Writing the past

摘要

In 1995 some 200,000 Serbs were ethnically cleansed from Croatia. Oh, no, actually, they fled. During the second world war Serbian royalist "Chetniks" were heroes-or were they villains? Balkan history is complicated, but there is widespread agreement on one thing. Every nation knows what is right and how everyone else is wrong. As one Serbian historian puts it: "There is one truth, just as there is one God." When Yugoslavia fell apart in the 1990s the question of who did what in 1389 or 1944 played a vital part in the propaganda used to whip up hatred. Balkan children are still being taught wildly varying versions of history with no idea that others view the same events differently.