중동부유럽

The present paper intends to study the self-perception of collective victimhood of Serbs, by looking into the funeral of Slobodan Milošević, former President of Serbia and Yugoslavia, held on 18 March 2006. Milošević died of heart attack in a prison cell at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia(ICTY) at The Hague on 11 March. The funeral of the former president served as a good occasion to understand political developments in the post-Milošević Serbia. Various controversies surrounding his funeral, from the cause of his death to his burial place,graphically demonstrated that Serbia was placed at a crossroad between old and conservative Serbia and new and more progressive Serbia. Thereby it was clearly shown that Serbia was divided by those who would consider Milošević as hero and those who as traitor. However, it should be mentioned that beneath the surface of the controversies and conflicts laid bare a general perception of Serbs which considered the former president as victim. The majority of Serbs appeared to consider him as the victim of western powers and later the ICTY. This phenomenon is closely linked with the self-perception of Serbs as a nation. From the mid 1980s, especially with Miloševićcoming to power, collective consciousness of victimhood has been developed in such a way that Serbs are loomed as a victim of big powers and history. There was a non-verbally delivered message that Serbs would be persecuted just because they wanted to live under the same roof of one country. This perception was developed and grew strong despite the fact that Serbia was not so much of a defender than an attacker in the context of the war of Yugoslavia’s dismantling. The funeral once again confirmed that the self-perceived collective victimhood of Serbs continued into post-Milošević Serbia. The implications from the funeral is that coming to terms with the past remains more of a task to complete that completed in Serbia.