Rok Avbar: National question and nationalism in Yugoslavia; a quick overview
National question and nationalism in Yugoslavia: a quick overview (working version)By Rok Avbar
CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION
2. SOME BASIC IDEAS
3. NATIONALISM IN YUGOSLAVIA’S ASCPECT
3.2. DEFINING NATIONALISM
3.1. FROM THE SETTLEMENT TO THE FIRST UNIFICATION
3.2. THE UNIFICATION WHICH LED INTO THE CONCLUSION
4. CONCLUSION
5. BIBLIOGRAPHY
5.1. LITERATURE:
5.2. E – SOURCES:
INTRODUCTION
The 21st century is an era and place when and where human kind should exceed all expectations. The truth is that we are nothing more than the successors of the centuries before this one. The last decade of the 20th century confronted us with numerous events which shocked the unsuspicious public, mostly because the ending of the II. World war has inspired and deluded us not to expect anything similar in the future.
The tragedies all over the world, not only in Yugoslavia during the period 1991 – 1995, but also the events in Rwanda have shown us that human kind is far from being civil and striving after the respect of human rights. Nevertheless, to expect that the latter would prevail over the political ambitions is a controversial claim as well.
What is more, the deception we still live in is the comprehension of the modern ages as the ages of possibility to solve any given conflict, any given situation and at the same time preserve the democracy and human rights. We tend do forget that regulations dictated by »Universal Declaration of Human Rights« are nothing more than a consequence of mistrusted human behaviour and is therefore hard to be used as a prevention for the future.
The last decade of the 20th century has once more shown us that no matter how many laws we implement, how many world-based documents we produce, there is hatred which surpass all the effort. The common expression in public for this behaviour is, among others, »nationalism«.
The war in Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995 is one of the most notorious events in the history of the 20th century. Not because it would cause more casualties than World War II but because the situations and political actions leading into this bloody battle seemed unimaginable for civilized society. It has once more shown the rebellious nature of the Yugoslav people, deeply rooted hatred and the differentiations which even the political oppression for almost 50 years was not able to suppress.
Therefore it is quite obvious why so many prominent scholars, academics and studies once again show their great interest in the question of (ethno-) nationalism, conflict studies and analysis of post-conflict areas. But we tend not to ask ourselves about the adequacy of the methodology, theories and other necessary instruments of our intellectual process.
The literature used in research is combined: some of it is the literature found in Slovene language only and there is an appropriate translation of title provided. Books which are originally written in English or other foreign languages and are translated in Slovene and were used for the purpose of this essay are cited as they are in Slovene language, but there is original version information provided as well. The terms used are simplified, for example: Yugoslavia is always used for describing Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and it consist territories of today’s states Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. When referring to nations, I use strict distinctions between people of today’s states in ex-Yugoslavia territories, adding some important categories and/or adjectives.
2. SOME BASIC IDEAS
It is always pretentious to judge someone’s history over the others but it is needless to say that history of the Balkans are probably one of the most intriguing histories.[1] The reason why is quite obvious: the Balkans were always understood as a region of contrasts, the region where the brutal South Slavs destroyed the great achievements of the Roman Empire and where law was not implemented to be respected, but to be put on trial how it could be broken without any consequences. The truth is that the Balkans are the European “Orient”. The term Orient is meant in a strict meaning of E. Said's definition of Orient which sygnifies a system of representations, framed by political forces and is designed for the West as a mirror image of what is inferior and alien to the West.[2]In her book Imagining the Balkans Maria Todorova has shown how ‘as in the case of the Orient, the Balkans have served as a repository of negative characteristics against which a positive and self-congratulatory image of the “European” and the “West” has been constructed’.[3] And we cannot blame the western scholars to understand the situation in the Balkans any different if we realize that mostly aspects with negative connotation have been stressed in their textbooks. Nevertheless, the number of books about the war in Yugoslavia and the reasons leading to it can arouse a persuasive doubt about the general comprehension of the causes which led to this bloody spectacle.[4] The first obstacle that is also the main interest of this essay is the question of the reasons which led to the war. The numerous ideas and variations about the socialistic ideas of equality and brotherhood was put on test when the general idea of this war became the term “nationalistic war” or even better, “the war between different nations”. The idea itself can find approval in non-academic sphere but can arouse a certain doubt about its simplicity, mostly because scholars would agree there is more to it. But for the purpose of this paper we shall stick to the general presentation about the nationalistic war and tend no to forget about the complexity of the situation.
The basic and mostly correct idea of Yugoslavia is that during the period 1945 – June 25 1991 (or January 15 1992 when Slovenia and Croatia have been internationally fully recognized as sovereign states for the first time) there were six main nations within Yugoslavia[5]: Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, Albanians and Bosniaks.[6] If we take a look at the various publications about the history of the Balkans we can hardly find an author who will deny the unbelievable ethno genesistaking place in this region. Therefore it is unreasonable to claim that substantial identities which are more or less present in everyday discourse are pure manifestation of a nation. Eric J. Hobsbawm in his book Nations and nationalism since 1780 shows that national formation was a process and we can only discuss nations in the modern way after the 1780.[7] Defining the nation which obviouslybecame an obstacle in the process of sustaining order in the region with the agreement in Paris, also known as Dayton Agreement, and the criteria used in the latter, is a common problem of the superficial observation. What Hobsbawm suggests is that we can hardly find satisfactory criteria for such an action.[8] Even shallow observation would convince us there are many cases in which the most objective or subjective criteria would not be sufficient. National formation is commonly regarded as a formation where the language, territory or religion plays an important part in. What we can observe in Hobsbawm’s writing is the doubt he arouses when it comes to defining the (sub-) objective criteria for a definition of nation.[9]Language, for instance, has a long tradition in a common comprehension of it as objective criteria which in case of Yugoslavia is proven to be wrong. The small differences between Croatian and Serbian language can be generally ignored[10] what could also be seen in the formation of Serbo – Croatian language.[11] But nevertheless, battles in last Yugoslav war convinced us, what is also claimed byM. Ignatieff, that the smaller the differences between two groups are, inside of the imagination the differences could become bigger and more threatening.[12] Although the nationalism experts would mostly disagree on defining language as the objective and crucial criteria/condition for national formation, the general understanding is quite different which can be seen in stressing language differences as in the latest case of Montenegro which would like to introduce two new letters in their Montenegrin language.[13] To show the importance and the delusion of Yugoslav presentation on language issue, I cite the anecdote from Misha Glenny’s book The Fall of Yugoslavia where he also describes a conference of parliamentary parties from all the republics in Yugoslavia:
Dragoljub Micunovic, the leader of the Democratic Party from Serbia, was the conference host. He and his party had expended considerable effort bringing together so much mutual loathing around a single oval table in such a civilized manner. The intention of the participants was to achieve what the leaders of the six republics had failed to do so abysmally: to unearth the road to peace. Micunovic made this plain in a tactful and encouraging opening speech. He finished by saying that simultaneous translation of the proceeding into Slovene and Macedonian would be provided. This harmless remark was the signal for the remaining guests to inject a lethal dose of Balkan absurdity into the proceedings which would demolish any marginal hopes that the conference might have produced anything of value.
Neven Jurica, the leader of the Croatian Democratic Union delegation and an uncompromising Croat nationalist, raised his hand on a point of order. “I was pleased to hear that Slovene and Macedonian translations will be provided but there are other languages as well to be translated. What about our Hungarian and Albanian colleagues?” A fair enough question to which Micunovic fairly replied, “I wish we could provide them with translations but you must understand that this entire event is financed by Democratic Party and our financial resources are limited. Those interpreters happen to be Democratic Party members who speak Slovene and Macedonian. Unfortunately we do not have any members who speak Albanian or Hungarian. If we did, we would provide them.” Brushing aside this reasonable explanation Jurica continued with his precise, icy logic, “While we are on the subject of language, I would also like to request a simultaneous translation of the proceedings into Croatian.” Jurica’s request, which would be akin to somebody from Glasgow requesting that a Londoner’s speech,is translated into Scottish English, provoked uproar and laughter.[14]
National formation in Yugoslavia is also quite often linked to the question of territory which was also the case in Yugoslav wars during the period 1991 – 1995. Territory settled and covered by South Slavs in the early 6 century AC under the Avar rule or independently was actually the entire peninsula, starting at Alps and ending at the Peloponnesus. Ethno genesis, mentioned earlier, took place while the old inhabitants of the peninsula of different origins were slowly assimilated into the new community. It is not responsible to discuss national names at this early stage, nevertheless the first sovereign principalities such as Croat and Serb states emerged in the late ninth or twelfth centuries.[15]The relation of territory to mythological or real sovereign entity is sometimes crucial in transforming ethnic/language group into a nation. In the heart of nationalistic myth which was so often used in political discourse in Yugoslavia in 1980s, there has to be at least a bit of truth so the mythological structure would seem convincing.[16] Therefore we could understand some tendencies in the territorial claims in Yugoslavia but we are obliged not to forget about the meaning of land’s transforming identity or as Banac suggest: “The history of the Balkans is the history of migrations – not just of people, but of lands.”[17]So it is not hard to understand that there are mythical representations included in known political discourse of Yugoslavia, nevertheless the national question was almost never officially brought into public in order to be discussed.
What is more, political discourse and public mobilization was not based only on mythological representations but it was also based on religion bases,which is also one of the key elements in national formation. When it comes to question of religion on the soil of Yugoslavia, there are three major religion groups: Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims. The meaning of religion in establishing entities as nations is commonly stressed in Yugoslav case, with special attention on so-called “national pockets”.[18] These entities which arouse all over the Balkans are the result of the historical progress, migrations which were caused by the expansion of Ottoman Empire. Today’s land of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for instance, was divided or was held by different communities or sovereign principalities with their specific religion.[19]In the latest history, there are two key religion related elements which were the generators of nationalistic tensions in Yugoslavia: the thesis about Serbs as a “chosen people” and thesis about religion clash between Orthodox Serbs, Catholics Croats and Muslims (Bosnian and Albanian Muslims).[20]
By mentioning, and on Yugoslav case explained, three most recognized components in nation-building, we can slowly move towards the question posed in the introduction. By moving on, we do not comprehend these three criteria as the only ones but we focus on them because of the simplicity of the discussion. For the purpose of the following discussion, we have to highlight the basics of nationalism as a field of study by adding some more dimensions.
3. NATIONALISM IN YUGOSLAVIA’S ASCPECT
3.2. DEFINING NATIONALISM
Defining nationalism is at the same time defining nation. If we accept Hobsbawm’s definition of nation as “any sufficiently large body of people whose members regard themselves as members of a nation”[21] and Gellner’s definition of nationalism as “primarily a principle which holds that the political and national should be congruent”,[22] we only describe two phenomena which are summed up in Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, i.e. the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity and; the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) self-determination.[23] While the concept of nationalism and its meaning in general discourse changed over the years, there is a fair amount of agreement about what is historically the most typical, paradigmatic form of nationalism. It is the one which features the supremacy of the nation’s claims over other claims to individual allegiance and which features full sovereignty as the persistent aim of its political program.[24] The idea of “belonging” is not disputable, the most prominent authors of nationalism studies tend to question the way of the latter. Authors such as Renan and Weber acknowledge this on strictly voluntary basics, when more typically authors stress this process as a process of non-voluntary essence of common origin, language, tradition and culture. The origin and other components of the latter definition are disputable as we could realize in the text above. Nevertheless, more modern views, according to the Stanford’s Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, define nation as somewhat mixed, both ethno-cultural and civic category, but still closer to the purely ethno-cultural as to the purely civic extreme.[25] When describing “belonging”, we often take it for granted and do not think about the process of nation-building as a task of fulfilment. The question:”Who is nation?” was more than appropriate. As Peter Wagner claims this question has been answered by political intellectuals which were sure about the existence of historical groups with common language and cultural experience.[26] By creating a nation which never thought of itself as such, at least not in modern terms, national foundations and legitimacies were yet to be found. Wagner suggested two different models; French model which understood nationality and nation as a construct and as a result of historical progress, while the German model understood that the cultural and language unity gain advantage over an individual.[27]
This explanation has a valid point if we take into a consideration the result that follows. When we pointed out the ethnic and civic aspect, we strived to point at the direction of distinction of two forms of nationalism: while we are all familiar with the general presentation of nationalism as an ideology with negative connotation, there are few who know there is more to it. Civic nationalism is based on the community of equal, sovereign citizens who are in favour of common series of political principles and institutions.[28] Ethnic nationalism is, in contrary, more in favour of common origin and culture, the national principle is often exclusive in its essence.[29] What is more, ethnic nationalism is often a basis of exclusion, intolerance and authoritativeness
3.1. FROM THE SETTLEMENT TO THE FIRST UNIFICATION
By paying special attention to Yugoslavia, we can observe almost all of the dimensions of nation building processes mentioned above. The territory where one of the bloodiest incidents in the late 20th century took place was a witness of human degeneration named war before. The kingdoms of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, the Ottoman rule over almost entire Balkan region, Habsburg Monarchy and more sovereignty took control over people and their land. Incredible ethno genesis mentioned above was also the key factor in mixing all the key elements of population. So therefore it is irresponsible to claim right over someone’s territory by putting this right in the historical context and operate with terms they are not appropriate. As Peter Stih, a prominent Slovene historian puts it in his book Slovenska zgodovina:” History of the specific territory and its inhabitants is not possible […] to reduce only on a history of one nation […]”.[30]Nevertheless, the political discourse and the events in the late 20th century have convinced us there is this ethnic nationalism in its horrifying form which was/is present in the Balkans.