RE-IMAGINING YUGOSLAVIA Learning and Living with Diverse Cultural Identities by Radoslav ...

224 Pages·2010·0.72 MB·English

RE-IMAGINING YUGOSLAVIA
Learning and Living with Diverse Cultural Identities

by

Radoslav Draskovic

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
For the degree of Master of Arts
Graduate Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto

©Copyright by Radoslav Draskovic 2010.
RE-IMAGINING YUGOSLAVIA
Learning and Living with Diverse Cultural Identities
Radoslav Draskovic
Master of Arts, 2010
Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto

Abstract of Thesis:

This thesis uses the example of Yugoslavia-the land of the South Slavs (also known as
the Balkans) - to study how the twists and turns of historical evolution have been
reflected in communal understanding of that history.
Key words: imagined communities, nation-state, historical memory, the study of history.

ii
Acknowledgments:

The great Mahatma Gandhi once said: “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but
it is very important that you do it”. I found that this sentence appropriately describes
every human endeavor including the road I have chosen for the last three years of my life.
This thesis marks the conclusion of a deeply personal journey as well as a great learning
experience that I had at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at University of
Toronto
At the end of this trip, before anyone else, I would like to thank my professors
Harold Troper and David Levine who have taught me a great deal during the course of
my studies, with their views, knowledge and advice. I am especially grateful to my
mentor, Professor David Levine, for his intellectual guidance, patience and understanding
of all the challenges that I met during the course of my study and while writing this
thesis.
I owe special gratitude to my friends, Edin Tabak and Nenad Vuckovic, both
fellow graduate students in Australia and Austria respectively, who read my papers and
my thesis and contributed with their valuable suggestions. I am deeply grateful to
Douglas Sokolyk for his help during the course of my studies, his support and his
invaluable friendship. I would also like to use this opportunity to thank Chris Sokolyk
who edited the last few chapters of my thesis.
My studies would be much more difficult without the support of two special
friends, Srebrenka Bogovic and Enrico Forte, who have read and edited each of my
papers and a large portion of this thesis. I am most indebted to both of them for their
sharp editorial eye, sense of humor, endless e-mails, and their unwavering support from
the very beginning to the end of my studies.
Finally I am most deeply grateful to the three most important women in my life:
To my wife Gordana for her patience - as she lost her husband to the historical sciences
for the last three years - as well as for constantly challenging my picture of the world for
the last 25 years. I am most thankful to my daughter Sonja for finding the time in her
busy teenage life to deal with her dad, his English, and his obscure themes from the
iii
murky world of her origins. Without her help and support this journey would be much
harder if not totally impossible. And finally to the memory of my mother Nevenka, for
teaching me with her life many invaluable lessons especially the one that real
communities are always more important than imagined ones.

iv
Table of Contents:

Abstract ........................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ iii
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. v

Chapters:

1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1
Living with the ‘Other’ ................................................................................................. 2
Nation: a Fate or a Construct? ..................................................................................... 5

2. Balkanisaton of the Balkans, (sixth century-1914) .................................................... 13
The Lines of Division ................................................................................................ 15
The ‘Ethnic Cyclones’ and the Military Frontier ....................................................... 19
The Myths and the Golden Ages ................................................................................ 23
Imagined Communities .............................................................................................. 25
The Language of Volk ............................................................................................... 28
The Serbs,the Croats and the Yugoslavs .................................................................... 31
The Issue of Bosnia ................................................................................................... 34

3. The First Yugoslavia (1918-1941) ............................................................................. 42
The Great War and Unification ................................................................................. 42
The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes ............................................................ 45
Socio-economic Divisions ......................................................................................... 47
The Centralists, the Unitarists and the Hard Opposition ............................................ 49
Cultural Bonds ........................................................................................................... 55
Royal Dictatorship and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia ................................................. 58
The War and the Formation of the Second Yugoslavia ............................................. 62
v
4. Tito’s Yugoslavia (1945-1980) .................................................................................. 70
The Dictatorship of the Proletariat ............................................................................. 71
The Quarrel with Stalin ............................................................................................. 78
The New Course ........................................................................................................ 80
The Reformists versus the Conservatives .................................................................. 82
Yugoslavia’s Golden Age .......................................................................................... 85
The Croatian Spring and the Serbian Liberals ........................................................... 89
The Bosnian Question ................................................................................................ 96
The Last Constitution .............................................................................................. 100

5. The Death of Yugoslavia (1981-1991 ...................................................................... 103
Unravelling at the Seams ......................................................................................... 103
The Albanian Question ............................................................................................ 107
The Culture of Apocalypse ...................................................................................... 111
The Cultural Wars .................................................................................................... 115
The Rise of Slobodan Milosevic .............................................................................. 120
The Media Wars ...................................................................................................... 127
A Perfect Enemy ...................................................................................................... 130
Against the Wind ..................................................................................................... 136
Slow Slide Towards Catastrophe ............................................................................. 138
War in Croatia ......................................................................................................... 140
Bosnian Tragedy ...................................................................................................... 145
One Country, Three Nationalisms ........................................................................... 148
At the Gates of Hell ................................................................................................. 155

6. Instead of Epilogue (1995-2010) ............................................................................. 163
War for a Memory ................................................................................................... 163
Bosnia Divided ........................................................................................................ 165
Cultural Cleansing ................................................................................................... 173
With God on Our Side ............................................................................................. 177
vi
Education of the Future Warrior .............................................................................. 181
The Rediscovery of the Ethnic Past ......................................................................... 184
Language of Division .............................................................................................. 188

7. Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 194
Once Upon the Time There Was a Country ............................................................. 194

8. Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 211

vii
1
Chapter One
Introduction

The former-Yugoslavia was made up of six republics, each representing a state
with its dominant ethnic group and officially recognized nation. Bosnia was an exception;
its complicated history and distinct ethnic make-up defined it as the state of all three
constitutive nations: Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims, today calling themselves
Bosniaks. The history of Yugoslavia can be read also as a power struggle between the
1
two largest ethnic groups, Serbs and Croats. The politics of both Yugoslavias were
always revolving around the uneasy relationship between Croats and Serbs. Jill Irvine
argues that solving the so-called Croatian question, which over time would turn into the
so-called Serbian question, would be crucial for the survival of Yugoslavia. The
relationship of these two nations, conditioned by their intertwined population (together
they made up almost sixty five percent of the total population and were spread over two
thirds of Yugoslavia’s territory), and their different and often mutually exclusive national
goals would define politics for most of their time together and eventually undermine the
2
existence of the entire country.
This power struggle would not be nowhere more obvious than on the territory of
the Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter, Bosnia). By its character and structure, and a long
culture of tolerance and diversity, Bosnia is quintessentially a multicultural society whose
population has experienced a common history and belonged to common culture.
Historically, Bosnia was always considered buffer zone between Croatia and Serbia, and
the appearance of the nation and nationalism on the historical horizon would make it, as
3
the Slovenian writer Josip Vidmar put it “the most complicated county in Europe.”
During the last hundred and fifty years its people and territories were contested and
claimed by Serbian and Croatian nationalists alike. The Second World War, as well as the
last Yugoslav war (1991-1995), took place mainly on Bosnian territory, with devastating
consequences for its civilian population, its multicultural make-up, and, ultimately, state

1
The state that existed between the two World Wars is commonly referred as the First Yugoslavia. The one
formed after the Second World War is referred as the Second Yugoslavia.
2
Jill Irvine, The Croat Question, Westview Press, Denver, Colorado, 1993.
3
Vidmar as quoted in Lovrenovic, Bosnia: A Cultural History, New York University Press, New York,
2001, p.108.
2
survival. Bosnian post war society has undergone tectonic political, social and cultural
transformations. The area has become a place where the process of ethnic
homogenization and the process of obtaining new cultural identities, have taken the most
extreme turn.
The vastness of this topic requires certain limitations to be imposed upon this
research paper, which will predominantly focus on analyzing the above-mentioned
relations that determined the fate of Yugoslavia’s multi-ethnic society. The study will
purposely neglect, or touch only marginally upon other ethnic groups and issues, except
when they illustrate - or directly relate to - the main topic.

Living With the ‘Other’

Throughout history living with the ‘other’ has been one of the oldest and greatest
challenges facing humans. Modern Western culture rests on the notion that man is a
rational being, a concept not easily supported after centuries of warfare and constant
conflict. Our inability to accept diverse ‘others’ might be deeply imbedded in the
irrationality of our character as a species. Anthropologist Edward T. Hall argues that
irrationality is something that not only defies logic and our educated way of thinking, but
also pervades our lives more deeply than we want to believe. Hall is only one among
many who contend that humans are products of their culture. Our cultural identity is
deeply hidden, buried under many layers of conventions. It is securely identified by our
mind as something to be taken for granted. But what we consider to be logical is very
often ‘cultural logic’, and our reactions and behaviour have to be seen and understood
against a larger cultural background. Different cultures were shaped by different
historical, political, economic and social circumstances, creating differences that often
obscure our common human nature. Our cultural identity is formed in an unconscious
way; it is internalized within our own social group during a long process of acculturation.
4
In that respect, “what has been thought of as mind is actually internalized culture.”

4
T. Edward T. Hall, Beyond Culture, Random House, New York, 1976,p.168.
3
Ethnicity is only one of our multiple identities within which we find
psychological security and assurance that protect us from the outside world. This hidden
cultural inheritance is not innate but learned and, therefore, malleable. Yet, ethnicity is
almost indefinable because it operates mostly on an unconscious level. Identification with
our given culture happens very early in the process of socialization and personal
development; it is one of the strongest bonds that hold communities and cultures together.
5
Hall writes: “It is analogous to the forces that bind the nucleus of the atom together.”
The social and psychological support and comfort that is offered by a community cannot
be underestimated. The ‘imagined community’ of people that make ethnic kinship might
be unknown to each other, but they share the same sense of community, the same sub-
textual cultural coding that determines the way they behave, from the way they
communicate to the way they raise their families, structure their societies or behave
politically. These “deep cultural undercurrents” that control our behaviour are the reason
why there is insistence that everyone conforms to the mores of the group, and why we are
uncomfortable and anxious if we cross those invisible - but powerful - boundaries set by
the group.
This cultural irrationality is deeply entrenched in our lives. We are simply unable
to see ‘others’- or ourselves - within the multiple layers of one’s own culture. We prefer
to think in simplifications and cultural stereotypes, unable to transcend the limits imposed
on us by our own culture. Hall argues: “Ethnocentrism is inevitably characterized by
irrational elements and, as long as it is widely shared, it is impossible to combat.
Individuals sometimes do lose their prejudices, but whole groups are slow to change and
in many instances give up one prejudice only to take on another. Individual irrationality
is thought of as a product of the particular psychodynamics of person, whereas cultural
6
irrationality is widely shared and therefore often thought to be normal.”
Our cultural identities are never static; they change, bend and shift as our
contingent and complex reality dictates. The phenomenon of nation and nationalism is a
recent newcomer in human history, a product of tectonic social changes that took place at
the end of the nineteenth century. Notoriously, it resists analysis or definition.

5
Hall, Beyond the Culture, p.208.
6
Hall, Beyond the Culture, p.193.