Serbian historiography
The development can be divided into four main stages: traditional historiography, Ruvarac's critical school, Communist–Marxist legacy, and the renewed Serbian national movement.
[15] Throughout the post war era, though Tito denounced nationalist sentiments in historiography, those trends continued with Croat and Serbian academics at times accusing each other of misrepresenting each other's histories, especially in relation to the Croat-Nazi alliance.
[17][18] Historians and other members of the intelligentsia belonging to the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) and the Writers Association played a significant role in the explanation of the new historical narrative.
[18] Four factors and sources that influenced the "new history" include:[18] Using ideas and concepts from Holocaust historiography, Serbian historians alongside church leaders applied it to World War Two Yugoslavia and equated the Serbs with Jews and Croats with Nazi Germans.
[17] Historians in Belgrade during the 1980s who had close government connections often went on television during the evenings to discuss invented or real details about the Ustaša genocide against Serbs during World War Two.
[26] In 1986, Vasilije Krestić alongside historian Radovan Samardžić were members of a commission that later drafted the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts which referred to a "genocide" being committed against Serbs by Albanians and Croats in Yugoslavia.
[36] Amongst liberal historians their efforts have been concentrated on refuting nationalist discourses prominent in media and public views and the failure of embracing modernity by Serbian society.
[38] Stanković, who headed the department of history at the University of Belgrade challenged the rehabilitation of Nazi collaborationists by providing documentation which demonstrated the Milan Nedić quisling government's culpability in war crimes.
[39] Serbian historian Tibor Živković in 2012 was critical about the Serbian historiography dealing with early medieval period, stating that the Belgrade Byzantist school after the 1940s until present (including such as Ferjančić, Maksimović, Novaković, Ćirković, Komatina, Babić), was defending the De Administrando Imperio's account about the migration of the Serbs and Croats, without any criticism but also misunderstanding the whole DAI, with a lot of repetition stuck 150 years behind contemporary international historiography.
[43] King Zvonimir (ruled 1075–1089) a figure who consolidated Catholicism and rejected Orthodoxy in Croatia is viewed by Serbian Church historians as an enemy of the Orthodox Christian religion.
[47] That event has been utilized by placing it within the wider Serbian political objective of vilifying Bosnian Muslims by associating their conversion to Islam with the identity of the Ottoman invader.
[47] Bosnian Muslims within the bulk of Serbian nationalist historiography are presented as the descendants of the mentally ill, lazy, slaves, greedy landlords, prisoners, thieves, outcasts or as Serbs who confused and defeated chose to follow their enemies religion.
[53] Adopting mainly the perspective of Eastern European traditions, Serbian historiography views the national struggle as having been attained through liberation from what has been referred to as "five centuries of" the "Turkish yoke".
[56] The Mountain Wreath, a 19th-century poem written by Petar Petrović Njegoš containing a narrative about Slavic Muslims refusing to revert to Christianity followed up with their massacre is viewed within Serbian historiography as part of the ideology of national liberation from Ottoman rule.
[60] Within Serbian historiography references to Muslim treachery and Albanian irredentism were made that coincided with new campaigns to expel people from Macedonia and Kosovo to Turkey.
[61] Serbian historiography holds the view that Russians and Serbs have a special relationship expressed through Slavophilism and pan-Slavism and that both peoples are part of a larger Slavic "brotherhood".
[64] Regarding the post-World War One unification of Montenegro with Serbia, Serbian alongside Montenegrin historians attempted to critically analyze the events though were hampered by political concerns and ideological bias of the Yugoslav era.
[72] In the 1980s, Serbian historians initiated the process of reexamining the narrative of how World War Two was told in Yugoslavia which was accompanied by the rehabilitation of Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović.
[79] For Serbian historians, the Independent State of Croatia was responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Serbs throughout rural areas and in concentration camps such as Jasenovac.
[83] Historiography within Tito's Yugoslavia had presented the Ustaša Independent State of Croatia (NDH) as an imposition of Nazi invaders and a deviation within the history of the Croats.
[84] The popes were depicted as anti-Serbian, as being intrinsic to the demise of interwar Yugoslavia and taking part in the genocide against Serbians within the pro-Axis Independent State of Croatia.
[85] While the Bujan Conference (1943) is viewed as contravening the anti-fascist struggle due to Albanian communists insisting on the allocation of Kosovo to Albania at the war's conclusion.
[87] In Serbian historiography Prince Lazar, a figure who assembled Serb forces at the battle of Kosovo to fight the Ottomans is portrayed as a blessed martyr.
[104][106][107][108][105][109][110][111] Serbian national history views the Albanian presence in Kosovo apart from being recent immigrants as one that strongly supported and reinforced Ottoman rule meant to dislodge Serbs and to enforce Muslim control.
[99] Many Serbian historians reject that Albanian family clans during the Ottoman period assisted to safeguard and preserve Orthodox monasteries and churches in Kosovo.
[112] Instead they contend that Albanians held imperial Ottoman military and administrative employment and were to blame as much as the Turks for the turmoil that forced many Serbs in 1690 and 1734 to migrate northward.
