obvious as we follow the timeline is that the calendar Serbia follows today is a calendar that obliterated , not only the history of Yugoslavia ’ s real socialism , but also a testament as to how Serbia officially came to accept interpretations of the wars of the 1990s based solely on Serbian nationalism and ethnocentrism . This means that the calendar was built around the complete denial of war crimes , the genocide in Srebrenica , the shelling of Sarajevo , the destruction of Vukovar , etc . It was built around Serbia ’ s apparent victimhood . The monuments erected and rituals introduced , often celebrating war criminals , are thus an adulteration of historically well-documented events .
Although the book is focused on memory activism , and consequently analyses the building blocks , such as calendars , commemorative rituals , mnemonic devices , it also offers an excellent insight into the political context of the 1990s in Yugoslavia , and the events immediately following the end of the wars – all these events that form the decisive framework for memory activism and show an in-depth understanding of the historically important contextualisation .
The context is also provided by a shared past of Yugoslavia ’ s successor countries . Although respective strong ethnic and national sentiments are also prevalent in these countries , a space of counter memories is also created , a space of shared anti-war , peaceful and , predominantly feminist , activism .
Since the author has consulted numerous sources , the book has a rich bibliography , photographic illustrations of events and appendices of relevant documents .
To conclude , Orli Fridman ’ s book on Memory Activism is an indispensable book , not only for the subfield of memory activism , but also for memory studies as a whole .
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