Politics of memory and SPC: It is important to be a victim

This photo just had to be on the cover of the book, says Karin Roginer Hofmeister. Church Holy Fridays in Ostra near Čačak - in the middle of the memorial complex dedicated to the fallen partisans, he writes Deutsche says.

The church was built next to the Courage Monument, which commemorates a group of partisans who fell into the ring of Chetniks and gendarmes there in 1943. Eleven got away. A monument communists was built in 1969, the church is still being completed.

And it is an obvious but convenient symbol of what Hoffmeister writes about in the new book "Memory of Suffering and Resistance: The Politics of Memory and the Serbian Orthodox Church" published by the Central European University.

The 1990s – a symbolic return

Hoffmeister, researcher in postdoctoral studies and lecturer in Holocaust studies at Charles University in Prague, studied in Belgrade, among other places.

He deals with the contemporary history of the Balkans and the role of religion in the construction of identity.

Photo: Jiří Thýn

In her new work, her theme is the great return of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) after the fall of communism, which culminated, as she writes, not under the regime of Slobodan Milošević, but later, after the Fifth of October.

First you need to look in the dictionary, because Hofmeister often uses the word "mnemonic", which originally refers to memory-aiding techniques. What, then, was the mnemonic role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in more than three decades since the fall of communism?

Slobodan Milošević's regime, he writes, did not allow the SPC to have completely free influence in the mainstream public, except when it "served the political goals of the ruling elite".

"Moreover, the church supported Milošević's nationalist policy of confrontation until its final stage. It was only after significant territorial losses and, most importantly, the loss of control over Kosovo, that the SPC directly and actively opposed the political establishment that failed to 'protect the Serbian ethno-religious organism' from the 'Others', and thus lost its legitimacy," she writes.

This opened up the possibility for the SPC to connect with democratic changes and it was as if no one asked who was against Milosevic and for what reasons. Together they were "cosmopolitan liberals and ethno-nationalists".

Golden time

Hofmeister sees Serbia as an area where three important fields intersect - it is after (post)socialism, conflicts and secularism. The first two items are often talked about in public, for example when talking about a "transitional" society or about "facing the past" and "reconciliation in the region".

The third item, on the other hand, often escapes. "The presence of religious phenomena in the public sphere is normalized as opposed to the paradigm of socialist atheism," writes Karin Hofmeister.

As she said at the beginning of March at the presentation of the book organized by the German Society for Southeast Europe, after the October 5th changes, "the presence of the church was normalized as a sign of emancipation." "The church is freed from the need to dwell on the ritual, so it enters the public, the media, museums..."

Bojan Aleksov, a Serbian historian and well-known anti-war activist from the 1990s, and today a lecturer at University College London, also participated in the discussion about the book.
He says that while Milošević as a "party apparatchik" only symbolically improved the position of the church, essentially the golden age for the Serbian Orthodox Church returned after the Fifth of October. "It was given a privileged position as the majority church, different finances, a role in the army, school," he recalls.

"Those changes provided the basis for what Karen described in the book. Only when it was strengthened legally, financially, logistically, it allowed the Church to take an active role in society, especially in the politics of memory," says Aleksov.

By the way, this cannot be attributed only to Serbia after the democratic changes. Aleksov says that something similar happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina precisely under the "supervision or governorship" of the European Union. There, too, religious organizations were strengthened, so they became important agents and cultures of memory.

"When I questioned it, I heard a metaphorical explanation of logic - namely, that people in the Balkans are intoxicated with nationalism. And how do you deal with a heroin addict? Well, you prescribe methadone. Methadone here is the church that should replace the toxicity of nationalism," says Aleksov.

"But I was never convinced of that. And methadone is addictive like heroin. We don't know what the long-term consequences will be," he adds.

Always victims

Moreover, Hofmeister writes in the book, the Serbian Orthodox Church was taken as an ideal witness to the "communist terror" that continued to some extent under Milosevic. It was all "the godless dungeon of the Serbian people". This monopoly on interpretation and demonization of the previous regime made the SPC widely accepted as a mnemonic agent after 2000.

So, what cards does the SPC play when it has the opportunity to influence the collective memory? Mainly on the role of victim, writes the author. And it is a global phenomenon - for a couple of decades, political sympathies and other advantages have been gained by being a victim, not a winner, says Hofmeister.

"Victims symbolize not only innocence, but also superiority over executioners," says Hofmeister at the book launch. "The memory of the resistance also speaks of heroic sacrifice. The Serbian Orthodox Church recognizes the Chetniks as heroes who sacrificed themselves defending Orthodox Christian values ​​from both fascists and communists."

From the words of Karin Roginer Hofmeister, we can also read the responsibility of the "West", which saw Serbia as the main villain and protagonist of the bloody nineties, and as therapy offered "facing the past", commemorating "other people's" victims and international criminal justice.

"The constant refusal to recognize the extent of Serbian suffering in the past - namely, the genocide in the NDH - while at the same time pointing to the historical wrongdoing of Serbs, reinforced the narrative of Western 'Serb-hatred' in the Serbian public," she writes.

The story of "Serbo-haters" (Hoffmeister uses the word "Serbophobia" in English) is a discourse construct promoted by Serbian elites. The word describes the "alleged historical fear, hatred and jealousy towards the Serbs, allegedly because of their moral superiority as persecuted 'righteous people'".

The belief that "the world is against us" persists to this day. In fact, it only intensified after the assassination of the first democratic prime minister, Zoran Đinđić, which marked the end of the real reform flywheel.

"Most people remained mentally locked within the familiar collective mnemonic categories of ethno-nationalistically defined heroic victims who are not responsible for their fate or inaction," he writes.

On the other hand, liberal players in the field of memory "were mostly dependent on external funding and external pressures on Serbian state authorities to embrace transnational (Western) values ​​and norms of memory work."

Vučić and the Church

And then everything in Serbia, including the role of the church, entered a new phase. In short, Hofmeister writes, today's president Aleksandar Vučić and the Serbian Progressive Party "centralized" the politics of memory in the hands of the ruling elite. Everyone else was pushed to the sidelines.

It's easy to think of examples - from pompous celebrations or commemorations where Vučić takes center stage, through the announcement of more "patriotic" textbooks and the construction of monuments, to bringing only those interpreters of the past who correspond to the authorities to the regime's television.
According to Hofmeister, Vučić's suite significantly expanded the repertoire in the politics of memory. From the paradigm of anti-communism, we moved to the simple ethnicization of everything - and the partisans are great for that if their ideology and all-Yugoslav character are erased.

Although in this phase the role of the victim in the Second World War and the Ustasha concentration camps dominates, Hofmeister notes that he is increasingly returning to the First World War, as well as to Nemanjići, a symbol of the glorious past and greatness.

The author also notes that Vučić often performs there with the President of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik. This tandem for celebrations and commemorations, which are broadcast on a large number of televisions, is accompanied by the militarization of such events.

And where is the SPC? "If the ruling elite sees them as a possible rival for the current mnemonic priorities set by the state, then non-state mnemonic agents are forced to temporarily or permanently withdraw from their positions of mnemonic authority," Hoffmeister writes.

Silence on protests

The extremism and silence of the top of the SPC - or the empty advertising that no one likes - can be seen in the current wave of protests led by students. On the official website of the Serbian Orthodox Church, pamphlets by Bishop David from Kruševac were published several times, in which the protest movement is demonized.

Hofmeister could not even write about that in the book - it was finished before the protest. But when asked by DW about it, she says: "I think the Church has been quite silent, only to appear with some controversial statements. True, recently several bishops have issued a different statement," she stated, mentioning that these are progressive bishops, some of whom have dioceses in Germany and the United States.

"So, there are voices and announcements that reach the public. But otherwise, the Church, it seems to me, does not know where it belongs now, how to react. It wants to be seen as if it is always with the people. But how now that it is connected to the regime," asks Hoffmeister.

"It is difficult for the Church to navigate through a complicated situation where you have student nonviolent protests, and yet you are somehow dependent on the political authorities. Because with Vučić, it is difficult for any sphere of public life to be independent. And the church is affected by that," she adds.

Historian Bojan Aleksov brings the issue back to the question of finances: "The Church has become absolutely intertwined with the state. The state is the biggest financier of the Church, and that must not be forgotten when talking about the role of the church in the current situation."

Karin Roginer Hofmeister's book is the result of many years of work - going through decades of announcements, the church periodical "Orthodoxy", articles, visits to various places and conversations with people from the Church and others.

In the end, it resulted in a study in which Hofmeister succeeded in trying not to, as she said in an interview, look at everything through Western glasses and oversimplify or stick to stereotypes of some kind of Balkan "backwardness".