Nenad Dimitrijevic

Crucial to the process of transition in the former Yugoslavia is responding adequately to the question of responsibility for crimes committed in the name of a collectivity, writes Nenad Dimitrijevic. However, collective moral responsibility is by no means an uncontested concept: even in collective crime, it can be argued, all that can be determined is the responsibility of the perpetrators, high-ranking officers, and political authorities. Surveying theories of collective responsibility, Dimitrijevic argues that collective responsibility is less a matter of individual or collective guilt than a sense of duty towards the victims and their community.

In 2000, the Serbian journal Rec together with radio B92 published a booklet under the title “Truths, Responsibilties, Reconciliations: The Example of Serbia”. The issues cited in the title emerge as keypoints towards building democracy in a society ravaged by long years of war. Nenad Dimitrijevic in his contribution looks at the concept of responsibility of a nation: Who is “responsible”, and what does that “responsibilitiy mean? How does one deal with this responsibility and look at one’s past through those eyes, and finally – what does it mean for one’s steps into the future?