Map 1.a.1: Lepenski Vir culture………..………..1 Map 1.a.2: Starčevo culture………...………2 Map 1.a.3: Approximate area of Vinča culture………..2 Map 1.a.4: Illyrian territory in the Balkans………4 Map 1.a.5: First Croat settlements………...14 Map 1.a.6: Slavic settlements, cca. 700………...15 Map 1.a.7: Serbs, Croats and Bulgars, 10th century……….15 Map 1.a.8: First Serb settlements……….16 Map 1.a.9: Balkans around 1184………...………..23 Map 1.a.10: Lands of Stefan Vukčić Kosača in 1440………..30 Map 1.a.11:Military Frontier, Austro-Hingarian map, 19th century)………...32 Map 1.a.12: Repubic of Ragusa in 1808…...………...33 Map 1.a.13: Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Banovine, 1929………44 Map 1.a.14: Banovina Croatia, 1939………...………46 Map 1.a.15: Partition of Yugoslavia in 1941………...49 Map 1.a.16: West Balkans today……….56
List of Charts Appendix I
Chart 1: The ethnic structure of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1921..42
1 1. The Objective of the study: The West Balkans Demystified
Nearly two decades after the wars of the 1990s, the nations and new states that cover the map of Former Yugoslavia and Albania today are still relatively unknown to the world beyond the Balkans (Map 1.a16). Those few, who were acquainted with the region, frequently accept as verbatim simplified and often deliberately misinterpreted national narratives firmly established during the wars. Even though there is much talk about reconciliation and the establishment of democracy in the Western Balkans, the reality differs significantly from political empty phrases emanating from European and American centres of power; the states and nations created during the war still struggle to achieve the level of recognition and co-existence acceptable for all. Serbia, Croatia, Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, with their politically and economically underdeveloped communities, entwined and frequently mutually violent histories filled with tense religious and ethnic conflicts, are often considered part of the same cultural milieu, so distant from modern European definition of a civilized civil society, modelled on the notion of a civic society, consisting of allegedly equal citizens, which regardless of race, religion, gender, language or ethnicity are loyal to the territory of the state.1 Passionate national feelings expressed in the past twenty-five years by various West Balkan ethnic groups and augmented by Western media and scholars, became a synonym for the negative interpretation of nationalism and national ideas, now considered remnants of the remote 19th and early 20th centuries.2 However, the question about the appearance and nature of nationalism in the Balkans remained prone to misrepresentation and mystification due to the partial and/or biased approach of researchers.3
1 Ignatieff, M. – Blood and Belonging, London, 1993, 3
2 One of the best representations of the ultimately biased approach by the western media was the award-winning BBC series The Death of Yugoslavia (1995) with the accompanying book of the same title, sponsored by the Soros Foundation and authored by journalists Allan Little and Laura Silber which was later used as evidence during the Hague Tribunal prosecutions for war crimes in Former Yugoslavia.
3 Studies of nationalism in the West Balkans were influenced not only by various theories advanced over the decades, but by political and personal backgrounds of the authors. For example, one such scholar, Ivan Čolović, an author of the frequently cited Warrior’s Brothel (Bordel ratnika, Beograd, 1993) and The Politics of Symbol in Serbia (Politika simbola u Srbiji, Beograd, 1997) connected the subcultural forms of criminals and sport hooligans with the intellectuals from modern national institutions – equalizing the cultural identity of the entire nation with the sub-group identities. To create this equalisation, Čolović used the interpretation of Serbian nationalism devised during the existence of Communist Yugoslavia which essentially banalised the 19th century nation-building process as backward and shamefully wrong. Čolović, a fervent student of official Yugoslav narratives in his youth, supported his work with a range of prominent Communist authors (Latinka Perović, for instance) whom he proclaimed “democratic” in order to sell his work to the more lucrative Western publishers. See
2 Although there has been a significant number of scholarly works both on the history and nationalism of individual Balkan states and on the region as a whole, there is still no single volume on the comparative development of nationalism, national narratives and nation-building of all the contemporary nations that inhabit the Western Balkans: the Former Yugoslavia and Albania. This is not intentional. The outside perception of the Balkans as a whole was for too long frozen in time. As Maria Todorova argued, there is an enduring “evolutionary belief in the superiority of orderly European civilization over barbarity, archaic predispositions, backwardness, squabbles, uncomforting and unpredictable behaviour – tribalism.”4 The notion of tribalism, she continues, relegates the Balkans to a lower civilizational category, which is in itself “intrinsically passive, incompatible and imitative in nature.” This perception enables the maintenance of imperial principles towards the Balkans and “releases the civilized world from any responsibility or empathy that it might otherwise bestow on more reasonable people.”5 Similarly, Balkan tribalism became “a convenient substitute for the emotional discharge that orientalism provided, exempting the West from charges of racism, colonialism, eurocentrism and Christian intolerance towards Islam.”6 On the other hand, Todorova argued that modern Balkan historiographies stem from the unconsolidated nation-states and social identities in crisis.7
Todorova’s analysis of the Western perception of the Balkans is generally correct. However, following the end of the wars and instalment of nominally pro-European governments at the beginning of the 21st century, a somewhat nuanced approach to the various West Balkan states was applied by the Western governments.
Croatia, almost completely ethnically cleansed during the wars was considered to be well-prepared to join the European Union on 8 July 2013. Its poor record of human rights and unprocessed war crimes were largely ignored by the responsible administrations in the key European capitals. Bosnia and Herzegovina, under the direct control of European bureaucrats who make strenuous efforts to maintain its unity, is in every aspect a failed state, deeply divided along ethnic and religious lines.
Montenegro has been ruled for a quarter of a century by the same nomenclature of
Čolović, I. – The Politics of Symbol in Serbia: Essays in Political Anthropology, London, 2002, p. 70-71 as well as Čolović, I. – Bordel ratnika, Beograd, 1993, the whole book.
4 Todorova, M. – Imagining the Balkans, Oxford, 1997, 185
5 Ibid, 185
6 Ibid, 188
7 Ibid, 183
3 corrupt politicians who ruthlessly exploit all available resources to retain power.
European advice on political plurality and ethnic and religious freedoms, so common in some other parts of the world, is noticeably absent in Montenegro. The deep ethnic tensions between Macedonian Slavs and ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, burdened by the dispute with Greece about the name of the state and the Bulgarian programme of awarding Bulgarian citizenship to all Macedonians who declare themselves ethnic Bulgarians, are artificially contained by the promise of potential integration into the EU. Serbia, even though officially proclaimed a candidate for membership to the European Union is still under a rigorous regime of punishment. The EU is seeking not only the further disintegration of the state after supporting the unilaterally proclaimed independence of its southern province of Kosovo and Metohija by demanding that Serbia officially recognizes the occupation of its territory, but there are indications that the new requirement of separating the northern province of Vojvodina will soon become part of the negotiating process.8 Kosovo and Metohija, after proclaiming independence from Serbia in 2008, has achieved partial international recognition. The province, after expelling most of its remaining Serbian population, is controlled by former Albanian terrorists and corrupt European bureaucrats and military.9 Albania, with its endemic corruption, shows little signs of economic recovery. Supported by the West, the government in Tirana makes significant efforts to promote the future unification of the Albanians from Kosovo and Metohija and Macedonia with the state of Albania, thus fuelling anti-Albanian sentiments in four neighbouring countries.10
With such a complex inheritance of the post-Communist conflict of the transitional years of the 1990s, the region of the West Balkans is left in a state of unresolved ethnic and territorial disputes. Even though there is no danger of an immediate new conflict, the majority of analysts of the region agree that such an option
8 Serbia applied for the EU membership in April 2008 after the pro-Western government led by Boris Tadić won the elections. Barely a year later, Vojvodina had the status of an Autonomous Province restored. The status of autonomous province it initially held under the provisions of the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution until it was cancelled by the government of Slobodan Milošević in 1989. The upgrading of Vojvodina’s judicial and economic powers was accompanied by diplomatic recommendations of the key Western ambassadors in Belgrade, which all coincided with the application for the EU membership:
http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/9/Politika/1603795/Skup%C5%A1tina+Vojvodine+usvojila+St atut.html – Accessed on 22/05/2014
9 In 2014 serious allegations about corruption among the Kosovo and Metohija’s politicians and the European mission appeared for the first time in Western media.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/06/eu-accused-over-kosovo-mission-failings - Accessed on 06/11/2014. Similarly, Hashim Taçi, the former Prime Minister of the so-called Kosova state was accused by the Council of Europe for trafficking organs of the Serbian prisoners.
10 Petiffer, J. and Vickers, M. – The Albanian Question – reshaping the Balkans, London, 2009, Preface
4 in the foreseeable future cannot be excluded.11 Therefore, the investigation of the states and peoples who currently inhabit the Western Balkans, and their changing perception of history, identity and nationhood are necessary to explain the persistent revisionism and misrepresentation of facts and events that will lead to new disputes and conflicts.
1.1 The Western Balkans, European but “Other” – The revisionism as a norm The changed political situation in Europe at the end of the 20th century led by the idea of a pan-European economic empire demanded the rapprochement and embellishment of the views of recent common history of the leading states of West Europe and Germany. One aspect of this political interaction between former political and military adversaries included the revision of the traditional historical interpretation of German responsibility for the two world wars as well as finding a convenient substitute narrative.12 The disintegration of Yugoslavia presented a convenient case for politically motivated historical revisionism. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Serbia was promptly chosen as the “rogue state,” because it was perceived as neither democratic, nor European. Owing to the traditional European view which labelled all Balkan states as “inadequate Europeans,” Maria Todorova in her analysis of Kennan’s conclusions argued that “the development of the earlier ages of the Balkans, not only of those of the Turkish domination but of earlier ones as well, had the effect of thrusting into the Southern Europe reaches of the European continent to the present day to preserve many of its non-European characteristics.”13 However, despite the summative view of the Balkans as the “alien anomaly” of Europe, some differences were made between the ethnic groups and nations when Yugoslav disintegration began.
This trend of historical revisionism that appeared parallel with the interventionism in Former Yugoslavia, termed “normative history” by Mark Mazower, used the linear approach of historical evaluation of the 19th century intellectuals and historians as generally accepted and transferred them to the end of the 20th century.14 For this purpose, the political intent hidden behind the tools of normative
11 In all personal contacts with both Balkan and foreign scholars, professionals and journalists encountered over the past seven years, the opinion is unanimous: the 1990s conflict was poorly handled by the International Community and the possibility of new conflict is real and present.
12 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/10249760/Germany-intervenes-in-WW1-commemoration-debate.html - Accessed on 18/08/2013
13 Todorova, 1997, 5
14 Mazower, M. – The Balkans – A Short History, London, 2000, 17; Ković, M. – Saznanje ili namera:
Savremena svetska istoriografija o Srbima u XIX veku, Sociologija, Vol. LIII, Beograd, 2011, 402
5 historiography,15 carefully selected and distinguished between those nations and ethnic groups that were “European enough” to be immediately admitted to the new pan-European family of states: Slovenes, Croats, Romanians and Bulgarians. Those responsive to dictated changes, such as the Montenegrins, ready to evolve from being considered “Highland Serbs” into the “Docleans” in just one decade were treated favourably.16 Those that were not “entirely European,” but could serve as the showcase for European tolerance and inclusiveness were the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina, now renamed Bosniaks, and Albanians, both because of their Muslim faith, were also treated as “pet-nations.”17 Finally, those that were “not European:”
Serbs, because of their traditional links to Russia and Macedonians, because of their argument with Greece about the name of the nation, were treated with an exceptional political cynicism. In making such distinctions, the entire historiography, interpretation and, in some cases, complete invention of national narratives of the regional nations and ethnic groups was re-modelled along those lines and established as a norm.18
The international condemnation of the Serbs for the outbreak of war in 1991 and the ensuing conflict within Yugoslavia led to intensified interest and new research into the Serbian position within the region. The view of Serbian culpability swiftly spread through the media, academic works and reports of war correspondents. From 1991 onwards a countless number of books in all major languages dealing with Serbian history, nationalism and politics were published through predominantly Western universities as an academic supplement to justify all actions taken against Serbia during that period. This began with the Balkan Ghosts by Robert Kaplan in 1992 and The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel P. Huntington in 1993, through works by Noel Malcolm Bosnia: A Short History, 1994 and Kosovo: A Short History, 1998 and James Gow Triumph of the Lack of Will, 1997. These all appeared before the end of the wars.
Continuing with Sabrina Ramet’s Thinking about Yugoslavia, 2005 and all of her other
15 Normative history accepts one model of historical evolution as universal and then explains historical deviations. See, Mazower, 2000, 17. Similarly, normative historiography transposes traditional interpretative methods to define tradition through the prism of modernity.
16 See further discussion.
17 A term introduced by Rebecca West in the Prologue of her inter-war travelogue published for the first time in 1942. See West, R. – Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, A Journey Through Yugoslavia, London, 2006, 20
18 The non-academic writers, mainly journalists and some diplomatic spouses with often superficial knowledge of the land and history, but well-connected to the mass-media, contributed greatly to dissemination of incorrect and biased revisionist accounts of the recent times. See further discussion.
6 works related to the same region, a revised history of the Serbs became deeply rooted in the modern western academia, successfully overturning all previous academic studies dealing with the subject. The perception of the Balkans as the “alien other”
depicted the Serbs as “Nazis” responsible for genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo.19 Unlike for the rest of the Yugoslav successor states, Serbian nationalism20 was most frequently presented as primordialist, negative and threatening the stability of the region, because it has been based on the “collective mental state”
which represents “a classic case of a people with damaged self-esteem.”21 According to this approach, Serbian nationalism is entirely a product of the revived and badly implemented ideas of the 19th century applied at the end of the 20th century.
This revised history written since the early 1990s by West European and American scholars was criticized by Serbian academics, who argued that the majority of foreign historians writing on the subject had neither visited Serbia nor could speak contemporary Serbian/Croatian languages or read the Serbian redaction of the Old Church Slavonic or Slaveno-Serbian of the 17th and 18th centuries. Equally, they argued that these new works show little use of Serbian archives and sources. The sanctions imposed on Serbia in April 1992 severely restricted Serbian academics from presenting their works in international conferences; this widened the gap between the Western and Serbian scholarly debates. Since the official ban on Serbian academics ended in 2002, there is a slow movement towards a more balanced view of the role of Serbian nationalism, with an increased use of materials and sources written in the Serbian language. However, the revised version of Serbian history and historical narrative of the 19th and 20th centuries by the Western and some non-Serbian Balkan scholars, had an enormous impact by branding the entire Serbian nation with the label of “Nazism” which in reality never existed to the extent that existed in Germany and its satellites during the Second World War. Nevertheless, behind the revisionism that is frequently explained as “groundbreaking and brilliant historical
19 Ramet, S. – Thinking about Yugoslavia – Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo – Cambridge, 2005, 80
20 The term nationalism throughout this work is used in order to determine actions taken in the name of the nation and has neither a positive nor a negative connotation. However, there is an increased misinterpretation of the term in a negative connotation, even among academics writing about the subject, which is in my opinion wrong – the negative perception of nationalism has often been defined as chauvinism. In this work, all negative aspects of nationalism will be termed as chauvinism.
21 Schoenfeld, C.G. – Psychoanalytic Dimensions of the West’s Involvement in the Third Balkan War in Meštrović, S. – Genocide after Emotion: The Post-Emotional Balkan War, London and New York, 1996, 160 quoted in Ramet, 2005, 306
7 straightening,”22 there is a subtle line of distinction between the real academic knowledge and the political intent. Whilst behind the knowledge, as argued by Miloš Ković, there exists the need to understand the past, the intent is led solely by the need to evaluate and misuse the past.23 This definition is what distinguishes the works of proper historiography to that of sensationalist journalism.
However, it would be incorrect to place the revisionism and invention of new historical narratives exclusively on the political intent of the West. Supported by the West and for their own political interests, various Balkan nations and ethnic groups used the political situation to assert their own versions of normative historiography in order to define their national identity, national narratives, state borders and justification for territorial expansion. Unsurprisingly, their desires were frequently influenced by the forces and ideas from outside the Balkans: they either went along the wishes of the West or against them, depending on the perception they held of each Balkan nation.
The objective of this study is to present the evolution of national ideas and nation-building in the Western Balkans as they progressed in time and point to the defining moments when they intertwined or diverged from each other. This is to avoid falling into the trap of normative historiography, as described above. The political intent was for far too long the guiding principle in the interpretation of the history of the region, that it became almost its foundation block. Because of this, it was deemed necessary to deconstruct the processes of national consolidation and enable some
The objective of this study is to present the evolution of national ideas and nation-building in the Western Balkans as they progressed in time and point to the defining moments when they intertwined or diverged from each other. This is to avoid falling into the trap of normative historiography, as described above. The political intent was for far too long the guiding principle in the interpretation of the history of the region, that it became almost its foundation block. Because of this, it was deemed necessary to deconstruct the processes of national consolidation and enable some