Clash of the Chosen Peoples

Reviews: 'Saviours of the Nation' and Balkan Holocausts? examine how the decline of "Yugoslavism" in the 1980s contributed to a still unresolved intellectual crisis in the region. by Steven Saxonberg and Christos Karagiannidis 18 June 2003 ‘Saviours of the Nation’: Serbia’s Intellectual Opposition and the Revival of Nationalism, by Jasna Dragovic-Soso. London, Hurst; Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002. Hardcover and paperback, 293 pages.

reviewed by Steven Saxonberg

'Saviours of the Nation' tells the fascinating but terrifying story of how the democratic, intellectual opposition in the communist world’s most liberal and open society turned to nationalism, eventually supporting--directly or indirectly--the dictatorial rule of Slobodan Milosevic.

From the 1960s until well into the 1980s, many observers did not consider Yugoslavia to be a “real” communist country, since the regime allowed a degree of openness and tolerance that was unthinkable for any other country behind the Iron Curtain, including the most reform-oriented, such as Hungary. The communists did not even call their organization a party any longer, but rather chose the name “League of Communists,” to emphasize the notion that they were expecting the state to wither away. Without a state, political parties would also become obsolete.

So what went wrong? How could well-respected intellectuals--who could put out internationally renowned journals such as Praxis--suddenly support anti-democratic, nationalist movements?

Jasna Dragovic-Soso, a research fellow at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London, finds much of the answer in the behavior of Croatian and Slovenian intellectuals. From the Serbian perspective, only Serbs were willing to give up their ethnic identity to become "Yugoslavs." They embraced their new Yugoslav identity with great enthusiasm. As long as they were Yugoslavs, they could accept that the Yugoslav Federal Republic of Serbia was much smaller than the traditional Serbian nation; they could accept that many Serbian-dominated areas would belong to other republics, such as Croatia; and they could accept that their republic was the only one containing autonomous republics. In fact, they had two autonomous republics within their borders: Vojvodina and Kosovo.

Then, during the 1970s, Croatian and Albanian nationalism emerged, which made Serbian intellectuals reconsider their position. Why should they sacrifice Serbia to a greater Yugoslavia if nobody else was willing to do so? Were they just fools to believe in an idea that nobody else believed in? Suddenly they saw themselves as naive idealists, who had let themselves be ruled by a Croat (Josip Broz Tito) and his Slovene ideologist (Edvard Kardelj). Their last hope was the Slovenes.

The Serbs had historical problems with Croatia, but the Slovenes had always been their brothers. They thus became terrified to discover that Slovenian intellectuals in the 1980s had completely given up support for a unified Yugoslavia and were demanding independent statehood for their republic.

To some extent, the conflict in Kosovo could be seen in this context. If their neighbors no longer thought of themselves as Yugoslavs, but rather as Albanians, Croats, or Slovenes, then why should Serbia be the only republic to be weakened by the existence of autonomous republics within it? And if these groups were turning to nationalism, why shouldn’t Serbs be concerned about their national interests? Soon Serbian intellectuals began depicting communism as a tool used by Croats and Slovenes to weaken Serbia. Albanian demands for full republic status strengthened the feeling that everyone was against the Serbs. In the minds of Serbian intellectuals, Kosovo constituted a central part of Serbian history, and Serbs were being forced out by the Albanian majority.

Of course, a contradiction arose in the thinking of the Serbian intellectuals, which Dragovic-Soso mentions but does not develop fully. That is the contradiction between the moral claim that the Yugoslav republics and, eventually, new states should be based on ethnicity and the simultaneous demand that they be based on historical borders. When it came to Serbs living in Croatia, the ethnicity argument reigned supreme: Certain portions of Croatia should be incorporated into Serbia, since Serbs comprised the majority there. When it came to Kosovo, however, the opposite argument came in handy: Kosovo has historically belonged to Serbia and, therefore, it did not matter that Serbs comprise a small minority.

Most readers of 'Saviours of the Nation' will find it absorbing reading and will not be disappointed. Some of the author's arguments, however, are insufficiently worked out.

Readers interested in political theory might wish the author had devoted more space to the failure of Yugoslavia's "consociational" system. Arend Lijphart and other writers on consociational democracy argue that regimes can avoid ethnic strife if they negotiate power-sharing agreements with all ethnic groups, giving them representation in the government and influence in the decision-making process. Often these groups also receive veto power over decisions that could affect them. Although Tito often tried to repress nationalist movements, before he died he instituted a power-sharing presidential system, where each year a different republic's president would hold office. This scheme of rotating presidents fits in well with the idea of consociationalism, but this was the first time that such an idea was tried under a one-party system. Dragovic-Soso’s book would have carried more theoretical weight if she had analyzed the reasons why Yugoslavia's power-sharing, yet non-democratic system could not appease the intellectuals.

The Praxis group could also have been treated in more detail. This circle of philosophers from the “new Left” tradition had an extremely good international reputation and stood close to the Frankfurt School. Many of its most prominent representatives, for example Svetozar Stojanovic and Mihailo Markovic, suddenly gave up their socialist internationalism for nationalist fervor. Since their internationalism was so well known and their Western contacts so great, the case of Praxis probably deserves a chapter-length look into the mentality of the group of intellectuals least likely to embrace nationalism.

Next page: A review of Balkan Holocausts? Serbian and Croatian Victim Centred Propaganda and the War in Yugoslavia

Balkan Holocausts? Serbian and Croatian Victim Centred Propaganda and the War in Yugoslavia, by David Bruce MacDonald. Manchester University Press, 2003. Hardcover and paperback, 308 pages.

reviewed by Christos Karagiannidis

We are the chosen bearers of a covenant; we experienced a golden age, endured a fall from grace, and now live in expectation of redemption. Although favored in the eyes of God, we are always the victim at the hands of others: inferiors, aggressors, barbarians ungraced by divine election. Or so the story goes.

In Balkan Holocausts? David Bruce MacDonald sets out to show how Serbs and Croats used such myths and claims of victimization and persecution to legitimize the aim of expanding the state. Paradoxically, in the case of each people, being victimized is intrinsic to building a myth glorifying one's nation as holy and chosen, heroic and one day triumphant.

MacDonald, a lecturer at the University of Otago in New Zealand, examines how Serbs and Croats have represented themselves as having experienced genocide and exclusion in all aspects of national life through the use of "victim-centered propaganda," a term that encompasses a much wider range of materials than the usual definition of propaganda. Throughout his provocative analysis, MacDonald highlights the responsibility of scholars--historians, ethnographers, archeologists--and the role of politicians and journalists who have rewritten and mythologized the past in order to achieve national goals.

NOBODY UNDERSTANDS US

Much of the book’s utility stems from its summary and explanation of the stereotypes and myths that ethnic groups employ in order to create a national identity, mold collective attitudes, engender common social memories of defeat and betrayal, and exalt themselves.

In the model of the "Great Nation" (Serbia, Croatia, Albania) MacDonald finds a vehicle for an examination of political and "scientific" arguments for state-expansion. Serbian and Croatian leaders alike, for instance, argued that the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina were fallen members of their own nation, who had been forced to abandon their true identity after the Ottoman invasion.

Negative images have played a large part in constructing the identities of the Serbian and Croatian nations themselves. Through such imagery, MacDonald argues, a people can task itself with the mission of rebuilding the past in order to correct previous injustices.

The myth of Kosovo was of great importance for the Serbs’ self-image as a long-suffering, persecuted people. The Serbs' defeat at the hands of an Ottoman army at Kosovo Polje in 1389 was seized upon as the people's defining moment, a crime so heinous it allowed the nation to transcend ordinary morality. Kosovo became Serbia's Jerusalem, a parallel between two chosen peoples. The Kosovo myth was used against ethnic Albanians living on the territory as a means of legitimizing the reincorporation of the province into an expanded Serbia. Serbian national identity clung to this myth, and Serbian nationalism both before and after Serbia took over Kosovo from Turkey in 1912 threw accusations of genocide in the face of the ethnic Albanian population. Anti-Albanian propaganda charging a long history of atrocities against Serbs in Kosovo was the key to legitimizing Serbian territorial claims on Kosovo.

The formation of a Croatian national identity in the 19th and 20th centuries took a different course, MacDonald writes, centering on Croats' self-definition as a civilized and peace-loving people. Croatian nationalism may be said to have begun with demands for greater use of the majority language alongside Hungarian during the 19th century as well as designation for a distinct Croatian language, serving educational and literary purposes.

More recently, the Croats, like the Serbs, made much of myths of persecution and victimization. Such thinking was employed to argue for Croatia's right to exist as a separate state with its "unique" language, religion, and race. Indeed, Croats had a duty to defend themselves against the tyrannical Serbs. Many Croatian writers have devoted much effort to distinguishing the Croats from the Serbs.

Each group in the struggle for identity found and constantly recurred to stereotypical exaltation of their own and no less rigid denunciations of those seen to be blocking their path: Albanians are a violent race that treacherously collaborated with the Ottoman occupiers. Croats are medieval, hierarchical, xenophobic, and backward; Croats and their Catholic faith are innately superior. Serbs are genocidal tyrants; Serbs and their Orthodox faith are the West's bulwark against Islam.

PICK ONE MYTH FROM COLUMN A …

In the 1990s, as words turned to warfare involving Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Kosovar Albanians in shifting nets of collaboration and betrayal, Serbs and Croats each frequently resorted to accusing the other of atrocities during World War II--the previous occasion when the southern Slavs fought against each other. The past was repeated in contemporary events; the victim/hero then was the victim/hero now. The Serbs located their modern-day Golgotha at Jasenovac, a concentration camp run by the World War II Croatian state, where thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and others lost their lives. The Croats' nation-building tragedy was the mass slaughter of fleeing Croat soldiers and civilians by Yugoslav Partisans in Bleiburg, Austria, in May 1945.

MacDonald shows how manipulation of Holocaust-like metaphors became a practical technique for nations seeking to advance their political agendas. His book portrays how the process of building national identities and political states in the former Yugoslavia was more than anything a social and cultural construction; a structure that embraces historical and cultural reinterpretations and revisions. In that sense, the role of history is absolutely central. History responds to present needs; we rewrite and re-focus history in order to further national and political achievements.

The author's narrative sometimes gets sidetracked when he falls into various errors concerning events and persons--as when he locates Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic's anti-Semitic views in the 1990s, thus granting him four extra decades of life. There are occasional pitfalls in his analysis as well. He criticizes Anthony Smith--who has argued for the central role of Golden Age myths in constructing national identities--for inadequate treatment of ethnic cleansing and national minorities, then himself fails to do justice to the role of negative imagery. Still, readers with historical and cultural understanding of what was Yugoslavia will find that Balkan Holocausts?, despite these lapses, gives insight into the origins and tortuous course of nationalist thought in some of its elusive varieties.