Volume 64, Issue 4

This paper analyses the memories of Belgrade residents of the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia (then part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). By focusing on the memories of this event, yet placing them in a broader context of the conflicts of the 1990s—the breakup of Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav wars—this essay explores what international intervention has meant to respondents in Belgrade by documenting memories of international intervention among older and younger generations, as well as among active members of antiwar NGOs in Serbia and citizens who were not engaged in activism during the 1990s. The paper aims to expand the scope of the discussions on dealing with the past and on transitional justice in the Western Balkans and to place them in the context of social memory studies and the study of post-conflict transformation processes. Furthermore, by presenting the case study of Serbia, this text contributes to the analysis of local mnemonic batt les as part of the creation of collective memories of the 1990s in post-Milošević Serbia, and it sheds light on the memories of the bombing as related to the war in Kosovo and the subsequent effects on shaping postwar Serbia–Kosovo relations.

This article analyses how NATO’s bombing of Serbia has been officially commemorated in that country. Initially, it provides an overview of the commemorations performed between 2000 and 2013, covering both the commemorative practices and policies of leading Serbian politicians and alternative voices. The focus then turns to the fifteenth anniversary of the bombing in 2014. Just as in previous commemorations, there was no central ceremony, but, rather, a series of commemorative events held all over the country. The controversies that these aroused are then discussed, in particular those surrounding the commemoration of Radio Television Serbia’s employees and the spontaneous commemorative acts that took place in Serbian schools.

In this article I explore the sonic and music practices in the experience of the NATO bombing of Belgrade, focusing particularly on their role in the governmental apparatuses both of the NATO forces and of Miloševic’s regime. Drawing on affect studies, I discuss sound and music not only as text, but as sheer intensity, as a vibrational body and force. I argue that the sonic element of the experience of NATO bombing proved important as it provided the surface area, the somatic layer of the war machine, on which the apparatuses of governance could operate and effectuate the production of meaning.

This paper examines the memory and narratives of the 1999 NATO bombings through a spatial lens, discussing how the debates surrounding memorial architecture reflect the multiple, and at times conflicting, understandings of the NATO bombing. By analysing the competition to reconstruct Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) from its ruins, this article discusses the tensions and challenges brought by narratives representing victimhood in Belgrade after 1999. It examines how understandings of victimhood have been spatialized through urban memorials, situating the RTS competition in the wider landscape of memorial representations of the NATO bombing in Serbia. Developed using a bottom-up process, the competition for the RTS memorial reflects both the opportunities and the limits of memorial architecture. While the competition and overall debates mirror general trends of memorial architecture in the context of European politics of regret and trauma, the limited scope of the memorial and its marginality in the cityscape both reflect and enhance the continuing obfuscation of the past in Serbia.

This article addresses trauma, its absence, and the creation of a collective memory among the contributors to the journal Symposion following the 1999 bombing of Serbia. By examining the group’s e-mails and conducting interviews with some of its members, it explores how their shared narrative patt erns constitute a mnemonic community, and asks what are the shared cultural frameworks that create a space for collective remembering within that community. The article argues that past and current politics of memory in Serbia have been built on discourses of a victimized nation and therefore do not recognize the specific ethnic, class or gender positions of individuals as they were during the bombing. Conversely, the national discourse on memorializing the bombing fails to articulate individual experiences and commemorative practices. This article therefore aims to present and analyse some of them.

This article investigates how Croatian women’s NGOs have contributed to gender policy in Croatia and what instruments they have used at the state level in drafting, initiating, and adopting innovative gender policy. It argues that, as norm advocates, Croatian women’s NGOs have adopted a double strategy: first, calling attention to the Croatian government’s non-compliance with international norms on women’s rights and second, enforcing change. Based on the advocacy of Croatian women’s NGOs, the author introduces the double-strategy model of norm implementation. The methodology is descriptive, whereas the analysis is based both on interviews and on published secondary data.