This book explores the involvement of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) in the national debates about remembering and commemorating the past in post-2000 Serbia. Grounded in ethnography, media studies, and mnemonics research, Karin Roginer Hofmeister demonstrates how domestic political elites and high-ranking ecclesiastics have employed the power of religion to reconstruct public collective memory. The author alleges that the SPC is both the perpetrator and the target of political strategies and goals to instrumentalize religion and distort the Serbian past.

After decades of marginalization in socialist Yugoslavia, the SPC made a comeback in the 1980s. Life was off-kilter and the Orthodox Church symbolized hopes for renewal. Political orientation was fluid and the lack of a nationwide consensus elevated the SPC’s position in society. Sensing the mood, Slobodan Milosevic employed religious symbolism on a monumental scale to mobilize the population. According to Hofmeister, this approach continues to prove politically efficacious. The book concentrates on how the SPC collaborates with the government in public mnemonic construction. To test the hypotheses about collective action, Hofmeister examines how the SPC has acted as a mnemonic agent in remembering World War II as a means to articulate Serbian heroic victimhood, and deny guilt and complicity in mass atrocities. According to the author, the SPC has received an increase in ceremonial prestige and financial support for supporting a state-sanctioned agenda, but it has lost autonomy in exchange, resulting in an “asymmetric symphony” (11) with the state.

Remembering Suffering and Resistance is divided into four chapters: the first two develop the post-modernist platform of memory politics, and the second two apply the empirical research. Since the 1980s, a renaissance in religious traditions has manifested itself in ways that encourage a reconceptualization of the meaning of modernity. Hofmeister’s focus on the SPC presents a clear picture of a broader global phenomenon, a case study of the late-modern Orthodox world. Of the many factors maintaining collective identity in twenty-first century Serbia, the church remains an indispensable authority of tradition. An analysis of the SPC’s characteristic agencies, media techniques, and public engagement strategies reveals the threads of religion within the complex tapestry of modern memory making. Hofmeister shows how the tradition of collective suffering and outside persecution in the post-2000 period blended with the leading politicians’ aspirations for power. Accordingly, the SPC embraced efforts to rehabilitate the image of the church as the guardian of Serbian society through the language and imagery of victimhood and crisis.

The memory of the suffering of Serbian civilians during WWII provided a cogent channel to assert notions of Serbian spiritual superiority and moral heroism over perpetrators. In mass liturgical ceremonies, blessings and sermons, the SPC has promoted Serb martyrdom in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). In terms of non-liturgical mnemonic action, the SPC has organized publications, awards, and commemorations of the Chetniks as heroes who sacrificed themselves in defense of Orthodoxy against fascists and communists. The official committees behind the creation of memorial complexes at places such as Staro Sajmiste and Ravna Gora include key ecclesiastical figures.

The study of religion in socialist and post-socialist Serbia is filled with uncertainties, and crafting narratives that aim to reconcile with a painful and traumatic past is difficult. Public apologies and expressions of regret hardly win popularity contests, and alternative memory incentives regarding collaboration and antisemitism are at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, the government under Aleksandar Vucic and the SPC have cooperated in shaping a particular vision of Serbia’s memoryscape that legitimizes their interests and enhances their national standing. As a result, interpretations of the past can become distorted at the public expense, and victims of the past can become the victims of memory.

Remembering Suffering and Resistance combines very lucid insights about the relationship between the collective religious experience and its link to memory as an element of social solidarity and an instrument in the hands of politicians, with tedious, intellectually self-indulgent passages on the interplay and irregularities of mnemonic frames and features. Admittedly, the theoretical insights have been thoughtfully tested against solid empirical evidence, including personal interviews with the participants. In doing so, the author has risked a callous response from certain ecclesiastical and academic circles, a condition which attests to the quality of the study and the powerful matrix of politics, memory, and the church in modern Serbia.