Carol S. Lilly

Boys Must be Boys: Gender and the Serbian Radical Party, 1991–2000*

On 27 June 2004, Serbian voters went to the polls for the third time in a year to choose a president. The winner of the first two rounds of voting, Tomislav Nikolić, Deputy to the President of the extreme right Serbian Radical Party (SRS), lost the third round of voting to the more liberal Borisav Tadić by just under 8 percentage points (53.2 to 45.4), and the Radicals failed to form a ruling coalition in government. Nevertheless, more than five years after the last war in the disintegration of the Yugoslav state, the largest political party in the largest of the successor states has been characterized as the most extreme right party in the Balkans today. Indeed, the Radicals have been an enduring force in Serbian politics for the past decade and a half, sometimes ruling in coalition with Slobodan Milošević’s Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). SRS founder Vojislav Šešelj, a flamboyant, obstreperous, highly influential figure, and his fellow Radicals have sought and in many ways succeeded in shaping the postcommunist transformation of Yugoslav politics and society, calling for a return to the true spirit of Serbia, when the nation was strong because its men defended its honor as well as its borders. This article examines the gender messages and practices of the SRS during the period from its formation in 1991 through the Balkan wars of the 1990s to the election of the democratic opposition in 2000. Numerous studies have highlighted the importance of gender to the post-communist transformations and the ways in which they fundamentally altered the gender order, often in ways that appeared to restrict women. The war and political turbulence that accompanied the post-communist period in the former Yugoslavia brought gender roles into even sharper relief. As one of the most enduring and significant political actors during this period, the SRS had an important impact on discourse and practices concerning gender roles, and it expended considerable effort in attempting to redefine them in new, “post-communist” ways. While some attention has been paid to the SRS and its relations to other European neo-fascist and extreme right organizations, there has been no study to date of SRS gender policies and practices. An examination of this subject can help us understand not only the critical forces at work in Serbia since 1991, but the role of gender