Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
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Chapter 4 • Nicola Mai<br />
also, there is no attempt to analyse the reasons for this political regime’s<br />
potential appeal to Serbs, nor the ways in which some form of consensus<br />
for such a regime must have been libidinally and thus culturally sustainable<br />
in Serbia.<br />
Another important aspect found in the analysis of the emergence of<br />
Serbhood from the Yugoslav identity is that, although most refugees tend<br />
to refer to Serbia and Yugoslavia indistinctly, the two concepts bear a different<br />
tone. In particular, Serb identity is distinguished from Yugoslav<br />
identity by underlining the existence of a different relationship with “tradition<br />
and religion”, Yugoslavia being more often related to the experience<br />
of the Communist past. When asked to decide between the two, however,<br />
most refugees chose “Serbian” as their national identity. When analysing<br />
the way different attitudes to religion were seen as marking off affiliation<br />
to the Serb rather than to the Yugoslav identity, it became apparent that<br />
most refugees perceived these differences as central in framing the difference<br />
both between Yugoslav and Serb and between Kosovar Serb and Serb<br />
identities.<br />
Many refugees have emphasized how, unlike Serbs from Serbia, they<br />
never actually severed their ties with religion, which they kept on practising<br />
privately in times of communism. This is a major element of perceived<br />
difference between Serbs from Kosovo and those from Serbia proper. It is<br />
one of the main arguments, along with the presence in Kosovo of the most<br />
important Serb Orthodox monasteries, mobilized to sustain the idea that<br />
Kosovo is the cradle of Serb civilisation. Most of the refugees actually<br />
seemed to hold this image of Kosovo, and believed that the many values<br />
and practices related to Serbhood had been preserved intact only in the<br />
region. The Serbs of rump Yugoslavia, on the other hand, are seen as having<br />
moved away from the practices, values and traditions central to maintaining<br />
Serbian identity. Their fall away from tradition is sometimes<br />
blamed for the country’s moral decay, and particularly for the events that<br />
led to the war and fragmentation of Yugoslavia. Especially criticized is the<br />
pragmatic attitude that many people had developed toward religion after<br />
the “end” of Communism, in both Kosovo and the rest of Yugoslavia. The<br />
renewed post-communist devotion and interest in the Orthodox Church<br />
was also often seen as instrumental and exterior. To many, this new surge<br />
of spirituality in fact disguised a desire to be seen as breaking away from<br />
Communism and to embrace a new nationalist and greedy configuration of<br />
Serbhood. Again, this lack of spirituality was usually considered to be at<br />
the basis of the moral and material fragmentation and decay of Serbia and<br />
Yugoslavia, to a varying extent.<br />
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