South East Europe TV Exchanges | Part 3: Serbia, Belgrade, Presevo

Part 3 - Serbia (Belgrade, Presevo)

As our Yugo crosses the border between Croatia and Serbia, Miljenko and Marko are discussing Operation Storm (Oluja) which was the Croatian military offensive which crushed the rebel Serbian would be breakaway state in Croatia in August 1995. Fourteen years later, they discuss how mainstream media and public opinion in Serbia and Croatia still disagree sharply on how to interpret these events.
The Yugo now approaches the city of Belgrade, Miljenko and Marko continue their conversation about the uses and misuses of history. Why does history need to be handled with care?

The two writers at the House of Flowers, the mausoleum of Marshall Tito.

Anyone who graduated from a Yugoslav secondary school would be surprised by what is in today’s history textbooks and what these books look like. Marko takes us to his old school in Belgrade to meet a former teacher.

They compare books from his time and now. Gone are lessons about the international workers’ movement, the USSR between the two world wars, the Chinese Revolution, etc.

The new interpretation of the Second World War is obvious in the way in which today’s textbooks put the defeated Serbian Chetnik and victorious communist Partisan movements on an equal footing as two Serbian anti-fascist movements in which the Chetniks even seem to take the lead.

The writers visit Dubravka Stojanovic, who is a history professor at Belgrade university.

“In Serbia and in the Balkans, history is too often understood as pre-military training”, according to Dubravka Stojanovic.

They discuss history teaching in the Balkans. She talks about the need for history to be “disarmed” and to include more tolerance and critical thinking.

Belgrade

The Yugo leaves Belgrade towards Presevo, an Albanian dominated region of south Serbia, on the border with Kosovo. Marko and Miljenko begin discussing the Serbian-Albanian dispute over the territory.

In Presevo, they meet with Engjellushe Morina who is originally from Kosovo.

She is a political analyst now but trained as an archaeologist and has written about culture and history.

She talks about the Dardanians and how Kosovo Albanian historians refuse to face up to the strange fact that the archaeological record for Kosovo appears to have a gap of several centuries with absolutely nothing. (Street Scene in Presevo)

Discussion about whether one day Presevo, which Albanians call Eastern Kosovo, will be exchanged for Serbian inhabited northern Kosovo. (Street Scene in Presevo)

The Yugo and passengers cross the border towards Macedonia.

Part 1 - Austria, Slovenia, Croatia

Part 2 - Croatia (Vukovar), Bosnia (Brcko)

Part 4 - Macedonia (Skopje, Pelince)

Portraits along the road

Driving the Yugo