Customer Reviews (2)

The past and the future for Serbs
So what keeps the Serbs going? Let's look at the history.

Serbs have always risen from ashes thought their 15 century old history, while their enemies have burned out. The key was that the Serbs were defending their land, their families, and their religion - Orthodox Christianity, which in synergy with their heroic tradition gave them all the strength and endurance they needed. The mightiest superpowers of their time, which have fought the Serbs, have collapsed: Ottoman Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Hitler. No, it's not the Serbs that destroyed them - the mightiest were wrong, and that is what destroyed them.

Those who don't know the history are doomed to repeat it, and they are repeating it buy pursuing greed, lies, and crime, just like their predecessors. They will either have to change, or their future will be the same as of their predecessors, guaranteed.

Review of R.G.D. Laffan's "The Serbs: Guardians of the Gate"
This is a really good read for anyone interested in the history of the Serbian people of the 19th and early 20th century.It traces the evolution of Serbian national thought from medieval times to World War I and theaspirations of a united Yugoslavia, or South Slav State.The book is acompilation of lectures given by Laffan, and was originally put together in1917, during the war.Especially moving is the tale of the hardship theSerbian people endured during the years 1912-1918.They truly were anheroic people during those years and their story is a compelling one.Thebook is also a source of sorrow to the reader familiar with late 20thcentury Serbian history, as we now know that the notes of optimism byLaffan for the future of the Serbian nation were crushed by the bloodycivil wars that occurred during World War II and the 1990's. ... Read more

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In a convenient, concise format, Serbia's Historical Heritage explodes general perceptions of Serbia (the Balkans) as developmentally backwards. This work documents how Serbian society developed recognized cultural monuments in the Middle Ages, how the nation evolved into an ideal parliamentary state, and how Serbia fought and sacrificed in both World Wars on the Allied side. ... Read more

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Serbia and Montenegro has recently come to the attention to global strategic planners.This report puts these executives on the fast track.Ten chapters provide: an overview of how to strategically access this important market, a discussion on economic fundamentals, marketing & distribution options, export and direct investment options, and full risk assessments (political, cultural, legal, human resources).Ample statistical benchmarks and comparative graphs are given. ... Read more

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This book traces the link between Serbian national mythology and genocide in the former Yugoslavia. Unlike other books dealing with this subject, HEAVENLY SERBIA analyzes the conflict's long-term sources, going as far back as the pre-Christian Slavic pagan religion. It also points out ways in which Serbian leaders convinced at least some members of the international community of the righteousness of their aims. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (32)

Balkan Mischief Makers
Recent Balkan wars represent a succinct example of the incestuous relationship between culture and brain function. A multicultural, relatively prosperous society with a high degree of inter-ethnic marriage is torn, within a year or two, into murderous fiefdoms. Appalling crimes are committed and justified by appealing to old myths resurrected by political expedience. Europe watches, helplessly, as veneer of civilization is torn with people reverting to Old Testament tribal eye-for-an-eye brutality.

This book tries to explain the causes and conditions that propelled Serbs into renting asunder of (an illusory?) tribal harmony in communist Yugoslavia. The main thesis is that Serb personal, political and religious life isdefined by myths (of Serb defeat by the Ottomans, of "Serb exceptionalism", etc). Several chapters attempt to show that the genocidal streak in the Serbian national mythos originated in a violent 19th century poem calling for elimination of Turks and their collaborators. Anzulovic shows that, far from resisting occupation, Serb aristocrats were valuable vassals of Ottoman Turks, helping to consolidate Ottoman power both through troops and personal service. There is an intriguing link between the Serb tradition of banditry and its disregard for victims which may be relevant to our understanding of the Bosnian war. Pace A., in Servia, cruelty when successful is admired; thus Serb paramilitary atrocities in Bosnia created a vicious self-reinforcing circle that was actively encouraged by intellectual, artistic and religious elites in the Serb capital (Belgrade). The author shows a particular scorn for the Serb Orthodox Church which has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Bosnian genocide through its "St. Savaist" populism. As far as the Belgrade Patriarchy is concerned, murdering innocent Muslims does not contradict Christ's teachings. In other words, for a few blood-soaked years the Serbs represented an Orthodox version of the Taliban.

Much of what A. says appears, to an outsider, convincing. The zeal with which Serb civilians, paramilitaries and soldiers tortured, maimed and murdered innocent Croats & Bosnians should be contrasted to the effeteness, confusion and lack of professionalism of European (British, French and especially, Dutch) armies which watched the genocide on the ground, sometimes from yards away. If I was in Afpak I certainly would be concerned if I had to serve next to the craven Dutch troops whose surrender of Srebrenica should represent a case study for every contemporary military school.

The book is not without problems. While trying to explain the Bosnian war, A. overplays the sway of mythos over the Serb "soul' while overlooking the role of Milosevic's opportunistic populism and the naked economical self-interest of Bosnian Serbs. The endless referral to violent medieval Serbian myths, poems and works of art overlooks the fact that almost every culture possesses their equivalents: Popol Vuh, Icelandic sagas, Warao creation myths, you name it. Finally, while the Serbs are portrayed as monsters egged on by their deviant cultural and religious institutions, the author overlooks the neighbors: Croats, who as Nazi collaborators committed far greater atrocities [that were said to disgust the Waffen SS itself]]; Albanians who are running arguably the most efficient and ruthless pan European drug trafficking and prostitution operation in history, Hungarians, who have their own sordid history of medieval slaughters. Claiming, as A. does, that the Serbs have a monopoly on violence and atrocities is absurd. Anyone who's read Burkhardt's seminal Civilization of the Renaissance will know that cruelty was the order of the day amongst the pre-Italians. Like the Bosnian Serbs, the Hutu perpetrated the Rwanda genocide mostly because of the their need for more land; historic hatreds were an excuse.

If A. is ethnically Croat, then one should consider this book as a (yet another?) salvo in the inter-ethnic rivalry between the two Slavic tribes.I'd say this book should be read with reservation as the lack of objectivity and pro-Croat bias make it apparent that the author's main goal is to demonize a historic antagonist/competitor. Anzulovic is a partisan, not a scholar and the book should be read as another installment in the propaganda jostle between Southern Slavs.

A view
Anzulovic's book is well written and researched.I have studied this region of the world in-depth.However, when reading this book it is important for the reader to understand that Anzulovic is exploring the Serb side of events, and what lead the Serbs to commit the atrocities they committed during the 1990s.During the Balkan Wars, all sides committed atrocities and war crimes and one needs to explore the wars from all sides, and come to his or her own fact based conclusion.

Why genocide happens?
Anzulovic's Heavenly Serbia is a great resource for students of the Balkans and the Yugoslav wars. It is also a good read for those with a general interest in the Balkans. The book is well written and well researched.

Strengths
Anzulovic sets out to explain how the myth of Heavenly Serbia has set the stage for the genocidal wars of the 1990s. He manages to do that very well in this book. He uses historical documents to prove that the myth was initially not a popular myth at all, but a church version of what had happened at the Battle of Kosovo in 1989. Further, he shows how the narrative spread among the population through the singing bards. Then, Anzulovic explains how the myth was used in the 19th and 20th centuries to justify Serbian megalomaniac ambitions. An, intriguing part of the book is the section where the author talks about how international circles had accepted the myth thus giving legitimacy to both the Serbian territorial ambitions and the genocidal campaigns.

Weaknesses
One weakness of the book is that Anzulovic often becomes repetitive. Also, one could argue that the author draws from too few sources when trying to prove his hypothesis. He relies a lot on Njegos's The Mountain Wreath to argue that the idea of eliminating entire ethnic groups to create a compact Serbian state was accepted widely. However, the content of one Serbian book is not as significant as the popularity of that book,. And, Anzulovic mentions the popularity of this and other similar books (Noz) to argue that the Serbian intellectuals were in fact promoting the myth Serbian victimization and calling for `revenge.'

In conclusion, Heavenly Serbia is an indispensable book for those who seek to understand the wars of 1990s in the Balkans. And, not only those but, also, previous wars of the 19th and 20th century in the Balkans which in fact were prequels to the 1990s, as this book implies.

Lest We Forget, the death camp was called 'JASENOVAC'
This book was typically written by a non-historian, a biased anti-Serb trying to portray a non-factual and non-historically backed truth.

Genocide comitted by Serbs? You got to be kidding!

Mr. Anzulovic, here is a topic for you to cover: the infamous concentration camps on WW2:"Jasenovac" in Croatia, that even shocked the Nazis for its gruesomeness.

The roots of the 1990's war in the Balkans lie in 'Jasenovac' Death Camp.

Jasenovac Death Camp is the place where an estimated one million civilians (majority women and children) were brutaly tortured and murdered just for being non-Nazi and non-Croatian.
This was a legacy of the Nazi-puppet State created in 1941, called 'Independent State of Croatia' governed by the so called Ustashe, dedicated to a clerical-fascist ideology influenced both by Nazism and extreme Roman Catholic fanaticism.

This rampage of racial GENOCIDE began in August 1941 and lasted 'till April 1945, when the camp was liberated.

More than 60 years later the existance of this infamous camp and the horrifying crimes committed there are still being overlooked, denied and suppressed throughout the world.

Hopefully, not for long.

For more info, please see:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=nb_ss_gw/102-9841842-1853711?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Jasenovac
http://www.jasenovac.org
http://www.pavelicpapers.com/
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/jasenovac/
http://www.balkan-archive.org.yu/kosta/jasenovac/

Again, 60 years later, the same Nationalistic Party called NDH (a.k.a Independent State of Croatia) comes to power in Croatia and reignites the old genocidal aspirations which were an overture to the 1990's conflict in the Balkans.

So, Mr. Anzulovic get your facts straight.

For all the true historians out there, above is a bit of factual literature.

Lest we forget, JASENOVAC !

Regards,
John Fletcher

An explanation of why the Serbs used genocide.
This book explains why the Serbs did the genocides of the 1990s.
The author explains how the Serbs came to feel like victims and performed some of the worst attrocities of the after Cold War era. I think some of the explanations have great value to how we understand these troubled people.

1.) Serbs viewed themselves as the bulwark against the East and the Turks.As the author vividly demonstrates, the Serbs were more often the allies of the Turks in the invasion of Europe than adversaries.The Serbs often allied themselves with the Turks against other Christian peoples like the Bulgars.
2.) Serbs glorified the use of violence against their enemies.Their most valued weapon was the knife.Glorification still takes place in modern novels and the Serbs are always the good guys.
3.) The Orthodox religion is tied so closely to the state that it is nor an effective opposition to the bloody policies of the police state.In fact, the Orthodox Church often condones and revels in the attrocities against the other religions.

This is an interesting read for the academic reader.It serves as one theory of why the Serbs did what they did in the 1990s.I am not sure if the author has an ax to grind with the Serbs, but the justification for what he says is in the book.A nice read.
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Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. ... Read more

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The Yugoslav crisis - armed conflict, ethnic cleansing and the reverberating ideas and mindsets - has been going on for more than ten years. This text, written by authors who have lived through these social conflicts, explores the roots of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. It deals with issues which include the institutional frameworks of ethnicity and nationalism; the input of the church, science, literature and sports; specific catalysts of the conflict; and the role of the political actors, students, the ruling party and the media. It examines why and how the violent option of settling disputes and conflicts on the territory of Yugoslavia is being accepted. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

This book sucks.
This book sucks. Its the worst piece of trash I've ever read. Don't waste a damn dime of your money on this garbage. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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Some loose "facts", but an interesting read
Some of the "facts" in this book are a bit on the loose side. If the book wasn't 100 years old, I'd call them downright lies. As it stands, it could just be that they didn't have access to as much of the historical information as we get now.

But don't let that distract you. You should definitely read this book. Now, I know what you're thinking. "It's FREE! Do I really want to pay that much?" And that's a valid concern. With a price tag like that, you'd better think long and hard before committing. But once you make that oh-so-difficult decision, you'll be in for an excellent read. If you're a fan of shows like The Office, that make you cringe with every inappropriate comment, you'll love this book.

It is packed to the brim with horrible, racist, biased propaganda and a healthy dose of western superiority complex. If you're not chuckling (in disbelief) every 5 minutes, you're doing something wrong. ... Read more

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This book chronicles Serbian resistance to the Central Powers during the first eighteen months of World War I. Based chiefly on official histories and an Admirality file on the work of the British Naval Museum at Belgrade in 1914-1915, it also includes a perviously unpublished diary by Admiral E.C.T. Troubridge, R.N., on the retreat of the Serbian army to the Adriatic Sea. This story of the overthrow of the Serbian Kingdom in 1915, and the personal story of an officer who represented his country in Serbian Headquarters, offers enlightening insight into Serbian history and poltics. ... Read more

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This book presents a brief history of Serbia. The book examines the dual political threads throughout the 1800's: (1) the gradual liberating from Ottoman rule and the replacement of that authority by Serbs, and (2) the determined efforts by Serbs to limit their own rulers in such a way as to eventually result in a parlimentary democracy, which was accomplished by the end of the century. In the twentieth century, the Serbs joined other South Slavs in the First and Second Yugoslavia, with the latter collapsing at the end of the century.

Customer Reviews (1)

History is Contemporary
Alex Dragnich's attempt to compress a multifaceted millenium of Serbian history into 160 pages is bold, and could be considered audacious in a lesser man. So much has to be left out, and what is included has to be treated with such economy and such precision, that many a professional would cringe at the task.

Professor Dragnich takcles it with panache and self-assurance that he can well afford.The reputation of this nonagenarian doyen of South Slavic studies in America is so solid, and his grasp of all the essentials so firm, that his book is beyond objections applicable to a run-of-the-mill academic monograph.

My main objection regards the book's editors, concerning a title that promises more than the work itself can deliver. A better one would have been "A Brief History of Modern Serbia, 1804-2004." The author's treatment of some four fifths of Serbia's recorded history, including the glory that was Serbia under the medieval Nemanjic dynasty, is compressed into a mere 18 pages (Chapters One and Two). That should have provided an expanded introduction to what really interests the author: the way in which a pre-modern peasant society managed to throw off the Ottoman yoke, establish a viable state structure, and limit their own rulers in such a way as to result eventually in a parlimentary democracy - and all that within a single century (1804-1903).

Dragnich's objective is to recount the story of a people for educated generalists, but his context is provided by the recent past, confirming the extent to which all history is contemporary history. After 15 years of relentless demonization by the North American and Western European elite class, "Serbia" has ceased to be a mere country, and "the Serbs" are no more just a small Balkan nation. It has become hard to mention the battle of Kosovo, or the attentat at Sarajevo, and keep those names separate from a host of associations induced by the likes of Clinton, Albright, Holbrooke, Amanpour, Sontag, and Wolfowitz.

Indeed, cringing at the mention of "the Serb" is now a litmus test of a postmodern Westerner's institutional clubability, on the order of his acceptance of the greatness of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the desirability of "gay marriage," and the sanctity of "dr." Martin Luther King, Jr. Dragnich senses this and readily admits that his purpose is twofold: to provide a better understanding of Yugoslavia's breakup, and to offer a more objective evaluation of the events surrounding it.

In that endeavor, the author does not succeed, not because his Balkan facts or his interpretations of Yugoslav realities are wrong, but because he underestimates the mendacity of the beast known as the "international community." Its controllers do not lack information or understanding; they lack common decency and the sense of moral distinction. Washington did not seek "to promote a peaceful settlement in Kosovo" and then got sidetracked, it actually wanted war. The horrors that the Clintonites and their European abettors have unleashed on the Serbs - among which the collective demonization and the demand for "denazification" exceed even those 78 days of bombing in 1999 - go far beyond any single element of rationally defined policy.

Six years short of his 100th birthday, Alex Dragnich remains an optimist, however. He still believes that, "had the policy makers and the media been better informed about Balkan and particularly Serbian history, conclusions and actions may have been very different." He hopes that his fair-minded and reasonable account of Serbia's modern history "will prevent future mistakes and, very importantly, lead to some reassessment of recent policies and media coverage." That hope, unfortunately, is futile. Foreign meedling in the Balkans has a long history and an awful record, but many meddlers had known the score well before they proceeded to use that knowledge in pursuit of a "solution" that was mad, or bad, or both.

Austria-Hungary's viceroy of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Benjamin Kallay, invented and promoted a "Bosniak" identity - a ruse perpetrated by Paddy Ashdown and his ilk today - and, to that end, he banned his own "History of the Serbian Nation" from his Bosnian fiefdom. That book, written while Kallay was the Habsburg envoy in Belgrade (1868-75), was too objective about the Serbs and therefore subversive of his political agenda. It was freely available elsewhere in the Dual Empire, but try bringing a copy from Vienna or Budapest to Sarajevo, and Kallay's gendarmes would put you in jail.

Half a century later, Churchill knew the truth about Tito's intention to Bolshevize Yugoslavia after defeating his domestic enemies and assured his envoy to the Partisans' headquarters, Brig. Fitzroy Maclean, that it was OK to continue pretending otherwise. "Do you intend to make Yugoslavia your permanent residence after the war?" he asked Maclean in 1944, when the latter expressed some unease about the communists' true design.

In the same vein, more recent assurances that Izetbegovic was not an Islamist and that the KLA were not terrorists invariably came from people equally certain not to make Bosnia or Kosovo their permanent residence after making them safe for jihad. What they are doing is a crime, and a systematic distortion of history is an important tool of their trade.

Even if all history is, in some measure, contemporary history, it should never be dominated by the ideological preferences of the elite class as thoroughly as the South Slav history has been dominated in the Western world over the past two decades. Alex Dragnich's "Serbia Through the Ages" makes a welcome contribution to the end of that dominance.
(Review by Srdja Trifkovic, published in "Chronicles," January 2006, p. 13) ... Read more

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This work: analyses Serbian political mythology about the nation; examines the historical development of Serbian myths; analyses political symbolism, myth, rhetoric and propaganda, using case studies; and investigates the relationship between the masses, mass culture and politics. ... Read more

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In this pioneering study of Kostunica's political formation and general worldview, Norman Cigar explores what he really represents for Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He believes that Kostunica's policies are essentially an attempt to preserve a "Greater Serbian" paradigm in opposition to more democratic and reform-minded political and civil forces. Cigar argues that such policies deter democratization at home and reconciliation with neighboring states, thus promising renewed conflict rather than stability.
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Customer Reviews (2)

Warning to World
Norman Cigar gives excellent picture about the most dangerous person on the Balkans today, Vojislav Kostunica or Dr. Kalashnikov.This Serb nationalist is involved in just about any atrocities that have happened in wars from 1992-1995.He was in the shadow of war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, just to take his place when the late one was spent.If we are not careful, Kostunica may bring another tragic episode in the Balkans.To stay careful we need book such as this one.We need to know what happened in the past in order to be able to recognize the danger in the near or far future.Kostunica is a near future danger!.His tactics of denial that Serbs committed any, any crimes is a recipe for disaster.Norman Cigar trully understands the source of problem in the Balkans and gives yet another good book on this topic.

Drivel not worth the paper it's printed on
Cigar's book is probably one of the worst books I've had the displeasure of reading. I barely got through it, to be honest. It is full of propaganda about some "Greater Serbia", and it rests on the notion that, well, Serbia can't be anything but a threat to its neighbours. Since its primary goal seems to be driven by Serbophobia rather than the author's wish to get the readers acquainted with Voislav Koshtunitsa, I don't see why he even chose to write a biographical book (one which is barely that, I might add.). He could've cut to the chase and gone the way so many "Balkan experts" have gone before him.

Cigar's obvious ignorance regarding the subject he himself chose to write on, and his contempt for this Serbian patriot, a capitalist and a Francophile, blinds him to the facts, and, thus, the truth; the truth that the only reformer and true democrat in Serbia is - well, Voislav Koshtunitsa.

Read Koshtunitsa himself if you want to get to know him better - and I think everybody should, especially those Pol Sci students with interest in The Balkans and Serbia. The man has written tons of awesome stuff ranging from politics and social theory, to philosophy, to government, to party pluralism and constitutional law. This man translated The Federalist Papers into Serbian back in 1982, when pro-Westernism in Serbia was a true conviction, not a trend-thing indulged in by the "post-Communist" political and social snobs of all stripes as it is today.

Koshtunitsa was a true reformer and a democrat (for which he was expelled from the University of Belgrade, in 1974, but not before he earned his PhD) at the time when the majority of his contemporaries (whom the likes of Cigar would refer to as "pro-Western", "reformist", etc.) were busy ratting out on their "morally deficient" (i.e. anti-Communist) colleagues...

Be careful. Don't fall into Cigars traps, because attributes such as "pro-Western" and "reformist" don't mean what they once could and probably did. "Pro-Western" might as well be someone who is ready to hand his country and its resources over on a silver platter, for the benefit of the Halliburtons of the world REGARDLESS of what he truly might be (a xenophobic dictator and mass murderer, for example). Well, if that is what Cigar means by "pro-Western" and "reformist", than Koshtunitsa certainly isn't either -- which is the main reason Cigar so openly despises him. Cigar couldn't care less for Koshtunitsa's alleged nationalism (which isn't "nationalism" at all but patriotism!), because he seems to highly regard much worse and bigger nationalists. He just uses it to pigeonhole the man so that he could dehumanize him easier. Double standards at their best.

A much less than mediocre a book. Given Cigars sources and references, this book was bound to stink from the very beginning (this one can easily be judged by its scornfully sensationalist front cover). Why any self-respecting publisher would pick it up is beyond me. Unfortunately, it got picked up. It's painfully bad. Pass up on it, for the love of God. ... Read more

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Indispensable for understanding the rebirth of the Serbian state, Karanovich's book traces the crteation of the first native Serbian intelligentsia during the period of the Constitutionalists (1838-58).After 1830, when Serbia was granted autonomy by the Ottoman Empire, the government invested heavily in the education of its youth, opening numerous schools, enlarging the Lyceum, educating Serbia's youth abroad, and establishing cultural institutions and societies. Under the leadership of this new generation, Serbia overcame many obstacles and laid the foundations for the future development and modernization of the Serbian state. ... Read more

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"The wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in neighboring Croatia and Kosovo grabbed the attention of the western world not only because of their ferocity and their geographic location, but also because of their timing. This violence erupted at the exact moment when the cold war confrontation was drawing to a close, when westerners were claiming their liberal values as triumphant, in a country that had only a few years earlier been seen as very well placed to join the west. In trying to account for this outburst, most western journalists, academics, and policymakers have resorted to the language of the premodern: tribalism, ethnic hatreds, cultural inadequacy, irrationality; in short, the Balkans as the antithesis of the modern west. Yet one of the most striking aspects of the wars in Yugoslavia is the extent to which the images purveyed in the western press and in much of the academic literature are so at odds with evidence from on the ground."—from Chapter 1

V. P. Gagnon Jr. believes that the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s were reactionary moves designed to thwart populations that were threatening the existing structures of political and economic power. He begins with facts at odds with the essentialist view of ethnic identity, such as high intermarriage rates and the very high percentage of draft-resisters. These statistics do not comport comfortably with the notion that these wars were the result of ancient blood hatreds or of nationalist leaders using ethnicity to mobilize people into conflict.

Yugoslavia in the late 1980s was, in Gagnon’s view, on the verge of large-scale sociopolitical and economic change. He shows that political and economic elites in Belgrade and Zagreb first created and then manipulated violent conflict along ethnic lines as a way to short-circuit the dynamics of political change. This strategy of violence was thus a means for these threatened elites to demobilize the population. Gagnon’s noteworthy and rather controversial argument provides us with a substantially new way of understanding the politics of ethnicity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A refreshing, well researched view
Gagnon does his work, and clearly presents a fact based alternative argument to the long held belief that ethnic hatreds caused the wars in the Balkans. In his fact based assessment, Gagnon clearly presents the history, and the truth behind the history.

Check the facts at the door...
I agree with BB.This book requires the reader to agree that black is white, yes means no...there are so many occasions in which the author offers fundamental untruths in order to demonstrate his points that one ends up throwing ones hands in the air in disgust.It is telling that the book one an award from the APSA -- an organization of non-experts.Experts who read this book will be left exasperated.Gagnon has a certain cachet, though, so he probably won't get the reviews he deserves.Bad ones, that is.

Nonsense
This ideas in this book are pure nonsense. Having lived over there both before, during and after the war, I can honestly say that, Prof Gagnon doesn't have a clue what he is talking about. While Croats, Serbs and Bosnians will never agree on who really is to blame for the war, what caused it, what really happened and will in general each attribute the blame on one (or both) of the other ethnical groups, they will all agree that the thesis presented in the book has nothing to do with reality. Did the politicians manipulate the masses? Sure; could the war have been avoided? Maybe, maybe not. Does it have to do anything with the ideas Prof Gagnon is presenting? Not really.

Thesis presented in the book can best be described as wishful thinking; one morning the esteemed profesor woke up with *the* greatest idea that would both explain the behavior of human masses as well as provide an unified framework for explaining all the wars in the world and similar phonomena such as 9/11 terrorist attacks (getting all the fame and glory that comes with such ideas), and then set out to find the facts that support this product of pure genius. The only problem is, the idea has nothing to do with reality.

The only other possible explanation for the book that I can think of is that the esteemed professor is trying to achive some other political agenda which would make it even more pathetic. That would certainly explain why he is trying to connect two completely separate and unrelated events such as war in former Yugoslavia and terrorist attacks on world trade center.

All that being said, with all the great books written in the world every year, it seems like a crime against humanity to waste your money on nonsense like this book.

Straight-forward if Somewhat Repetitive
V.P. Gagnon present a refreshing analysis of the breakdown of state structures in Yugoslavia and the rise of so-called "ethnic wars". It is a much needed diversion from the heavily skewed and highly inaccurate appraisals of Balkan societies as portrayed by Robert Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts or even Mischa Glenny's the Fall of Yugoslavia, in which the jouralist-writers portray the entire region as a place awash in ancient hatreds, pre-modern superstitions, and primitive tribal communities.

One strong element of Gagnon's book is his clarity. If you come away from this book not knowing that the conflicts in Croatia and Serbia were the result of elites in power purposefully "demobilizing" the greater population by constructing images of external threats and provoking violence along ethnic lines so as to shift political discourse away from issues of reformist change, you were making a concerted effort to not pay attention, as Gagnon repeats this claim on almost every fifth page. His argument is supported by social scientific polling data taken in Croatia and Serbia at the time, which indicates a continued trend towards favoring democratic development and multi-ethnic communities, even during the most violent periods of inter-ethnic warfare.

However there are some apparent weaknesses of his work. The most important is that while he alludes to elites resorting to casting the "other" as aggressive and violent against one's own "innocent" community, Gagnon does not explain why the images and historical references chosen were used towards the larger audience. In other words, elites didn't simply make up stories and myths of past aggressions; they had to, at the very least, create images of the "other" that their own communities could recognize, identify with, and accept. Likening Tudjman's HDZ to the Ustasha regime of WWII could only work if 1) Serbs still collective remember that era as a time of extreme ethnic oppression against them, 2) Some members of the HDZ actually likened themselves to the Ustashas and 3) Tudjman did not openly play into extreme elements of Croat nationalism. Likewise, the Serbs could not have been cast as aggressors if extremist elements under Milosevic's control did not seek to carve out territorial elements within Croatia. In short, Gagnon's argument is valid, but dismisses historical memory too quickly - something he argues needs to be taken into account from anthopology and culturalist studies of the region.

Finally, he attempts to liken his elite demobilization model in the last few pages to U.S. Cold War policy and the policies of the Bush Administration following September 11. While there are some parallels that could be found in sidelining any opposition to the Bush Administration's positions, the fundamental difference is that attempts at elite demobilization were made AFTER the 9/11 attacks, and were not a pre-planned nor pre-orchestrated plan before any hostilities as was argued in Serbia and Croatia. In addition, the opposition, did not, and has not, presented an opposition platform that voters might gravitate towards, something the Croat and Serbian opposition parties did have. Moreover, he ignores the rather lopsided positions taken by the Clinton Administration's policy of "Good Croats"and "Bad Serb" lumping that was so prominent in the foreign policies of both Warren Christopher and Madeline Albright, blaming Serbia for the same strategies of political manipulation that an exonerated Croatia similarly practised.

However, these are only small problems Gagnon has, but this does not take away from the overall clarity and specifics of his work in the former Yugoslavia, and he should be commended for providing an intelligent and honest assessment of a series of events that have been so horribly misunderstood in Western medias.

A start
Gagnon's book is an essential source of information on and serious analysis of the role of elites in manufacturing nationalist "hysteria" in Serbia and Croatia.The only major flaw is the book's untested assumption that Yugoslavia was poised for a smooth transition to liberal democracy, which was derailed by a nationalist "de-mobilization".This claim seems facile in lieu of a serious analysis of what exactly it was that nationalists were trying to suppress.Would Yugoslavia be merely another Poland today if the nationalists had failed, or something radically different?Writers like Gagnon tend to overlook that Yugoslavia was never a communist bureaucracy in the tradition of the Soviet puppet states, but an experiment moderating elements of socialism with a relatively open market.It is too easy to chalk it up as just another repressive communist authoritarian structure which bred a popular movement for liberalization.Nonetheless, Gagnon is to be commended for moving far beyond the typical "ancient ethnic hatred" explanation for conflict in the Balkans. ... Read more

Product Description
Symbols are central to politics.In this groundbreaking work, Ivan Colevic investigates the symbols of politics and the politics of symbols in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Hercegovnia.The first part of the work, "The Serbian Political Ethno-Myth," analyzes Serbian political mythology about the nation and nationalism in particular, as well as the role of narratives in political discourse, and notions of time, nature, borders, heroism, and national identity.

The second part, "From the History of Serbian Political Mythology," is concerned with the historical development of Serbian political myths.The third part, "Characters and Figures of Power," comprises case studies which analyze political symbolism, myth, rhetoric, and propaganda.These studies are based on examples gleaned from the Serbian press, academic texts and literature, political speeches, and from everyday life.

Finally, Colevic investigates the relationship between the masses, mass culture, and politics, including the recruitment of soccer fans into the war in the former Yugoslavia, and how symbolic communication was used by Serbia's anti-Milosevic opposition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a wasted opportunity by Colovic
Because I'd read the British edition which was translated correctly as "The Politics of Symbol in Serbia", I didn't get what I bargained for. What I hoped would be an analysis of crowd psychology and nationalism, turned out to be a political polemic against the Milosevic regime and the kind of nationalism that allegedly brought that regime to power. Thus, the translation of the US edition: "Politics of Identity in Serbia: Essays in Political Anthropology" is really an incorrect translation of the original Serbian title. However this is actually a good thing, since the title of Colovic's book in Serbian is "Politika Simbola u Srbiji" - that isn't a good title at all to describe the subject matter of this book.

Colovic doesn't believe in genetics, nor in ethnic identity, ethnic nationalism or religion. He advises the Serbs to abandon all of these and after doing so, they will soon be among the prosperous nations of Europe. The book is devided up into 30 or so 5 page essays on various topics and happenings in Serbia in the 90s. Most of Colovic's examples and subject matter come from the extreme Serbian right. This means more to the right of the mainstream nationalism in Serbia represented by the Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj and Milosevic and his Socialists. The problem is that Colovic portrays this extreme right as being mainstream. It is like analyisng contemporary right-wing America by mostly using white supremacists as examples.

Interesting parts for which I gave it two stars are a scathing critique of the Orthodox Church hierarchy and insightful analysis of crowd psychology at soccer games. Though Colovic is rarely quoted by anybody, when he is, he is mostly quoted about the latter. Everything else was political polemic and unbalanced criticisms of the general society by using examples from its extreme fringe elements. Do not watse your time on this book. If you want a book about crowd psychology, without a political agenda, read "Crowds and Power" by Elias Canetti. ... Read more

Product Description
During their thirteen years in power, Slobodan Milosevic and his cohorts plunged Yugoslavia into wars of ethnic cleansing, leading to the murder of thousands of civilians. The Milosevic regime also subverted the nation's culture, twisted the political mainstream into a virulent nationalist mold, sapped the economy through war and the criminalization of a free market, returned to gender relations of a bygone era, and left the state so dysfunctional that its peripheries --Kosovo, Vojvodina, and Montenegro -- have been struggling to maximize their distance from Belgrade, through far-reaching autonomy or through outright independence.

In this valuable collection of essays, Vjeran Pavlakovic, Reneo Lukic, and Obrad Kesic examine elements of continuity and discontinuity from the Milosevic era to the twenty-first century, the struggle at the center of power, and relations between Serbia and Montenegro. Essays by Eric Gordy, Maja Miljovic and Marko Hoare, and Kari Osland look at the legacy of Serbia's recent wars --issues of guilt and responsibility, the economy, and the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague, respectively. Sabrina Ramet and Biljana Bijelic address the themes of culture and values. Frances Trix, Emil Kerenji, and Dennis Reinhartz explore the peripheries in the politics of Kosovo/a, Vojvodina, and Serbia's Roma.

Serbia Since 1989 reveals a Serbia that is still traumatized from Milosevic's rule and groping toward redefining its place in the world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Politically Correct Look at Serbia Lacking Objectivity and Detachment
~Serbia Since 1989: Politics And Society Under Milosevic And After~ is an anthology of essays on Serbia's history, geopolitics and transformation since the breakup of the former Yugoslavian federation of nation-states. Since the book's publication, Montenegro and Kosovo have obtained separation buttressed by recognition in the international community and the United States.

As for the book's objectivity, consider the source, as Vjeran Pavlakovic who wrote the two opening essays and edited the book is a Croat, as is Reneo Lukic. I greet a book on Serbian-Balkans geopolitics with skepticism when its written in large part by Croats and Albanians on Serbia. If it was Serbs reporting on Croatia and Albania, then the same skepticism is called for. This book is no different. Many of contributors are Croats and one Albanian. Reading it can help balance one's perspective however if other resources are sought after.

The Western perception of current affairs in the Balkans is murky and gray, and fed through the lens of media and intelligence agency propaganda. Most Americans couldn't identify the former Yugoslavia on a map or sort out its constituent republics. They know even less of the complex history of the Balkans going back to medieval times. Most Americans have not heard of Tito and may only know of Sarajevo as the site of 1984 Winter Olympics. Their view of Serbs is usually through lampoonish, fictitious, lop-sided Hollywood films like 'Behind Enemy Lines' (2001) where American cowboy aviators document and stop Serb war crimes.

The polemical essays on Slobodan Milosevic are more accurate and detached than others. Milosevic, a former communist party boss served as the President of Serbia from 1989 until 1997 and as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000. He sanctioned state discrimination of ethnic minorities in Vojvodina, Serbia, and Kosovo. He reversed autonomy afforded to the various regions in favor of centralization. He looted the state of its infrastructure and created a spoils system to reward party loyalists. He was a corrupt kleptocrat and demagogue that brought out the worse in Serbia's nationalist aspirations. In fairness, he was not well-received by a number of Serbs. Efforts to compare him to Hitler were a bit of hyperbole however. Many ethnic Serbs have rejected the ideological premises of Tito's rule, and the subsequent fusion of virulent nationalism and socialism advocated by Milosevic. Many Serbs are sympathetic to the restoration of constitutional parliamentary monarchy. Aleksandar Karadordevic is the claimant to the throne of the Serbian monarchy and favors liberalization of the economic policies as opposed to controls and dirigisme.

The claims that Milosevic manipulated Serbian national symbols and mythology was a bit duplicitous. In contrast, Croatian forces co-opted the emblem of the Ustasa for its armies, hearkening back to memory of the Nazi SS killing squads of Ante Pavelic that murdered thousands of Serbs during World War II. This stoked the passions of war. Yet Serbs are faulted by one of the books' contributors for protesting this symbolism. It is offensive in much the same way the swastika is to the Jews. To me, such nitpicking by the contributors is indicative of a double standard.

Sabrina Ramet's essay 'The Politics of the Serbian Orthodox Church' says more about her biased secular humanist politics of political correctness than it does the Serbian Orthodox Church. In one breath she cites positives such as when Patriarch Pavele asked Slobodan Milosevic to resign from office in 1992 and 1999, and the 1992 statement that "the war benefits only one common enemy--the devil!" Then comes a blistering tirade against the church in spite of this. She faults the church for urging Serbs not to leave their homes in 1990s in present-day Bosnia. She faults Orthodoxy for its intolerance of feminism citing the words of the Apostle Paul about Christian marriage principles in disapprobation. Likewise, she condemns "the Orthodox church's stubborn condemnation of homosexuality." In a lot of sane places in the world, homosexuality is regarded as immoral. Up until 1970, it was classified as mental disorder by the American Psychological Association. The radical Left seems to celebrate degeneracy and mock traditional culture. If anything the Serbian Orthodox Church, for all of its flaws, was a socially conservative force that helped the Serbian people through the dark years of state-sanctioned atheism under the secular regime of Tito. The church was right to condemn the destruction and burning of centuries-old Orthodox cathedrals and shrines in Kosovo by bellicose Albanian Muslims. UN and KFOR just sat idle and let it happen. This essay is as ridiculous as it is anti-Christian. I think it's wrong to expect a society deeply rooted in traditional Orthodox Christianity to become as secularized as Western Europeans.

Ramet's essay on nationalism at the end of the book is somewhat better. Virulent nationalism is a corrupt ideology. Though, one has to reflect upon the folly of multiculturalism too. Tito posited a cultural relativism that never reflected the reality of the Balkans experience, and encouraged resettlement and intermingling of peoples throughout Bosnia. During Tito's rule, many in Bosnia compelled to become detached from their nationality, and a new census classification of Yugoslav emerged for urban city dwellers, and they were reeducated to this effect. In the end, a multicultural Bosnia was only a powder-keg set to go off. With no common bond except socialism and economic ties, when Yugoslavia fell apart, age-old ethnic tensions emerged with a vengeance. Tribal allegiances are innate enough, and as old as humanity. One is delusional to have a cultural Marxist vision of abolishing those distinctions, which is why tolerance needs to temper the passions of tribalism however.

It's hypocritical to hear from them about "the extent of Serbs' responsibility for the war and for the atrocities committed in the course of the war," given the double standards of neglecting Croat and Bosniac atrocities. All sides had their hands bloody in that lamentable civil war. An Orthodox Jewish humanitarian observer group noted that something had to be said about the fact that the first refugees of that war were 40,000 Serbs. Serbia had a stronger military and came back with a vengeance admittedly.

As for the American and Western media, they wouldn't know anything about objective journalism. One might as well speak of an American media-military-industrial complex. NBC, is owned by General Electric, and GE makes the weapon systems used to carry out the NATO bombing of Serbia. So, naturally the chorus was all against Serbia. No revelation of war atrocities against Serbs by Croats and Bosniacs would be advanced in the mainstream media. The accounts were lop-sided. The alternative media began picking up on it. This book is rooted in erstwhile media spin on the Balkans for past two decades. I have seen documentation of brutalities committed by Bosniac Muslims against their neighbors such as Orthodox clergy with their heads decapitated. With the assistance of Western intelligence agencies, international mujahideen fighters from across the Islamic world were supported. Ironically, importing fighters allowed for a proving ground for radical Islamist elements recruited by Al-Qaeda. It's documented in a book _Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa'ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad_. This is a classic example of blowback. Blowback is a term used to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. It typically appears random and without cause, because the public is unaware of the secret ops that provoked it. As Rep. Ron Paul states in criticism of U.S. foreign policy, it's "schizophrenic." The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was a group classified by the CIA as narco-terrorists engaged in opium smuggling and forced prostitution, but somehow became a worthwhile foreign aid recipient later. I find it highly offensive that Western governments went along with such absurdities.

The greatest tragedy of the Balkans war was that it was avoidable. In many ways, it was exacerbated by Western powers, particularly the Federal Republic of Germany when it gave diplomatic recognition to an independent Bosnia in 1993. Croatia had seceded peacefully, and on the border between Serbia and Croatia there was detente. Germany had economic interests in Croatia and an independent Bosnia. 'Bosnian' is not an ethnic nationality, and it only lead to a mad scramble for power for one constituency, Croat, Muslim, or Serb, to take the helm of this artificial Potemkin State Bosnia and Herzegovina. Western diplomatic maneuvers were a carte blanche for the Croats to make their move, and the Serbs and Bosniack Muslims followed. If the West intervened at all at the time it would be more appropriate to urge a cessation of hostilities, and press for diplomatic resolution to allow for peaceful negotiation concerning status of certain lands to a Greater Croatia and Greater Serbia, while establishing protectorates in the multi-ethnic population centers, borderlands, and the Bosniac-majority region. Even the post Dayton Accord in 1995, which lumped many Croats with Bosniacs and has since resulted in Roman Catholic Croats fleeing from from the region. It's an artificial entity the exists on paper only, as the state is divided in faultlines between the three nationalities.

NATO violated its charter in instigating a bombing campaign against Serbia which needlessly killed Serb civilians and hit the Chinese embassy sparking an international incident in 1999. The Spanish and German Air Forces led the charge, followed by the Americans. Clinton declared that "we are standing against ethnic cleansing with our wonderful, myriad, rainbow, multiethnic military ... and the even more powerful pull of our shared American values." Somehow, "terror" and "state violence" is acceptable when Western governments perpetrate it. The Clinton U.S. State Department fabricated claims that 100,000 Kosovar Albanians were missing. The NY Times did a good job of hyperbole in stretching the claim to 500,000 in April. There were atrocities committed by Serbian regime granted, but they became exaggerated. The damage to economic infrastructure by NATO hurt the Serbian people more than its military. Ironically, NATO inflicted 3,000 to 5,000 Serbian casualties in the bombing, mostly civilians. For all the hue and cry about human rights in the West, it just manifests the hypocrisy of Western governments. Evil begets evil. Two wrongs don't make a right. Moreover, in John Norris' book _Collision Course: NATO, Russian and Kosovo_ he tacitly said that the real rational for the war was Serbia's failure to adopt a social and economic programme amenable to the Western power brokers, not Serb policy toward Albanian Kosovars. A ranking Clinton-Albright State Department official Strobe Talbott headed the joint committee on intelligence at the time, and later proclaimed Norris' book to be the means of understanding the conflict. Talbott wrote the introduction to the book. It besmirches the Clinton administration's erstwhile moral justification for the bombing when one reads this book.

For past decade, UN peacekeeping and KFOR in Kosovo have been a joke. They are patrons of criminal rings engaged in drug trafficking and white slavery. Ethnic cleansing is somehow acceptable to the international community as long as its perpetrated against the Serbs. Over seventy-six Serbian shrines have been desecrated in different zones of responsibility of KFOR units deployed in Kosovo and Metohia. We cannot talk objectively about the war, or current affairs or find much objective scholarship because ideology and power politics games besmirch the historical inquiry. In war, truth is said to be the first casualty. And after war, it's basically the same. The Serbian people have been as much a victim of the cruel war, the 1995 and 1999 NATO bombing and the regime of Milosevic as Croats, Albanians, and Bosniacs have.

For a more objective look into American intervention in the Balkans consider reading _Fool's Errands: America's Recent Encounters with Nation Building_ by Gary T. Dempsey and Roger W. Fontaine and my Amazon.com review. ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1917.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more