Accounting for a Violent Past by Other than Legal Means

Considerable attention has been paid to legal aspects of responses to violations of international humanitarian law in the former Yugoslavia, but less attention has been given to cultural dimensions of this issue, which may be at least equally important. The present study follows aspects of the reception of guilt and responsibility in post-Milosevic Serbia, as expressed in public outlets for opinion and in recently published 'war diaries'. The typology of guilt and responsibility developed by Karl Jaspers is applied to clarify questions related to the issue. Some explanations are suggested both for the necessity of a wide-ranging public discourse on the issue and for the hesitancy of Serbian society to engage in this discourse.