Challenging the Enduring Fallacies
A book by Croatian-American economist Jozo Tomasevic, tellingly titled "War and Revolution," has served as the authoritative work of "history" on the matters of Yugoslavia in WW2. Published in 1975, it remains the foundation for numerous pseudo-histories written since, with the aim of somehow proving that it was really the "greaterserbian bourgeois oppressors" (actual Communist phrase) to blame for wartime slaughter and the interwar "oppression" of other groups.
In present-day Serbia, the cult of Serbian collective guilt has dominated politics, culture and academia since the 2000 astroturf revolution. That explains why few, if any, challenges to Tomasevic's myth have been put forth. Until now.
Miloslav Samardzic, another economist who turned historian, has researched archives, interviewed eyewitnesses, and written over a dozen books about WW2, focusing on the royalist resistance (aka the "Chetniks"). He is also one of the authors of a documentary series about Yugoslavia in WW2, mentioned here before - which will be shown in Washington DC on April 19 (see here for more information).
Samardzic has recently written a two-part essay addressing the numerous problems in Tomasevic's work, too lengthy to reproduce here. I do, however, commend them to the attention of anyone interested in WW2 history of Yugoslavia:
- “Chetniks” by Jozo Tomasevich: The Fallacy that Endures (Part 1)
- “Chetniks” by Jozo Tomasevich: The Fallacy that Endures (Part 2)
If it were just the Communists distorting the history of the war, to justify their takeover in 1945, that would be one thing. Quite another is to see Communist-invented history championed (example) by heirs of Nazi collaborators in present-day Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia. Baffling as that might appear at first, once you realize that the common thread of these "histories" is the shared hatred of Serbs, things will begin to click into place.
http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2015/04/c...acies.html
