1             Vjeran Pavlaković University of Rijeka, Croatia : New research in the field of memory studies has shed considerable light on how the World War Two past was distorted and manipulated in order to justify the resurgence of violence after 1991 in the former Yugoslavia, including the instrumentalization of commemorations, memorials, collective memories of victims, and other aspects of the memory culture in this region. Commemorations of the wars in the 1990s threaten to create permanently conflicting narratives of the past and prevent the post*war reconciliation which will ensure long*term stability in the region. The media, narrow political interests, and the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) all play a role in how commemorations of Yugoslavia’s breakup, and by extension social memory of the recent past, are perceived. This article examines how the post*communist commemorative culture in Croatia affects Serb*Croat relations, with a focus on the annual celebrations of the Croatian Army’s most successful military action during the Homeland War, Operation Storm (Oluja).  : Operation Storm, Serb*Croat relations, commemorations, culture of memory Despite centuries of co*existence, political and cultural cooperation, and shared interests of a European future, positive Serb*Croat relations in the twentieth century have been overshadowed by the periods of mutual violence and ethnic hatred that have unfortunately characterized the former Yugoslavia’s short but turbulent history. World War Two and the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s were the two conflicts which can without a doubt be considered the nadir of Serb*Croat relations, with particularly tragic consequences for those groups who were national minorities, i.e., Serbs living in Croatia, and to a lesser extent, Croats living in Serbia. Although Western observers have often noted that the ex*Yugoslavia seemed to have been plagued with an overabundance of history and collective memories, a more appropriate interpretation is that there has