KULTURA SEĆANjA: SPOMEN-OBELEŽJA IZ VELIKOG RATA U SADRŽAJIMA UDžBENIKA ISTORIJE U GIMNAZIJAMA U REPUBLICI SRBIJI I ZAKONSKA REGULATIVA O VOJNIM SPOMEN-OBELEŽJIMA IZ VELIKOG RATA

Abstract

The separation of the present from everything which precedes it as one of the present processes in the contemporary Serbian society leads to a whole series of discontinuity in its development. The rejection of the remembrance of their own past, whose expression is also the neglecting of memorials from the Great War (1914-1918) disables the cognition of history, cognition of themselves and others who touch the rejected collective memories. In the paper the emphasis is placed on (a) the importance of collective remembrance for the formation of the cultural identity; (b) the importance of the transfer of the collective remembrance via institutionalized mediators to new generations with the aim of the establishment of the continuity with historical past. The institutionalized education participates in the process of mediation between an individual and society: the content which is transferred creates the basis for the formation of the identity of participants of the educational process and may strengthen the sense of belonging to certain groups as the supports in fragmented reality. Education may also avoid the possibility of the realization of the influence to the creation of the bases for the formation of the cultural identity by marginalizing the knowledge about their important elements or letting other factors of the formation of the identity have the crucial influence. Education policies create the scope of activities of the institutionalized education in the plan of the formation of the identity pursuant to the ruling political will. In the previous century, even though the developmental paradigms and social orders changed, the educational policies had the common feature in the presentation of the role of the Serbian army in the Great War: they are marginalized inschool textbooks. The response to the question why it occurred requires a complex interdisciplinary research which exceeds the scope of this paper so the authors emphasize the existence of certain phenomena in the Serbian culture and society, which are, maybe, connected to the process of the collapse of the culture of remembrance: (a) the tendency of Serbs towards failing to respect their own victims; (b) the necessity of different authorities, with the aim of creating a harmonized unit with others, under the influence of the so-called Yugoslavian idea (1918), Communist ideology (1945) or admission to the EU (after 2000) – to neglect “the Serbian population” and actively participate in the process of fostering a specific culture of forgetting. It is exactly this selective remembering, isolating or rejecting of certain events or artifacts which testifies on those that indicate in practice to the establishment of the cultural continuity and the connection between past and present generations or, a completely opposite process, the creation of discontinuity and the separation of “ancestors” and “descendants”. The minimum space which is granted in the analyzed high school textbooks in memory of Serbian soldiers, who were killed in the Great War in fight for freedom (there is no single datum on the memorials built by the state), which shows that the latter process is ongoing. Simultaneously, the review of legal documents referring to the military monuments from the Great War (1914-1918) in the country and outside and the acting in accordance with it: and especially, the attitude towards the military memorials in FYRM as a paradigm of the attitude towards the memorials of Serbian soldiers killed in the Great War – showing that the ancestor generations are insufficiently respected by the generations of their descendants nowadays.