Within the nearly 400 pages of a widely used Serbian textbook, college-age students can learn that neighboring Montenegro and Republika Srpska, one of the two main entities that compose Bosnia-Herzegovina, are "Serb states."
They won't learn that Serb forces committed genocide at Srebrenica in 1995, killing more than 8,000 mostly unarmed civilian men. Other war crimes by Serb forces in the post-Yugoslav wars get hardly any mention.
Together with RFE/RL's Balkan Service, Jelena Djureinovic, a historian from the University of Vienna, analyzed the contents of the textbook for its accuracy in a country less than three decades removed from the internecine wars of the Balkans in the 1990s.
She characterized excerpts of the book that teach young Serbs about the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and its successor states as a melange of "problematic statements, selective presentation of facts, [and] a focus that corresponds to Serbian nationalism."
The book is one of just several textbooks assigned to upper-level secondary-school students in Serbia. It was published by Belgrade-based printing house Novi Logos in 2021 and authored by Dushko Lolandic, Ratomir Milikic, and Maja Milinovic.
Here are seven of its most highly disputable statements.
'Serbian States'
"In addition to the Republic of Serbia, the Serb states (those where a large percentage of the Serbian population lives and where the Serbian language is spoken) are Republika Srpska (as a constitutional part of Bosnia-Herzegovina) and Montenegro."
Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina are internationally recognized countries whose constitutions define them as independent and sovereign, not as "Serbian."
Both were part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that existed from 1945 to 1992, and before that, from 1918, they were part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.
Following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, Bosnia declared independence after a referendum on March 1, 1992 (following similar declarations by Slovenia and Croatia). The 1992-95 Bosnian War that pitted Yugoslav Army units and their Serb successors against Bosnian (mostly Bosniak) and Croat forces began after Bosnia's recognition by around two dozen countries in Europe and elsewhere.
Bosnia was admitted as a member of the United Nations in May 1992.
The constitution of Bosnia -- comprising Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, along with the self-governing Brcko District -- arose from the Dayton agreement that ended the Bosnian War in 1995.
Montenegro declared independence from its State Union with Serbia following a referendum in May 2006 that was quickly recognized by all five permanent UN Security Council members.
Djureinovic notes that the textbook's repeated characterization of Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina as "Serbian states" in fact "represents the author's position, not claims that are scientifically based."
In a response to RFE/RL's Balkan Service, publisher Novi Logos said use of the term "Serbian lands" has been prescribed through the Serbian state education plan and program for "the earliest period of the Middle Ages for the areas of medieval Zeta, Travunia, Raska, Zahumlje, Bosnia, and Paganija, which would partially correspond to areas of today's Montenegro, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina."
"Such terminology has been used in Serbian historiography for more than a century and a half," said the publisher.
'Threat Of Serbs In Montenegro'
"Serbs in Montenegro found themselves in a particularly difficult situation after the independence of that republic in 2006.... Under the rule of Milo Djukanovic, Serbs in Montenegro were dismissed from the civil service and removed from all state positions. The authorities in Podgorica tried in every way to reduce the number of Serbs living in Montenegro."
Citing these allegations, among other things, on October 13, the Montenegrin civic initiative called 21 May requested that the textbook be withdrawn from use. The group argued that "it is unacceptable that textbook literature is based on lies and nationalist constructions." It described the characterization of the purported purge of Montenegro's public sector as "inappropriate and unfounded."
Novi Logos tells RFE/RL that "the criticism [of the textbook] probably arose as a result of internal political events and interparty frictions in Montenegro, and neither the Republic of Montenegro nor the National Council of the Montenegrin Ethnic Minority in Serbia was behind such an initiative" to get the textbook withdrawn.
However, local media reports that Podgorica responded with a note of protest from the Montenegrin Foreign Ministry to Serbia and requested the deletion of disputed portions of the textbook.
Djureinovic describes the characterization of Serbs' posts in Montenegro as "unfounded statements by the author" that are not based on credible scientific literature since the breakup of Yugoslavia.
"It is not only promoting the narrative that Serbs can only be heroes, defenders, or victims, but also legitimizing the Serbian policy of interference in Montenegro," she says.
War In Croatia And The Siege Of Vukovar. Who Are The Victims?
The textbook teaches students that "civil war broke out in Croatia and caused great casualties among Serb civilians."
War crimes against Croat civilians during the years 1991-95 are never explicitly mentioned in the textbook.
"When talking about crimes that were...committed against [anyone other than] the Serb population, the passive voice is used and we learn merely that crimes were committed -- but we don't know who committed them or whom they were committed against. In these cases, students might easily assume that the victims are Serbs because of the narrative of misery and suffering of the Serb people that runs through the entire lesson," Djureinovic says.
For example, the three-month siege of Vukovar, in eastern Croatia, is described as follows:
"A battle was fought for Vukovar, a city on the Danube where roughly equal numbers of Croats and Serbs lived [and] where a Serb was elected mayor. Croatia sent a large number of irregular military units to Vukovar to enforce the new laws that were adopted in Zagreb. Several thousand people died in the fight for the city, including one JNA [Yugoslav People's Army] general. During the fighting, war crimes were committed against the civilian population."
Vukovar was under siege from the Yugoslav People's Army and Serb paramilitary formations for 87 days -- from August to November of 1991.
According to Vukovar's hospital, 1,624 people died during the nearly three-month siege, and more than 2,500 more were injured. About 5,000 people were condemned to camps in Serbia, and about 22,000 Croats and other non-Serbs were expelled from the city.
At one point, the Yugoslav People's Army removed many of the wounded, including civilians, from Vukovar's hospital. They were summarily killed on the night of November 20-21, 1991, at the site of a former agricultural conglomerate and cattle farm known as Ovcara.
Veselin Sljivancanin, a former security chief of a Yugoslav People's Army guard brigade, was sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague to 10 years in prison for aiding and abetting in the torture of prisoners at Ovcara.
Djureinovic says she thinks the textbook's lessons on the 1990s "fully reflect the official politics of memory and the [Serbian] government's attitude toward the wars."
Such a narrative, she says, is common to virtually all history textbooks in Serbia since the wars in the former Yugoslavia were introduced into the curriculum.
Its publisher counters that the textbook was written "exclusively for students in the Republic of Serbia."
"The author's team is well aware of textbooks in other former Yugoslav republics in which there is much that is disputed from the point of view of Serbian historiography, but it is not up to us to refer to it," says Novi Logos.
They add that the textbook "includes examples of horror and suffering on all warring sides, with a special focus on Serbs and the areas inhabited by Serbs until the pogrom."
Siege Of Sarajevo
"Sarajevo was under a partial blockade by Serb forces, and many Serbs remained imprisoned in the city, as Muslim military forces did not allow them to leave. Fighting was constantly taking place around the city, and war crimes against Serbs were committed in the city itself, as confirmed in 2021 by an independent international commission."
The Bosnian Serb Army, known as the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), laid siege to Sarajevo, a city of over half a million inhabitants according to the 1991 census, in April 1992. The siege ended in February 1996.
During that 1,425-day period, hundreds of thousands of shells were fired at the city from the surrounding hills and more than 11,500 people were killed, including around 1,600 children.
The Hague war crimes tribunal eventually sentenced three commanders -- Stanislav Galic, Dragomir Milosevic, and Momcilo Perisic -- to prison terms for their roles in the siege.
"The section about the siege of Sarajevo is probably the most offensive example of twisting facts and shifting the prism of observing an event and crime -- from Serb perpetrators and their victims to Serb victims," says Djureinovic.
In response to criticisms of the textbook's lessons on the disintegration of Yugoslavia and its impression that "only Serbs were victims," Serbia's state Institute for the Improvement of Education says: "We assure you that you could very easily reach a large number of historians who would also be dissatisfied with the contents of the textbook but would state that Serb suffering was not sufficiently described in it."
The institute further says that "Serbian textbooks do not represent the biggest obstacle to the process of reconciliation in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, taking into account some other educational systems where textbook literature often has the characteristics of reading propaganda."
The institute's representatives decline to specify which educational systems they have in mind.
Genocide In Srebrenica
"...during the capture of Srebrenica in 1995, Serb units committed serious war crimes against Muslim fighters and men who were fighting their way out of the city. A number of them were captured and shot, while others died in the fighting. Historians still disagree on the number of killed and dead."
Djureinovic says this is the only war crime committed by Serb forces that is mentioned in any detail in the textbook.
"But more than half of that text is dedicated to crimes against Serbs (around Srebrenica before the year 1995), so the genocide in Srebrenica was only referred to as 'serious war crimes,'" she says.
Authorities in Serbia still deny that genocide was committed in Srebrenica, although the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has concluded otherwise.
Forces of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) killed 8,372 non-Serb men and boys in and around Srebrenica. More than 25,000 women, children, and elderly individuals were expelled from what was designated as a "safe area" under multiple UN resolutions.
More than 50 individuals have been sentenced to a combined 700-plus years in prison for genocide or other war crimes in Srebrenica. In addition to The Hague, courts in Bosnia-Herzegovina have also characterized the crimes there as a genocide -- the only one on the territory of the former Yugoslavia during the wars of the 1990s.
Radovan Karadzic, the first president of the Republika Srpska entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was sentenced by The Hague war crimes tribunal to life imprisonment for genocide in Srebrenica, among other crimes.
The commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, Ratko Mladic, was also sentenced to life imprisonment by the same court, including on a conviction for genocide in Srebrenica.
Some 6,652 victims have so far been buried at the Srebrenica Memorial Center in Potocari, with 237 more buried elsewhere at the request of their families.
Investigators and forensics experts are still searching for the remains of more than 1,000 other Srebrenica victims.
War In Kosovo
"At the very end of the 20th century (1999), the crisis in Kosovo and Metohija led to NATO aggression and the bombardment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The aggression of the NATO pact ended with the arrival of NATO troops in Kosovo and Metohija, which was followed by numerous crimes against Serb civilians. The Serb army and a large number of members of the Serb people then left Kosovo and Metohija. Violence against the Serb population continued."
"Nowhere in the textbook is there any prehistory of the conflict, nor is there any mention of the numerous war crimes committed by units of the Yugoslav Army (against ethnic Albanian civilians), for which there are indictments and judgments by the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia," says Djureinovic.
In March 1999, NATO forces began bombing the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia due to an exodus and alleged crimes committed by Serb military and police forces against the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo.
The Racak Massacre
"At the beginning of 1999, Serb forces clashed with the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] and liberated the Kosovar village of Racak from Albanian terrorists. William Walker, the head of the OSCE monitoring mission that was in Racak during the conflict, accused the Serb forces of war crimes against Albanian civilians who were not even in the village."
On January 15, 1999, Serb police and military forces in Kosovo killed 45 ethnic Albanian civilians, including women and children, in Racak.
The Hague tribunal concluded that most of those killed were shot in the head, seemingly from close range.
Multiple reports from the OSCE and Human Rights Watch (HRW) characterize the events in Racak as a massacre of ethnic Albanian civilians by Serb forces. The massacre was crucial to NATO's decision to launch air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Serbian authorities, including current Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, describe Racak as a "fabricated" incident.
How Do The Serbian Government And The Publisher Respond To Criticism Of The Textbook?
Serbian institutions have responded to these and other points of criticism regarding the textbook by saying that it was approved in accordance with Serbian law.
The Institute for the Improvement of Education largely echoed that view. Its representative tell RFE/RL's Balkan Service that the Novi Logos textbook follows the curriculum and is "based on accepted scientific theories, facts, conclusions, interpretations, current data, and contemporary achievements."
Novi Logos responds by saying the textbook "is not written according to the free discretion of the author but exclusively in accordance with the lesson plan and program [that is] appropriate for the age of the students.
"The authors tried to objectively and impartially present the events or personalities prescribed by the plan and program," it says.
It adds that its sources were "the most verifiable and represent the most recent scope of Serbian historiography in the domain of national history, as well as European and world scope in the domain of general history."
What Do Serbian Students Say?
"The [former Yugoslavia] led a rather anti-Serb policy at many moments," 19-year-old Milica, who graduated from a Belgrade high school last year, says of the lessons she learned from history class about the breakup of Yugoslavia. "It was wrong for the Serb people, disastrous for us."
Although textbooks contain lessons on the disintegration of Yugoslavia, another 2022 high-school graduate, Ilija Siljegovic, says he and his classmates weren't actually taught anything about it.
"The last lesson we had was World War II and its aftermath," Siljegovic says. "We didn't cover the topics of Kosovo or the disintegration of [Yugoslavia] at all."
Another, Marko Ogrenjac, also says he learned nothing at school about war on the territory of the former Yugoslavia.
"Because of the coronavirus, we were quite late on lectures. The professor told us to try to do our own research," Ogrenjac says.
