be asked in rela-tion to Serbs living under Milosevic.

Collective guilt can be particularly objected to on moralgrounds. In short, crimes against a nation perceived as collec-tively guilty are unlikely to provoke moral outrage. Like an eyefor an eye, the concept of collective guilt provides a basis uponwhich crimes against such a nation can be treated as justified.How else can we explain the lack of international reaction toOperation Storm in August 1995the ethnic cleansing by U.S.-supported Croatian forces of some 200,000 Croatian Serbs fromthe Krajina?33 The belief that these Serbs were simply getting



what they deserved was implicit in a comment made at the timeby Peter Galbraith, the then American ambassador to Croatia.According to him, the expulsion of Serbs from the Krajina did notamount to ethnic cleansing because ethnic cleansing is a prac-tice supported by Belgrade and carried out by Bosnian andCroatian Serbs.34

It is undeniable that Serbian forces, both the regular army andvarious paramilitary organizations, committed heinous crimesduring the Yugoslav wars. Yet terrible crimes were also commit-ted against the Serbsin Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. In addi-tion, the Serbian people suffered at the hands of NATO, whosepilots bombed Serbia for three months in 1999, and at the handsof their own leader, Slobodan Milosevic. However, the notionthat Serbs are collectively guilty has meant that crimes againstthem have tended to receive little attention, hence the problemof the lack of international recognition of the crimes committedagainst the Serbs.35 Unless and until such recognition occurs,many Serbs are unlikely to want to discuss the suffering ofothers, instead seeing themselves as the principal victims of thenineties. Evidently, this will not help the truth and reconciliationprocess because the sense of victimization, to cite Buruma,impedes understanding among people and cannot result inmutual understanding.36

So far, this paper has argued and sought to demonstrate thatthe concept of collective guilt is flawed, problematic and unhelp-ful. If, however, the reader remains unconvinced and believes thatwe can rightly speak of the Serbs collective guilt, this raises afundamental question: what does it actually mean to say that theSerbs are collectively guilty? Are we saying that they are guiltyfor supporting Milosevic? Cohen, for example, maintains that asa people, the Serbs cannot escape responsibility: they massivelybacked Milosevics nationalist upheaval and they voted him intooffice in the first free elections of December 1990.37 To say thatthe Serbs are guilty because they voted for Milosevic, however,simply raises further questions. In particular, how much supportdid he actually have, and why did people champion him?

Taking the first of these questions, there is no doubt thatMilosevic was immensely popular when he first came to power in



1989. According to Ramet, for example, Milosevic was genuinelyloved by many (though not all) Serbs as no other leader had beensince Chetnik leader Draza Mihailovic.38 Nevertheless, it is impor-tant not to exaggerate levels of support for Milosevic. It is also nec-essary to emphasize that support for him and his political party,the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), steadily decreased throughoutthe nineties. This is evidenced not only by anti-regime protests,like those of 1996-1997, but also by election results.

In the 1990 presidential elections, for example, Milosevic won65.34 percent of the votes cast. Although he was the clear victor(his closest rival, Vuk Draskovic, won just 16.4 percent of thevote), the percentage of votes for Milosevic represented only46.72 percent of the total electorate.39 In other words, he did nothave an absolute majority of support within the country. By thetime of the next presidential elections in 1992, Milosevics popu-larity had already declined. In these elections, he won 53.24 per-cent of votes cast, which represented just 37.12 percent of thetotal electorate.40

The results of parliamentary elections show a similar decreasein support for Milosevics party. In the first multi-party electionsin Serbia in December 1990, the SPS won 46.1 percent of votescast (32.9 percent of the whole electorate).41 In the second par-liamentary elections held in December 1992, the party won 28.8percent of the vote (20.1 percent of the total electorate), therebylosing its parliamentary majority.42 This meant that the SPS wastherefore unable to rule on its own after the second elections,but with its informal partner, the SRP [Serbian Radical Party], ithad an absolute majority in parliament.43

In the third multiparty elections in December 1993, the SPSreceived 36.7 percent of the votes cast (22.5 percent of the totalelectorate).44 Although it won these elections and obtained 22more seats than in the previous elections, it remained three seatsshort of an absolute majority. Moreover, objectively speaking, itshold on power was threatened for the first time, naturally oncondition that the other parties (which had a total of 127 seatsagainst the SPSs 123) could agree amongst themselves.45

Fortunately for Milosevic and the SPS, however, the other partieswere not able to do so.



Further evidence of the SPSs declining popularity is the factthat it needed to enter into coalitions with other parties. In the1997 elections, it entered into a Left Coalition with the YugoslavUnited Left46 and New Democracy, and in March 1998 it formed acoalition government with the Yugoslav United Left and theSerbian Radical Party. In short, the election results reveal thatMilosevics regime enjoyed the support of a significant element ofthe Serbian population (about 40 per cent) only until 1992. From1992 onward, this support rapidly deteriorated, amounting toonly 20 per cent of the electorate in 1997. On the other hand, thesystematic opposition to Milosevic kept growing, and in 1997 itexceeded 40 per cent of the electorate.47

Turning now to the second question, what were those Serbswho supported Milosevic actually giving their support to? Werethey, as Goldhagen claims, endorsing an eliminationist pro-ject?48 Unfortunately, there are no detailed studies of whypeople in Serbia supported Milosevic. However, analysis of hisspeeches, a valuable yet often neglected primary source, can pro-vide important insight. A recurrent and prominent theme ofMilosevics speeches was the economy and the need for eco-nomic development. In his speech in Pancevo on 10 May 1990,for example, he declared that Serbia was resolved upon a pro-gramme of economic and social reforms,49 and in his speech atthe Sava Centre in Belgrade on 20 October 1994, he stressed thatSerbia must draw upon all her resources to bring about eco-nomic stabilization and development and to raise both communityand individual standards.50

In view of this strong emphasis on economic issues, it can beargued that at least part of Milosevics appeal was very practicaland that what he instilled in people was the hope of a better lifeand a bright and prosperous future, which is borne out by thefact that his greatest supporters came from low-income socialgroups such as pensioners, peasants, and housewives.51 This issignificant because it challenges claims that Milosevic appealed to,and relied upon, ethnic hatred and chauvinism.52 Furthermore, ifwe accept that there was a very practical element to Milosevicspopularity, it thus becomes far more difficult to argue that theSerbs are guilty for having supported him, not least because



there were always some national minorities who themselvesvoted for Milosevic on economic grounds.53

To contend that the Serbs are collectively guilty for backingMilosevic, moreover, is to do a great injustice to those coura-geous individualswhom existing Western literature on Serbiahas tended to overlookwho actively opposed the regime. Theexistence of this Second Serbia further undermines the popu-lar idea that Milosevic enjoyed near-universal support.

The Voices of Second Serbia

According to Gordy, As a political idea, while the notion ofcollective guilt is often used as a part of rhetoric, it has severalobvious theoretical shortcomings. Probably not the least of theseis the inclination to define a false collectivity which ignores socialand political differences.54

To speak of Serbias collective guilt is essentially and erro-neously to conceptualize Serbia as a homogeneous entity com-prised of people sharing fundamentally the same views andoutlook. In fact, the reality is that Serbia is a highly complex anddivided society. At the simplest level, we can distinguish betweentraditional Serbia, comprising those who supported Milosevic,and so-called Second Serbia or Other Serbia,55 consisting ofthose individuals who tirelessly opposed and fought against theMilosevic regime.

The experiences of the latter, however, have tended to receivelittle attention, which has simply reinforced the misconceptionthat the Serbian population wholeheartedly supported Milosevic.Using data from semi-structured interviews conducted in thesummer of 2006, this part of the paper is precisely about givingexpression to a different set of voices. The 14 interviewees,56 allmembers of the Serbian political and cultural elite, were pur-posely selected for interview on the basis of their very activeopposition to the Milosevic regime.

That Milosevic was very popular when he came to power in1989 is heavily emphasized in Western literature on the regime.LeBor, for example, has referred to Milosevic as a living Serbiansaint,57 and according to Hartman, when Milosevic delivered his



now infamous speech at Gazimenstan in Kosovo on 28 June1989, he was le nouveau Messie (the new Messiah).58 Yet whatis often overlooked is the fact that from the very outset, therewere people in Serbia who were strongly against Milosevicpeople like Branka Prpa, the director of the Historical Archives inBelgrade. She explained, I recognized immediately that Serbiahad crossed into Hell with Milosevic.59 The Belgrade journalistDuska Anastasijevic similarly maintained that she was againstMilosevic from the beginning. In her words, I was opposed toMilosevic from the start, from the moment he ousted IvanStambolic during the Eighth Session.60 I was twenty at the time,and when I saw just how autistic and power-hungry Milosevicwas, it scared me. The day after the Eighth Session, I had an urgeto tell people that Serbia was facing a catastrophe and thatMilosevic was very dangerous.61

Each of the interviewees opposed the Milosevic regime inhis/her own way, and they all faced serious risks in doing do. Thepersonal experiences of three particular interviewees can beused to illustrate this. In the case of Filip David, a writer and pro-fessor of Dramaturgy, the struggle against the regime was notpolitical but rather ethical and moral. This took the form of set-ting up various organizations in which like-minded people whowere against Milosevic could gather and express their views.David explained,

Together with three friends, all of them writers, I founded a newWriters Association in Sarajevo, composed of writers from all overYugoslavia. We tried to maintain the friendship that existed. In 1991in Belgrade, I helped to found the Belgrade Circle. The membersmet once a week to discuss and to criticize Milosevics politics. TheBelgrade Circle was the only place where people opposed toMilosevic could come to talk and to protest. I was also a member ofGroup 99, which was founded in Frankfurt. It was made up of writersand publishers from Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Kosovo andMontenegro. The idea was to oppose bad things. We went toMontenegro on one occasion to support Djukanovic [the then PrimeMinister of Montenegro], and we went to Sarajevo to support multi-ethnicity. . . . I also founded the Writers Forum, which was againsthatred and nationalism. When you live in that kind of State whereyou have killings and so on, you must say something.62



However, opposing the Milosevic regime could be very dan-gerous, as highlighted by the assassination of the journalistSlavko Curuvija, the partner of Branka Prpa. A few days afterCuruvijas murder on 11 April 1999, an article appeared in theState-controlled newspaper Politika claiming that Filip Davidand two other vocal critics of the Milosevic regime were traitorswho had called for Belgrade to be bombed. Curuvija himself hadwritten an article advocating an aerial bombardment of the city,and it was shortly after this that he was gunned down on hisdoorstep. Despite receiving menacing phone-calls and beingthreatened in the street, David nevertheless decided to remain inBelgrade. In his words, Despite everything, I didnt want toleave. I felt I had to stay and to say what I thought. I needed tofight, to oppose, and to try to explain. Some of Davids friends,however, like Mirko Kovac and Bogdan Bogdanovic, left Serbiaand never came back.

For the cartoonist Predrag (Corax) Koraksic, his cartoonsalso known as Coraxwere the vehicle through which to makea stand against the Milosevic regime. These cartoons, according tothe Serbian psychologist Zarko Trebjesanin, were an uncompro-mising and subversive critique of a dictatorship. . . .63 Not surpris-ingly, therefore, there was a price for Koraksic to pay. WhenMilosevic came to power, Koraksic was working for the indepen-dent newspaper Vecernje Novosti (Evening News). However,Milosevic decided to take control of the newspapers editorialboard, and that is when Koraksics problems really began. After herefused to support the new editorial policy, the newspaper nolonger wanted to publish his cartoons, and a three-year court caseended with Koraksic being sacked from Vecernje Novosti in 1993.Thereafter, he started working for the independent newspaperNasa Borba (Our Struggle). When that became too popular andwas consequently closed down by the regime, he joined the inde-pendent newspaper Danas (Today). However, there were alwaysrisks, and Koraksic regularly received threatening phone-callsand letters.

After Milosevics fall from power in 2000, his wife MiraMarkovic gave an interview to the Slovene newspaper Mladina(Youth). When she was asked what she thought of Koraksic, she




replied, On je najgori crtanist na svetu! (He is the worst car-toonist in the world!). Koraksic recalled, After that, I was reallyscared!64 With good reason too, since it did not bode well to becriticized by Mira. Her weekly column in a popular Belgrade mag-azine, nicknamed The Horoscope, was a reliable forecast ofthe political fortunes of Serbias elite.65

Koraksic also faced numerous obstacles. For example, an exhi-bition of his work had been scheduled for 15 March 1995 at thegallery Art Sebastian in Belgrade. However, the director of thegallery decided that Koraksics cartoons could not be displayed,owing to their negative portrayal of Milosevic, his wife, and SPSofficials.66 Thus, when visitors arrived at the gallery to viewKoraksics drawings, they were faced with virtually bare walls. Allthe caricatures of Milosevic, his wife and members of his partyhad been removed. Only drawings of opposition leadersremained. It was no coincidence that the owner of the art gallery,the firm Inex Interexport, had firmly-established business linkswith the ruling authorities.67

From 1994 until 2000, Ljubica Markovic was the editor-in-chiefof the news-agency BETA. After the 1996-97 anti-regime protestsin Serbia, the number of BETAs clients rose dramatically. Thus,Markovics work was a way for her to express her opposition tothe Milosevic regime. Like other independent media, however,BETA faced many problems. Markovic explained, Sometimes itwas very risky. There were times when you didnt know if youwould be able to come to work the next day and do your job.68

It was particularly dangerous during the late nineties asMilosevic, feeling his power slipping away from him, becameincreasingly authoritarian. In 1999, for example, he introducedan Information Law that inflicted extortionate fines on anyonewho dared to criticize his regime. BETA was fined in May 2000.

Markovic is the half-sister of Milosevics wife (although theyhave not had any contact for 25 years), and according to her theSerbian police tried to use that against her. For example,

On one occasion, a policeman came with a long list of names. He saidthat he was representing the Greek-Serbian Association ofFriendship, and he wanted to know if I approved of the people onthe list being given medals. I told him that it was nothing to do with



me. There were various names on the list, like King Juan Carlos andRatko Mladic. Number 46 on the list was Mirjana Markovic. Before heleft, the policeman said to me, Remember number 46. Ill be back.He never did come back, but it was very unsettling. On another occa-sion, a policeman came to BETA. We didnt know how he got into thebuilding. He kept saying to one of my colleagues, Do you know thatshe [Ljubica Markovic] does not have a good relationship with herhalf-sister? Again, he said that he would come back, but he didnt. Itwas very subtle pressure from the secret police, and it was veryunnerving.

Threats and intimidation were just two of the prices to be paidfor being actively against the Milosevic regime. Another was los-ing ones job. In 1998, under Milosevics new University Law,Radmilo Marojevic, a radical old-style communist turned Serbiannationalist, was appointed Dean of the Philological Faculty inBelgrade. He immediately turned his attention to ProfessorRanko Bugarski, who described himself as an outspoken criticof the Milosevic regime.69 Marojevic regarded Bugarski as a badSerb and wanted to remove him. Over-ruling the two-yearextension that the previous Dean had granted to the sixty-five-year-old professor, Marojevic thus forced Bugarski to leave theFaculty (he has since returned).

By expressing and demonstrating their opposition to theMilosevic regime, such individuals took considerable risks.Despite this, they have seldom received the recognition andcredit they deserve, not least because it has been far more con-venient to ignore than to acknowledge the existence of thisSecond Serbia. Overlooking the reality of resistance to theMilosevic regime, an example of what Hayden calls an uncom-fortable fact,70 aids the propagation of the myth that Milosevicenjoyed extensive support. This, in turn, has provided a basis forthe argument that the Serbs are collectively guilty.

By placing the burden of collective guilt on the Serbs, we inthe West thereby absolve ourselves of any blame or responsibil-ity for the events that befell the former Yugoslavia. The intervie-wees, however, stressed that Western governments were far fromblameless. Some particularly emphasized how the SerbianOpposition was let down by the West. To cite Miljenko Dereta,the executive director of the Civic Initiative, an NGO in Belgrade,


The West could have done more to help the Opposition, first ofall by recognizing us. They didnt talk to us. They only talked toMilosevic. By ignoring us, the West was not accepting reality,because we existed. A wrong picture of reality was consequentlycreatedthat everyone in Serbia was for Milosevic and that civilsociety did not exist. It took the Opposition a long time to getaccess to international organizations and to start a dialogue withthem. The process only really started in 1999-2000.71

According to Koraksic, therefore, the problem is that the Westdoes not know the right face of Serbia.72 However, perhaps thereal problem is that it does not want to. It is easier to blame Serbiafor everything that happened in the former Yugoslavia if one sub-scribes to certain stereotypes and ides reues, or received ideas,that have developed about the country and its people.

Serbian Collective Responsibility

While there is no basis for arguing that the Serbs are collec-tively guilty, perhaps there is a case to be made for Serbian col-lective responsibility. While the two concepts may appear verysimilar, they should not be conflated, as Arendt has emphasized.According to her, collective responsibility is always political. Thatis to say that every government assumes responsibility for thedeeds and misdeeds of its predecessors and every nation for thedeeds and misdeeds of the past.73 In her view, moreover, theonly way in which to escape from this political and strictly col-lective responsibility is to leave the community. Thus, refugeesand stateless people are the only totally non-responsiblepeople.74 For Arendt, however, the key point is that we can beresponsible without being guilty. Thus, she insists on a sharperdividing line between political (collective) responsibility, on oneside, and moral and/or legal (personal) guilt, on the other. . . .75

Summarizing her position on collective responsibility, Arendtconcludes, . . . no moral, individual and personal standards ofconduct will ever be able to excuse us from collective responsi-bility. This vicarious responsibility for things we have not done,this taking upon ourselves the consequences for things we areentirely innocent of, is the price we pay for the fact that we live



our lives not by ourselves but among our fellow men, and thatthe faculty of action which, after all, is the political faculty parexcellence, can be actualized only in one of the many and mani-fold forms of human community.76

This rationale for collective responsibility brings to mind whatKarl Jaspers calls metaphysical guilt. According to Jaspers, meta-physical guilt is the feeling produced by the knowledge of crimeand can be understood as a universal sentiment which interfereswith a persons conception of the self as fully human. Just as,according to Arendt, human solidarity justifies collective respon-sibility, so too does it lie at the heart of Jaspers metaphysical guilt.As the latter explains, There exists a solidarity among men ashuman beings that makes each co-responsible for every wrongand every injustice in the world, especially for crimes committedin his presence or with his knowledge. If I fail to do whatever I canto prevent them, I too am guilty.77

Although Jaspers speaks of metaphysical guilt, guilt is a legalconcept that refers to a specific status defined by an act of a judi-cial institution.78 What Jaspers is discussing are states of feelingand self-assessment. According to Gordy, therefore, it is moreappropriate to speak of metaphysical responsibility, and forhim this concept is highly persuasive. In his words, FollowingJaspers, at least one form of collective responsibility, his meta-physical guilt, is common to every person. We do not have toshare his mysticism to understand feelings of responsibility asfunctioning only partly on the level of the individual, and partlyin the context of identities and relationships. In this senseresponsibility has to do with our sense of who we are, our senseof one another, and peoples sense of us. Collective perceptionsand feelings are involved at all these levels.79

It is in this metaphysical sense, it is argued, that we canspeak of the collective responsibility of the Serbian people. Thepoint is that although no one is responsible for others in thesense that he is answerable for the conduct of others, we are allextensively responsible for our fellows in the sense that we haveduties towards them. . . .80 In short, all of us, to cite Lewis, haveduties to further the wellbeing of others, independently of anyadvantage to ourselves.81



Furthermore, we can speak of the Serbs collective responsibil-ity not only in a metaphysical sense. According to Jaspers, Itclearly makes sense to hold all citizens of a country liable for theresults of actions taken by their state,82 regardless of whether ornot they supported those actions. Hence, it can be argued that theSerbs are collectively responsiblerather than guiltyin thispolitical sense. This responsibility is based on citizenship, and assuch it attaches not only to Serbs but also to national minorities inSerbia. The important point, however, is that there can be collec-tive responsibility without collective guilt. Indeed, as Jaspersrightly emphasizes, A people as a whole can be neither guilty norinnocent, neither in the criminal nor in the political (in which onlythe citizenry of a state is liable) nor in the moral sense.83

Certainly from a practical point of view, it is far more useful tospeak of collective responsibility than collective guilt. AsArendt famously argued, Where all are guilty, nobody in the lastanalysis can be judged.84 Indeed, every war crimes tribunal todate has expressly rejected the idea of collective guilt.85 Gordy,for his part, maintains that conceptions of collective guilt, whileoften politically popular, do not assist the process of dealing withresponsibility,86 and establishing responsibility is an essentialpart of any peace-building process. To cite Kovacevic, Theprocess of discovering the truth and establishing who is respon-sible for committed crimes helps in the recovery of individualsand the community from suffered traumas and systematical pres-sures they were subjected to.87 In this respect, the potentialimportance of metaphysical responsibility is that it appeals toelemental human solidarity, and the moment people empathizewith the victimized, they turn against the killers.88

Of course it might be argued that the notion of metaphysicalresponsibility, in particular, is excessively broad and even unhelp-ful. However, it can be counter-argued that the concept reflectsthe realities of the inter-dependent world in which we now live,as well as the duties that arise from that inter-dependency. Ratherthan diluting responsibility, the idea of metaphysical responsibil-ity actually strengthens it, by reminding us of our obligations toeach other as human beings. Furthermore, it is a very specificconcept in the sense that it requires people, not as nations but



as individuals, to look within themselves and to examine theirown consciences. Finally, it should be noted that while theessence of metaphysical responsibility is such that it would notonly encompass the Serbs, this is not to mitigate their responsi-bility. Rather, it is to recognize that many others, including theinternational community, also bear part of the responsibility forthe tragic events that befell the former Yugoslavia.89 It is preciselysuch recognition that could significantly help Serbia to deal withits painful past.

Conclusion

Using the example of Serbia as a case-study, this paper hasargued and sought to demonstrate that the concept of collectiveguilt is fundamentally flawed. It began by highlighting the veryserious practical and moral implications of branding an entirepeople collectively guilty. By giving expression to the voices ofSecond Serbia, it then specifically sought to challenge the ideathat the Serbs are collectively guilty for having supportedMilosevic. Finally, while rejecting the notion of collective guilt, itsuggested that we can legitimately talk about a nations collectiveresponsibility, in particular its metaphysical responsibility basedon human solidarity.

Intellectuals, philosophers and academics have long discussedand debated whether we can speak of a nations collective guilt.Many of these debates and discussions took place in the after-math of the Second World War. If the crimes of Nazi Germany,above all the Holocaust, were the chief catalyst for these debatesand discussions, it is suggested that a particular postCold Wardevelopment justifies renewed analysis of, and reflection about,the concept of collective guilt. This aforementioned develop-ment is the rise of the so-called criminal leader.

Woodward highlights a general pattern in the postCold Warperiod of U.S. officials identifying rogue or renegade states,headed by new Hitlers, such as Saddam Hussein and SlobodanMilosevic, who defied all forms of civilized behaviour and had to bepunished to protect those norms and to protect innocent people.90

The main way in which such leaders defy civilized behaviour is by



unleashing illegitimate wars, and it is such warmongering behav-iour that essentially defines the criminal leader. Speaking in March1999 at the start of the Kosovo War, for example, President Clintondescribed Milosevic as . . . a dictator who has done nothing sincethe Cold War ended but start new wars and poor gasoline on theflames of ethnic and religious division.91

Historically, war has been seen as something normal and legit-imate. As Howard argues, War has been throughout history anormal way of conducting disputes between political groups.92

However, this is no longer the case. In the words of Mueller,Over the last century or two, war in the developed world hascome widely to be regarded as repulsive, immoral, and uncivi-lized.93 One explanation for this change in attitudes towards waris the postCold War decline of the Realist paradigm and the sub-sequent rise of Liberalism as an ideology. For realists, war is arational response by states to the security dilemma created bythe anarchical nature of the international system. In contrast,Liberalism was and is, in large part, an expression of revulsionagainst illegitimate violence: that of tyrants at home and ofaggressors abroad.94 Consequently, . . . liberalism has made animportant contribution to challenging the position of war as astandard feature of international political life.95 If attitudestowards war are changing, this necessarily affects how we per-ceive those who start, or are seen to have initiated, armed con-flict. To cite Duffield, The condemnation of all violent conflict byliberal peace means that the leaders of violent conflicts are auto-matically problematised. By their own actions, they risk placingthemselves beyond the limits of cooperation and partnership.This is regardless of whether they are guilty of war crimes, asmany are, or defending themselves from dispossession orexploitation, which some may be.96

Such developments have important implications for thenotion of collective guilt, since an obvious corollary of the crim-inal leader is the criminal nation. In short, as more leaders aredeemed to be criminal, it is possible that more nations will beheld to be collectively guilty. This potential for an increasedusage of the term collective guilt, and the enormous injusticesit would entail, necessitates new discussion and debate. The



contribution of this paper has been to argue, and hopefullydemonstrate, that collective guilt is a dangerous and unhelpfulconcept that should be wholly rejected.

Notes1. Burleigh Taylor Wilkins, Terrorism and Collective Responsibility (London: Routledge,

1992), 20.2. See, for example, Kurt Baier, Guilt and Responsibility, in Collective Responsibility: Five

Decades of Debate in Theoretical and Applied Ethics, ed. Larry May and Stacey Hoffman(Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), 197-218.

3. Stacy Sullivan, Milosevics Willing Executioners, The New Republic 220:19(1999): 28.4. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, A New Serbia, The New Republic 220:20(1999): 17.5. Goldhagen, A New Serbia, 17.6. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the

Holocaust (London: Abacus, 1997).7. Serbia was selected as a case-study on the basis of the authors particular interest, and

extensive research, in that country.8. Peter Handke, A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia (New York: Viking, 1997), 76.9. Cited in Drinka Gojkovic, The Future in a Triangle: On Guilt, Truth and Change, in Facing

the FutureA Reader, an unpublished collection of documents, ed. Organization forSecurity and Co-operation in Europe (2006), 52. Personal correspondence with Dr. ZoricaMrsevic from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in Belgrade.

10. Gojkovic, The Future, 53.11. On 13 November 2003 Svetozar Marovic, the then President of Serbia and Montenegro, apol-

ogized to the citizens of Bosnia-Hercegovina. However, he rejected any notion of collectiveguilt. Rather, he insisted that . . . peoples have no right to and must not suffer guilt andanguish caused by individuals and that peoples must not be made to suffer guilt for evilsperpetrated by individuals; rather, the individuals themselves ought to be held accountablefor that. Cited in the Humanitarian Law Centre, Transitional Justice Report: Serbia,Montenegro and Kosovo, 1999-2005 (Belgrade, Serbia: Humanitarian Law Centre, 2006), 40.

12. Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgement (New York: Schocken Books, 2003), 28.13. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgement, 29.14. Cited in Srboljub Bogdanovic, Polemics: Collectively Innocent, http://www.helsinki.org.

yu/confront_detail.php?lang=en&idgnrc=693 (accessed 31 August 2006).15. For example, as in cases of so-called strict liability.16. Joel Feinberg, Collective Responsibility, The Journal of Philosophy 65:21(1968): 676.17. Peter A. French, The Responsibility of Monsters and Their Makers, in Individual and

Collective Responsibility, ed. Peter A. French (Rochester, VT: Schenkman Books, 1998), 5.18. It is important to emphasize that this problem of denial exists not only in Serbia but also

elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia. See, for example, Louis Aucoin and Eileen Babbitt,Transitional Justice: Assessment Survey of Conditions in the Former Yugoslavia (Belgrade,Serbia: United Nations Development Programme, 2006). However, since this paper isfocused on Serbia, it will deal only with the problem of Serbian denial.

19. Latinka Perovic, To Tell the Difference between the Murderers and the Victims, in Womenfor Peace, ed. Staca Zajovic (Belgrade, Serbia: Women in Black, 2001), 107.

20. Strategic Marketing and Media Research Institute, Javno Mnenje u Srbiji: Stavovi PremaDomacem Pravosudju za Ratne Zlocine i Haskom Tribunalu [Public Opinion in Serbia onDomestic Trials for War Crimes and the Hague Tribunal] (April 2005), 15. Personal corre-spondence with Dusan Pavlovic from the Jefferson Institute in Belgrade.

21. Strategic Marketing and Media Research Institute, Javno Mnenje, 10-11.22. Sonja Biserko, Kolektivno Poricanje [Collective Denial], Helsinska Povelja 93/94 (2006): 3.23. According to Cohen, it makes little sense to speak of a people as being in denial because

denial is not a stable psychological condition. . . . Unless psychotically cut off from reality,




no one is a total denier or non-denier, still less in denial or out of denial permanently.Rather, people give different accounts to themselves and others; elements of partial denialand partial acknowledgement are always present; we oscillate rapidly between states.Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (Cambridge, UK:Polity Press, 2001), 54.

24. Carla Del Ponte, Prosecutions Opening Statement, http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/020212IT.htm (accessed 14 January 2005).

25. Robert M. Hayden, Schindlers Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and PopulationTransfers, Slavic Review 55:4(1996): 742-43.

26. According to a survey by the International Republican Institute in Belgrade in lateSeptember 2005, for example, 35 percent of the 2,237 respondents said that Srebrenica wasa war crime, 25 percent said that it was a war necessity, 10 percent said that it was a mas-sacre, and 4 percent claimed that they did not know of it. International RepublicanInstitute, Serbia (September 2005). Personal correspondence with Aaron Presnall from theJefferson Institute in Belgrade.

27. Srebrenica can thus be seen as an example of what Cohen terms implicatory denial; thisoccurs when there is no attempt to deny either the facts or their conventional interpreta-tion. What are denied or minimized are the psychological, political or moral implicationsthat conventionally follow. Cohen, States of Denial, 8.

28. Rosalyn Higgins, Statement to the Press by H.E. Judge Rosalyn Higgins, President of theInternational Court of Justice (2007), http://www.icj-cij.org/presscom/index.php?pr=1898&p1=6&p2=1&search=%22icty%22&PHPSESSID=db49b03ad074d149813d9a7b93f329d7(accessed 1 March 2007).

29. Cited in Hayden, Schindlers Fate, 730.30. David Cooper, Collective Responsibility, Moral Luck, and Reconciliation, in War Crimes and

Collective Wrongdoing; A Reader, ed. Aleksandar Jokic (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 209.31. H. D. Lewis, Collective Responsibility, in Collective Responsibility: Five Decades of Debate

in Theoretical and Applied Ethics, ed. Larry May and Stacey Hoffman (Lanham, MD:Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), 28.

32. Lewis, Collective Responsibility, 29.33. Cedric Thornberry has pointed out that following Operation Storm, Croatia became the

most ethnically pure state in the whole of the former Yugoslavia. Cited in Robert Thomas,Serbia under Milosevic: Politics in the 1990s (London: Hurst, 2003), 13.

34. Cited in Hayden, Schindlers Fate, 738.35. Vesna Nikolic-Ristanovic, Social-Historical Context, Victimization, and Truth and

Reconciliation Process in Serbia So Far (2003), http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:Up9i6NAWrLMJ:www.vds. org.yu/file/VesnaNikolic-Ristanovic.doc+vesna+nikolic+ris-tanovic&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=2 (accessed 25 August 2006).

36. Cited in Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating HistoricalInjustices (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2000), xvii.

37. Roger Cohen, Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo (New York: Random House,1998), 194.

38. Sabrina P. Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito tothe Fall of Milosevic, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2002), 36.

39. Dijana Vukomanovic, Documentary Appendix, in Challenges of Parliamentarism: TheCase of Serbia in the Early Nineties, ed. Vladimir Goati (Belgrade, Serbia: Institute of SocialSciences, 1995), 274.

40. Vukomanovic, Documentary Appendix, 275.41. Vukomanovic, Documentary Appendix, 268.42. Vukomanovic, Documentary Appendix, 270.43. Srecko Mihailovic, The Parliamentary Elections of 1990, 1992, and 1993, in Challenges of

Parliamentarism: The Case of Serbia in the Early Nineties, ed. Vladimir Goati (Belgrade,Serbia: Institute of Social Sciences, 1995), 55.

44. Vukomanovic, Documentary Appendix, 272.45. Mihailovic, The Parliamentary Elections, 58.46. Yugoslav United Left was the political party of Milosevics wife, Mira Markovic.



47. Slododan Antonic, Zarobljena Zemlja: Srbija za vlade Slobodana Milosevic a [A ClosedNation: Serbia under Milosevic] (Belgrade, Serbia: Otkrovenje, 2002), 507.

48. Goldhagen, A New Serbia, 16.49. Slobodan Milosevic, Od Gazimestana do Seveningena [From Gazimestan to

Scheveningen] (Belgrade, Serbia: Harprom, 2001), 22.50. Milosevic, Od Gazimestana, 84.51. For example, according to research by the Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade in

November 1990, 68 percent of pensioners, 51 percent of farmers, and 48 percent of house-wives supported the Socialist Party of Serbia. In contrast, only 2.5 percent of pensioners, 2percent of farmers, and 4 percent of housewives voted for the Democratic Party, and just2.5 percent of pensioners, 12 percent of farmers, and 11 percent of housewives voted forthe Serbian Renewal Movement. Srbobran Brankovic, Social Class and Political Affiliation,in Challenges of Parliamentarianism: The Case of Serbia in the Early Nineties, ed.Vladimir Goati (Belgrade, Serbia: Institute of Social Sciences, 1995), 87-88.

52. Ramet, for example, contends that Milosevic built his power on a foundation of hatred andxenophobia. . . . Ramet, Balkan Babel, 308. She further claims that of all the ex-Yugoslavrepublics, only Milosevics regime relied on the inculcation and nurturing of hatred in thefirst place to develop support. Ramet, Balkan Babel, 351. For his part, Zimmermann refersto the ethnic hatred sown by Milosevic and his ilk. . . . Warren Zimmermann, Origins of aCatastrophe: Yugoslavia and Its DestroyersAmericas Last Ambassador Tells WhatHappened and Why (New York: Times Books, 1996), 41.

53. As part of the authors doctoral research, 18 semi-structured interviewees were conductedwith various national minorities in Serbia and Kosovo in the summer of 2004. According toa male ethnic Hungarian interviewee in Novi Sad, Minorities supported Milosevic becauseof the money and privileges they received. There was a part of society that got richer andricher in that period. Author interview, Novi Sad, 7 September 2004. For his part, a maleKosovar Albanian interviewee in Vucitrn similarly explained that there were always someAlbanians who were loyal to Milosevic. He paid them well and they enjoyed many privilegesand opportunities. . . . Author interview, Vucitrn, 24 August 2004.

54. Eric Gordy, Accounting for a Violent Past by Other than Legal Means, Southeast Europeanand Black Sea Studies, 3:1(2003): 3.

55. Bieber notes that the term Other Serbia has been used to describe a group of NGOs andintellectual circles that sought to formulate a non-nationalist alternative to the regime andcourageously oppose the war. Florian Bieber, The Serbian Opposition and Civil Society:Roots of the Delayed Transition in Serbia, International Journal of Politics, Culture andSociety, 17:1(2003): 83.

56. Duska Anastasijevic (a journalist for Vreme), Slobodanka Ast (a journalist for Vreme),Professor Ranko Bugarski (a philologist), Professor Filip David (a writer and professor ofDramaturgy), Miljenko Dereta (head of the Civic Initiative, an NGO), Professor VojinDimitrijevic (a professor of International Law and the director of the Belgrade Centre forHuman Rights, an NGO), Drinka Gojkovic (head of the War Documentation Centre, anNGO), Predrag Koraksic (a cartoonist), Ljubica Markovic (director of the news-agencyBETA), Jelica Minic (an economist), Milan Nikolic (a sociologist and the director of theCentre for Policy Analysis), Branka Prpa (the director of the Historical Archives inBelgrade), Heri Stajner (a media analyst at the Media Centre in Belgrade), and ProfessorSrbijanka Turaljic (an electrical engineer and former vice-minister of higher education).

57. Adam LeBor, Milosevic: A Biography (London: Bloomsbury, 2002), 119.58. Florence Hartman, Milosevic: La Diagonale du Fou Milosevic: The Diagonal of the Insane]

(Paris: Denol, 1999), 50.59. Author interview with Branka Prpa, New Belgrade, 5 June 2006.60. Ivan Stambolic had been Milosevics mentor and was instrumental in helping his protg to

climb up the career ladder. Milosevic, however, repaid Stambolic by engineering his removalfrom power. After the Eighth Session in September 1987, Stambolic was forced to step downfrom the position of Serbian President, to be succeeded by Milosevic. Stambolic was myste-riously kidnapped while out jogging in August 2000. His body was later discovered in 2003.It is widely believed that Milosevic and his wife were behind Stambolics murder



61. Author interview with Duska Anastasijevic, Belgrade, 3 July 2006.62. Author interview with Filip David, Belgrade, 3 July 2006.63. Zarko Trebjesanin, Slobo on Coraxs Couch, in On [He], ed. Predrag Koraksic (Belgrade:

Plato, 2001), 11.64. Author interview with Predrag Koraksic, New Belgrade, 14 June 2006.65. Laura Silber, Milosevic Family Values, The New Republic 221:9(1999), 26.66. Koraksics portrayal of Milosevic was anything but flattering. From 1999 onwards, for

example, he drew Milosevic without eyes in order to make the point that the latter lived inhis own reality and did not want to see what was really happening around him. As well asthe eyes that could not see, Milosevic is easily recognized in Koraksics drawings by hisbristling hair, high forehead, and pug nose turned up at the end. Fat cheeks, protrudingchin and tight lips make up the finishing touches to his familiar character. His face is frozen,expressionless. He never laughs, except in a cartoon where his pose is typical of a smilingdictator (a kind of smile that makes your blood run cold!) surrounded by children with sadand dumfounded faces. Trebjesanin, Slobo on Coraxs Couch, 8. In one of Koraksics car-toons, Milosevic is standing in a Marilyn Monroetype pose on a grating, his uplifted skirtrevealing legs with cloven hooves and a Devils tail. Predrag Koraksic, ed., On [He](Belgrade: Plato, 2001), 41.

67. Nepodobni Corax [Unsuitable Corax], Vreme (20 March 1995), 13.68. Author interview with Ljubica Markovic, Belgrade, 22 June 2006.69. Author interview with Professor Ranko Bugarski, Belgrade, 20 June 2006.70. Hayden, Schindlers Fate, 743.71. Author interview with Miljenko Dereta, Belgrade, 4 July 2006.72. Koraksic, Interview.73. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgement, 149.74. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgement, 150.75. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgement, 150-51.76. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgement, 157-58.77. Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000),

26.78. Gordy, Accounting for a Violent Past, 6.79. Gordy, Accounting for a Violent Past, 6.80. Lewis, Collective Responsibility, 32.81. Lewis, Collective Responsibility, 32.82. Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt, 33.83. Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt, 35.84. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgement, 278.85. For example, in his opening address for the UK on 4 December 1945, Hartley Shawcross,

the chief British prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials, emphasized that the entire law relat-ing to war crimes . . . is based upon the principle of individual responsibility. Cited inMichael R. Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 1945-46: A Documentary History(Boston: Bedford Books, 1997), 87.

86. Gordy, Accounting for a Violent Past, 4.87. Zivorad Kovacevic, Vukovar, Forgive! in Serbia and the World: Between Arrogance and

Humbleness, ed. Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia (Belgrade, Serbia:Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, 2004), 302.

88. Perovic, To Tell the Difference, 108.89. Gowan rightly points out that the Wests role in the disintegration of Yugoslavia has largely

been overlooked in Western literature. Peter Gowan, National Rights and InternationalPowers in Yugoslavias Dismemberment, Labour Focus on Eastern Europe 62 (1999): 18.

90. Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), 7.

91. Cited in Philip E. Auerswald and David P. Auerswald, eds., The Kosovo Conflict: ADiplomatic History through Documents (The Hague, the Netherlands: Kluwer LawInternational, 2000), 730.

92. Michael Howard, The Causes of War and Other Essays (London: Temple Smith, 1983), 7.


93. John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: BasicBooks, 1990), 9.

94. Stanley Hoffman, The Crisis of Liberal Internationalism, Foreign Policy 98 (1995): 160.95. John Macmillan, On Liberal Peace: Democracy, War, and the International Order

(London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1998), 281.96. Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and

Security (London: Zed Books, 2001), 129.



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