111 pages • 3 hours read
Zlata FilipovićZlata's Diary
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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Socio-Historical Context: Socio-Political Conflict in Bosnia
The socio-political conflicts leading up to and following the Bosnian War stemmed from the 1992 dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which in turn followed escalating ethnic conflicts in the wake of the republic’s first free elections in 1990. The elections shifted power to three competing nationalist parties, the Party of Democratic Action, the Serbian Democratic Party, and the Croatian Democratic union. Members of the loose confederation of states (which included modern Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Slovenia) previously unified under the central socialist government began to agitate for independence, with some factions even favoring the overturn of socialist governance entirely.
Yugoslavia’s predominant ethnic and religious groups—Serbs, Croats, and Muslims—had enjoyed relatively balanced sovereignty under the centralized republic. However, the possibility of independent states being established meant that any given group might find itself a minority within the breakaway country. In Bosnia, for example, Muslim Bosniaks outnumbered Serbs and Croats, which rekindled long-standing ethnic distrust and sparked rumors of a planned Islamification of Bosnia.
Following the 1990 elections, Serbian nationalists within the Yugoslav People’s Army developed the RAM Plan to arm and militarize Serbians outside of Serbia to consolidate power under the Serbian Democratic Party. Knowledge of this plan alarmed members of the Bosnia Parliament, and in 1991, they approved a memorandum on sovereignty that approved emergency military action against those attempting to implement the RAM plan. This caused a splinter within the multiethnic parliament, with Serb officials walking out.
In the following months, Serbian nationalists within Bosnia prepared for a full-scale political and military takeover. In January, Serbian nationalists declared secession from the rest of Bosnia, creating the Republika Srpska. Declaring the move unconstitutional, the remaining Croat and Bosniak officials tried to gain international recognition of their own government. When this failed, they had to try to reach an agreement with the secessionists. These are the events behind the tense New Year Zlata describes in 1991.
A formal referendum on independence came between February 29 and March 1 of 1992. While Bosniaks and Croats voted in favor of Bosnian independence, many Serbians boycotted. Despite the lack of a required 2/3 majority, the parliament declared independence on March 4. The EEC recommended Bosnia adopt constitutional provisions outlining a plan for peaceful coexistence, but the secessionists rejected the constitutional plans. This coincides with the tense atmosphere Zlata describes in March of 1992, when the city is blockaded following the civilian killing of Serbian wedding guests.
By April 1992, the United States and EEC officially recognized Bosnia-Herzegovina, leading to a quick military rebuttal from the secessionists, who, along with the JNA, moved to secure and occupy strategic locations. By May, Bosnia-Herzegovina entered the UN, entitling them to UN aid and supplies. The three-year war officially ended with the 1995 Dayton Accords, but the ensuing period of political conflict resulted in the political and ethnic division of Bosnia.
Political reparations and reconciliation were ongoing and unresolved as of 2023. Overseen by the United Nations Security Council, tribunals for the Yugoslav wars, including the Bosnian War, ran through 2004. Arrests and trials of war criminals began afterward. Major players convicted on multiple charges relating to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide include Radovan Karadžić, leader of the Serb Democratic Party, and Ratko Mladić, leader of the Bosnian Serb army in cooperation with the Yugoslav People’s Army.
Zlata describes the results of the political upheaval and war throughout the diary, though as a child, she tends to boil the political situation down to the most basic part, which is the ethnic division between Muslims, Serbs, and Croats. These tensions strike Zlata as ridiculous, contributing to her impression of The Absurdity of War.
Historical Context: The Siege of Sarajevo
The Siege of Sarajevo refers to the prolonged blockade of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Bosnian War. Lasting from April 5, 1992, to February 29, 1996, the conflict is considered the longest occupation of a city in modern times. Sarajevo was a strategic target. As the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina and a cultural icon, the city was a symbolic seat of power. As a large, integrated city, it also represented the opposite of what the Republika Srpska desired: a separate territory for Serbians.
Besieging forces also wanted the airport, which the UN occupied and protected as a “safe zone” throughout the siege, and the city’s infrastructure. Zlata’s description of the widespread destruction of the city and her sorrow at the loss of key landmarks, including the Olympic Zetra, confirms the psychological as well as tactical goals of the occupation, which aimed to erode residents’ Hope and Perseverance.
Sarajevo was first besieged by regular troops from the Yugoslav People’s Army, the JNA, in support of Serbian secessionists and later besieged by the Army of Republika Srpska, the VRS. Irregular and paramilitary troops aided official forces both within Sarajevo and without. Because of the city’s geographic position, artillery fire and sniper shots from the hills pinned down opposing forces inside the city and cut off supply chains and infrastructure such as water, electricity, and gas. Bosnian forces had few options but to set up barricades, defend neighborhoods, and wait.
VRS and irregular forces entered and occupied strategic sectors of the city throughout the siege, expelling citizens and targeting them for ethnic cleansing and removal to concentration camps. They also strategically razed neighborhoods, allowing advancing troops to easily move in and occupy territory afterward. Consequently, people could not leave or even travel across town. Zlata describes the isolation caused by the occupation, as if forgotten by the world, and the difficulties of moving even within the city.
Sarajevo continued to face bombardment and occupation until liberation in 1996. The UN Protection Force held the airport in Sarajevo, maintained both safe and no-fly zones in and outside the city, arranged for refugee transport and assistance, and monitored zones of separation, but their role was limited to peacekeeping of neutral zones as diplomatic noncombatants. The UN received harsh criticism following the war, particularly regarding its failure to hold the safe zone in Srebrenica, where the VRS massacred more than 8,000 Bosniaks in July 1995. Zlata describes the UN peacekeeping mission primarily in terms of food and water distribution and armed transport: One family friend, Nedo, even gets a job working on the transports.
Cultural Context: Ethnic Diversity and Identity in Bosnia
Though Zlata describes politics as the division of people into Muslim, Serb, or Croat ethnic groups, ethnic diversity and identity in Bosnia is much more complex. Geographically situated near the intersection of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, the region has been a cultural crossroad since antiquity, though the predominance of the three modern ethnic majorities has its origins in the Middle Ages.
At the time, the Slavic region of the Balkans consisted of independent kingdoms, or Bans. Centrally located, the independent Banate of Bosnia faced conquest by the neighboring kingdoms of Serbia and Croatia and, as empires expanded, competing Frankish and Byzantine influences. By virtue of constant annexation, Bosnian culture and language incorporated these competing influences. The region even formed its own church distinct from (and considered a heresy by) both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.
In the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire conquered and incorporated Bosnia, shifting social, political, legal, linguistic, and religious traditions again. In response to epidemics, forced migration, and Ottoman territorial clashes with Western Europe, Bosnia became a frontier province and destination for various displaced people, including Sephardic Jews, Roma, and Catholic missionaries from Western Europe, as well as Turkish, Persian, and Arabic-speaking people from the Middle East, and orthodox Slavs.
In 1878, Austria-Hungary forcibly incorporated Bosnia into its empire, heightening Catholic influence until 1918. Following WWI, the kingdom of Yugoslavia incorporated Bosnia, and after WWII, Bosnia became one of the confederated states under the socialist Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. While the republic did not discourage religious practice and observations as strongly as some communist regimes of the same period, increased secularization staved off regional ethnic and religious tensions.
Conflict between the three majority ethnicities following the dissolution of the Yugoslav republic was often expressed through religion and religious symbols, though other cultural distinctions existed between groups. Ethnic nationalism fanned by long-standing prejudice and fears of political disenfranchisement led to increasingly hostile actions.
Following the war, a new constitution divided the country by the three majority ethnic groups (collectively 96% of the population): Each of these “constituent groups” elects one member of a three-person presidency. This express protection under the constitution did not extend to other ethnic minorities who suffered displacement and ethnic cleansing during the war, such as Jews, Roma, and ethnic Albanians. Memories of targeted violence during the war add to the ongoing political division of the country, which includes separate schooling, language instruction, and history classes for Bosniak, Serb, and Croat children.
