"Open the doors of history before me,
bring the events and the faces to life,
take me away to the garden of facts
where every step, every path is
known to you as is your own life."

—Desanka Maksimovic¹
from the poem "History Class"

Case Studies in Serbian Historical Consciousness: The Kragujevac Massacre and Stjepan Filipovic's Valiant Last Stand

INTRODUCTION

          Continuity and change are the two governing forces of history. When we consider what has happened in the past, the two most important questions are: "What has evolved and how?" and "What has remained the same and why?" Both forces are at play regarding the historical consciousness of a nation, especially a nation that has a past as turbulent as that of Serbia. It is a complex process to sort through the motivations behind various manipulations of historical consciousness, to find out whether it is a slight manipulation or a blatant attempt to revise history completely in the mind of the public. Those who "consume" history, the public, are fundamentally distinct from those who are in a position to affect, to whatever degree, the perception of history. In Serbia, the latter, the government, provides the foundation upon which historical consciousness is built, and the former, the public, functions collectively as an impressionable audience. Historical consciousness is the way in which a people who share a collective identity, whether that be religious, ethnic or national, relate to their past. Thus, in a narrow sense, historical consciousness in Serbia is a product of the public, but molded by the government.

          Saul Friedlander, an accomplished, prolific, and well-respected scholar of Jewish history, employs a useful analogy to explain the nature of historical consciousness.² Friedlander suggests we think of "the representation of a recent and relevant past" as a "continuum." The "dispassionate" historical scholar, armed with objectivity, curiosity, and industriousness, tirelessly seeks truth at one pole, while the "constricts of public-collective memory” are found at the opposite pole, vulnerable to influence and prone to apathy. He defines historical consciousness as the "middle ground" between these two poles. Historiography and "public-collective" memory meet at this middle point and it is here that they are most "intertwined and interrelated." Thus, "Historical consciousness is the necessary conjunction of both extremes in any significant attempt at understanding, explication, and representing the yesterday that affects the shaping of today." This is a very concise definition of a very lofty and open-ended concept. There are many streams available to one who wishes to go wading in historical consciousness. It is, by definition, an interdisciplinary subject. I intend to apply Friedlander's definition of historical consciousness to Serbian history and I also propose to explore a few additional factors that have bearing upon the subject of historical consciousness, namely, government and individual subjectivity.

          History can be understood collectively or subjectively. This is parallel to the way in which an individual perceives and interacts with his environment. One definition of history is, in fact, the environment of the past. The convictions of an individual are much more steadfast than the pliable mentality of the public. However, people engage their surroundings on both levels: as members of society and as individuals with finely measured tenets.

          After beginning with an historical sketch of Yugoslavia, sufficient to offer a context for my two case studies, I will explore two foci of public memory in Serbia in an attempt to associate constancy with the individual's subjective viewpoint and change with the group, or public, mentality. The commemoration of the Kragujevac massacre and the death of Stjepan Filipovic has been used as a tool to manipulate the historical consciousness of the Serbian people regarding the Second World War. I will discuss the way in which the memorials commemorating the massacre at Kragujevac and the death of Stjepan Filipovic have been presented to the public. I will establish that the Communist government, which came to power during the Second World War, did in fact have a self-serving agenda in mind when it fashioned Memorial Park in Kragujevac. I will then investigate how the image of Stjepan Filipovic has been used as a symbol of Partisan heroism and victory, meant to glorify the Partisan war effort in the Second World War. The two case studies I have selected also reflect the individual, subjective view of an historical event. It is my contention that both subjective perception and government-sponsored orchestration are involved in the development of historical consciousness in Serbia.

          It is the purpose of this paper to analyze the commemorative representation of the Kragujevac massacre and the image of Stjepan Filipovic in order to explicate the forging of Serbian historical consciousness. The conclusions of that inquiry will then be extrapolated to compare the subjective perception and the collective memory of these two case studies