Transcript
In this book I deal with the roots and consequences of the Serbian nationalism that has dominated the Serbian political scene for two centuries. I focus on the last quarter of the twentieth century and first years of this century. Those are the years when the most extreme form of that phenomenon caused the break-up of Yugoslavia and hampered the emergence of a functional, democratic, modern state. Throughout Serbia’s history—from medieval times to the present day—the issue of what territory should be encompassed with the borders of the Serbian state has always prevailed over other concerns, including national (popular) sovereignty and participative democracy. This book not only explores the longstanding policies, ideological patterns, and actors that led to the collapse of the Yugoslav federation amid the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II; it also seeks to explain why Serbia is still unable to come to grips with both its recent past and its current reality. As the following chapters argue, Serbia, still seesawing between archaism and modernity, not ready to give up delusions about itself and the contemporary world, is prone to further instability, political regression, and even fragmentation. Yugoslavia’s disintegration has been a subject of hundreds of scholarly publications, but its complexity as a paradigm of the post-communist development has still not been thoroughly researched. Post-communist societies have been, as a rule, saddled with weak or ruined economies, dysfunctional institutions, corruption, crime, and demoralized societies. The belief that those countries could morph overnight into democracies proved fallacious. Nationalism has been present in most the post-communist world as a substitute for the failed ideology. Most post-communist societies have been multiethnic and have had no mechanisms to deal with tensions and conflicts generated by the newly arisen nationalism. However, Serbian radical nationalism, which led to the break-up of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, was unique in the sense that the Serbian political leadership had neither the political will nor the skill to respect basic international standards in resolving the Yugoslav crisis.
