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Statuettes of Josip Broz Tito, Draža Mihailović, and Nikola Tesla featured in a tourist souvenir shop in Niš, Serbia. (RSD 1450 is about USD 14.) Photo by Global Voices, CC-BY 3.0.

The call of Belgrade mayor Aleksandar Šapić to remove the tomb of Yugoslav antifascist leader Josip Broz Tito from the city and erect a monument to his arch enemy, Nazi collaborator Draža Mihailović, incited wave of criticism in Serbia and across the region of former Yugoslavia.

“I cannot influence it publicly, nor can the City of Belgrade formally influence it legally, but I think that moving the tomb of Josip Broz from the Museum of Yugoslavia is an extremely important thing for the Serbian people and the future of this country,” he said to the city assembly on September 17.

The mausoleum of the late Yugoslav leader, called the the House of Flowers, is a major tourist attraction for Belgrade, attracting 120,000 visitors a year, AFP reported.

The House of Flowers mausoleum houses the tombs of Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito and the first lady Jovanka Broz. It is part of Museum of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, and major tourist attraction. Photo by Global Voices, CC-BY 3.0.

In a statement for the Balkan Investigating Network (BIRN), historian Milovan Pisarri said the move is “unfortunately another act in the continuity of the policy that has been going on at the official level for 20 years, which entails the rehabilitation of those war criminals, that nationalist ideology and actually the project that the Chetniks themselves had about creating a Greater Serbia,“ as well as “erasing any connection with Yugoslavia, with communism, with that period which nevertheless brought about among other things great progress not only for Serbia but also for all peoples on the territory of that country.”

Serbian citizens and opposition politicians blamed Šapić for attempting distraction from the real problems.

Podržaću Šapićevu ideju podizanja spomenika Draži Mihailoviću, čim budem video slike četnika koji oslobađaju Beograd.

Do tada:
– spomenik četničkim koljačima u Beogradu – neće moći;
– skretanje pažnje građana sa poskupljenja osnovnih životnih namirnica na istorijske teme – neće… pic.twitter.com/wZfgFdmJvE

— Kosta Konstantinović 🇪🇺🇺🇦🇬🇪 (@KostaKonstan) September 17, 2024

Photos: Liberation of Belgrade from the Nazis by Yugoslav Partizans and the Red Army.
Text: I will support Šapić's idea to erect a monument to Draža Mihailović, after I see photos of Četniks liberating Belgrade. Until that time
– no way for a monument to Četnik killers in Belgrade
– no to use of historical topics to draw citizens attention from increasing prices of basic foodstuffs
No pasaran!

Dragana Rakić, deputy president of the Democratic Party, told the newspaper Danas that “when Šapić is unable to offer Belgraders functional and safe public transport or ensure regular funding for the city’s most basic institutions, he stirs up age-old debate — Chetniks or Partisans.“

BNE Intellinews reported that Šapić's proposal also drew criticism from his coalition partners. Ivica Dačić, Serbia’s interior minister and leader of the Socialist Party of Serbia, distanced himself from the plan, stating that his party “will not support the removal of communist memorials.”

Reactions also came from abroad, with numerous social media posts, as well as official statements such as by anti-fascists from Montenegro, denouncing the idea.

This is not the first time Šapić has proposed the removal of Tito’s tomb. When he proposing sending Tito's remains to his birthplace of Kumrovec in Croatia in April 2024, officials from Bosnia and Herzegovina retorted that, as an anti-fascist city, Sarajevo would welcome the remains. The renewed backlash indicated that efforts for historical revisionism by nationalists who have been in power in Serbia since the 1990s had not been fully successful.

The debate was “settled” by the Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić, who told Politico that “it won’t happen.” In a interview published on September 23, he was quoted as saying:

I have never been a big fan of communists and the communist regime, but Josip Broz is a part of our history, he lived here and he was buried here, and he will remain a part of Serbian and Yugoslav history.

After that, mayor Šapić seemingly paused his initiative to remove Tito's tomb. However, on September 26 he officially submitted the proposal to build a monument to Draža Mihailović in the center of Belgrade to the Commission for monuments and names of squares and streets of the Assembly of City of Belgrade.

Why is Draža Mihailović so controversial?

During the Second World War, Mihailović was leader of the Serbian nationalist Četnik movement (also written as Chetnik), which on one hand claimed that they fought occupiers on behalf of King Peter II and the Yugoslav government in exile, who escaped to the UK in early 1941, while in practice they collaborated with German Nazis and their local proxies against the anti-fascist resistance movement led by Yugoslav Communists.

Museum of Yugoslavia historic exhibition on Second World War shows 1941 posters by Nazi occupation authorities, offering rewards of 100,000 Reichsmark for Draža Mihajlović and Josip Broz Tito as resistance leaders. Mihailović later turned his Četniks into Nazi collaborators. Photo by Global Voices, CC-BY 3.0.

While they collaborated with the Nazis, the Četniks also sought support from Western allies, and participated in rescuing downed UK and US pilots (later recognized by US president Truman with posthumous medals). However by 1944, British fact-finding missions and other overwhelming evidence of Četnik service to the Nazis led to the Allies renouncing ties with Mihailović and other Serbian quislings.

After the war, the internationally recognized Yugoslav authorities convicted and executed him for treason and war crimes in 1946.

In a much shared column for Radar, historian Pissari explained how the “Chetnik ideology, like many other nationalist ideologies, and even fascist ones, survived World War II like many other nationalist ideologies, and even fascist ones, survived World War II” as Serbian diaspora “continued to cultivate the cult of royalist anti-communist forces,” and idea of “establishing the Greater Serbia.”

In the late 1980s most political parties in Serbia turned to nationalism, while during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, Serbian extremist groups branding themselves as “revived” Četniks were responsible for acts of aggression and war crimes committed in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.

Pissari noted that when the most radical parties fully took power in 2000, “nationalism then captured the state, and thus, power” leading to full rehabilitation of the Chetniks in the political and public sphere in Serbia. The process of Mihailović's rehabilitation, included a retrial that ended in 2015, formally overturned the 1946 verdict.

The campaign glorifying Mihailović as a hero proceeded in Serbian political discourse and media, drawing condemnation by human rights organizations like the Helsinki Committee as “morally unacceptable” and as provocation against Serbian neighbors who suffered from Četnik-perpetrated ethnic cleansing and genocide in various wars.

The latest revisionist initiatives by Belgrade mayor show that the political forces that perpetrated war crimes in the 1990s are still in power in Serbia. Populist invoking of Četnik legacy further polarizes the Serbian society and sends negative, warmongering signals across the whole Balkans region, hampering efforts for reconciliation, justice and peaceful coexistence.