Jelena Đureinović's recent monograph traces the efforts of multiple agents of memory to transform how the Second World War is remembered in Serbia. Focusing on the combined work of anti-communist parties and individuals, she argues that ultimately they did not so much repudiate the Partisans or the National Liberation Army as ethnicize them, including within the ranks of antifascist organizations even the Chetniks. In this way, the anti-communist opposition sought to reconcile and reunite all Serbs/At the same time, they framed them as victims of communism, openly coopting and revising the communist era slogan: “victims of facism”.

Đureinović's approach is both chronological and topical. The first half of the book covers the historical evolution of memory politics in Serbia from the end of the Second World War through the 1980s and the rule of Slobodan Milošević during the 1990s, then follows it into the post-Milošević era of the 2000s. The second half of the book looks at the post-Milošević era in more detail, addressing several specific events and issues relating to memory politics. These chapters consider a variety of official, quasi-official, and unofficial memorial events and activities, including the establishment of commissions to find and exhume the graves of the victims of communism, legal processes to provide veterans’ benefits for members of the Chetniks and rehabilitate those condemned by the communist regime, and a whole series of activities associated with the memorialization and rehabilitation of the infamous leader of the Chetniks, Dragoljub (Draža) Mihailović, who was arrested, tried, and executed by the communist regime in July 1946.

Đureinović's stated goal is neither to rehabilitate the Chetniks nor to recondemn them; nor does she seek to prove that the communists were either heroes or villains. Indeed, if anyone plays a villain in her narrative, it is those historians who participated in the commemorative and rehabilitation processes, whom she often chides for a lack of professionalism and balance. Nonetheless, Đureinović sometimes shows her hand, as she defends both the Partisans and the memory of Yugoslavia. Perhaps this was unavoidable. As Đureinović notes, historical memory is deeply political, and therefore, every construction of a memorial act involves political choices about what information to include and exclude. As Đureinović describes how Serbia's anti-communist actors often explicitly excluded information about the war crimes and atrocities committed by the Chetniks or the benefits provided by the socialist state, she provides the missing information both to make her point, but presumably also to offer historical balance. Yet in so doing, she moves beyond her stated goal of assessing only the politics of memory and does, in fact, evaluate the historical narrative.

One of the strengths of Đureinović's work is her focus on the various elite and popular actors who engaged in mnemonic work in Serbia. As she points out, although official sources often supported the memory work, it usually was initiated and carried out by unofficial groups and individuals who had a vested interest in its success, including the leaders of anti-communist political parties, historians, émigrés, and relatives of those previously deemed enemies of the people, as well as the Serbian Orthodox Church and members of the previously ruling Karađorđević dynasty. Another strength is the attention the author pays to the legal dimension of memory work in Serbia. She describes the legal processes carried out in 2007–2011, which provided state pensions for members of the Chetnik organization and a means for the judicial rehabilitation of individuals deprived by the communist regime “of life, freedom or other rights … on political or ideological grounds” (135). These processes, as Đureinović describes them, were deeply problematic because they did not offer an opportunity to speak to those who might be opposed to a particular rehabilitation or the entire anti-communist narrative.

Finally, Đureinović covers the rehabilitation of Draža Mihailović himself, which took place over an eight-year period from 2006 to 2014. Although that process began by positing Mihailović as the leader of a true antifascist resistance movement, it succeeded only by limiting its focus to the legitimacy of his 1946 trial and proving that he had been convicted for political and ideological reasons. When the judge affirmed the decision to grant the rehabilitation request, he explained that “the court had not dealt with the facts and conclusions of whether Mihailović had been a war criminal, but their jurisdiction had been limited to evaluating if the trial had been fair and just, which it had not been” (161).

When the judge affirmed the decision to grant the rehabilitation request, he explained that “the court had not dealt with the facts and conclusions of whether Mihailović had been a war criminal, but their jurisdiction had been limited to evaluating if the trial had been fair and just, which it had not been” (161). Ultimately, then the Serbian court claimed that it had two questions to answer: 1) Was Mihailović a war criminal? and 2) Had he been treated fairly by the communist criminal justice system? Yet, it chose to answer only the second question and in so doing, again revealed a lack of balance. The communists were condemned for their flawed system, while the question of Mihailović’s culpability remained unresolved.

Đureinović, however, argues that even the court’s condemnation of the original Mihailović trial is unreliable since its own proceedings were no fairer than those of the communists and, moreover, entirely left out the context of other postwar trials, such as those at Nuremburg. She is right, of course, but as she herself pointed out elsewhere, the political context had changed significantly, and that leads to my main criticism of this otherwise excellent monograph. Đureinović deliberately organized her book chronologically to show how memory work is politicized, but she does not always dissect just how that political context functions. In this case, while the judges at Nuremberg were explicitly concerned with proving war guilt, those in both communist Yugoslavia and in post-communist Serbia had overtly political considerations—either to promote communism and Yugoslavia or create a narrative that would unite all Serbs and present them as the victims of the communism. In each context, the lessons of Nuremberg could not be less relevant.