Collective Guilt and The Serbs

Collective Guilt, Collective
Responsibility and the Serbs

Janine Natalya Clark
Can an entire nation be collectively guilty for crimes committed in its

name? Focusing on the case of Serbia, this article argues that collective guilt
is a morally flawed and untenable concept that should be rejected. It presents various moral and practical objections to both the generic notion of
collective guilt and the more specific idea of Serbian collective guilt and
contends that the latter is a fundamental impediment to peace-building
and reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia. On what basis might it be
argued that the Serbs are collectively guilty? To claim that they are collectively guilty for having supported Milosevic both exaggerates levels of support for the former Serbian leader and does a major injustice to those
individuals who bravely fought against the Milosevic regime. Drawing on
the work of Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers, the article concludes by suggesting that perhaps we can speak of Serbian collective responsibility.
Keywords: Serbs; Milosevic; collective guilt; collective responsibility; collective denial; Second Serbia
Can an entire nation be collectively guilty for the crimes committed in its name? This is the key question with which this paper
is concerned. Discussions surrounding the notion of collective
guilt have most often centred upon the case of the German
people, 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 in
recent history is to be found in the persecution of the Jews in
Nazi Germany.1 The case of My Lai, when as many as 500
unarmed women, children and elderly Vietnamese were massacred on 16 March 1968, has also been frequently discussed in the
context of debates about whether and to what extent we can correctly speak of collective guilt.2
More recently, as a result of the devastating wars in the former
Yugoslavia during the 1990s, some commentators began to speak
668
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.
DOI: 10.1177/0888325408318533
Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at DIRSA/TABASCO on December 23, 2014
about the collective guilt of one particular nation involved in

those warsSerbia. For example, in an article published in The
New Republic during the NATO bombing of the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia in 1999, Sullivan argued, Whatever else we do
in Kosovo, we must face the fact that, to all intents and purposes, many ordinary Serbs areto paraphrase Daniel Jonah
GoldhagenMilosevics willing executioners.3 Despite his claim
that the notion of collective guilt, conceptually and morally indefensible, must be rejected,4 Goldhagen himself was insisting that
Serbia needed to be occupied on the grounds that any people
that commits such deeds in open defiance of international law
and the vehement condemnation of virtually the entire international community clearly consists of individuals with damaged faculties of moral judgement and has sunk into a moral abyss from
which it is unlikely, any time soon, to emerge unaided.5
For Goldhagen, just as the German peopleHitlers willing
executioners6bore collective guilt for the Holocaust, so too
the Serbian people were collectively guilty for the crimes of the
Milosevic regime and therefore in need of collective punishment.
Using Serbia as a case-study,7 this paper will seek to show that
the concept of collective guilt is problematic and morally flawed. It
will begin by outlining some objections to the idea of Serbian collective guilt and will argue that those NGOs in Serbia that embrace
this notion impede the very truth and reconciliation process that
they are trying to encourage and develop. The second section will
ask what it actually means to say that the Serbs are collectively
guilty. If the contention is that they are culpable for having supported Milosevic, this is to do a fundamental injustice to those
individuals who courageously and tirelessly fought against the
regime throughout the nineties. These opponents of the regime,
who form the focus of this part of the paper, represent a second
face of Serbia which the West has tended, deliberately, to ignore.
The final section of the paper will suggest that while we cannot
speak of the Serbs collective guilt, perhaps we can speak of their
collective responsibility. Drawing upon the work of Hannah
Arendt and Karl Jaspers, it will argue that there is a case to be made
for Serb political and metaphysical responsibility.
East European Politics and Societies

669
The Case against Collective Guilt

When Yugoslavia disintegrated and descended into bloodshed, it was the Serbs who were widely seen as the aggressors.
To cite Handke, so many international magazines, from Time
to the Nouvel Observateur, in order to bring the war to their
customers, set up the Serbs, far and near, large and small, as the
evildoers and the Muslims in general as the good ones.8 If the
Serbs had the status of an aggressor nation during the nineties,
in the eyes of some their status has now become that of a guilty
nation. This ascription of collective guilt can be seen, inter alia,
in calls for the Serbian nation to apologize for its crimes. In
February 2000, for example, Joschka Fischer, the then German
Minister of Foreign Affairs, argued that one of the conditions for
dialogue was an apology of the Serbian side for what has happened to the Albanians.9
According to Drinka Gojkovic, the head of the War
Documentation Centre in Belgrade, The demand for an apology is
always addressed to the whole nation, all Serbs. The message it
contains is basically less of a condemnation and more of an offer of
relief. Apologize, shake your guilt off, show that you are moral.10
Such demands are based upon the assumption that all Serbs
are, and should feel, guilty.11 However, as Arendt argues, Morally
speaking, it is as wrong to feel guilty without having done anything specific as it is to feel free of all guilt if one actually is guilty
of something.12 In her judgement, There is no such thing as
collective guilt or collective innocence; guilt and innocence
make sense only if applied to individuals,13 and using the
example of Serbia this paper seeks to defend Arendts viewpoint.
Whilst calls for Serbia to apologize have chiefly come from
outside the country, it is important to stress that the idea of collective guilt is not anathema to everyone in Serbia. Within the
NGO sector in particular, there are various individuals who
embrace the notion of Serbian collective guilt. Sonja Biserko, for
example, the president of the Helsinki Committee for Human
Rights in Serbia, asks, If we collectively take pride in the success
of 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 question she poses, however, is based upon a flawed analogy. That is
to say that it is neither useful nor constructive to compare pride
with guilt, since only the former can be vicarious. To cite
Feinberg, even when it is reasonable to separate liability from
fault,15 it is only the liability that can be passed from one party to
another. In particular, there can be no such thing as vicarious
guilt.16 Thus, for example, . . . if all Americans are guilty of the
massacre at My Lai, it must be shown that they all in some way
contributed materially to the monstrous acts performed on that
day in March 1968.17
One of the reasons why Biserko and other leading human
rights activists, such as Natasa Kandic and Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco,
are so unpopular in Serbia is their insistence that as part of the
truth and reconciliation process, the Serbs must face up to and
acknowledge their nations collective guilt for the crimes of the
Milosevic era. Yet constant references to Serbian collective guilt,
far from advancing the truth and reconciliation process, actually
frustrate and hinder it. In short, by speaking of collective guilt,
people like Biserko and Kandic are actually perpetuating the very
problem of denial that they are professedly fighting to eliminate.
There are people in Serbia who deny that certain crimes, like
Srebrenica, ever took place.18 Latinka Perovic, for example,
describes how, pacing about in a forsaken Serbia, whose soul
has been taken away by those who killed thousands of Muslims
in Srebrenica, I confront disbelief that such ferocious atrocities
should have happened and that Serbs committed them. I
encounter unwillingness, even desperate refusal, to accept the
truth that is brutally documented. . . .19
Evidence of this unwillingness or refusal to accept that certain
crimes were committed by the Serbian side during the nineties
can also be seen in the results of public opinion poll data. As one
illustration, according to research by the Strategic Marketing and
Media Research Institute in Belgrade in April 2005, 74 percent of
the 1,205 respondents said that the Serbs had carried out fewer
crimes than the Croats, Albanians and Muslims during the wars in
the former Yugoslavia, of whom 24 percent also thought that
671
Serbs had perpetrated fewer crimes than the Slovenes.20 In the

same research, while 27 percent of respondents had heard that
paramilitary groups from Serbia killed civilians in Bijeljina during
the war in Bosnia, only 14 percent believed this had actually happened; and 47 percent of respondents had heard that paramilitaries and members of the Yugoslav Army killed civilians in
Vukovar in Croatia, but just 23 percent believed this to be true.21
For Serbian NGOs like the Helsinki Committee for Human
Rights in Serbia and the Humanitarian Law Centre, such data attest
to the Serbs collective denial. Biserko, for example, claims that
Milosevics extradition to The Hague on 28 June 2001, pokrenuo
odbrambeni mehanizam gotovo cele zajednicekolektivno poricanje (triggered a defence mechanism of almost the entire communitycollective denial).22 Such sweeping statements, it is
argued, are as unhelpful as they are erroneous. Whilst there are
those in Serbia who deny the existence of crimes, the key question
is not how to cure such individuals but rather why there are
people in Serbia who continue to seek refuge in denial.23 This is
obviously a complex question to which there are no simple
answers. However, one possible answer is that denial serves as an
important mechanism for asserting and affirming ones own innocence. This mechanism, in turn, is fuelled by fear that to acknowledge the perpetration of crimes is to thereby both incriminate
oneself and, more broadly the Serb nation, as being somehow guilty.
Thus the real problem, it is suggested, is not Serbian collective
denial but rather the notion of collective guilt itself.
To take one illustration, in July 1995 some 7,000 Muslim men
from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica were massacred. Those
involved in or responsible for the crime were subsequently indicted
by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In
a landmark decision in April 2004, the Tribunal found the Bosnian
Serb general, Radislav Krstic, guilty of aiding and abetting the crime
of genocide in Srebrenica. It was the first time since the Nuremberg
trials that an international court had established a case of genocide
on European soil. At the same time, the Tribunal has explicitly and
repeatedly rejected any notion of collective guilt. At the start of
Milosevics trial on 12 February 2002, for example, the chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte emphasized that the accused in this case, as
672

in all cases before the Tribunal, is charged as an individual. He is

prosecuted on the basis of his individual criminal responsibility. No
state or organization is on trial here today. The indictments do not
accuse an entire people of being collectively guilty of the crimes,
even the crime of genocide. . . . Collective guilt forms no part of the
prosecution case.24
Hayden, however, maintains that . . . genocide must be a collective act, a policy and practice formed in the name of one collectivity and implemented against another. Thus even
prosecutions of individuals presuppose the collective guilt of
those 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 itself
indicates that the larger guilt is assumed.25 Hence, while the
case of Srebrenica may be used as an exemplar of how some
Serbs engage in denial,26 following Hayden it can be argued that
this denial is not a denial of the crime per se but rather of the collective guilt implicit in that crime.27
By making some people more likely to deny the existence of
crimes than to openly discuss them, the concept of collective guilt
is an impediment to peace-building in the former Yugoslavia.
Thus, in this sense the recent Judgement of the International
Court of Justice on 26 February 2007, in the case of Bosnia and
Hercegovina versus Serbia and Montenegro,28 is to be welcomed.
If the Court had found that the Serbian state committed or was
responsible for genocide in Srebrenica in 1995, this would
arguably have cemented the idea of Serbian collective guilt,
thereby creating further obstacles to reconciliation.
The notion of collective guilt also hinders and obstructs a more
general process of human understanding. If we believe that an
entire nation is collectively guilty of heinous crimes, it follows that
we will regard that nation as being fundamentally different from
ourselves. If we proceed on this us/them basis, we thereby
close our minds to any possibility of comprehending why the
crimes were committed in the first place. This is extremely dangerous because, to cite Todorov, It is understanding, not the
refusal to understand, that makes it possible to prevent a repetition of the horror.29 We cannot empathize with a criminal
673
nation, and we do not want to. It is much easier, and more palatable, to emphasize that nations otherness than to see in it elements of ourselves. Yet if we focus only on it being not like us,
we thereby avoid asking ourselves a fundamental questionhow
would we have behaved in similar circumstances?
For example, we can argue that the German people were collectively guilty for embracing National Socialism, but how do we
know that we ourselves would not have done so in the same circumstances? In other words, What business do we have condemning these people if . . . we too would have naturally absorbed
those beliefs had we been brought up in their society?30 Similarly,
we can hold the Serbian people collectively guilty for supporting
Milosevic, for example, but can we be sure that we ourselves, in a
similar situation, would not have supported him?
It is also easy for us, as outsiders, to claim that more people in
Serbia should have stood up against the Milosevic regime, or that
more people in Germany should have opposed Hitler and the
Nazis. According to Lewis, however, it is important to bear in
mind that . . . there are severe limitations on the power of the
individual to modify social conditions, for normally he can only
do so by concerted action, and concerted action, moreover,
which requires a consensus of opinion on highly complicated
social and economic questions.31
Thus, in the case of Germany, for example, the question we
need to ask is, What could have been expected of the average
German citizen in the swirling tide of the events which engulfed
him and others eventually in the deep vortex of war?32 The same
sort of question, it is argued here, should also be asked in relation to Serbs living under Milosevic.
Collective guilt can be particularly objected to on moral
grounds. In short, crimes against a nation perceived as collectively guilty are unlikely to provoke moral outrage. Like an eye
for an eye, the concept of collective guilt provides a basis upon
which crimes against such a nation can be treated as justified.
How else can we explain the lack of international reaction to
Operation Storm in August 1995the ethnic cleansing by U.S.supported Croatian forces of some 200,000 Croatian Serbs from
the Krajina?33 The belief that these Serbs were simply getting
674

what they deserved was implicit in a comment made at the time

by Peter Galbraith, the then American ambassador to Croatia.
According to him, the expulsion of Serbs from the Krajina did not
amount to ethnic cleansing because ethnic cleansing is a practice supported by Belgrade and carried out by Bosnian and
Croatian Serbs.34
It is undeniable that Serbian forces, both the regular army and
various paramilitary organizations, committed heinous crimes
during the Yugoslav wars. Yet terrible crimes were also committed against the Serbsin Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. In addition, the Serbian people suffered at the hands of NATO, whose
pilots bombed Serbia for three months in 1999, and at the hands
of their own leader, Slobodan Milosevic. However, the notion
that Serbs are collectively guilty has meant that crimes against
them have tended to receive little attention, hence the problem
of the lack of international recognition of the crimes committed
against the Serbs.35 Unless and until such recognition occurs,
many Serbs are unlikely to want to discuss the suffering of
others, instead seeing themselves as the principal victims of the
nineties. Evidently, this will not help the truth and reconciliation
process because the sense of victimization, to cite Buruma,
impedes understanding among people and cannot result in
mutual understanding.36
So far, this paper has argued and sought to demonstrate that
the concept of collective guilt is flawed, problematic and unhelpful. If, however, the reader remains unconvinced and believes that
we can rightly speak of the Serbs collective guilt, this raises a
fundamental question: what does it actually mean to say that the
Serbs are collectively guilty? Are we saying that they are guilty
for supporting Milosevic? Cohen, for example, maintains that as
a people, the Serbs cannot escape responsibility: they massively
backed Milosevics nationalist upheaval and they voted him into
office in the first free elections of December 1990.37 To say that
the Serbs are guilty because they voted for Milosevic, however,
simply raises further questions. In particular, how much support
did he actually have, and why did people champion him?
Taking the first of these questions, there is no doubt that
Milosevic was immensely popular when he first came to power in
675
1989. According to Ramet, for example, Milosevic was genuinely

loved by many (though not all) Serbs as no other leader had been
since Chetnik leader Draz a Mihailovic.38 Nevertheless, it is important not to exaggerate levels of support for Milosevic. It is also necessary to emphasize that support for him and his political party,
the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), steadily decreased throughout
the 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 won
65.34 percent of the votes cast. Although he was the clear victor
(his closest rival, Vuk Draskovic, won just 16.4 percent of the
vote), the percentage of votes for Milosevic represented only
46.72 percent of the total electorate.39 In other words, he did not
have an absolute majority of support within the country. By the
time of the next presidential elections in 1992, Milosevics popularity had already declined. In these elections, he won 53.24 percent of votes cast, which represented just 37.12 percent of the
total electorate.40
The results of parliamentary elections show a similar decrease
in support for Milosevics party. In the first multi-party elections
in Serbia in December 1990, the SPS won 46.1 percent of votes
cast (32.9 percent of the whole electorate).41 In the second parliamentary elections held in December 1992, the party won 28.8
percent of the vote (20.1 percent of the total electorate), thereby
losing its parliamentary majority.42 This meant that the SPS was
therefore unable to rule on its own after the second elections,
but with its informal partner, the SRP [Serbian Radical Party], it
had an absolute majority in parliament.43
In the third multiparty elections in December 1993, the SPS
received 36.7 percent of the votes cast (22.5 percent of the total
electorate).44 Although it won these elections and obtained 22
more seats than in the previous elections, it remained three seats
short of an absolute majority. Moreover, objectively speaking, its
hold on power was threatened for the first time, naturally on
condition that the other parties (which had a total of 127 seats
against the SPSs 123) could agree amongst themselves.45
Fortunately for Milosevic and the SPS, however, the other parties
were not able to do so.
676

Further evidence of the SPSs declining popularity is the fact

that it needed to enter into coalitions with other parties. In the
1997 elections, it entered into a Left Coalition with the Yugoslav
United Left46 and New Democracy, and in March 1998 it formed a
coalition government with the Yugoslav United Left and the
Serbian Radical Party. In short, the election results reveal that
Milosevics regime enjoyed the support of a significant element of
the Serbian population (about 40 per cent) only until 1992. From
1992 onward, this support rapidly deteriorated, amounting to
only 20 per cent of the electorate in 1997. On the other hand, the
systematic opposition to Milosevic kept growing, and in 1997 it
exceeded 40 per cent of the electorate.47
Turning now to the second question, what were those Serbs
who supported Milosevic actually giving their support to? Were
they, as Goldhagen claims, endorsing an eliminationist project?48 Unfortunately, there are no detailed studies of why
people in Serbia supported Milosevic. However, analysis of his
speeches, a valuable yet often neglected primary source, can provide important insight. A recurrent and prominent theme of
Milosevics speeches was the economy and the need for economic development. In his speech in Pancevo on 10 May 1990,
for example, he declared that Serbia was resolved upon a programme of economic and social reforms,49 and in his speech at
the Sava Centre in Belgrade on 20 October 1994, he stressed that
Serbia must draw upon all her resources to bring about economic stabilization and development and to raise both community
and individual standards.50
In view of this strong emphasis on economic issues, it can be
argued that at least part of Milosevics appeal was very practical
and that what he instilled in people was the hope of a better life
and a bright and prosperous future, which is borne out by the
fact that his greatest supporters came from low-income social
groups such as pensioners, peasants, and housewives.51 This is
significant because it challenges claims that Milosevic appealed to,
and relied upon, ethnic hatred and chauvinism.52 Furthermore, if
we accept that there was a very practical element to Milosevics
popularity, it thus becomes far more difficult to argue that the
Serbs are guilty for having supported him, not least because
677
there were always some national minorities who themselves

voted for Milosevic on economic grounds.53
To contend that the Serbs are collectively guilty for backing
Milosevic, moreover, is to do a great injustice to those courageous individualswhom existing Western literature on Serbia
has tended to overlookwho actively opposed the regime. The
existence of this Second Serbia further undermines the popular idea that Milosevic enjoyed near-universal support.
The Voices of Second Serbia
According to Gordy, As a political idea, while the notion of

collective guilt is often used as a part of rhetoric, it has several
obvious theoretical shortcomings. Probably not the least of these
is the inclination to define a false collectivity which ignores social
and political differences.54
To speak of Serbias collective guilt is essentially and erroneously to conceptualize Serbia as a homogeneous entity comprised of people sharing fundamentally the same views and
outlook. In fact, the reality is that Serbia is a highly complex and
divided society. At the simplest level, we can distinguish between
traditional Serbia, comprising those who supported Milosevic,
and so-called Second Serbia or Other Serbia,55 consisting of
those individuals who tirelessly opposed and fought against the
Milosevic regime.
The experiences of the latter, however, have tended to receive
little attention, which has simply reinforced the misconception
that the Serbian population wholeheartedly supported Milosevic.
Using data from semi-structured interviews conducted in the
summer of 2006, this part of the paper is precisely about giving
expression to a different set of voices. The 14 interviewees,56 all
members of the Serbian political and cultural elite, were purposely selected for interview on the basis of their very active
opposition to the Milosevic regime.
That Milosevic was very popular when he came to power in
1989 is heavily emphasized in Western literature on the regime.
LeBor, for example, has referred to Milosevic as a living Serbian
saint,57 and according to Hartman, when Milosevic delivered his
678

now infamous speech at Gazimenstan in Kosovo on 28 June

1989, he was le nouveau Messie (the new Messiah).58 Yet what
is often overlooked is the fact that from the very outset, there
were people in Serbia who were strongly against Milosevic
people like Branka Prpa, the director of the Historical Archives in
Belgrade. She explained, I recognized immediately that Serbia
had crossed into Hell with Milosevic.59 The Belgrade journalist
Duska Anastasijevic similarly maintained that she was against
Milosevic from the beginning. In her words, I was opposed to
Milosevic from the start, from the moment he ousted Ivan
Stambolic during the Eighth Session.60 I was twenty at the time,
and when I saw just how autistic and power-hungry Milosevic
was, it scared me. The day after the Eighth Session, I had an urge
to tell people that Serbia was facing a catastrophe and that
Milosevic was very dangerous.61
Each of the interviewees opposed the Milosevic regime in
his/her own way, and they all faced serious risks in doing do. The
personal experiences of three particular interviewees can be
used to illustrate this. In the case of Filip David, a writer and professor of Dramaturgy, the struggle against the regime was not
political but rather ethical and moral. This took the form of setting up various organizations in which like-minded people who
were against Milosevic could gather and express their views.
David explained,
Together with three friends, all of them writers, I founded a new
Writers Association in Sarajevo, composed of writers from all over
Yugoslavia. We tried to maintain the friendship that existed. In 1991
in Belgrade, I helped to found the Belgrade Circle. The members
met once a week to discuss and to criticize Milosevics politics. The
Belgrade Circle was the only place where people opposed to
Milosevic could come to talk and to protest. I was also a member of
Group 99, which was founded in Frankfurt. It was made up of writers
and publishers from Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Kosovo and
Montenegro. The idea was to oppose bad things. We went to
Montenegro on one occasion to support Djukanovic [the then Prime
Minister of Montenegro], and we went to Sarajevo to support multiethnicity. . . . I also founded the Writers Forum, which was against
hatred and nationalism. When you live in that kind of State where
you have killings and so on, you must say something.62

679
However, opposing the Milosevic regime could be very dangerous, as highlighted by the assassination of the journalist
Slavko C uruvija, the partner of Branka Prpa. A few days after
C uruvijas murder on 11 April 1999, an article appeared in the
State-controlled newspaper Politika claiming that Filip David
and two other vocal critics of the Milosevic regime were traitors
who had called for Belgrade to be bombed. C uruvija himself had
written an article advocating an aerial bombardment of the city,
and it was shortly after this that he was gunned down on his
doorstep. Despite receiving menacing phone-calls and being
threatened in the street, David nevertheless decided to remain in
Belgrade. In his words, Despite everything, I didnt want to
leave. I felt I had to stay and to say what I thought. I needed to
fight, to oppose, and to try to explain. Some of Davids friends,
however, like Mirko Kovac and Bogdan Bogdanovic, left Serbia
and never came back.
For the cartoonist Predrag (Corax) Koraksic, his cartoons
also known as Coraxwere the vehicle through which to make
a stand against the Milosevic regime. These cartoons, according to
arko Trebjesanin, were an uncomprothe Serbian psychologist Z
mising and subversive critique of a dictatorship. . . .63 Not surprisingly, therefore, there was a price for Koraksic to pay. When
Milosevic came to power, Koraksic was working for the independent newspaper Vecernje Novosti (Evening News). However,
Milosevic decided to take control of the newspapers editorial
board, and that is when Koraksics problems really began. After he
refused to support the new editorial policy, the newspaper no
longer wanted to publish his cartoons, and a three-year court case
ended with Koraksic being sacked from Vecernje Novosti in 1993.
Thereafter, he started working for the independent newspaper
Nasa Borba (Our Struggle). When that became too popular and
was consequently closed down by the regime, he joined the independent newspaper Danas (Today). However, there were always
risks, and Koraksic regularly received threatening phone-calls
and letters.
After Milosevics fall from power in 2000, his wife Mira
Markovic gave an interview to the Slovene newspaper Mladina
(Youth). When she was asked what she thought of Koraksic, she
680

replied, On je najgori crtanist na svetu! (He is the worst cartoonist in the world!). Koraksic recalled, After that, I was really
scared!64 With good reason too, since it did not bode well to be
criticized by Mira. Her weekly column in a popular Belgrade magazine, nicknamed The Horoscope, was a reliable forecast of
the political fortunes of Serbias elite.65
Koraksic also faced numerous obstacles. For example, an exhibition of his work had been scheduled for 15 March 1995 at the
gallery Art Sebastian in Belgrade. However, the director of the
gallery decided that Koraksics cartoons could not be displayed,
owing to their negative portrayal of Milosevic, his wife, and SPS
officials.66 Thus, when visitors arrived at the gallery to view
Koraksics drawings, they were faced with virtually bare walls. All
the caricatures of Milosevic, his wife and members of his party
had been removed. Only drawings of opposition leaders
remained. It was no coincidence that the owner of the art gallery,
the firm Inex Interexport, had firmly-established business links
with the ruling authorities.67
From 1994 until 2000, Ljubica Markovic was the editor-in-chief
of the news-agency BETA. After the 1996-97 anti-regime protests
in Serbia, the number of BETAs clients rose dramatically. Thus,
Markovics work was a way for her to express her opposition to
the Milosevic regime. Like other independent media, however,
BETA faced many problems. Markovic explained, Sometimes it
was very risky. There were times when you didnt know if you
would be able to come to work the next day and do your job.68
It was particularly dangerous during the late nineties as
Milosevic, feeling his power slipping away from him, became
increasingly authoritarian. In 1999, for example, he introduced
an Information Law that inflicted extortionate fines on anyone
who dared to criticize his regime. BETA was fined in May 2000.
Markovic is the half-sister of Milosevics wife (although they
have not had any contact for 25 years), and according to her the
Serbian police tried to use that against her. For example,
On one occasion, a policeman came with a long list of names. He said
that he was representing the Greek-Serbian Association of
Friendship, and he wanted to know if I approved of the people on
the list being given medals. I told him that it was nothing to do with

681
me. There were various names on the list, like King Juan Carlos and
Ratko Mladic. Number 46 on the list was Mirjana Markovic. Before he
left, the policeman said to me, Remember number 46. Ill be back.
He never did come back, but it was very unsettling. On another occasion, a policeman came to BETA. We didnt know how he got into the
building. He kept saying to one of my colleagues, Do you know that
she [Ljubica Markovic] does not have a good relationship with her
half-sister? Again, he said that he would come back, but he didnt. It
was very subtle pressure from the secret police, and it was very
unnerving.
Threats and intimidation were just two of the prices to be paid

for being actively against the Milosevic regime. Another was losing ones job. In 1998, under Milosevics new University Law,
Radmilo Marojevic, a radical old-style communist turned Serbian
nationalist, was appointed Dean of the Philological Faculty in
Belgrade. He immediately turned his attention to Professor
Ranko Bugarski, who described himself as an outspoken critic
of the Milosevic regime.69 Marojevic regarded Bugarski as a bad
Serb and wanted to remove him. Over-ruling the two-year
extension that the previous Dean had granted to the sixty-fiveyear-old professor, Marojevic thus forced Bugarski to leave the
Faculty (he has since returned).
By expressing and demonstrating their opposition to the
Milosevic regime, such individuals took considerable risks.
Despite this, they have seldom received the recognition and
credit they deserve, not least because it has been far more convenient to ignore than to acknowledge the existence of this
Second Serbia. Overlooking the reality of resistance to the
Milosevic regime, an example of what Hayden calls an uncomfortable fact,70 aids the propagation of the myth that Milosevic
enjoyed extensive support. This, in turn, has provided a basis for
the argument that the Serbs are collectively guilty.
By placing the burden of collective guilt on the Serbs, we in
the West thereby absolve ourselves of any blame or responsibility for the events that befell the former Yugoslavia. The interviewees, however, stressed that Western governments were far from
blameless. Some particularly emphasized how the Serbian
Opposition was let down by the West. To cite Miljenko Dereta,
the executive director of the Civic Initiative, an NGO in Belgrade,
682

The West could have done more to help the Opposition, first of
all by recognizing us. They didnt talk to us. They only talked to
Milosevic. By ignoring us, the West was not accepting reality,
because we existed. A wrong picture of reality was consequently
createdthat everyone in Serbia was for Milosevic and that civil
society did not exist. It took the Opposition a long time to get
access to international organizations and to start a dialogue with
them. The process only really started in 1999-2000.71
According to Koraksic, therefore, the problem is that the West
does not know the right face of Serbia.72 However, perhaps the
real problem is that it does not want to. It is easier to blame Serbia
for everything that happened in the former Yugoslavia if one subscribes 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 collectively guilty, perhaps there is a case to be made for Serbian collective responsibility. While the two concepts may appear very
similar, they should not be conflated, as Arendt has emphasized.
According to her, collective responsibility is always political. That
is to say that every government assumes responsibility for the
deeds and misdeeds of its predecessors and every nation for the
deeds and misdeeds of the past.73 In her view, moreover, the
only way in which to escape from this political and strictly collective responsibility is to leave the community. Thus, refugees
and stateless people are the only totally non-responsible
people.74 For Arendt, however, the key point is that we can be
responsible without being guilty. Thus, she insists on a sharper
dividing line between political (collective) responsibility, on one
side, and moral and/or legal (personal) guilt, on the other. . . .75
Summarizing her position on collective responsibility, Arendt
concludes, . . . no moral, individual and personal standards of
conduct will ever be able to excuse us from collective responsibility. This vicarious responsibility for things we have not done,
this taking upon ourselves the consequences for things we are
entirely innocent of, is the price we pay for the fact that we live
683
our lives not by ourselves but among our fellow men, and that
the faculty of action which, after all, is the political faculty par
excellence, can be actualized only in one of the many and manifold forms of human community.76
This rationale for collective responsibility brings to mind what
Karl Jaspers calls metaphysical guilt. According to Jaspers, metaphysical guilt is the feeling produced by the knowledge of crime
and can be understood as a universal sentiment which interferes
with a persons conception of the self as fully human. Just as,
according to Arendt, human solidarity justifies collective responsibility, so too does it lie at the heart of Jaspers metaphysical guilt.
As the latter explains, There exists a solidarity among men as
human beings that makes each co-responsible for every wrong
and every injustice in the world, especially for crimes committed
in his presence or with his knowledge. If I fail to do whatever I can
to prevent them, I too am guilty.77
Although Jaspers speaks of metaphysical guilt, guilt is a legal
concept that refers to a specific status defined by an act of a judicial institution.78 What Jaspers is discussing are states of feeling
and self-assessment. According to Gordy, therefore, it is more
appropriate to speak of metaphysical responsibility, and for
him this concept is highly persuasive. In his words, Following
Jaspers, at least one form of collective responsibility, his metaphysical guilt, is common to every person. We do not have to
share his mysticism to understand feelings of responsibility as
functioning only partly on the level of the individual, and partly
in the context of identities and relationships. In this sense
responsibility has to do with our sense of who we are, our sense
of one another, and peoples sense of us. Collective perceptions
and feelings are involved at all these levels.79
It is in this metaphysical sense, it is argued, that we can
speak of the collective responsibility of the Serbian people. The
point is that although no one is responsible for others in the
sense that he is answerable for the conduct of others, we are all
extensively responsible for our fellows in the sense that we have
duties towards them. . . .80 In short, all of us, to cite Lewis, have
duties to further the wellbeing of others, independently of any
advantage to ourselves.81
684

Furthermore, we can speak of the Serbs collective responsibility not only in a metaphysical sense. According to Jaspers, It
clearly makes sense to hold all citizens of a country liable for the
results of actions taken by their state,82 regardless of whether or
not they supported those actions. Hence, it can be argued that the
Serbs are collectively responsiblerather than guiltyin this
political sense. This responsibility is based on citizenship, and as
such it attaches not only to Serbs but also to national minorities in
Serbia. The important point, however, is that there can be collective responsibility without collective guilt. Indeed, as Jaspers
rightly emphasizes, A people as a whole can be neither guilty nor
innocent, neither in the criminal nor in the political (in which only
the citizenry of a state is liable) nor in the moral sense.83
Certainly from a practical point of view, it is far more useful to
speak of collective responsibility than collective guilt. As
Arendt famously argued, Where all are guilty, nobody in the last
analysis can be judged.84 Indeed, every war crimes tribunal to
date has expressly rejected the idea of collective guilt.85 Gordy,
for his part, maintains that conceptions of collective guilt, while
often politically popular, do not assist the process of dealing with
responsibility,86 and establishing responsibility is an essential
part of any peace-building process. To cite Kovacevic, The
process of discovering the truth and establishing who is responsible for committed crimes helps in the recovery of individuals
and the community from suffered traumas and systematical pressures they were subjected to.87 In this respect, the potential
importance of metaphysical responsibility is that it appeals to
elemental human solidarity, and the moment people empathize
with the victimized, they turn against the killers.88
Of course it might be argued that the notion of metaphysical
responsibility, in particular, is excessively broad and even unhelpful. However, it can be counter-argued that the concept reflects
the realities of the inter-dependent world in which we now live,
as well as the duties that arise from that inter-dependency. Rather
than diluting responsibility, the idea of metaphysical responsibility actually strengthens it, by reminding us of our obligations to
each other as human beings. Furthermore, it is a very specific
concept in the sense that it requires people, not as nations but
685
as individuals, to look within themselves and to examine their

own consciences. Finally, it should be noted that while the
essence of metaphysical responsibility is such that it would not
only encompass the Serbs, this is not to mitigate their responsibility. Rather, it is to recognize that many others, including the
international community, also bear part of the responsibility for
the tragic events that befell the former Yugoslavia.89 It is precisely
such recognition that could significantly help Serbia to deal with
its painful past.
Conclusion
Using the example of Serbia as a case-study, this paper has

argued and sought to demonstrate that the concept of collective
guilt is fundamentally flawed. It began by highlighting the very
serious practical and moral implications of branding an entire
people collectively guilty. By giving expression to the voices of
Second Serbia, it then specifically sought to challenge the idea
that the Serbs are collectively guilty for having supported
Milosevic. Finally, while rejecting the notion of collective guilt, it
suggested that we can legitimately talk about a nations collective
responsibility, in particular its metaphysical responsibility based
on human solidarity.
Intellectuals, philosophers and academics have long discussed
and debated whether we can speak of a nations collective guilt.
Many of these debates and discussions took place in the aftermath of the Second World War. If the crimes of Nazi Germany,
above all the Holocaust, were the chief catalyst for these debates
and discussions, it is suggested that a particular postCold War
development justifies renewed analysis of, and reflection about,
the concept of collective guilt. This aforementioned development is the rise of the so-called criminal leader.
Woodward highlights a general pattern in the postCold War
period of U.S. officials identifying rogue or renegade states,
headed by new Hitlers, such as Saddam Hussein and Slobodan
Milosevic, who defied all forms of civilized behaviour and had to be
punished to protect those norms and to protect innocent people.90
The main way in which such leaders defy civilized behaviour is by
686

unleashing illegitimate wars, and it is such warmongering behaviour that essentially defines the criminal leader. Speaking in March
1999 at the start of the Kosovo War, for example, President Clinton
described Milosevic as . . . a dictator who has done nothing since
the Cold War ended but start new wars and poor gasoline on the
flames of ethnic and religious division.91
Historically, war has been seen as something normal and legitimate. As Howard argues, War has been throughout history a
normal 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 has
come widely to be regarded as repulsive, immoral, and uncivilized.93 One explanation for this change in attitudes towards war
is the postCold War decline of the Realist paradigm and the subsequent rise of Liberalism as an ideology. For realists, war is a
rational response by states to the security dilemma created by
the anarchical nature of the international system. In contrast,
Liberalism was and is, in large part, an expression of revulsion
against illegitimate violence: that of tyrants at home and of
aggressors abroad.94 Consequently, . . . liberalism has made an
important contribution to challenging the position of war as a
standard feature of international political life.95 If attitudes
towards war are changing, this necessarily affects how we perceive those who start, or are seen to have initiated, armed conflict. To cite Duffield, The condemnation of all violent conflict by
liberal peace means that the leaders of violent conflicts are automatically problematised. By their own actions, they risk placing
themselves beyond the limits of cooperation and partnership.
This is regardless of whether they are guilty of war crimes, as
many are, or defending themselves from dispossession or
exploitation, which some may be.96
Such developments have important implications for the
notion of collective guilt, since an obvious corollary of the criminal leader is the criminal nation. In short, as more leaders are
deemed to be criminal, it is possible that more nations will be
held to be collectively guilty. This potential for an increased
usage of the term collective guilt, and the enormous injustices
it would entail, necessitates new discussion and debate. The
687
contribution of this paper has been to argue, and hopefully

demonstrate, that collective guilt is a dangerous and unhelpful
concept that should be wholly rejected.
Notes
1. 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 for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (2006), 52. Personal correspondence with Dr. Zorica
Mrsevic 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, apologized to the citizens of Bosnia-Hercegovina. However, he rejected any notion of collective
guilt. Rather, he insisted that . . . peoples have no right to and must not suffer guilt and
anguish caused by individuals and that peoples must not be made to suffer guilt for evils
perpetrated by individuals; rather, the individuals themselves ought to be held accountable
for 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 is
focused 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 Women
for Peace, ed. Staca Zajovic (Belgrade, Serbia: Women in Black, 2001), 107.
20. Strategic Marketing and Media Research Institute, Javno Mnenje u Srbiji: Stavovi Prema
Domacem Pravosudju za Ratne Zlocine i Haskom Tribunalu [Public Opinion in Serbia on
Domestic Trials for War Crimes and the Hague Tribunal] (April 2005), 15. Personal correspondence 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,
688

24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
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 denial
and 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.
Carla Del Ponte, Prosecutions Opening Statement, http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/
020212IT.htm (accessed 14 January 2005).
Robert M. Hayden, Schindlers Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population
Transfers, Slavic Review 55:4(1996): 742-43.
According to a survey by the International Republican Institute in Belgrade in late
September 2005, for example, 35 percent of the 2,237 respondents said that Srebrenica was
a war crime, 25 percent said that it was a war necessity, 10 percent said that it was a massacre, and 4 percent claimed that they did not know of it. International Republican
Institute, Serbia (September 2005). Personal correspondence with Aaron Presnall from the
Jefferson Institute in Belgrade.
Srebrenica can thus be seen as an example of what Cohen terms implicatory denial; this
occurs when there is no attempt to deny either the facts or their conventional interpretation. What are denied or minimized are the psychological, political or moral implications
that conventionally follow. Cohen, States of Denial, 8.
Rosalyn Higgins, Statement to the Press by H.E. Judge Rosalyn Higgins, President of the
International 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).
Cited in Hayden, Schindlers Fate, 730.
David Cooper, Collective Responsibility, Moral Luck, and Reconciliation, in War Crimes and
Collective Wrongdoing; A Reader, ed. Aleksandar Jokic (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 209.
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.
Lewis, Collective Responsibility, 29.
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.
Cited in Hayden, Schindlers Fate, 738.
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+ristanovic&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=2 (accessed 25 August 2006).
Cited in Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical
Injustices (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2000), xvii.
Roger Cohen, Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo (New York: Random House,
1998), 194.
Sabrina P. Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to
the Fall of Milosevic, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2002), 36.
Dijana Vukomanovic, Documentary Appendix, in Challenges of Parliamentarism: The
Case of Serbia in the Early Nineties, ed. Vladimir Goati (Belgrade, Serbia: Institute of Social
Sciences, 1995), 274.
Vukomanovic, Documentary Appendix, 275.
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.
Mihailovic, The Parliamentary Elections, 58.
Yugoslav United Left was the political party of Milosevics wife, Mira Markovic.

689
47. Slododan Antonic, Zarobljena Zemlja: Srbija za vlade Slobodana Milosevic a [A Closed
Nation: 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 housewives supported the Socialist Party of Serbia. In contrast, only 2.5 percent of pensioners, 2
percent of farmers, and 4 percent of housewives voted for the Democratic Party, and just
2.5 percent of pensioners, 12 percent of farmers, and 11 percent of housewives voted for
the 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 and
xenophobia. . . . Ramet, Balkan Babel, 308. She further claims that of all the ex-Yugoslav
republics, only Milosevics regime relied on the inculcation and nurturing of hatred in the
first place to develop support. Ramet, Balkan Babel, 351. For his part, Zimmermann refers
to the ethnic hatred sown by Milosevic and his ilk. . . . Warren Zimmermann, Origins of a
Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and Its DestroyersAmericas Last Ambassador Tells What
Happened and Why (New York: Times Books, 1996), 41.
53. As part of the authors doctoral research, 18 semi-structured interviewees were conducted
with various national minorities in Serbia and Kosovo in the summer of 2004. According to
a male ethnic Hungarian interviewee in Novi Sad, Minorities supported Milosevic because
of the money and privileges they received. There was a part of society that got richer and
richer in that period. Author interview, Novi Sad, 7 September 2004. For his part, a male
Kosovar Albanian interviewee in Vucitrn similarly explained that there were always some
Albanians who were loyal to Milosevic. He paid them well and they enjoyed many privileges
and opportunities. . . . Author interview, Vucitrn, 24 August 2004.
54. Eric Gordy, Accounting for a Violent Past by Other than Legal Means, Southeast European
and Black Sea Studies, 3:1(2003): 3.
55. Bieber notes that the term Other Serbia has been used to describe a group of NGOs and
intellectual circles that sought to formulate a non-nationalist alternative to the regime and
courageously oppose the war. Florian Bieber, The Serbian Opposition and Civil Society:
Roots of the Delayed Transition in Serbia, International Journal of Politics, Culture and
Society, 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 of
Dramaturgy), Miljenko Dereta (head of the Civic Initiative, an NGO), Professor Vojin
Dimitrijevic (a professor of International Law and the director of the Belgrade Centre for
Human Rights, an NGO), Drinka Gojkovic (head of the War Documentation Centre, an
NGO), Predrag Koraksic (a cartoonist), Ljubica Markovic (director of the news-agency
BETA), Jelica Minic (an economist), Milan Nikolic (a sociologist and the director of the
Centre for Policy Analysis), Branka Prpa (the director of the Historical Archives in
Belgrade), Heri S tajner (a media analyst at the Media Centre in Belgrade), and Professor
Srbijanka 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 removal
from power. After the Eighth Session in September 1987, Stambolic was forced to step down
from the position of Serbian President, to be succeeded by Milosevic. Stambolic was mysteriously 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
690

61. Author interview with Duska Anastasijevic, Belgrade, 3 July 2006.

62. Author interview with Filip David, Belgrade, 3 July 2006.
arko Trebjesanin, Slobo on Coraxs Couch, in On [He], ed. Predrag Koraksic (Belgrade:
63. Z
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 in
his own reality and did not want to see what was really happening around him. As well as
the eyes that could not see, Milosevic is easily recognized in Koraksics drawings by his
bristling hair, high forehead, and pug nose turned up at the end. Fat cheeks, protruding
chin 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 smiling
dictator (a kind of smile that makes your blood run cold!) surrounded by children with sad
and dumfounded faces. Trebjesanin, Slobo on Coraxs Couch, 8. In one of Koraksics cartoons, Milosevic is standing in a Marilyn Monroetype pose on a grating, his uplifted skirt
revealing 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.
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.
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.
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 relating to war crimes . . . is based upon the principle of individual responsibility. Cited in
Michael R. Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 1945-46: A Documentary History
(Boston: Bedford Books, 1997), 87.
ivorad Kovacevic, Vukovar, Forgive! in Serbia and the World: Between Arrogance and
87. Z
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 International
Powers 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: A
Diplomatic History through Documents (The Hague, the Netherlands: Kluwer Law
International, 2000), 730.
92. Michael Howard, The Causes of War and Other Essays (London: Temple Smith, 1983), 7.

691
93. John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: Basic
Books, 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.
692


Collective Guilt and The Serbs

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Collective Guilt, Collective

Responsibility and the Serbs

Can an entire nation be collectively guilty for crimes committed in its

about the collective guilt of one particular nation involved in

East European Politics and Societies

The Case against Collective Guilt

Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility

in which we have not individually participated?14 For Biserko,

Serbs had perpetrated fewer crimes than the Slovenes.20 In the

Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility

in all cases before the Tribunal, is charged as an individual. He is

Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility

what they deserved was implicit in a comment made at the time

1989. According to Ramet, for example, Milosevic was genuinely

Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility

Further evidence of the SPSs declining popularity is the fact

there were always some national minorities who themselves

According to Gordy, As a political idea, while the notion of

Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility

now infamous speech at Gazimenstan in Kosovo on 28 June

East European Politics and Societies

Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility

East European Politics and Societies

Threats and intimidation were just two of the prices to be paid

Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility

Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility

as individuals, to look within themselves and to examine their

Using the example of Serbia as a case-study, this paper has

Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility

contribution of this paper has been to argue, and hopefully

Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility

East European Politics and Societies

Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility

61. Author interview with Duska Anastasijevic, Belgrade, 3 July 2006.

East European Politics and Societies

Collective Guilt, Collective Responsibility

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