Serbia’s ruling political establishment has increasingly used the country’s turbulent past to shape contemporary political narratives, presenting historical events through a selective lens that critics say reinforces nationalism, victimhood and support for the government.
Under President Aleksandar Vučić and Interior Minister Ivica Dačić, both of whom were politically active during the 1990s, interpretations of the breakup of Yugoslavia, the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Srebrenica genocide and the 1999 Kosovo war have evolved alongside their political careers.
Critics argue that the governing Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) frequently emphasize Serbian suffering while downplaying or reframing crimes committed by Serbian forces and political leaders during the Yugoslav wars.
“The regime maintains a firm policy toward history and, in this respect, does not differ from other authoritarian and populist governments that simplify complex historical processes,” Dragan Popović, director of the Centre for Practical Policy, told Radar.
According to Popović, the government’s narrative portrays Serbia and Serbs primarily as victims, while questioning that interpretation or introducing historical nuance can result in accusations of betrayal.
He argues that such a narrative also serves a contemporary political purpose by reinforcing the perception that Serbia remains under threat.
Rewriting the political legacy of the 1990s
Both Vučić and Dačić held prominent positions during the rule of Slobodan Milošević.
Dačić spent much of the 1990s as spokesperson for the SPS, while Vučić was a member and later secretary-general of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS). He also served as information minister in the Milošević government from March 1998 until its fall in October 2000.
Their positions toward that period have changed significantly over the years.
Dačić has gradually adopted a more sympathetic assessment of Milošević, recently arguing that although the former president made mistakes in day-to-day politics, he ultimately “gave his head for Serbia” when he was extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2001.
Vučić has also sought to distance himself from some of his most controversial statements from the 1990s.
In 1995, during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vučić made a widely criticized statement threatening retaliation against Muslims if Serbs were killed. He later said that the remark had been taken out of context and that he would not repeat it.
His political transformation since then has been substantial. Vučić now presents himself as a pro-European leader committed to regional stability and economic development.
Nevertheless, critics argue that elements of the nationalist worldview associated with his earlier political career remain visible in the rhetoric surrounding Serbia’s relations with Croatia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Srebrenica and the politics of memory
The Srebrenica genocide remains one of the most contested subjects in Serbia’s public discourse.
More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces in and around Srebrenica in July 1995. International courts have established that the killings constituted genocide.
However, Serbia’s political leadership has frequently referred to Srebrenica as a mass crime while resisting the term “genocide” in domestic political discourse.
Popović argues that the government’s treatment of Srebrenica is closely linked to its broader political narrative.
“The regime frames Srebrenica for daily political purposes,” he said, arguing that the crime is acknowledged but presented in a way that emphasizes alleged efforts to harm Serbia and the Serbian people.
At the same time, nationalist groups and activists close to the ruling establishment have continued to display murals honoring former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladić, who was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes by the UN tribunal in The Hague.
The issue has also generated confrontations in Belgrade, including criticism and attacks directed at individuals attempting to publicly commemorate Srebrenica victims.
Critics say that placing Serbian victims alongside the victims of Srebrenica can sometimes function not as an act of remembrance for all victims, but as a means of avoiding a direct discussion of the nature and scale of the Srebrenica genocide.
The politics surrounding Operation Storm
The anniversary of Croatia’s 1995 Operation Storm has become another central element of Serbia’s political narrative.
The operation resulted in the flight and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Croatian Serbs and remains a defining trauma in Serbia’s public discourse. Serbian authorities regularly commemorate the victims and refugees, describing the event as one of the largest instances of ethnic cleansing in Europe since the Second World War.
At the same time, critics say that official narratives frequently omit the broader political and military context, including years of failed negotiations and the expulsion of Croats from areas controlled by the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia initially convicted Croatian General Ante Gotovina in connection with crimes committed during Operation Storm, but the appeals chamber later acquitted him of the charges related to a joint criminal enterprise.
The legal outcome remains a source of controversy in Serbia and has been repeatedly invoked by politicians and media outlets as evidence of what they describe as international double standards.
Popović argues that nationalist elites throughout the former Yugoslavia have historically used unresolved grievances to mobilize public opinion.
“Nationalist elites on all sides raised morale at the beginning of the wars by invoking historical injustices,” he said. “The question is whether you nurture those resentments for daily politics or invest effort in reconciliation and the future.”
Kosovo and the legacy of Milošević
The same political approach has increasingly been applied to the Kosovo conflict.
Critics have pointed to statements by members of Serbia’s political establishment suggesting that the central problem with Milošević’s Kosovo policy was not necessarily the objective itself, but its failure.
The Kosovo war in 1998–1999 resulted in the displacement of approximately 800,000 Kosovo Albanians, alongside the killing and disappearance of thousands of civilians and combatants from both communities.
The conflict ended after NATO’s intervention and the withdrawal of Serbian and Yugoslav forces from Kosovo.
Popović argues that attempts to draw simplistic parallels between Kosovo, Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East risk ignoring the fundamentally different historical and legal circumstances surrounding each conflict.
“If you approach the past in an unscientific and selective way, you will create unsustainable parallels, except at the level of a superficial analogy,” he said.
History as a political instrument
The broader debate is not simply about how Serbia remembers the wars of the 1990s. It concerns how historical memory is used in contemporary politics.
Government officials and pro-government media frequently highlight Serbian suffering in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, while critics say that crimes committed by Serbian forces receive considerably less attention.
At the same time, regional nationalist movements reinforce one another by presenting neighboring nations as permanent threats and historical adversaries.
The result is a political environment in which unresolved questions from the Yugoslav wars remain central to contemporary debates over national identity, security and territorial claims.
For Popović, the way forward requires a fundamentally different approach to the past.
Serbia, like the other countries of the former Yugoslavia, has yet to fully confront the legacy of the wars, he argues. Historical grievances exist across the region, but political leaders have a choice over whether to exploit them or use historical reckoning as a foundation for reconciliation.
The danger, critics warn, is that when history becomes primarily a political weapon, selective memory can turn yesterday’s conflicts into tomorrow’s political tensions.
