Balkan Babel Ramet, Sabrina P.
2002, 20020101
eBook
The fourth edition of this critically acclaimed work includes a new preface, a new chapter, and a new epilogue, as well as revisions throughout the book. Sabrina Ramet, a veteran observer of the ...Yugoslav scene, traces the steady deterioration of Yugoslavia’s social and political fabric in the years since the war for Kosovo. Ramet paints a strikingly original picture of Yugoslavia’s demise and the emergence and politics of the Yugoslav successor states.
After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, no-one was prepared for the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia. Suddenly old terms like chetnik and ustasha found new currency, and a new term surfaced – ...'ethnic cleansing' – with its sickening echo of 'final solution'. The upsurge of nationalist sentiment in Eastern Europe raises the question whether the wars in the former Yugoslavia are harbingers of things to come. Will the racist idea of the ethnically pure state crush the humanist ideal of the multicultural society? Yugoslavian Inferno provides a rich analysis of the complex issues that brought about the demise of Yugoslavia and the ensuing fratricidal warfare. It pays particular attention to the role of religion in fanning the flames of interethnic hatred and is written by a scholar uniquely placed to write it. A Yugoslavian- American with roots in both Croatia and Serbia, whose religious tradition is Protestant, rather than Catholic, Orthodox, or Muslim, Paul Mojzes is an internationally recognized authority on religion in Eastern Europe. Based on travels in the region, interviews with politicians, scholars, and religious leaders, as well as news accounts and monographs in generally inaccessible languages, and formulated after a lifetime of scholarly achievement, Yugoslavian Inferno presents insights that only a native can provide and the critical objectivity that only an outsider can offer.
This book examines the most controversial war crimes trial of the modern era and its contested legacy for the growing fields of international criminal law and post-conflict justice. The international ...trial of Slobodan Milošević, who presided over the violent collapse of Yugoslavia, was already among the longest war crimes trials when Milošević died in 2006. Yet precisely because it ended without judgment, its significance and legacy are specially contested. The chapters here examine the meaning of the trial's termination and its implications for post-conflict justice. The book's approach is intensively cross-disciplinary, weighing the implications for law, politics, and society that modern war crimes trials create.
Worlds Apart tells of a well-meaning foreign policy establishment often deaf to the voices of everyday people. Its focus is the Bosnian War, but its implications extend to any situation that prompts ...the consideration of military intervention on humanitarian grounds. Ambassador Swanee Hunt served in Vienna during the Bosnian War and was intimately involved in American policy toward the Balkans. During her tenure as ambassador and after, she made scores of trips throughout Bosnia and the rest of the former Yugoslavia, attempting to understand the costly delays in foreign military intervention. To that end, she had hundreds of conversations with a wide range of politicians, refugees, journalists, farmers, clergy, aid workers, diplomats, soldiers, and others. In Worlds Apart, Hunt’s eighty vignettes alternate between the people living out the war and “the internationals” deciding whether or how to intervene. From these stories, most of which she witnessed firsthand, she draws six lessons applicable to current conflicts throughout the world. These lessons cannot be learned from afar, Hunt says, with insiders and outsiders working apart. Only by bridging those worlds can we build a stronger paradigm of inclusive international security.
The topic of this article does not cover the views of all Serbian politicians on the language in Bosnia and Herzegovina from the beginning of the 1990s, at least not those who remained in the ...convocation of the Assembly of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and who were opponents of the policy of the Serbian Democratic Party, that is, they did not agree with it. In this paper, we analyze shorthand notes from the so-called Assembly of the Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1991 to 1995 (from January 1992, the so-called Republic of the Serbian People of Bosnia and Herzegovina; and from March 1992, the so-called Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and from September 1992, the Republic of Srpska). The aim of this paper is twofold. One is analyzing the nationalist attitudes of Serbian politicians about the language in Bosnian society from the beginning of the 1990s, while the other is pointing out the presence of some open and tolerant attitudes. Topic wise, we follow the narrative about the use of the alphabet or the discussion about the relationship between the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. Moreover, particular focus is on the discourse about the name of the language and the mutual relationship between the linguistic identities of Serbs, Croats and Bosniak Muslims. Lastly, we will pay special attention to the issue of Ekavica (ekavian speech) and the model of political partialness and imposition of the Ekavian language of identity in the dialect space to which it does not originally belong. As the use of Ekavica was the biggest point of contention in the debates of Serbian politicians, in this paper we will additionally refer to a brief historical overview of the status of Ekavica in the Bosnian society, especially in education. Documents about the usage of Ekavica in special circumstances will also be presented in this paper. As the documents show, however, Ekavica is a means of spreading Serbian national interests in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Following some ideas of proposed or adopted legislative acts on language from the beginning of the 1990s, we will analyze the transcripts from a total of thirteen parliamentary sessions where language was discussed, along with about twenty individually expressed views during parliamentary procedures. As a thorough presentation or analysis of all of the above would exceed the usual article length, we will present only some parliamentary positions directly as sources. Other views will be systematized and analyzed as a group through the discussion and conclusions. Views that directly concern the current organization of our society and state will be particularly dealt with. In that regard, significant data on how Serbian is positioned in relation to the Bosnian and Croatian languages through the directly stated views of Serbian political representatives on several occasions and at separate parliamentary sessions can also be observed. Two opposing models were found – tolerance in language views, on one hand, and open discrimination and linguistic imperialism in the misuse of language for political purposes on the other hand. The starting motive for research of this type is a contextualized relationship to the current situation in connection with official negative attitudes towards language rights in the Bosnian entity the Republic of Srpska, with a special contextual connection with the latest legislative acts – the so-called unity of the Serbian cultural space, the guidelines for the unified cultural and educational policy of the Serbian people (from 2019), and the Declaration on the borders of the Serbian language (from 2022) – without directly entering into the content elements thereof.
In The Muslim-Croat Civil War in Central Bosnia, 1992–1994 Charles R. Shrader offers the first full-scale military history of a crucial conflict in Bosnia between two former allies. When the ...Bosnian Serbs and their Serbian allies attacked Bosnia-Herzegovina in March, 1992, the Bosnian Croats and Muslims collaborated to defend themselves. As Serbian pressure increased and it became clear that the West would not intervene, the two allies began to stake out their own claims.
Drawing on testimony and exhibits from cases presented before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Shrader describes the organization and tactical doctrine of the Croatian Defense Forces and the Muslim-led Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina. He analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the two sides in such fields as communications, training, and logistics. He assesses not only the problems of command and control in the newly formed armies, but also the impact of criminal activity, the mujahedeen, and the intervention of peacekeeping forces.
What looked to many like aggression by the Bosnian Croats, Shrader views as the adoption of an “ active defense, ” a doctrine embraced by U. S. forces, against a predatory Muslim force. He believes UN and European observes rushed to judgment regarding the aggressive intent of the Croatian command. Far from being the attackers, Shrader concludes, the Bosnian Croats in Central Bosnia were clearly outnumbered, outgunned, and on the defensive. Surrounded by superior Muslim forces, they barely held out in their enclaves in the Lasva Valley until a cease-fire was achieved in February 1994.
Although Shrader’s work is a detailed, meticulous, analysis by a neutral expert, not everyone will find his conclusions comfortable. But every serious student of the conflict in Bosnia will have to take his history into account. Enhanced by maps, useful appendices, and a glossary, this should become the standard work on military operations in Central Bosnia and a useful case study of internal warfare and ethnic conflict.
It has been 27 years since the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the history of the conflict, its consequences, and long-term implications for the politics and lives of its citizens has ...remained a source of interest for scholars across the globe and across disciplines. This scholarship has included works by historians and political scientists seeking to explain the war’s origins with a view to Bosnia’s traditional multi-ethnic character and background. The country has been used as a case study in state- and peace-building, as well as to study the implications of ongoing transitional justice processes. Other scholars within the fields of human rights and genocide studies have focused on documenting the war crimes committed against the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the conflict and the mass-scale displacement of people, mostly Bosnian Muslims, from their homes and homelands. International law scholars have carried this work further, tracing the development of courts created in response to war crimes in Bosnia and their effectiveness in generating justice for victims.
Diaspora communities have formed in North America (especially in St. Louis), Europe, and Australia because of war and displacement, and have themselves become a considerable topic of study spanning the disciplines of anthropology, migration studies, political science, memory studies, conflict and security studies, psychology, and geography.
This volume seeks to illuminate how Bosnian migrant and diaspora scholars are contributing to the development of Bosnian Studies. The authors included in this volume are either writing from their (new) home bases in Australia, Austria, Canada, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the
United States, among others, or they have returned to Bosnia after a period of migration. Their chapters have distinct entry points of inquiry, demonstrating how scholars have integrated Bosnia as a theme across the range of disciplines in which they are situated. The selections
included in the volume range from literary analysis to personal memoirs of the conflict, from studies of heritage and identity to political science analysis of diaspora voting, to genocide studies and questions of (or lack of) ethics in the growing field of Bosnian Studies.
Today's international war crimes tribunals lack police powers, and therefore must prod and persuade defiant states to co-operate in the arrest and prosecution of their own political and military ...leaders. Victor Peskin's comparative study traces the development of the capacity to build the political authority necessary to exact compliance from states implicated in war crimes and genocide in the cases of the International War Crimes Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Drawing on 300 in-depth interviews with tribunal officials, Balkan and Rwandan politicians, and Western diplomats, Peskin uncovers the politicized, protracted, and largely behind-the-scenes tribunal-state struggle over co-operation.
Although, 30-years ago, there was a limited number of computer networks and computers in the former Yugoslavia, as well as worldwide, they were used by academia and the elites, who had enough ...knowledge and access to computers and to modems. Their views on the political situation, which have been preserved in the digital world, may give valuable insight into events, and, notably, about how these elites perceived/participated in the collapse of the State, and how the public in different Yugoslavian republics articulated their views. The main problem relating to this kind of approach was the limited resources that were available, as the majority of the digital documents have been lost forever, so studying this topic through the use of pre-web digital documents looked more like digital archeology, and less like historical/textual analysis. This paper was written based on two case studies: the bulletin board systems (BBS) Sezam BBS, and the e-mail distribution list Pisma Bralcev, and how they were used to report on the Yugoslav People's Army’s attacks on Dubrovnik and Vukovar in Fall, 1991. In the first case, the study examines ‘Sezam BBS’, which was based in Belgrade and was used by Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian academics, politicians and journalists, and was, at the time, the most popular forum open to the public, and was under no government control. The second case was the email distribution list, Pisma Bralcev, which was run by Slovenian academics and was used for the distribution of news abroad. The data for analysis was collected through archival research on original discussions, e-mails, reports, etc. The main findings show that the bulletin board systems, discussion groups and e-mail enabled the first forums for the exchange of opposing ideas, and they became places in which the Yugoslavian elite could be informed beyond the information that was given by the mass media and politically controlled sources.
Iako je prije 30 godina u bivšoj Jugoslaviji, kao i u svijetu, postojao ograničen broj računalnih mreža i računala, njima su se koristile akademske zajednice i elite, koje su imale dovoljno znanja i pristupa računalima i modemima. Njihovi pogledi na političku situaciju, koji su sačuvani u digitalnom svijetu, mogu dati vrijedan uvid u tadašnje događaje, posebno u vezi različitih gledišta artikuliranih u pojedinim jugoslavenskim republikama vezanih za raspad države. Glavni problem u vezi s istraživanjem bili su ograničeni dostupni resursi, budući da je većina digitalnih dokumenata zauvijek izgubljena, pa je proučavanje ove teme korištenjem digitalnih dokumenata prije weba više izgledalo kao digitalna arheologija, a manje poput povijesne/tekstualne analize. Ovaj rad je pisan na temelju dvije studije slučaja: sustava oglasnih ploča (BBS) Sezam BBS i e-mail distribucijske liste 'Pisma Bralcev', koji su korišteni za izvještavanje o napadima Jugoslavenske narodne armije na Dubrovnik i Vukovar u jesen 1991. godine. 'Sezam BBS', sa sjedištem u Beogradu, koristili su srpski, hrvatski i slovenski akademici, političari i novinari, a bio je u to vrijeme najpopularniji forum otvoren za javnost i nije bila pod kontrolom vlade. Lista elektroničke pošte, Pisma Bralcev, koju su vodili slovenski akademici, služila je za distribuciju vijesti u inozemstvo. Podaci za analizu prikupljeni su arhivskim istraživanjem izvornih rasprava, e-mailova, izvješća, a glavni nalazi pokazuju da su ovi sustavi komunikacije omogućili prve forume za razmjenu suprotstavljenih ideja te postali mjesta na kojima se jugoslavenska elita mogla informirati mimo informacija koje su davali masovni mediji i politički kontrolirani izvori.
Balkan Legacies John Paul Newman, Balázs Apor / John Paul Newman, Balázs Apor
2021, 2021-06-15
eBook
Balkan Legacies is a study of the aftermath of war and state socialism in the contemporary Balkans. The authors look at the inescapable inheritances of the recent past and those that the present has ...to deal with. The book's key theme is the interaction, often subliminal, of the experiences of war and socialism in contemporary society in the region. Fifteen contributors approach this topic from a range of disciplinary backgrounds and through a variety of interpretive lenses, collectively drawing a composite picture of the most enduring legacies of conflict and ideological transition in the region, without neglecting national and local peculiarities. The guiding questions addressed are: what is the relationship between memories of war, dictatorship (communist or fascist), and present-day identity—especially from the perspective of peripheral and minority groups and individuals? How did these components interact with each other to produce the political and social culture of the Balkan Peninsula today? The answers show the ways in which the experiences of the latter part of the twentieth century have defined and shaped the region in the twenty-first century.
