It has been more than thirty years since Yugoslavia disintegrated and war broke out on its former territory. It has also been more than thirty years since the anti-war movement, civil society organizations, and the media refused to embrace war-mongering politics. Some brave people took to the streets and other public spaces in Belgrade (and other parts of Serbia) to denounce conflict, destruction, and bloodshed across Yugoslavia. This is their story.
The courage of all those who opposed the war policies inspires future generations to do everything possible to guarantee that the anti-war struggle is neither forgotten nor suppressed. Three decades later, anti-war history is being systematically suppressed and excluded from dominant historiographical and political narratives because it would have shown that things could have been done differently. It would also indicate that the war was not imminent and was pushed by politicians and their regimes who lived and benefited from it, rather than by different nationalities. Unfortunately, the political forces that were the main initiators and protagonists of the conflict remain powerful in Serbia and other former Yugoslav republics even after thirty years.
Forgetting the anti-war movement serves the interests of a privileged few, including those who ideologically prepared, supported, and justified the wars and those who participated in them. We want to remind that an anti-war scene emerged in Belgrade almost immediately after the war in Slovenia and Croatia had started, gathered all those who found the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia, the redrawing of borders, ethnic cleansing, rape, sieges, bombings of cities, and mass crimes intolerable. This website is devoted to many influential figures from Serbia’s public life who have always proposed peaceful alternatives despite the risk to themselves.
Today their examples still inspire and remind us that the fight for freedom, equality, human rights, peace, and a better society never ends.
During the breakup of Yugoslavia, anti-war associations and groups of citizens emerged, representing a constant alternative to the state war-mongering policy during the nineties. Public proclamations, different texts, leaflets, publications, as well as interviews with individual participants are combined, classified, and available in this unique digital database. We intend to update the archive in the coming months and years.
Photos of the most important activities, events, and participants of the most significant protests and peace initiatives in Serbia from 1991 to 1995 are included in this unique collection dedicated to anti-war movements. Most of the photographs are the work of Goranka Matić, whom we would like to thank for the generous donation of precious historical material. In addition, Women in Black and the Fund for Humanitarian Law also provided us with some photographs, which we gratefully acknowledge.
During the 1990s wars, the authorities in all republics made political decisions about what kind of information should be available to citizens. As a result, the official media image of war was twisted to support official state and war-mongering policies. However, some journalists, as well as entire media editorial offices, refused to accept such terms. This category contains testimonials regarding anti-war and anti-regime journalistic activities, as well as a small but promising digital newspaper archival database of the 1990s.
The 90s Museum is a project of Kulturni centar grad (Belgrade) that aims to gather and preserve sources and materials pertaining to the nineties in ex-Yugoslavia.
Contact: info@museum90.com
The project was developed with the support of
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