The Parting of Ways: Public Reckoning with the Recent Past in Post-Milosevic Serbia.

Critics point to defects in the trial process, or to the persistence of nationalism, as reasons for the limited transformative impact of the Milošević trial in Serbia. However, the role of memory and different understandings of how to confront the past have been equally important in shaping responses to the Tribunal. These factors are explored in this chapter by examining a debate the Milošević trial generated within Serbia's liberal intelligentsia: The 2002 Vreme debate exposed the existence of two alternative narratives of the Serb experience of the wars of the 1990s, two approaches to the question of responsibility for the crimes committed in those wars, and two deeply opposed visions of the role played by the West in Serbia's democratic transition. The Vreme debate offers important insights into why the impact of courts in transitional societies is not as straightforward as their advocates might hope.