At the end of the 1980s there were around fifty active religious communities in Yugoslavia. With a focus on the Serbian Orthodox Church, this presentation will show how religious communities launched a synchronized common front and, from Tito’s death (1980) on, began the process of returning from marginal social positions. A special form of action by religious communities was the organization of mass religious gatherings that marked the difference between Us and Them. The talk will discuss the aggressive expression of nationalist pretensions during the celebration of the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, the celebrations of the anniversary of the 1690s migrations of the Serbs (Velika seoba Srba) and the jubilee of ustasha terror over the Serbs executed in 1941. It aims to show the relationship of the Serbian Orthodox Church towards Bosnia and Herzegovina as a subject of international law and how the Serbian Orthodox Church sought to disrupt the modernization of society, examining whether such a (premodern) society was successfully incited to war as a rite in which the Other is sacrificed with the aim to (re)homogenize the Serbian people in one Great Serbian state.

Online-Lecture by Edin Omerčić (University of Sarajevo)

The Web Lecture Series “Transregional Histories of the Yugoslav Wars” is part of the research project Reordering Yugoslavia, Rethinking Europe, which is organized by the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History together with the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies.

LOCATION
You are invited to join the lecture and discussion via Zoom

REGISTRATION
No pre-registration is required for participation.