Abstract
Long before the wars of independence broke out in the former Yugoslavia, a legacy of genocide existed in Serbia. According to this legacy, the Serbs had been the victims of genocide for hundreds of years. When the region slid into war in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a collective memory of genocide was politicised and found its way into the propaganda of Serbian President Slobodan Miloševiæ. This thesis charts the use of this legacy in Miloševiæ's most important speeches and public addresses during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.