War and national identity of Serbs in the Republic of Srpska and B&H

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The main subject of this research is the complex relationship between the war and national identity in the case of the Serb population in the Republic of Srpska and Bosnia and Herzegovina. War and violence have multiple significant social functions, out of which one of the most important is their role in a formation and affirmation of individual and collective national identity. The structure of the relations and connections between war and national identity is extremely complex, for these two phenomena have symbiotic relationship and influence each other in different ways – every threat to a national collectivity leads to the cohesion within a community and rise off all the factors which determine its ethnic and cultural characteristics, while, on the other hand, a strong feeling of national identity facilitates and encourages mobilization on the ethnic base in the case of the threat of conflict. Although every armed conflict starts a number of mechanisms crucial for the creation of the cohesion of a community in order to defend the territory, culture and lives of its members, out of which one of the most important is the affirmation of national identities, conflicts caused, motivated and represented by ethnic and/or religious differences often manifest much higher level of emotionality, while the violence is fitted within a cultural frame, becoming a symbol of cultural values, which consequently leads to the strengthening of the real or imagined causes of conflict/ethnic and religious identities. Apart from war’s direct role in the creation and affirmation of national identity, its indirect role is also very important, for war throughout the history has had huge influence on almost all of the important components of identity, such as history, religion, statehood, culture, tradition, myths and legends. Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Srpska are extremely interesting case studies for the analysis of the impact of war on national identity because of their turbulent history, ethnic diversity and exceptionally brutal civil war which marked first years of Bosnia as a sovereign state. Throughout the history Bosnia has been the point of intersection between different civilizations, religions and cultures, Europe and Asia, Eastern and Western culture, Islam and Christianity, and different national interests of international and regional actors. All of these influences have had a great role in the creation and shaping of the identities of all the peoples in this region, including Serbs who made the majority of the population in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the biggest part of its history; the analysis of the role of war in the affirmation of the Serb national identity can help the understanding, not only of the Serb national consciousness, but also of the contemporary politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the complex situation in which this country has been since the first day of its independence. Since the biggest part of the history of Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina had been marked by numerous wars…