Nationalism And The Politicization Of History In The Former Yugoslavia

​“This book is very timely: the instrumentalization of history for political goals has become a pressing issue and worrisome feature of many polities, to the point of challenging even the most consolidated democracies. Focusing on Yugoslavia’s fragile successor states, the authors explore plurifold analytical levels, including local, regional, transnational, European and global perspectives. The authors comprehensively demonstrate how politicizing history, in the postwar and postcommunist societies of what was once Yugoslavia, has prevented both reconciliation and democratization.” —Sabine Rutar, Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Germany “Ognjenovic and Jozelic focus here on the former Yugoslavia before and after its fragmentation to explore and evaluate the various uses of histories by nationalists, both those who promoted ‘federal nationalism’ and those who peddle specific local nationalisms in successor states. The book deals specifically with the Western Balkans, but these developments have their parallels in many other parts of the world, and the book will be useful well beyond the region on which the study is based.” —Paul Mojzes, Professor Emeritus, Rosemont College, USA “The former Yugoslavia has become a battlefield for the ‘Memory Wars’, in spite of the wealth of judicially established facts and available evidences gathered about the atrocities in the region, and various initiatives aimed at dealing with the past and efforts at transitional justice. Focusing on three periods of Yugoslav history – the Second World War, socialist Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav wars of 1991–2001 – the contributors show that despite these efforts to deal with the past, sustainable peace and reconciliation across ethnic and religious groups remain a distant aim.” —Marijana Toma, Center for Cultural Decontamination, Serbia This book analyzes how nationalists in the former Yugoslavia have politicized history to further their political agendas, retaining and prolonging conflict among different cultural and religious groups, and impeding the process of lasting reconciliation. It explores how narratives have been (mis)used, drawing on examples from all of the former Yugoslav republics. With contributors from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, it provides a vital assessment of how nationalists have attempted to (re)shape public collective memory and relativize facts.

This book explores how school history textbooks are used to perpetuate nationalistic policies within divided regions. Exploring the ‘divide and rule’ politics across ex-Yugoslav successor states, the editors and contributors draw upon a wide range of case studies from across the region. Textbooks and other educational media provide the foundations upon which the new generation build understanding about their own context and the events that are creating their present. By promoting nationalistic politics in such media, textbooks themselves can be used as tools to further promote and preserve ongoing hostility between ethnic groups following periods of conflict. This edited collection will appeal to scholars of educational media, history education and post-conflict societies.

"There is no greater sorrow on earth than the loss of one's native land." --Euripides The Yugoslav tragedy is a story about crimes committed with extraordinary boldness and deception, propagated by the politicians and by the media from both inside, and outside, the former Yugoslavia. This mixture, at the heart of the conflict, provoked the greatest humanitarian catastrophe in Europe since World War II. Written in memory to a lost homeland, to the people who died, and to the people who survived--especially the refugees, displaced internally or dispersed throughout the world--this book is a powerful commentary on war itself that provides insight into the roles that history, ethnic nationalism, and religious differences can play in modern conflict. "A finely crafted historical dialectics that refuses to give into dualist explanations about 'the crimes' and eventually the death of the former Republic of Yugoslavia, as resulting from either 'bad' primordial ancient hatreds and ethnic nationalism, or from the lack of some civic nationalism in the form of 'good' but artificially constructed communities. The author follows Hannah Arendt in charting the history of a long century of 'statelessness, rightlessness and homelessness' in the region brought on by externally imposed balkanization. Every step of the way we are warned against those who preach the purity of ethnos over demos, or conversely, those who seek the bureaucratic disconnection of ethnos from demos as an ideal solution." --Greg M. Nielsen, Concordia University, author of The Norms of Answerability: Social Theory Between Bakhtin and Habermas "The strength of Ljubisic's work is the seamless way it moves from one level to another, first analyzing events in the former Yugoslavia at the level of state politics, then shifting to a discussion of the international context, and finally, and most importantly, describing the impacts of these events at the individual level. In the process, she provides a comprehensive analysis of these confusing events and a much needed contribution to the literature. This is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the recent history of the Balkan region." --Neil Gerlach, Carelton University, author of The Genetic Imaginary: DNA in the Canadian Criminal Justice System Table of Contents INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE: Theories of the Nation and Nationalism Nationalism and Multiculturalism The Origins of the Nation Primordial Versus Imagined Community Summary CHAPTER TWO: The National Question in Yugoslavia The Yugoslav Idea Viability of Yugoslavia and the Avoidable War Summary CHAPTER THREE: 'Divide and Rule' Politics of External Balkanization The Old World Orders in the Balkans Yugoslavia and the New World Order Summary CHAPTER FOUR: Ethnic Cleansing in Multinational Yugoslavia 'Purification' of Heterogeneous Territories Multiethnic Resistance to the War Summary CHAPTER FIVE: Stateless Peoples Totalitarian Solutions Hundred Years of Statelessness Rebuilding Home in Multicultural Montreal Obstacles to Integration Summary CONCLUSION Bibliography Index DAVORKA LJUBISIC holds a BA from the University of Ljubljana, in Slovenia and an MA from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. She was born in Zagreb, Croatia--at the time one of six constitutive republics of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Unable to live according to the agenda of 'newprimitivism' and a politics of sorrow, in 1995 she immigrated to Canada. 224 pages, 6x9, index, bibliography, maps

This essential resource provides a cogent, comprehensive historical analysis of Yugoslavia's demise, one that clearly identifies events and trends that urgently demand the world's attention.

Even before it collapsed into civil war, ethnic cleansing, and dissolution, Yugoslavia was an archetypical example of a troubled multinational mosaic, a state without a single national base or even a majority. Its stability and very existence were challenged repeatedly by the tension between the pressures for overarching political cohesion and the defense of separate national identities and aspirations. In a brilliant analysis of this complex and sensitive national question, Ivo Banac provides a comprehensive introduction to Yugoslav political history. His book is a genetic study of the ideas, circumstances, and events that shaped the pattern of relations among the nationalities of Yugoslavia. It traces and analyzes the history and characteristics of South Slavic national ideologies, connects these trends with Yugoslavia's flawed unification in 1918, and ends with the fatal adoption of the centralist system in 1921. Banac focuses on the first two and a half years in the history of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, because in his view this was the period that set the pattern for subsequent development of the national question. The issues that divided the South Slavs, and that still divide them today, took on definite form during that time, he maintains. Banac provides extensive treatment of all of Yugoslavia's nationalities; his sections on the Montenegrins, Albanians, Macedonians, and Bosnian Muslims are unique in the literature. In this unbiased account, all of the principals and groups assume a tragic fascination. When published in 1984, The National Question in Yugoslavia was the first complete introduction to the cultural history of the South Slavic peoples and to the politics of Yugoslavia, and it remains a major contribution to the scholarship on modern European nationalism and the stability of multinational states.

(Ab)use of religion as a political means to an end: the achievement of nationalist political goals, analyzing 'how' through which mechanisms this phenomenon has been and still is practiced in South-Eastern Europe.

In this study of identity politics, memory and long-distance nationalism among Serbian migrants in California, the author examines the complicated ways in which visions of the past are used to form Diaspora subjects and make claims to the homeland in the present. Drawing on extended fieldwork in the San Francisco Bay Area community, she shows how the Yugoslav wars generated a revaluation Serbian history and personal life stories, resulting in the strengthening of ethnic identity. Nevertheless, strategies for dealing with rupture and change also included contestation of exile nationalism.

This interdisciplinary examination of present-day identities and histories of the former Yugoslavia explores relationships with the social, political, cultural and historical 'facts and fictions' that have marked the different parts of the region. It shows that while nationalism remains important other social dynamics also exert a strong influence.