The role of historians-slavists in studies of contemporary world (the case of the Balkans)

Abstract

The nature of the events in Yugoslavia during the break-up of the federation in the early 1990s, their scape and drama, required serious knowledge of the history of the peo- ples living there. Only historians can see the true picture of many events, their roots, causes, motives, only specialists in the history of the region, who know the historical de- velopment of the peoples living there, their interactions, and who understand how the im- pact of the international factor in the region has evolved throughout history. In the article, theoretical speculations are proved by the very contemporary history of the Balkans in the recent twenty years. The author analyses the events in Srebrenica in the middle of the 1990s.