KOSOVO: 1938 to Modern Times
This first section of the special examines recent and more distant
history in the turbulent Balkans, which have been not only the
powder keg of Europe but the geographical area in which
political, diplomatic, and humanitarian events have played
themselves out at great costs. In the process, the events have
continued to reshape the map of Europe. From the Turkish
occupation of Yugoslavia, to the "loss" of Kosovo, through the
German occupation of the region, to the Communist and then
post-Tito years, to the recent ethnic clashes and the hard-fisted
regime of Slobodan Milosevic, this region of considerable
strategic importance has continued to threaten the security and
political integrity of the European continent. And at the heart of
the crisis is a tiny area called Kosovo. Perhaps the most
revealing evidence of the horror this war is the refugees. The
masses on the move in Kosovo are leaving a redefined Europe
in their footsteps.
Introduction
A Mixed Blessing
Media Myths and Realities
The Kosovo Conundrum
History and Hindsight
Frequently Asked Balkan Questions
Discussion, Research, and Essay Questions
Indicates material appropriate or adaptable for younger viewers.
Comprehensive News in Review Study Modules
Using both the print and non-print material from various issues of News in Review, teachers and
students can create comprehensive, thematic modules that are excellent for research purposes,
independent assignments, and small group study. We recommend the stories indicated below for
the universal issues they represent and for the archival and historic material they contain.
"German Reunification," October 1990
"Yugoslavia: The Powder Keg of Europe," September 1991
"Bosnia: A Peacekeeper's Nightmare," September 1992
"Bosnia: A Year of War," May 1993
"Chechnya: A Question of Control," February 1995
"The Bosnian Peace: Enforcing the Treaty," February 1996
"Bosnia: After the Election," November 1996
"Serbia: Making Votes Count," March 1997
"Albania: Descent Into Anarchy," May 1997
"Kosovo: Repeating History?" November 1998
KOSOVO: 1938 TO MODERN TIMES
Introduction
Tectonics is the area of geology that deals with the development
of the broad structural features of the earth and their
deformational origins. According to the theory of plate tectonics,
first proposed during the 1960s, the area just below the earth's
surface is not a continuous mass, but is composed of a number
of huge geological plates that sometimes come into violent
contact with each other along their fault lines, or boundaries.
One such fault line where two geological plates meet runs
through the rugged, mountainous region of southeastern Europe
known as the Balkans. This area is no stranger to severe seismic
disturbances such as the massive earthquake that levelled the
Macedonian capital city, Skopje, in 1963.
But the Balkans are not only a zone of geological instability. The
tectonic plates that have collided here over huge spans of
human history have also been of the religious, cultural, political,
social, and economic varieties. As Robert Bideleux and Ian
Jeffries, the authors of a recent history of Eastern Europe have
noted, the Balkans are a place where "the ethnic tectonic plates'
of Europe and Asia have grated over the centuries, and such an
area was bound to be unsettled at times of conflict." Ever since
ancient times, the Balkan peninsula has been a frontier zone into
which rival civilizations, religious faiths, nationalist movements,
and political ideologies have entered and repeatedly struggled
for control. More often than not, the results of these clashes have
been very bloody for the various peoples inhabiting the region.
For example, at the beginning of the 20th century, the
assassination of a member of the Austro-Hungarian royal family
in the Balkan city of Sarajevo touched off a chain of events that
was to result in the First World War. During the last decade of
this century, fighting in Bosnia and Kosovo again focused
international attention on this unstable and war-ravaged part of
the world, raising concerns that events there might ignite another
global conflict like the one that broke out in 1914, with equally or
possibly even more cataclysmic consequences.
Many observers of the recent crises in the Balkans in countries
like Canada seek to account for the region's chronic instability
and tendency to bloodshed by pointing to what are alleged to be
"ancient hatreds" among its peoples, arising from deep-seated
religious, cultural, and ethnic differences that date back
centuries. The fact that the Balkans are home to a variety of
ethnocultural groups with frequently strong nationalistic
sentiments and a subsequent tendency toward divisiveness has
even influenced our language. The word balkanization refers to
any process of political or national splitting, like the nearseparation of Quebec from the rest of Canada during the 1995
sovereignty referendum. This term is almost always used in a
pejorative manner, implying that such political division is a bad
thing, potentially leading to murderous consequences, such as
those that have occurred in the Balkans themselves.
Introduction
A Mixed Blessing
Media Myths and Realities
The Kosovo Conundrum
History and Hindsight
Frequently Asked Balkan Questions
Discussion, Research, and Essay Questions
Indicates material appropriate or adaptable for younger viewers.
KOSOVO: 1938 TO MODERN TIMES
A Mixed Blessing
In French the word macedoine means a mixed fruit salad,
referring to the rich mixture of ethnocultural, linguistic, and
religious groups in Macedonia, the country that gives this dessert
its name. It is certainly true that the Balkans contain a wide
diversity of peoples. The region today includes the countries of
Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia (including
Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo), Bosnia, Croatia, and
Slovenia, as well as the small part of Turkey that is
geographically located in Europe. The majority of its inhabitants
are of Slavic origin, and share important linguistic, cultural, and
religious similarities. The name Yugoslavia means "Land of the
southern Slavs." But the Greeks, Turks, Romanians, and
Albanians, along with other minorities, are of non-Slavic
background, and have frequently come into conflict with their
Slavic neighbours. A current example of this is the ongoing
struggle over Kosovo between the Serbs, a Slavic people, and
that province's Albanian population.
As you watch this segment of this special News in Review
program, consider carefully the "mixed blessing" that the
Balkans, especially Kosovo, represent.
1. List five reasons why the instability in the area is a result of
internal causes.
2. List five reasons why the instability in the area is a result of
external forces.
3. Suggest how causes and forces differ.
4. In your own words, explain the meaning of the following: "The
Balkans have had the misfortune of being on the faultline of
three great civilizations."
Follow-up Discussion and Activities
1. Consult an atlas and study maps of the Balkan region that
provide information about its physical and geographical features,
as well as the main countries located there.
2. In your own words, explain why the image of "tectonics" is an
appropriate one to describe the conflicts that have occurred in
the Balkans throughout history.
3. From the information you obtained in the atlas, make a list of
the different nationalities that inhabit the Balkans today.
4. Why do you think that the word balkanization has come to
have such negative connotations? How was this word used for
political purposes during the 1995 Quebec sovereignty
referendum campaign?
Introduction
A Mixed Blessing
Media Myths and Realities
The Kosovo Conundrum
History and Hindsight
Frequently Asked Balkan Questions
Discussion, Research, and Essay Questions
Indicates material appropriate or adaptable for younger viewers.
KOSOVO: 1938 TO MODERN TIMES
Media Myths and Realities
Another widely held impression of the Balkans is that this is a
region caught in a kind of historical time-warp, where age-old
conflicts continue to be fought among its various peoples long
after similar rivalries have been forgotten in other parts of the
world. The area has also been stereotyped as economically and
socially backward, a place where the barbarity and violence of
the medieval period contrast in a bizarre way with the high-tech
globalization that is currently engulfing the rest of the world.
Media critics suggest that Western television news reports
especially are responsible for this simplistic image of the
Balkans. The region has been portrayed as a zone where rival
military forces equipped with all the latest state-of-the-art
weaponry restage old fights like the Battle of Kosovo Polje,
which originally took place in 1389.
Fred A. Reed is a Canadian writer who has travelled widely in
the Balkans in recent years, and is conversant in many of the
languages spoken by the region's peoples. In his perceptive
book Salonica Terminus: Travels into the Balkan Nightmare, he
notes that "perhaps more intensely than anywhere else, Truth
and History, in the Balkans, are national considerations."
Many of today's Balkan political leaders, such as Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic, employ their own one-sided
versions of history as a weapon to justify their actions and
condemn those of their enemies. But since most outside
observers, from the casual North American television news
viewer to important political leaders, are not well-versed in the
long and complex history of the Balkans, it is sometimes
tempting to rely on sweeping oversimplifications and
generalizations as a means of making sense of what is
admittedly a very confusing situation.
Discussion
1. With your classmates, discuss what you know about events in
Kosovo or other parts of the Balkans. To what extent is your
knowledge based on television news reports? How much
information about the background to these conflicts do such
reports contain, or indeed can they obtain?
2. Why do you think history is such an important propaganda
weapon for the various parties in the current dispute over
Kosovo?
Heroes and Villains
There is also a tendency, found even among some experts on
the ongoing conflict in the Balkans, to play favourites, and to
identify strongly with one of the participants, while heaping abuse
and criticism on the others. It has been suggested that this goodguy-bad-guy mentality, widespread in Europe and North America
since the late 19th century at least, has led many well-meaning
foreign observers to make serious errors in their assessments of
the origins of Balkan problems and potential solutions to them.
This phenomenon was noted by the British writer Rebecca West
as early as 1940 in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, her classic
account of her travels in the Balkans in the years just before the
Second World War. In the "Prologue" to this lengthy and
remarkable work, West comments that outsiders "of
humanitarian and reformist disposition constantly went out to the
Balkan peninsula to see who was in fact ill-treating whom, and,
being by the very nature of their perfectionist faith unable to
accept the horrid hypothesis that everybody was ill-treating
everybody else, all came back with a pet Balkan people
established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally
the massacree and never the massacrer."
From the late 19th century until the period after the Second
World War, most informed Europeans and North Americans
sympathized with the Slavic peoples of the Balkans, in particular
the Serbs. They were originally viewed as the Christian victims of
a cruel and oppressive tyranny that had been imposed on them
by the Muslim Ottoman Empire since medieval times. Then in
July 1914, when Serbia was confronted with an ultimatum from
Austria-Hungary following the assassination of Archduke
Ferdinand in Sarajevo, its refusal to bow to a vastly superior
adversary was portrayed as a heroic and noble gesture in the
West. Austria-Hungary's attack on Serbia and the German
invasion of neutral Belgium became major factors influencing
Britain to enter the First World War in the summer of 1914.
Later, during the Second World War, the communist Yugoslav
partisans led by Marshall Tito and whose ranks were composed
primarily of Serbs, were seen as heroic fighters against the Nazi
occupiers of their country, and therefore received the full military
backing of the Western Allies. And when Tito's fledgling
communist regime boldly stood up to Soviet dictator Joseph
Stalin's bullying in 1948, it won the support of generally anticommunist Western leaders like U.S. President Harry S.
Truman. But by the 1990s, such perceptions had radically
shifted. At this point, as Yugoslavia disintegrated into chaos and
civil war, most Westerners and their governments were prepared
to hold the Serbs primarily responsible for the violent ethnic
conflicts that erupted in the region. In June 1999, the Yugoslav
President and Serbian nationalist leader Slobodan Milosevic
became the first sitting head of state in history to be condemned
as a war criminal by an international tribunal, headed by
Canadian judge Louise Arbour.
Discussion
1. With reference to television news reports you may have seen
on the war in Yugoslavia, discuss the predominant images
presented of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, and of the
Serbian people as a whole.
2. Why do you think there is such a widespread tendency for
people to identify heroes and villains in the current Balkan
conflicts? What is the danger in such a simplistic analysis of the
situation?
Introduction
A Mixed Blessing
Media Myths and Realities
The Kosovo Conundrum
History and Hindsight
Frequently Asked Balkan Questions
Discussion, Research, and Essay Questions
Indicates material appropriate or adaptable for younger viewers.
KOSOVO: 1938 TO MODERN TIMES
The Kosovo Conundrum
NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia, undertaken in early 1999
as a means of forcing Milosevic's regime to halt its oppression of
the Kosovar Albanians, intensified the anti-Serb sentiment that
had been growing in western Europe and North America since
the Bosnian civil war of the early 1990s. Milosevic and the
Serbian people he led were often portrayed as crazed nationalist
fanatics, intent on imposing their will on the Albanian majority of
Kosovo by any means, however cruel and violent. For their part,
Canadians of Serbian background were outraged that the
government of Canada and its military forces were participating
in what they regarded as an unwarranted aggression against
Yugoslavia and its sovereign territory, Kosovo. However great
the excesses of Serb police and Yugoslav military forces on
active duty in Kosovo might have been, most Serbs inside and
outside the country continue to believe that it is part of their
nation, a claim they are convinced can be historically and legally
validated.
But as the human tide of Albanian refugees began to crest
during the spring of 1999, receiving intense media coverage,
many people in the West became sympathetic to a nationalist
political cause that up to that point had received only scanty
support or even public attention. The Kosovars (a word that
originally denoted any inhabitant of Kosovo, regardless of ethnic
origin, but which soon came to be understood as referring only to
those of Albanian background), became international symbols of
victimization at the hands of the Milosevic regime and its terrible
policy of "ethnic cleansing."
Western leaders such as U.S. President Clinton did not hesitate
to invoke terms like genocidealthough most analysts consider
this an overstatementto depict what was allegedly taking place in
Kosovo. The armed Kosovar Albanian fighting force known as
the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army), which a senior U.S. State
Department official had only a few months previously labelled a
"terrorist organization," now found itself championed in much of
the Western media as a heroic band of freedom-fighters.
On June 9, 1999, after many rounds of difficult negotiations,
NATO and Yugoslav military leaders meeting on the KosovoMacedonia border finally agreed to the terms of a Yugoslav
military withdrawal from the region. In return, NATO committed
itself to ending the aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia that had
lasted for over two months and had caused widespread
destruction and loss of life in that country. A peacekeeping force
composed of troops from both NATO countries and other
interested states such as Russia, was to be deployed in Kosovo
under United Nations authority, to monitor the Yugoslav pull-out
and ensure the safe return of Albanian refugees who had fled the
region in the hundreds of thousands when the fighting began.
Although few were willing to predict that this deal would lead to a
lasting peace in the region, it did appear that at least the latest
murderous round in the ongoing Balkan civil wars was drawing to
a close.
Discussion
A conundrum is a hard or puzzling question or issue. Given the
long and complex history of violence in the Balkans, and given
the equally complex international response to events in the
regionnot only in the current war but since the beginning of the
centurysuggest why the conflict in Kosovo is a historical and
political conundrum.
Introduction
A Mixed Blessing
Media Myths and Realities
The Kosovo Conundrum
History and Hindsight
Frequently Asked Balkan Questions
Discussion, Research, and Essay Questions
Indicates material appropriate or adaptable for younger viewers.
KOSOVO: 1938 TO MODERN TIMES
History and Hindsight
At this point in time, it is far too early to reach any firm
conclusionsa historical assessmentof the tragic events in Kosovo
and Yugoslavia during the early part of 1999. As frustrating and
coldly objective as it may seem, only historical hindsight will
allow us this neutrality. Even many of the horrific events of the
earlier Bosnian war, which ended in 1995, still remain shrouded
in controversy and bitter mutual recriminations among that
region's once-contending parties who are now reluctantly locked
in an uneasy truce. There has been and remains considerable
disagreement over whether the deep and violent hatreds among
the various peoples inhabiting the Balkans are the result of
ancient animosities, or have instead been more recently
manufactured and inflamed by unscrupulous, demagogic leaders
like Milosevic and his Croatian and Bosnian Muslim
counterparts, Franjo Tudjman and Alia Izetbegovic. Most
historians agree, however, that historical hindsight is a continual
process and that without some understanding and appreciation
of the area's pervasive and frequently dark history, it is virtually
impossible to make sense of any current crisis there, especially
the Kosovo conflict.
Perhaps the most useful approach the concerned outside
observer could adopt is the one Fred A. Reed has recommended
in the foreword to his book. He writes "in a region where one
man's martyr is another's war criminal, where one country's
founding myth is another's tale of woe and usurpation, what
other refuge can the chronicler of human absurdity seek than
compassionate relativism?"
It is in this spirit of concern for the past and present sufferings of
all the Balkan peoples, along with a willingness to consider their
divergent arguments and truth-claims as objectively as possible,
that we might best undertake our examination of the troubled
history and unsettled current state of the Balkans. It would seem
that here, as in other global trouble-spots such as the Middle
East and Northern Ireland, some kind of coming to terms with the
heavy burden history has imposed on the people of the region
must be a basic prerequisite for any chances for lasting peace
and a more secure future for them in the coming century.
Discussion and Activities
1. Using an up-to-date almanac or encyclopedia, find out more
about the current leaders of the countries of the Balkans.
2. As a class, discuss the extent to which you think "ancient
ethnic hatreds" or the acts of current political leaders are
responsible for provoking the fighting in Kosovo and other areas
of the Balkans during the past decade.
3. The term relativism suggests the belief that knowledge and
truth are relative, that is, not absolute. In your own words,
suggest what you think Fred A. Reed means by "compassionate
relativism." Why might this be difficult to achieve?
Introduction
A Mixed Blessing
Media Myths and Realities
The Kosovo Conundrum
History and Hindsight
Frequently Asked Balkan Questions
Discussion, Research, and Essay Questions
Indicates material appropriate or adaptable for younger viewers.
KOSOVO: 1938 TO MODERN TIMES
Frequently Asked Balkan Questions
The ongoing conflict that has occurred during the last decade in
the Balkans has focused world attention on this troubled region
of Europe. Because of the complex nature of the internecine
rivalries and struggles over land and power erupting there in
recent years, some important questions have arisen in the minds
of outside observers interested in making sense of this situation.
Some critics suggest that much of the Western media, usually
preoccupied with bringing television viewers and newspaper
readers the most up-to-date stories and graphic images, have
not really addressed these questions in a satisfactory way.
Here are some FAQs (frequently asked questions) about the
history and current situation in the Balkans and some answers to
them. Form groups to examine each of the FAQs. As a group, try
to formulate in your own words why each question represents a
critical element in the eventual historical analysis of this war.
Report your findings to the class.
1. How ancient are the divisions among the peoples inhabiting
the Balkans?
It is undeniable that the Balkan region has been the scene of a
great deal of bloodshed, provoked by religious, ethnocultural,
political, and national divisions among the groups living there.
But when one projects what are really the results of 19th and
20th century nationalist struggles onto the distant past, one runs
the risk of seriously distorting Balkan history. Prior to that time,
most Balkan peoples were only dimly aware of their "national"
identity, if at all. There were undoubtedly significant religious
distinctions between Muslims and Christians, and between
Roman Catholics and Orthodox believers, for example. Linguistic
and cultural divisions could also be found, especially in the
countryside. But in most rural areas of the Balkans the peasantry
was so ethnically mixed that it was a very difficult task to draw
national boundaries dividing the new states that came into being
after the First World War.
In the great cities of the Balkans, places like Salonica (now
Thessaloniki), Sarajevo, Belgrade, and, most importantly, the
Ottoman capital Constantinople itself (today's Istanbul), the
situation was even more cosmopolitan. There one could find a
rich mixture of peoples, living for the most part in harmony. The
Canadian international-affairs expert Gwynne Dyer has strongly
criticized the widespread Western view that the Balkans is a
region whose people are the doomed prisoners of their "ancient
hatreds." He writes that it is "a nationalistic lie that the Balkans is
a place cursed with a special history of ethnic hatreds, where
peace can be achieved only by forcibly separating the different
religious and linguistic communities. . . . The truth is that the
history of the Balkans is not worse, or more complicated, or even
very different from that of other places where the empires have
been rolling in and out for thousands of years."
2. Why is the medieval Battle of Kosovo such an important event
for Serbs today?
Many Serbs today regard Kosovo as the cradle of their
civilization, and this explains to a great extent their reluctance to
abandon it to the area's Albanian majority. One of the main
reasons for Serbian attachment to Kosovo relates to their
perceptions of an event that took place there in 1389the Battle of
Kosovo Polje. To most Serbs, this battle is a defining moment in
their epic national saga, despite the fact that it resulted in the
defeat of the army of Serbian Prince Lazar at the hands of his
Ottoman foes, led by Sultan Murad I. The 600th anniversary of
the battle on June 28, 1989, was marked by a huge rally of
Serbs from Yugoslavia and beyond. They gathered there in the
hundreds of thousands to commemorate their defeat and commit
themselves to the cause of avenging the battle by maintaining
their hold on Kosovo. Slobodan Milosevic was the main speaker
at this demonstration, and he used it to consolidate his power
within Serbia. In the wake of this rally, Milosevic also imposed
harsh, repressive measures against the ethnic Albanian majority
in Kosovo, which had previously enjoyed considerable local
autonomy.
But how much of the Serbs' attachment to this episode in their
national history is based on a factual understanding of the battle
itself and its immediate consequences for the Balkan region is
debatable. Some suggest there has been a major effort of
historical myth-making, an exercise that began among Serb
nationalists of the 19th century. Tim Judah, author of The Serbs:
History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, has noted that
"in all of European history it is impossible to find any comparison
with the effect of Kosovo on the Serbian national psyche. The
battle changed the course of Serbian history, but its immediate
strategic impact was far less than many subsequently came to
believe. Its real, lasting legacy lay in the myths and legends
which came to be woven around it, enabling it to shape the
nation's historical and national consciousness."
Many deeply cherished Serbian perceptions of this battle may
not be grounded in fact. For one thing, it is not clear that Kosovo
was the disastrous, epic defeat many Serb nationalists have
portrayed it to be. Although the Ottomans did win the day, both
armies' leaders, Prince Lazar and Sultan Murad, lost their lives.
As well, there were to be many more engagements between the
Ottomans and their Balkan Slav adversaries before the region
fell predominantly under their control over a century after the
battle. In addition, it is probably untrue to regard Kosovo as a
clear-cut Serb-versus-Ottoman affair. There were many Serbs in
the ranks of Murad's forces, servants of the Ottoman lords who
ruled their lands. The Battle of Kosovo Polje was a medieval
conflict between two rival overlords and their armies composed
of vassals and conscripts. Most analysts consider that viewing it
in 19th or 20th century terms as a struggle between two rival
national groups is a mistake and historically anachronistic.
Nonetheless, this is exactly how Serbian nationalists have
portrayed this event from the early days of their people's
"awakening" up to the present. The "holy ground" of Kosovo has
been fought over many times in the past century, from the
Balkan Wars of 1912-13, through the First and Second World
Wars, to the recent Kosovo conflict. The attachment of many
Serbs to what many consider the myth of Kosovo, despite
considerable evidence to the contrary remains a profound
example of how 19th century nationalist myth-making, and what
the British historian Eric J. Hobsbawm has called "the invention
of tradition," can continue to exercise a powerful, even deadly,
hold over the historical imagination and the imagined history of a
people.
3. Why were the Balkans referred to as "the powder keg of
Europe" in the years prior to the First World War?
Shortly before his death in 1898, the renowned German
statesman Otto von Bismarck, predicted that he would not live to
see the next great war, but that it would occur over "some damn
foolish thing in the Balkans." During the 19th century, the
Ottoman Empire, the main power in the region, had entered into
a period of terminal decline. The Greeks and the Serbs were the
first Balkan peoples to take advantage of the weakness of their
Ottoman masters and assert their demands for independence in
the early 19th century. During the 1870s, with significant Russian
assistance, Bulgaria and Romania were also successful in
freeing themselves from Ottoman rule. At the 1878 Congress of
Berlin, the great powers of Europe sought to negotiate a
peaceful solution to what came to be known as the "Eastern
Question." How the various Balkan national disputes that were
emerging in the wake of Ottoman decline could be prevented
from triggering a major European conflict became a crucial issue.
The Congress of Berlin attempted to redraw the map of the area
in such a way that no single Balkan state emerged with too much
territory at the expense of the others. But the statesmen
attending this meeting were unable to prevent the growing
tensions and rivalries among the three major European empires
who hoped to capitalize on the power vacuum in the Balkans as
the Ottoman Empirenow contemptuously referred to as "the sick
man of Europe"steadily lost its grip. Czarist Russia, whose
government was increasingly falling under the sway of the "panSlavist" party, wanted to enhance its position as the protector of
the south Slav peoples of the Balkans. It was also interested in
expanding its territorial and military influence into the
Mediterranean area by securing itself a warm-water port,
possibly at Constantinople.
For their part, the Austro-Hungarian and German empires were
also pursuing their own strategic and economic interests in the
region. Austria-Hungary's Habsburg rulers were particularly
concerned about Serbia and its potential as a destabilizing force
on the many Slavic inhabitants under their control. In 1908,
Austria-Hungary consolidated its control over BosniaHerzegovina in an attempt to stave off growing nationalist
demands for a "Yugoslav" (south Slav) state with Serbia as its
nucleus. Two Balkan wars in 1912 and 1913 had already
indicated that the region was extremely unstable and conflictprone. Statesmen in many capitals by now habitually referred to
the Balkans as "the powder-keg of Europe," an area that could
explode without warning at any moment, with dire consequences
for the peace of the continent.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian
throne, made a state visit to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, on
June 28, 1914. This was Vidovdan (St Vitus's Day), the
anniversary of the Serb defeat at the Battle of Kosovo Polje in
1389. It is hard to imagine a more ill-timed choice of dates for the
Archduke and his party's trip. He and his wife were shot dead by
a young nationalist of the Young Bosnia group, an organization
pledged to freeing the province's Slavic inhabitants from
Habsburg rule and uniting them with Serbia. Incensed at what it
considered Serbia's complicity in the assassination, AustriaHungary presented that nation with an ultimatum demanding,
among other things, that it permit Austrian police investigators
free access to its territory in order to track down the assassins.
The Serbian refusal to accept the draconian terms of the
Austrian ultimatum was to set in motion a chain of diplomatic
events that would result in the First World War.
In order to demonstrate its support, Russia, Serbia's Slavic
Balkan ally, mobilized its vast forces in an effort to intimidate
Austria-Hungary into withdrawing the ultimatum. But Germany,
allied with Austria-Hungary, had indicated that it was willing to
issue Vienna a "blank cheque" as far as its dealings with the
Serbs were concerned. Alarmed at Russian mobilization,
Germany sent an ultimatum demanding that Russia call off its
military operations or else war would be declared. By the time
Germany declared war on Russia, its military leaders had set
into motion a strategic plan for a two-front war against the two
European states that were considered to be its most likely
enemiesRussia and France. This plan called for a quick invasion
of France through neutral Belgium, which was to remove the
more serious French threat before German forces marched
against the slower-moving Russians.
Germany's decision to move against France through Belgium
was to draw a reluctant Great Britain into the escalating
European crisis. By early August 1914, the First World War had
begun. It was to last for over four years and result in millions of
deaths and untold destruction in Europe. When it finally ended,
in 1918, it had brought down four of the continent's oldest
dynastiesthe Ottoman, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and German
empires. The face of Europe, and especially the Balkans, was to
be transformed by the territorial settlements the victorious Allied
nations imposed on the region. But these new arrangements
were to ultimately prove incapable of preventing yet another
conflict from erupting in Europe 20 years later.
4. Why did Yugoslavia break apart and descend into civil war
during the 1990s?
In 1945, a new Yugoslavia emerged from the ruins of the Second
World War. Led by the wartime Partisan commander Josip
Brozbetter known as Titothe communist government introduced
a federal system that granted considerable autonomy to the six
republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Montenegro, and Macedonia. Three years later, Tito showed his
determination to follow a distinctively Yugoslav path by refusing
to bow to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's attempts to impose his
version of communism on the country. Instead, Tito followed an
independent foreign policy that soon brought him support from
the United States, despite his communist beliefs.
During the 1950s and 60s, Tito's regime succeeded in rebuilding
the country and improving relations among its once-hostile
peoples. Impoverished areas like Macedonia, Montenegro,
Kosovo, and eastern Serbia witnessed major improvements in
their local economies through large-scale public investments. At
the same time, living standards in the more prosperous
republics, like Slovenia and Croatia, far surpassed those of any
other Eastern European communist state, and rivalled the West.
Yugoslavia gained an important position on the international
scene as one of the leaders in what became known as the nonaligned group of nations, including Egypt, India, Indonesia, and
others. These countries were determined to remain neutral in the
struggle between the competing Cold War power blocs of East
and West.
During this period, Yugoslavia also became something of a
model for socialists who were looking for a "third way" between
Western capitalism and Soviet-style communism. With Tito's
encouragement, Yugoslav economic officials experimented with
a system known as "workers' self-management," under which
groups of workers in a factory or business assumed democratic
control of its operations, including decisions regarding
production, investment, research and development, personnel,
and marketing. This system preserved the socialist goal of public
ownership, while seeking to remove the heavy-handed control of
centralized state planning from the healthy functioning of
economic institutions. For a while, it appeared to be quite
successful, as Yugoslavia's rates of economic growth soared
and the standard of living steadily improved.
By 1980, the year Tito died, Yugoslavia was able to boast an
average of 6.1 per cent per year economic growth. Education
and medical care were free and of exceptionally good quality,
and the literacy rate was the highest in Eastern Europe.
Relations among the country's once-hostile peoples also
improved considerably. Tito's regime acted harshly against any
incitement to ethnic hatred, and promoted the ideals of
"brotherhood and unity" in an effort to foster a new Yugoslav
identity among its citizens. High-school students were
encouraged to travel to different parts of the country in order to
come to know each other better. This policy was beginning to
show positive results, especially among the younger generation
that had been born after 1945. In the last Yugoslav census,
taken in 1981, over five per cent of the citizens indicated their
ethnic group as "Yugoslav," as opposed to "Serb," "Croat,"
"Muslim," etc. This represented a big increase over the 1961
census.
In the decade after Tito's death, however, economic, social, and
political conditions in Yugoslavia began to deteriorate. This was
partly the result of poor leadership within the country. Tito
himself had employed his personal authority and wartime
charisma very effectively to impose his version of a new
Yugoslavia on his people. But he had not permitted a clear
successor to emerge while he was still living. Instead, after his
death, the ruling Yugoslav League of Communists experimented
with a rotating presidency, giving a party official from each of the
six republics a one-year stint as the country's leader. This proved
to be a recipe for instability and permitted the regional leaders to
advance their own narrow agendas at the expense of the
national interest.
But another significant factor leading to the collapse of the
Yugoslav federation has received very little attention in the
Western media. This involves what many observers consider the
disastrous results of economic policies that international financial
bodies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund imposed on Yugoslavia as a condition for receiving loans
during the years leading up to the crisis of the early 1990s. Like
other nations applying for this financial assistance, Yugoslavia
was required to implement "structural adjustment programs,"
including massive cuts in education, health care, and social
spending, privatization of worker-managed businesses, currency
devaluation, and the layoffs of many workers. Once these
policies were in place, and the budget was balanced, then the
financial agencies would authorize the loans.
Such a plan was a recipe for political as well as economic
disaster for a country like Yugoslavia. As the economy reeled
under the impact of these policies, thousands of companies went
bankrupt, unemployment skyrocketed, social institutions
deteriorated, and the country's GDP declined sharply. By 1991,
the economy was in a state of total chaos, triggering a political
crisis that broke the federation into pieces. With the central
government and its state bank unable to provide any assistance,
the poorer parts of Yugoslavia such as Macedonia, Montenegro,
Kosovo, and Serbia felt abandoned to their fate. Meanwhile, the
more prosperous republics, Slovenia and Croatia, began to
review their options and consider breaking away from
Yugoslavia. In this they were strongly encouraged by Western
nations like Germany, who invitingly dangled the lure of
integration into the European Community before them.
In the view of University of Montreal economist Michel
Chossodovsky, Yugoslavia's tragic and bloody breakup has
more to do with internally manufactured political crises and
externally imposed economic punishments than with the "ancient
ethnic hatreds" frequently offered as the main factor behind the
Balkan conflicts that began in the early 1990s. He notes that "just
as economic collapse spurred the drift toward separation, the
separation in turn exacerbated the economic crisis. Co-operation
among the republics virtually ceased. And with the republics at
each others' throats, both the economy and the nation itself
embarked on a vicious downward spiral. The simultaneous
appearance of militias loyal to secessionist leaders only
hastened the descent into chaos. These militias, with their
escalating atrocities, not only split the population along ethnic
lines but also fragmented the workers' movement."
5. Will NATO's military presence in Kosovo following the
withdrawal of Yugoslav forces lead to a permanent peace in this
part of the Balkans and greater stability in Europe?
NATO's tanks and personnel carriers rolled over the MacedoniaKosovo border in early June 1999, to be met with a rapturous
welcome from ethnic Albanians who had endured months of
persecution at the hands of Yugoslav military and Serb police
units. Western television reporters accompanying the NATO
operation excitedly dispatched their footage of the event to
audiences abroad, comparing it to the liberation of Europe from
Nazi rule at the end of the Second World War. The historical
parallel was apt, but probably not for the reasons commentators
had intended.
While NATO forces were entering Kosovo from the south, a
contingent of Russian troops had arrived from the north, through
Yugoslavia, taking up positions in and around the provincial
capital, Pristina. There, the local Serb residents received their
"liberators" with the same degree of enthusiasm as their
Albanian counterparts had welcomed NATO. This extraordinary
conjuncture of events served to underscore not only the
extremely uncertain fate that awaits the divided peoples of
Kosovo under the K-FOR (Kosovo Force) occupation, but also
the impact this will have on relations among the various nations
involved, especially Russia and the United States.
The fears of ethnic Serbs in Kosovo that they too might become
victims of "ethnic cleansing in reverse" were substantially borne
out in the weeks that followed the arrival of NATO occupation
forces in Kosovo and the return of ethnic Albanian refugees. In
revenge attacks, KLA units reluctant to disband and hand in their
weapons have been targeting Serbs and Roma (Gypsies)
remaining in Kosovo. On July 24, British forces near Pristina
found the bodies of 14 Serb farmers who had been executed.
During the NATO bombing campaign, the anti-Milosevic
movement was reluctant to take to the streets of Belgrade and
other Serbian cities while the country was under attack. But
following the end of hostilities, opposition to Milosevic's regime
resurfaced. A number of demonstrations calling for his
resignation and the formation of a new government have been
held. Many Serbs believe that Milosevic's early departure is an
essential prerequisite for their country's reconstruction since
other European states have made it clear that there will be no
aid forthcoming until and unless he leaves office.
How long would a NATO military presence inside Kosovo be
required? The province had been devastated and its peoples
traumatized by large-scale killing and "ethnic cleansing." Any
expectations that Serbs and Albanians could live together in
peace in the region appeared naïve at best. The European
nations, linked by the Organization for Security and Co-operation
in Europe (OSCE), were bitter at their inability to settle the
Kosovo conflict on their own, and uneasy about the potentially
dangerous precedent that had been set by a direct NATO
military intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign
European state, Yugoslavia.
While Western leaders like U.S. President Bill Clinton and British
Prime Minister Tony Blair proclaimed the NATO campaign in the
Balkans a victory for peace, democracy, and human rights,
others were less certain about what had really been achieved,
and the cost that had been paid in achieving it. It is still not
known how many people lost their lives, either as a result of
ethnic cleansing operations inside Kosovo itself, or from the
intense NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, but preliminary estimates
run into the thousands. The Albanian refugees, eager to return to
their homes, faced a grim future of economic deprivation, while
their former Serb neighbours were fleeing en masse. A KLAdominated Albanian regime in Kosovo was likely to promote a
Greater Albania policy that was bound to antagonize Macedonia
and Greece, as well as Serbia. Tensions between Russia and
the United States over the implementation of the military
occupation of Kosovo remained high, and there were concerns
that they might trigger a serious political crisis inside Russia
itself. This could result in the replacement of President Boris
Yeltsin's weak government with a hard-line nationalist regime
supportive of Serbia and hostile to the West.
The meeting of the U.S. and Russian armies on the banks of the
River Elbe in Germany in 1945 did not lead to a lasting peace
after the Second World War, as many on both sides hoped at the
time, but to the onset of the Cold War that split Europe and the
world into two rival power blocs for almost 50 years. The fall of
the communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989, and the
collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, led many to
proclaim that the Cold War was over and that a new world order
of international peace, co-operation, and the advance of free
market democracy was at hand. Events in the Balkans over the
past decade, especially the conflicts in different parts of what
was once Yugoslavia, have cast serious doubt on these hopeful
expectations. While the current round of the Balkan wars
appeared to be over, the fate of Kosovo, Yugoslavia, and the
region as a whole remained extremely uncertain and fraught with
peril.
Introduction
A Mixed Blessing
Media Myths and Realities
The Kosovo Conundrum
History and Hindsight
Frequently Asked Balkan Questions
Discussion, Research, and Essay Questions
Indicates material appropriate or adaptable for younger viewers.
KOSOVO: 1938 TO MODERN TIMES
Discussion, Research, and Essay Questions
1. Conduct a follow-up investigation on the situation of the ethnic
Albanian refugees from Kosovo who arrived in Canada during
the fighting and were settled at military bases in Ontario and
Nova Scotia. How many have returned to Kosovo? How many
have chosen to stay in Canada as permanent residents and for
what reasons?
2. Using a historical atlas or encyclopedia, work with a partner to
prepare a chart containing a series of coloured maps that show
how the boundaries of the Balkan nations have changed from
the Ottoman era to the present day.
3. Find out more about the history of the Ottoman Empire and
European perceptions of it from the medieval to the modern
period. Good sources of information on this topic include The
Ottomans: Dissolving Images, by Andrew Wheatcroft; A History
of the Arab Peoples, by Albert Hourani; Istanbul and the
Civilization of the Ottoman Empire, by Bernard Lewis; The
Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire, by Alan Palmer;
Orientalism, by Edward W. Said; and The Ottoman Empire: Its
Record and Legacy, by Wayne S. Vucinich.
4. Research the factual background to the Battle of Kosovo Polje
(1389) and discuss why it has become such an enduring
historical myth and nationalistic symbol to the Serbian people up
to the present day. Good sources of information on this topic
include The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of
Yugoslavia, by Tim Judah; Kosovo: The Legacy of a Medieval
Battle, edited by Wayne S. Vucinich and Thomas A. Emmert;
and Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through
Yugoslavia, by Rebecca West.
5. Compare the terms of the agreement for Kosovo that was
reached by NATO and Yugoslav military authorities in June 1999
with those of the Rambouillet peace accord that Yugoslavia
rejected earlier that year. What are the major similarities and
differences between the two deals?
6. Form groups to research and prepare a brief report to the
class on the major developments that occurred in each of the
following periods of Balkan history, and how they have
contributed to the current troubled situation of the region: (a) the
Balkans in ancient and classical times, (b) the Byzantine Empire,
(c) the Ottoman Era, (d) the rise of Balkan nationalism to 1914,
(e) the Balkans between the two world wars, (f) the Balkans
during the Cold War era, and (g) conflict in the Balkans since
1989.
7. Contact the following embassies of Balkan countries in order
to obtain official press releases, statements, and other
information about the current situation in the region from the
perspective of that country's government: Embassy of the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 17 Blackburn Ave., Ottawa ON
K1N 8A2, Tel: (613) 233-6289, Fax: (613) 233-7850; Embassy of
the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, 130 Albert St.,
Suite 1006, Ottawa ON K1P 5G4, Tel: (613) 234-3882, Fax:
(613) 233-1852; Embassy of the Hellenic Republic (Greece), 7680 MacLaren St, Ottawa ON K2P 0K6, Tel: (613) 238-6271, Fax:
(613) 238-5676; Embassy of the Republic of Albania, 1511 K St.
NW, Suite 1000, Washington DC, USA 20005, Tel: (202) 2234942, Fax: (202) 628-7342.
Introduction
A Mixed Blessing
Media Myths and Realities
The Kosovo Conundrum
History and Hindsight
Frequently Asked Balkan Questions
Discussion, Research, and Essay Questions
Indicates material appropriate or adaptable for younger viewers.