Volume 73, Issue 1

The adoption of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/78/282, designating 11 July as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, embodies a significant effort in combating genocide denial. However, the Resolution generated substantial preemptive and reactive backlash, sparked by a global network of actors committed to revising the history of the 1990s. This article provides a detailed account of the resolution’s contextual history within the UN, as well as an analysis of the geopolitical and ideological underpinnings of Srebrenica genocide denial as a tool of regional nationalist and revisionist agendas. As a salient example, the article explores the coordinated campaign led by Serbia and Republika Srpska to undermine the resolution, utilizing it to mobilize nationalist tropes, discredit international institutions, and reinforce denialist narratives.

This article analyzes the epistemology of the language/dialect (L/D) dichotomy. The L/D dichotomy gives rise to disputes between “splitters”, who want to split the speech of a given region into more than one “language”, and “lumpers”, who view the region as speaking one “language” albeit with diverse “dialects”. While numerous linguists have declared the L/D dichotomy theoretically meaningless, thus taking an “agnostic” approach, linguists interested in a particular case study often take sides in lumper/splitter disputes. Such linguists, who the authors call “assertionists”, adopt a variety of rhetorical strategies to make their case. Taking as a case study assertionists writing about Central South Slavic, this article identifies three main strategies: the “avalanche of trivia”; the “appeal to imaginary evidence”; and the “denigration of the political”. Both lumpers and splitters adopt all three strategies to conceal the poor epistemological foundations of assertionism.

This article analyzes the politicization of identities in Dalmatia during the turbulent decade of the 1990s. It argues that during the Croatian War of Independence (or the Homeland War), several factors led to the politicized delegitimization of Dalmatian identity outside a Croatian nationalist context. These included the proximity of the Serbian Krajina rebellion, the flood of displaced persons from the Croatian hinterland to the coastal cities, the attacks of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ)-led government on the regionalist Dalmatian Action party and regionalism in general. The author also analyzes how many coastal Croats reacted to and described their hinterland cousins, mirroring the rural/urban divide that characterized descriptions of Serbs by nationalist Croats during the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

This study assesses healthcare workforce shortages in Bulgaria across three periods: communism (1944–1989), transition (1990–2002), and EU integration (2003 onward). Using historical data and benchmarking against European medians, the authors analyze trends among physicians, dentists, nurses, and midwives. They find that during communism, massive investment until the mid-1970s, and restricted international mobility led to significant human capital accumulation in healthcare. For the 1980s, they identify serious issues due to reduced subsidies and low remuneration. The authors point to a substantial brain drain and care drain following the labor market opening during the transition, while they argue that the reform implemented at the end of this period exacerbated nursing staff losses. For the period of EU integration, they observe positive reversals, but also emphasize that shortages persist. This, they argue, can be explained by the inability of the educational system to overcome the shortages.

Students at all the major universities in Serbia have been staging blockades and protests for the past three months in what is regarded as the largest student uprising in Serbia’s recent history. The protests were sparked by but far transcend the collapse of the recently renovated canopy of the Novi Sad train station, which claimed the lives of 15 people. Ivana Dinić spoke to Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Belgrade Dubravka Stojanović about the causes of this unprecedented manifestation of civic activism and about the impact the protests could have on Serbia’s democratisation process. Professor Stojanović was active in the antiwar movement in the 1990s and has remained at the forefront of the democratic struggle in Serbia ever since.