The Fall and Rise of a National Hero: Interpretations of Draza Mihailovic and the Chetniks in Yugoslavia and Serbia since 1945

摘要

This article explores the ways in which Draza Mihailovic and the Chetnik movement have been presented and reinterpreted as historical figures in Serbian historiography and popular representations of history since the Second World War, from his vilification and portrayal as a traitor to eventual rehabilitation and depiction as a Serbian national hero. It examines the key role played by historians as mediators of memory and charts the way in which the instrumentalisation of Second World War history by communist historiography paved the way for extensive national reinterpretations of wartime history and the creation of new usable national histories in the post-Yugoslav republics. The article addresses issues of transmission by reference to educational historiography and analyses the controversy caused by a Serbian basketball player's tattoo of Mihailovic in 2004 in order to explore the shifting paradigms of political memory discourses and historical interpretations.