By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic
A National trauma
A national trauma which the Serbs after the fall of the Serbian national state and the Ottoman occupation experienced after June 20th, 1459[i] can be compared with that felt by Judea’s Jews after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.[ii] Since Serbia soon found herself well within the Ottoman Sultanate and the European Christian states were on defense from the victorious Muslim Ottoman Turks, no light at the end of the historical tunnel was seen and the whole nation sank into deep despair for the next four centuries. In a sense, the nation may be regarded as an extended individual, with similar suffering from wounds and defeats.[iii] And as an individual compensates for its personal defeats by pushing his/her traumatic memories into the subconscious, so a nation builds up a fictitious history, trying to justify his/her failures and construct a fictitious world without unpleasant reality. Subjugated Serbs were no exception, as the Jews, Germans, Albanians, Lithuanians,[iv] etc. were neither. This is evidenced mostly from folk epic poetry.[v]