The Serbs: History, Myth & The Destruction Of Yugoslavia, by Jim Judah

This particular book is a somewhat sprawling but compelling account of the history of the Serbian people and the historical and cultural memory that, cultivated by their religious and political leaders for centuries, encouraged them upon courses of action that were somewhat harmful to their well-being and that remain troublesome for the fate of the Balkans as a whole. The author manages to carefully discuss what are immensely contentious matters, pointing out the ways in which “outer” Serbs provide both a source of potential support for core Serbian political leaders, a way to project power into areas outside the proper borders of Serbia itself, but are also often abandoned when the cost in blood and treasure becomes too great to pay. This is by no means merely a recent phenomenon, as the author looks over the broad span of history to show the intense divisions within the polities of the South Slavs and the way that the Balkan way of war as has been practiced for hundreds of years became more problematic as a result of the development of modern media presentations of that unpleasant way of war when it has been unhappily practiced by Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Kosovars, and others, often against each other in conflicts of baffling complexity.

This book is a bit more than 300 pages in length and it is divided into sixteen chapters that span a broad arc of history relating to the unhappy history of the Serbs, whose frequent conflicts and desire for both freedom from domination and domination over other, smaller peoples, has often led to migrations and violence. After a list of illustrations, preface, acknowledgements, an author’s note, and a list of abbreviations, this book begins with a discussion of the migrations that led to the arrival of the Serbs and Croats in the Balkans, the first kingdoms they established there, the arrival of the Turks, and the military frontier that began in the 1400s between the Ottomans and Austrians in the Balkans (1). This is followed by a discussion of the development of the Serbian empire under its early rulers and the collapse that followed the peak of Serbia’s medieval kingdom (2). This is followed by a discussion of the Battle of Kosovo and its aftermath, including the preservation of the cult of death that followed after the battle and its repercussions (3). This is followed by a discussion of the rise of Serbian nationalism in the 1800s and how history was used to serve the aims of a nationalist ideology for the Serbs (4). This leads to a discussion of the Balkan Wars and the way in which Serbia and other nations sought to expand their rule and remove the Turks from Europe altogether (5). After this, the author discusses the first Yugoslav union that came about as a result of the painful and traumatic experience of World War I, which restored to Serbia an empire under its domination (6) in the aftermath of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The decline and fall of this first Yugoslavia in the violence of World War II, and the complex violence that followed between 1941 and 1945 between Germans, Italians, Croats, Serbian nationalists, Communists, and others is the story that follows (7), before another chapter talks in detail about the experience of Yugoslavia under Tito’s communist rule and his weaker successors (8). The collapse of Yugoslavia into war, where Serbia sought to transform a collapsing Yugoslavia into a Greater Serbia it could dominate better led to a tragedy (9). Several chapters then detail the progress of that war, including the initial conflicts in Slovenia and Croatia (10), the complicated corruption and initial Serbian efforts in Bosnia (11), the genocidal behavior to ethnically cleanse Bosnia (12), the rise of the Serbian gangster culture (13), the massive inflation that threatened the well-being of ordinary Serbs (14), the skull towers that showed the collapse of humanity (15), and the ominous future of Kosovo that the author managed to successfully predict (16) then round out the book, which concludes with four appendices that discuss the national structure of Yugoslavia and the censuses of 1961, 1981, and 1991, along with notes, a select bibliography, and an index.

Overall, this book is a powerful one that leaves the reader with a strong sense of unease. Though the author clearly has a lot of negative things to say about the opportunism and corruption of Serbian elites and the incompetence of many others whose behavior allowed for the horrors of the wars that accompanied the collapse of Yugoslavia to take place, the author has a strong degree of compassion for ordinary people on all sides and on their desires for the good life that has been denied to them due to the intense violence that has made a lasting and just peace impossible. The author points out that even those who sought to build culture and national identity in places like Serbia and Montenegro were part of the problem by their celebration of violence against their enemies, whether it meant people who had converted to Islam under the influence of the Turks, the Turks themselves, or other peoples who had conflicting claims to the territory and people that one state wanted to rule. Since except for Slovenia the boundaries of Yugoslavia’s republics did not in any way coincide with ethnic and religious borders, the rise of violence and the denial of humanity and life to others threatened the lives and well-being of millions of people who were often just simply in the way of the ambitions of their leaders, who exploited their plight for political support but ultimately abandoned them to the loss of their communities when support became too costly to the people back home. Given the potent mix of history and vengeful feelings that linger on the region, we cannot assume that a lasting peace will be easy to secure and maintain, not least given that Serbs still mourn the outcome of a battle that took place in 1389. The past is not dead, it is not even the past, and the scars of history run deep.