People in War: Oral Histories of the Yugoslav Wars

The Documentation Centre for the Wars of 1991–1999 (Dokumentacioni Centar Ratovi 1991–1999) is an NGO based in Belgrade, Serbia, that is committed to making sense of the “character, causes and consequences” of the recent wars in the former Yugoslavia.¹ The organization collects a range of artifacts, textual and video materials, and works of art that address the Yugoslav wars, and it has an archive in Belgrade, which is open to the public. This archive includes the original audio recordings of the testimonials collected in the volumes under review here, photographic evidence from the war that has been donated by witnesses, as well as local and international accounts of the war in text and film. The rationale for the project is to initiate public contemplation and to help establish accounts of the wars that differ from essentialist and nationalist narratives that have been dominant in the region during the past two decades. Moreover, one of the NGO’s mandates is to specifically address the question of Serbia’s role in, and responsibility for, the wars. The project is driven by the conviction that “to accurately record, understand and remember the past is crucial for building a society of responsible citizens capable of shaping a peaceful and creative future of Serbia and the whole region.”² Five volumes of oral testimonials that were undertaken, recorded, and archived by the Centre in reference to the Croatian War of Independence and the Bosnian War will be examined here. Three volumes are testimonials from soldiers’ perspectives and two from civilian perspectives, one of which specifically focuses on women. The witnesses are from different regions of the former Yugoslavia and include Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims).

These volumes are, first and foremost, about the oral testimony of the witnesses. The testimonials are transcribed in their original language (Serbian Croatian and Bosnian), and the volumes consist of an introduction by the editors and the transcripts of the interviews. (None of the materials have been translated into English; hence, the quotations, below, have been translated by the author of this review essay.) The volumes do not include any analysis, contextualization, or discussion by the editors; as a result, the agency of the speaker is emphasized and it is up to the reader to make sense of the testimonials. Each volume has a short introduction in which the editors map out their methodology and describe their intentions for the project, which is to explore and document the experiential dimension of the Yugoslav wars from the perspective of ordinary people.

One of the collection’s great strengths is that these testimonials examine the emergence of hostilities and their subsequent escalation and partial decline over time; it helps address one of the big questions that the Yugoslav wars prompt: how can former neighbors turn on each other? The interviews, which are led by psychiatrists and writers from the region, are structured so that respondents reflect on their life prior to, during, and after the war. What is evident is that oral history is particularly important in this region and in relation to the Yugoslav wars for a couple of reasons. First, because it is clear that the...