”Only Unity will save the Serbs”

Contemporary notions of the people, politics and memory in Montenegrin and Serbian religious nationalism

Research seminar with Dr. Emil Bjørn Hilton, Lund University.

Commentator: Catharina Raudvere, University of Copenhagen.

Eastern Europe has since the fall of communism seen a rise in entangled religious and national movements. Among these rising movements are the various Eastern Orthodox churches a crucial player. The churches are throughout Eastern Europe identified as the core ideological root for the new emerging nation states and their national movements.  In former Yugoslavia, this development was part of the backdrop for the violent confrontations of the 1990s and the subsequent formation of the new Post-Yugoslav nation states. Today, the Orthodox Churches keeps playing a pivotal role in the shaping of local politics and national identity, such as in the recent election in Montenegro in 2020. Emil Hilton Saggau will, in this talk, take a closer look on the current and historical perception of the “people” and the national memory in these Orthodox churches in order to discuss their role in the shaping of nationalism and politics in former Yugoslavia.