Smrt na Kosovu Polju : istorija kosovskog mita
In this major study, anthropologist Ivan Čolović dismantles the Kosovo myth not as a historical truth, but as a political construct that has changed over the centuries according to the needs of the government and the nation.
The book traces the evolution of the myth from medieval epic poems and church texts, through Romanticism and the creation of the modern Serbian nation in the 19th century, to the Milošević era and the wars of the 1990s.
Čolović shows how the story of Prince Lazar, the “heavenly chosen one” and a sacrifice for the Kingdom of Heaven, was gradually transformed into an ideology of ethnic purity, revenge and territorial rights. He is particularly harsh on the way in which intellectuals, academics, the church and politicians in the 1980s and 1990s instrumentalized the myth – from the SANU memorandum to Gazimestan in 1989.
The author analyzes poems, speeches, paintings, films, newspaper articles and political rituals, showing how a defeat turns into a victory, and the defeated into eternal victors. The book is not an attack on Serbian culture, but a precise deconstruction of a dangerous political myth that served to mobilize hatred and war.
"Death on Kosovo Field" remains one of the most important works on how national myths kill—and how they can be understood to stop being used as weapons.
One copy is available
