Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation

Like most of the reviewers I am a veteran Balkanist, and am impressed by the quality of both research and writing in this , I found it even easier to use than Mischa Glenny's excellent study of War & Nationalism.

My caveat is the obvious one, it takes very much the 'Guardian report from embattled Sarejevo' approach to the Bosnian conflict. The Serbs are caricatured as villains and the Muslims as heroes/victims, and the Croats relegated to an overly minor role, rather than key players. It also takes this line (a bit)with the break-up of Yugoslavia, where extremist Serb statements are extensively quoted as if representative of Yugoslavia's Serb polity, while similar stuff from Croats or Albanians is carefully put in its correct context as not speaking for the majority. The lies and misdeeds of Serb politicans are likewise accurately deconstructed, while those of the other sides tend to be taken uncritically at their own word. My own experience of living in Bosnia during 1990 was of a community for whom no sides extremists actually spoke, but were polarised against their will by war and the fear of war. The trouble is that a a historian it is easy to be caught by self-fulfilling prophecies, extremists can both talk and ignite a war which engulfs whole communities, it should not be taken as proof they were somehow articulating a whole community's desire for war all along!

Overall a useful contibution, especially in terms of chronology of who said what, and provided its bias is taken into account, well worth reading.

The book tries to be objective by giving straight facts without bias. But it is hard to compile a heap of facts about such a complex story as was yugoslavias into a book. And this book in my opinion lacks mentioning of some facts that could clarify some of the going-ons. One can still feel the typical western (particulary the former colonial imperial) view on these matters.
I will mention only a couple of things that bothered me and they come from the same "not understanding":
When quoting Dobrica Cosic who said about the memorandum of the serbian Academy of Sciance and Art that it's not nationalist but on the contrary pro Yugoslav the authors observe Cosic's statement as unconvincing. This for me shows the typical lack of understanding of yugoslav problem. The core of this is that Cosic was in no way unconvincing - he told/repeated the same statement that everybody else was afraid of in yugoslavia which is that "Serbian way is Yugoslavian way". Serbs considered Yugoslavia as an extension of Serbia, a war loot that they got after the first world war for being in the good books with imperialists like Britain and France and against ("would-be") imperialists like Austria-Hungary and germany. That's why Serbs were practically taken by surprise with the '70 constitution changes which further decentralised yugoslavia and consequently felt threatend by it - it showed them that what they consider their realm/empire isn't so much theirs anymore. The same serbian imperialistic attitude brought Alabanians to rebell against the serbs.
Furthermore "slicing" Serbia in 3 pieces had a reason. Vojvodina and Kosovo had (and have) large minority populations. Kosovo had albanians (at that point already angry because of the way they were treated by serbs up untill then - we all knew how they were treated when we were serving army duty in Yug. Peoples army) vojvodina had Romanians, Hungarians and others.
No reason is mentioned for this reorganisation. It can be vaguely read between the lines that the reason was also decentralisation of govenrment in yug. in accordance with the in other ways silly self-anagement plan of the yugoslav communists which was a way of having a sort of crippled democracy within an undemocratic system. The practical goal of this "democracy" was creating confusion - you can't have monolith structure of communist state and democracy functioning at the same time - the result was that the problems and initiatives of the groups of people were being discussed at the lower levels and brought conclusions (by non-anonymous voting) and those conclusions were taken to a higher level to be voted again...etc. At the end the initial initiative got lost somewhere and none of the "important" higher level polititians got blamed for not implementing the will of the people. Also all kind of personal problems came up during the discussions at the lowest levels (at factory personell meetings, community meeetings etc.) so nothing was done and nothing could endanger the Party and status. But no one expected it would also cut hands to making fast decisions and would make the already inneficient communist system even more inneficient.
Someone who knows this also can understand why Milosevic passed "anti bureaurocratic" acts when he was in power. "self management" in communist days was something that was creating "red tape" because it was meant to create it. That was its purpose - so people wouldn't have time or energy to deal with their authorities and wouldn't know who to blame for what - responsibilities were dispersed. It also had a mildening effect on serbian imperialism. It got lost inside "red tape". But as it is usual in communist regimes - no one sticks to rules too hard so the imperialist nationalism was able to bubble to surface after all. Milosevics "anti bureaurocratic acts" fully opened the door to it at just the right time.

And a comment to a reader that said that the book is one-sided. The unbeatable but very unfortunate fact remains that Serbia was the initiator of the horror and is therefore the quilty party in this matter. Serbias reactions/actions to problems that it faced were inaproriate - always agressive, so was the attitude that forced Serbia to react. By considering yugoslav republics as their own provinces instead of partner states inside a common state, by immediately agressively dealing with their albanian minority... There are countries that have strong minorities of nations that were agressive in history but despite problems they may have with these minorities they don't resovle them by striking back with double force and NEVER by taking away their acquired rights.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Silber and Little bring up the subtle nuances of the war in the former Yugoslavia that have been glossed over in other accounts. It is very detailed without drowning the reader in information. They did a spectacular job of putting the information together in a way that is informative and engaging.
My one dissappointment with this text is that it is less and less detailed and sort of tapers of as it comes to an end. The events discussed at the end of the book get less attention while the importance is not diminished.

This book is an exhaustive account of the events that led to the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, one of the complex, multiethnic republics that had once comprised Yugoslavia. Laura Silber and Allan Little, drawing largely on interviews with the leading characters on all sides in the conflict, have written a book that will be consulted for generations to come, for diplomacy's sake.

It is perhaps one of the longer books written about the Bosnian war (it does treat the wars in Slovenia and Croatia, respectively, as well as prime readers on the recent history of Yugoslavia in the late 1980s that shaped it for war). While it lacks in the intricate history to be found in Noel Malcolm's history of Bosnia, and the compressed highlights and historical transitions that are illustrated most vividly in Tim Judah's journalistic work about the Serbs, Silber and Little's work is most effective, in this reviewer's view, in meticulously chronicling every detail of the war in Bosnia. The front lines, the politicians, the paramilitary groups, the efforts and experiences of the few peacekeepers, the atrocities and experiences of civilians caught between exchanges of gunfire; Silber and Little have not overlooked anything surrounding Bosnia's demise. However, as the bulk of this book is devoted to Bosnia, the brief background and key events leading to Yugoslavia's demise provided in these pages could be inadequate for some first-time readers of this tragedy.

The revised Penguin Books edition of this book (under review) appeared in 1996. Throughout the dense text are recurrent references to Kosovo, the province from which Slobodan Milosevic, now an indicted war criminal made it to power in Serbia, and later in the rump Yugoslavia. Silber and Little, at that early stage, predicted that worse was yet to come in Kosovo (see pp. 383-384), writing that the post-Dayton police-dominated province with its Albanian majority (and Serb minority) would be influenced by what happened to the rest of the former Yugoslavia. In Silber and Little's words: "A peace settlement based on the principle that statehood derives from ethnicity sent powerful signals to Serbia's minorities...that could lead to further conflict in the future" (p. 384). Once again, the age-old phenomenon of having writing on the wall; Kosovo was a disaster waiting to happen, with advance warning.

Essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the faceted character and nature of a long, gruesome war.

Somehow, great reporters become famous after servicing in some type of 'tiranny', like a South American, a Middle Eastern or even a Balkan country. What this BBC correspondents did in Yugoslavia is a true masterpiece. They were able even to read the mind of politicians and war generals; they didn't miss a single point of the action, and their book reads like replaying events occurred now a decade ago.